“Whose car?” Camille whispered.
“I don’t know. Let me look at you,” I demanded instead, turning her toward the streetlight. “I want to see if you’ve changed. Look, my clothes are different.” I indicated my body. Camille’s outfit had indeed altered and I grasped her left hand to check for the familiar sight of her gold wedding band, an antique ring Mathias had given her, inscribed on the inner rim with the words I am yours for all time.
She noticed at the same second. “My ring is gone. It’s gone. That means…that means…” She began to buckle and I grabbed her elbows, keeping her upright.
“Mine is gone, too,” I confirmed. Steeling my nerves against the onslaught of anguish, I looked hard into my sister’s stricken eyes. “And I’m not…” I bit back a moan. “I’m not pregnant anymore.”
I saw it engulf her face, the absolute need to fall apart, and so I yelled. I hated myself for yelling at her but I could not let her crumble to bits. “No! Camille, no! Don’t do this, please, don’t do this. We have to stick together!”
“It’s just like my nightmares…oh God oh God…”
“Camille!”
“LET GO OF ME!” Her eyes blazed with unchecked ferocity and I obeyed at once, helpless as she fell to all fours on the gravel, hyperventilating before giving way to a wailing, inhuman crescendo of distress. The hair on my nape stood straight and at last I covered my ears, doubling forward into a crouch and squeezing my eyes shut, as though to do so would block out the sound and sight of my sister beyond all control.
It seemed she would never stop.
I wrapped both arms around my head and pressed my forehead hard against my knees.
I could still hear her screams long after the sound finally ceased.
The town was truly empty this night. No one came running to investigate, no vehicles scrolled past on Main. Even after falling quiet, Camille remained on all fours, head hanging. Feeling at last able to approach, I crawled to her side and sat on one ankle. I wasn’t sure if I should touch her or not; instinct won out and I curled a careful hand around her right shoulder.
I had almost given up hope when she reached up and grasped my fingers.
We took stock to the best of our ability. A quick walk to the sign welcoming visitors to town assured us that this was still indeed Jalesville. The population, however, had fallen slightly. This Jalesville boasted no all-night gas station, no drugstore beaming with the cheerful fluorescent lights to usher us within a space where someone worked and might be able to provide additional information. No matter how unbelievable it seemed, we were walking and breathing and existing in an altered time-frame. The most probable theory was based on the only real clue we possessed, which was that Fallon Yancy had done something in the past to transform what we’d known as reality to the current reality.
But what? And how?
Back in the parking lot of The Spoke and exhaling with exertion from the walk to the road sign in the chilly night air, we stripped from our coats and searched every last pocket. Camille turned up a key ring strung with three keys, one of which worked on the Toyota beneath the streetlight. Once inside the car we dug through everything, tearing apart the contents of the glove compartment, then a single suitcase and two purses we found in the backseat, assuming correctly that these items were ours. Our driver’s licenses were current; mine identified me as Patricia Gordon and my address was listed as a Chicago residence, not one that I recognized. Camille too possessed our former surname, Gordon, and her address was the same as that of Shore Leave, back home in Landon.
Ripping through a black leather handbag large enough to fit a couple of volleyballs, I felt a hard, familiar shape and cried triumphantly, “A phone!”
I snatched it up and tapped out a pin code – the year I was born – rewarded when the screen blinked to life.
“Thank God I have no imagination,” I muttered, scrolling through numbers as quickly as my fingers could move, ignoring the many I did not recognize. “Here’s you, Milla, and Clint, and Dad, Mom and Aunt Jilly…here’s Shore Leave…”
Camille found a phone tucked in the other purse but was having no luck breaching its security code. She peered over my shoulder; both of us already suspected but it still hurt like hell to confirm that my phone contained no contact information for Case, Mathias, any of the Rawleys, or…Ruthann.
“It’s got to be a mistake,” I said, hoarse and breathless, trying with little success to keep abject panic at bay. “Where are they?”
“Call Mom,” Camille ordered at once. Her voice was raw and harsh, the way Case’s had sounded after the fire in our barn, the fire that had burned his lungs.
“I’m scared to,” I admitted. My heart seemed to be hacking shallow trenches between my rib bones.
“Who else is missing?”
I examined my contact list a second time, forcing a slower pace, with escalating dread. “Blythe isn’t here, or Uncle Justin or Grandma, or Al and Helen Anne…” And then I froze. My heart skittered and missed several beats. “Oh God, here’s Robbie. He’s…still alive.”
“Call him later, we have to talk to Mom,” Camille insisted.
Mom didn’t answer, nor did Aunt Jilly. It was after eleven, which meant it was after midnight in Minnesota, but I tried Clint anyway, hanging up before leaving a voicemail, just like I’d done with both my mother and aunt. I had no idea where to begin with what I had to say.
“I’ll try again first thing in the morning,” I whispered.
We scanned the mess we had created in the unfamiliar vehicle that was somehow ours, clothes and shoes and make-up falling all across the floor mats and spilling out into the gravel parking lot. I was so terrified I felt without actual substance, as
