He usually had a sandwich and a macchiato, and sat at the counter, admiring the trinkets resting on the varnished wooden shelves that ran along the mirror behind the bar.
Sometimes, he thought he recognized a reflection, the face of a young woman drinking a cup of tea, alone at a table at the far end of the room, and he thought he must be confused.
One morning, he decided to break with habit. His daydreaming had become increasingly frequent over the past few weeks. He went to his usual café, but this time for breakfast.
The room was almost empty. The owner was drying glasses behind the counter. Josh sat down at a table, and his gaze came to rest on a small wooden plane that was swaying on a string, suspended from the ceiling. As he watched, he felt a jolt of electricity course down the back of his neck, and his head started spinning, falling backward, as Josh saw his entire life flash before his eyes.
Regaining consciousness, he heard a man’s voice drifting above him.
“Are you okay? Gosh, you scared me. Want me to call a doctor?”
Josh didn’t want to see a doctor. He sat up and asked the owner how he had come to own the little wooden plane.
“Funny you should ask. It’s been there for two months. A young woman gave it to me. She begged me to take it, said I’d be doing her a big favor. She asked me to put it somewhere people would see it, and I was happy to. It’s cute, isn’t it? Then, she gave me an envelope to give to the person who asked where the plane had come from. She told me to tell you that she had given it to you years ago, and that that was why it might take you a while to recognize it.”
The café owner ducked behind the counter and reemerged, holding an envelope.
“Don’t tell me you’re going to start crying before you’ve even read it!”
Josh wiped his eyes dry and tore open the envelope. On the back were an address and a phone number.
Joshy,
I’ve found you.
I love you.
Hope
Author’s Note
I’d like to pay tribute to Kim Suozzi and Josh Schisler, whose lives inspired this story.
And because the impossible is merely a matter of time, I hope from the bottom of my heart that Kim will awaken from the deep slumber in which she has lain since a misty January morning in 2013, and I hope even more ardently that she and Josh will one day be reunited.
To be able to write, you have to be able to imagine.
I’d like to thank the researchers who helped me with their advice, made all the more invaluable by my pitiful knowledge of neuroscience when I first began writing this novel. In truth, I’m not too sure of the extent to which that has improved.
Most of the barely credible scientific advances described in these pages are based on truth, and those that are not may one day exist—especially now that Josh has offered up a few ideas to inspire the people who, like him, truly are geniuses in the field of neuroscience.
Flinch has asked me not to forget to mention just how remarkable his role was too. I haven’t forgotten, Flinch.
New York, January 2, 2016
Marc Levy
Acknowledgments
Thanks to Pauline, Louis, Georges, and Cléa.
Raymond, Danièle, and Lorraine.
Susanna Lea.
Emmanuelle Hardouin.
Cécile Boyer-Runge, Antoine Caro.
Lydie Leroy, Joël Renaudat, Céline Chiflet, the teams at Les Éditions Robert Laffont.
Pauline Normand, Marie-Ève Provost, Jean Bouchard.
Léonard Anthony, Sébastien Canot, Mark Kessler, Estelle Rolloy.
Noa Rosen, Helena Sandlyng-Jacobsen, Lauren Wendelken, Kerry Glencorse.
About the Author
With more than forty million books sold, Marc Levy is the most-read French author alive today. In a nationwide poll commissioned by Le Figaro, Marc tied with Victor Hugo as the country’s number one favorite writer. He’s written twenty-one novels to date, including A Woman Like Her, The Strange Journey of Alice Pendelbury, The Last of the Stanfields, P.S. from Paris, The Children of Freedom, Replay, and All Those Things We Never Said.
Originally written for his son, his first novel, If Only It Were True, was later adapted into the film Just Like Heaven starring Reese Witherspoon and Mark Ruffalo. Since then, Levy has not only won the hearts of European readers; he’s won over audiences around the globe. Over two million copies of his books have been sold in China alone, and his novels have been published in forty-nine languages. He lives in New York City. Readers can learn more about him and follow his work at www.marclevy.info.
About the Translator
Hannah Dickens-Doyle was awarded her master’s in translation in 2013 and has been translating and traveling ever since. Originally from the UK, she has called six countries home and now splits her time between Lille and London. In addition to being a translator, Hannah is also a writer.
