I wait outside the bathroom door until I hear the shower running, and then I take off down the hall with my phone tight in my hand. I hurry down the staircase, scrolling through my contact list and I press her name.

I hold the phone tight to my ear as it rings and rings. 

Finally, she picks up.

"Well?" she says.

I go into the office, closing the door behind me. "You were right. She lied to me."

"I'm sorry, Dad." Jade whispers. "But she's not her. Which memory did you use?"

I rub a hand through my hair. "This time at the lake. I told her she jumped in and she just went along with it."

Jade sighs on the other end. "She's been fooling you. I don't know how she could know the other things, but to catch her off guard, you need to ask her questions about it, rather than have her tell you the memories."

"Which is what I did," I say. "But. . . what if she genuinely just doesn't remember? And she just went along with it because she thought it might had happened. Lily did have a bad memory."

"Seriously?" she curses. "Even when there's proof staring you right in the face you still can't see it!"

"Jessie and Jamie believe her," I say through my teeth. "They spent most of last night talking and catching up. I don't want to take this away from them."

"She's lying!" Jade yells. "I've been doing a lot of research on reincarnation last night and even if it was possible, the odds of it just happening to one person out of billions is extraordinarily suspicious. I mean, sure, there's children that possess memories of a previous life, but they never carry that belief to term, and there's always pieces missing."

"Such as?"

"Such as they can remember names and they can remember how that person died, but they can't show specific personalities of that person. And sure, environmental factors play a part in that. But having memories of being someone else would in time turn you into that person, one way or another. It could be a twisted kind of fate, but it's just highly unlikely that someone that believes themselves to be a reincarnated version of someone else would still believe it after twenty years."

"Unless it was the truth." I say.

"No, that's not what I'm saying."

"I know what you're saying. But how else can you explain the things she's told me?"

"By studying Mum," she says. "By talking to someone that knew her. Even private things between you could be easy to guess."

"No. It's deeper than that."

"I think that you want it to be her," she says quietly. "I think that you want it to be her so much that it's clouding your rationality."

I bite on my lip, trying to resist throwing the phone at the window. I take it from my ear for a moment, delving into deep breaths, before placing it back to my ear. "What do I do?"

"Ask her something else, something personal. Something that has to make her think. Something that Mum would never forget."

I know exactly what to try. I've already asked her it once before, when she was a child, and she couldn't give me an answer then: now, she claims to have all the memories. "Okay," I tell her. "I'll call you later."

I disconnect the call and I leave the office, following the smell of coffee that inflames the air around me from the kitchen. 

I've got one shot at this. I need to make it count.

For Lily.