Building on Dreams

Chapter 46 - The Notebook of Maxwell Tabor

"Curious," Greg remarked aloud as he realized this minor detail matched his memories as Max.

"What's curious?" Susan asked from across the room.

"Just something I'm reading," Greg replied in a vague sort of tone, still thinking, and he remembered Jessie's reaction to the sketch of the house he'd shown her a few days before. If she'd visited there in that life, it would have been as Eleanor.

Susan looked up from what she was doing and saw Greg wearing a thoughtful expression and studying a small, leather covered book he held in his hands. It wasn't very big. In fact it reminded her very much of the one he usually kept in his pocket, but this one looked different somehow, older.

"Does this have something to do with our house?" Susan asked hesitantly, wondering if that was what this specific notebook was about.

"Not really," Greg said after a moment's thought. "Susan, do you happen to know where you and Eleanor lived as Mrs. Peabody?"

"As Mrs. Peabody?" Susan asked in surprise. "Why are you thinking of that?"

Greg cocked his head slightly as he considered the book in his hands. His first thought was to share it with Susan. To show her what he'd found. But if he did that, he would also have to explain where it came from and how he came to have it now. He wasn't ready to do that just yet, so for the time being he hesitated.

"It's just something I've come across," he said vaguely. "I've been trying to remember something more from that life."

Susan nodded. "Greg ... does this have something to do with the dream that's been waking you up lately?"

Greg looked at her with a start.

"A dream that's been waking me up?"

"Yes. It's only happened a couple of times over the past few months, but it left me wondering what it was you were dreaming about," Susan explained.

Greg looked at her thoughtfully. "I only remember waking on one occasion in the past two months as the result of a dream."

"The day you got up early. I remember that," Susan said. "I think it's happened more than once, but I'm not sure you were fully awake those other times."

"That could be," Greg conceded.

"Were you dreaming about Max?" Susan wondered. "You said that although it was one of our dreams, you didn't think it was one we shared."

Greg thought back to the one occasion he could remember when he'd been awakened recently by a dream. It was the dream about the fog ... and the path ... and being lost. Of seeing the deer, and trusting in the Lord's guidance above all else. He didn't remember much more about it, and as he considered it, he wasn't at all certain which life it represented. Could it have been Max? Somehow he'd always thought the dream was of Harald, but perhaps not. Perhaps that was why the setting looked so keenly familiar when he visited their build site that one foggy morning.

"I do not know," he said at last. "I'm not sure which life it is from, if I'm honest with myself."

"Do you want to talk about it?" Susan offered.

The curser on her screen was blinking, waiting for her next key stroke as her hands lay poised above her keyboard.

"It isn't urgent," Greg assured her, putting the little book away. "I think I hear the children down stairs. I'll go check on them."

"Okay," Susan agreed and she refocused her attention once more on the characters that filled her screen.

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