The Evolution of Mara Dyer (Mara Dyer #2)(47)

Noah reached down—to hand me the charm, I thought—but instead pulled me up from the floor and onto the sheet-covered sofa next to him. He handed me the pendant. My fingers curled around it, just as Noah asked, “Where did you get that doll?”

“It was my grandmother’s,” I said, staring at my closed fist.

“But where did it come from?”

“I don’t—”

I was about to say that I didn’t know, but then remembered the blurred edges of a dream. Hushed voices. A dark hut. A kind girl, sewing me a friend.

Maybe I did know. Maybe I watched while it was made.

Impossible though it was, I told Noah what I remembered. He listened intently, his eyes narrowing as I spoke.

“I never saw the charm, though,” I said when I finished. “The girl never put it inside.”

“It could have been sewn in later,” he said, his voice level.

With whatever that paper was too. “You think—you think it really happened?” I asked. “You think the dream could be real?”

Noah said nothing.

“But if it was real, if it really happened . . .” My voice trailed off, but Noah finished my sentence.

“Then it wasn’t a dream,” he said to himself. “It was a memory.”

We were both quiet as I tried to wrap my mind around the idea.

It made no sense. To remember something, you have to experience it. “I’ve barely left the suburbs,” I said. “I’ve never seen jungles and villages. How could I remember something I’ve never seen?”

Noah stared at nothing and ran his hand slowly through his hair. His voice was very quiet. “Genetic memory.”

Genetic.

My mind conjured my mother’s voice.

“It isn’t you. It might be chemical or behavioral or even genetic—”

“But who in our family has had any kind of—”

“My mother,” she had said. “Your grandmother.”

That was just before she recounted my grandmother’s symptoms.

Grandmother’s symptoms. Grandmother’s doll.

Grandmother’s memory?

“No,” Noah said, shaking his head. “It’s nonsense.”

“What is?”

Noah closed his eyes, and spoke as if from memory. “The idea that some experiences can be stored in our DNA and passed down to future generations,” he said. “Some people think it explains Jung’s theory of the collective unconscious.” He opened his eyes and the corner of his mouth lifted. “I’m partial to Freud, myself.”

“Why do you know this?”

“I read it.”

“Where?”

“In a book.”

“What book?” I asked quickly. Noah took my hand and we headed for his room.

Once inside, he scanned his shelves. “I don’t see it,” he said finally, his eyes still on the bookcases that spanned the length of his room.

“What’s it called?”

“New Theories in Genetics.” He tipped out a thick book, then replaced it. “By Armin Lenaurd.”

I joined in the search. “You don’t alphabetize,” I said as my gaze traveled over the spines.

“Correct.”

There was no order to any of the titles, at least none I could discern. “How do you find anything?”

“I just remember.”

“You just . . . remember.” There were thousands of books. How?

“I have a good memory.”

I tilted my head. “Photographic?”

He shrugged a shoulder.

So that was why he never took any notes in school.

The two of us continued to search. Five minutes passed, then ten, and then Noah gave up and dropped down on his pristinely made bed. He lifted his guitar from its case and began aimlessly playing chords.

I kept looking. I didn’t expect the book to have all the answers, or any, really, but I wanted to know more about this and was mildly annoyed that Noah didn’t seem to care. But just as my back began to ache from crouching to read the titles on the bottommost shelf, I found it.

“Score,” I whispered. I tipped the volume out with my finger and withdrew it; the book was astonishingly heavy, with faded gold lettering on the clothbound cover and spine.

Noah’s brow creased. “Strange,” he said, watching me rise. “I don’t remember putting it there.”

I carried the book to his bed and sat beside him. “Not exactly light reading?”

“Beggars can’t be choosers.”

“Meaning?”

“It was all I had on the flight from London back to the States.”

“When was this?”

“Winter break. We went back to England to see my grandparents—my father’s parents,” he clarified. “I accidentally threw the book I was reading in with my checked luggage, and this was in the seat pouch thing in front of me.”

The book was already growing heavy on my lap. “Doesn’t seem like it would fit.”

“First class.”

“Of course.”

“My father took the jet.”

I made a face.

“I would wholly embrace and mirror your disdain, but I have to say, of all the useless garbage he bleeds money on, that’s the one I’m not at all sorry about. No lines. No security misery. No rush.”