Chapter 9 Maggie #2
What did this mean? That I would never meet Sarah now? That Emma would never be born because I was here, in 1987, changing things that weren’t meant to be changed? Or was it simpler than that, was I just forgetting? Was every moment I spent building this new life erasing the old one from my memory?
I tried to remember Emma’s middle name. I’d known it, once. I’d helped Sarah pick it, arguing for hours about family names and meanings and how the full name would sound when Emma inevitably got in trouble at school.
Gone.
I tried to remember her laugh. The sound of it, bright and sudden, the way it could fill a room.
Gone.
I tried to remember the last thing she’d said to me, that final conversation before the world ended and rewound and dropped me here in a body that wasn’t quite mine anymore.
Gone.
“Maggie?”
Jack’s voice, warm with concern. His hand on my elbow, steadying.
I grabbed my bag of books from the counter. My movements were jerky, mechanical.
“Ready to go?” I asked. My voice sounded off. Too bright. Too forced.
He was watching me with that gaze, the one that saw everything and filed it away for later analysis. I could tell he knew something was wrong. I could also tell he was choosing not to push.
“Sure,” he said. “Let’s walk by the river.”
Outside, the afternoon had turned golden, late winter sun slanting through bare branches. Jack took my hand like it was the most natural thing in the world.
I nodded, not trusting my voice.
The photograph sat in my purse like a stone.
Jack
Something had happened in the bookstore. I didn’t know what. Maggie’s face had closed up between one moment and the next, her easy joy replaced by something that looked almost like grief. She’d recovered quickly, she was good at recovering, but the lightness from earlier was gone.
We walked along the Charles, and she was quiet in a way that worried me. Not the comfortable silence from the Public Garden. This was heavier. Weighted.
“I need to tell you something,” I said.
She looked at me, and I saw her brace herself. Like she was expecting bad news.
“The Times interview.”
“I know. You told me.”
“I know you know. But I want to talk about it. Really talk about it.” I stopped walking, and she stopped with me, the river gray and slow beside us. “This is a big deal for me. This could change everything.”
“I know.” Her voice was soft. “You should go.”
“I want to. But—” I turned to face her fully. “I don’t want to leave things uncertain between us. I’ve done that before. Left town for a story, come back to find the person I was dating had moved on because I wasn’t paying attention. I don’t want that to happen with you.”
“It won’t.”
“How do I know that?”
She took a breath. The late afternoon light was doing something to her eyes, making the green look almost gold.
“Because I’ll be here when you get back,” she said. “I promise.”
“You’ve pulled away before.”
“I know.” She didn’t flinch, didn’t make excuses. “Three times. I know exactly how many times over the year we were together. And I know how it must have felt from your end, like you were always auditioning for a part I never intended to cast. But that’s not what’s happening now.”
“What is happening now?”
For a long moment, she didn’t answer. The wind off the river was cold, carrying the smell of ice and distance. A jogger passed us, breath visible, headphones trailing a wire to an invisible Walkman.
“I’m staying,” Maggie said finally. “That’s what’s happening. I’m choosing to stay, even though it scares me. Even though every instinct I have is screaming at me to run before you can leave first.” She reached up and touched my face, her fingers cold against my cheek.
“Go to New York. Take the interview. Impress them, because you will. And when you come back, I’ll be here. Waiting. Not because I don’t have other options, but because you’re the option I want.”
I looked at her, this woman I’d spent a year trying to understand, this puzzle I’d almost given up solving, and saw something I’d never seen before.
Certainty.
Not deflection. Not the careful charm she used to keep people at arm’s length. Just... certainty.
“Who are you?”
“I’m trying to figure that out.” She smiled, and it was the realest smile I’d ever seen from her. “But I think I’m someone who’s done running.”
I kissed her.
Not carefully. Not tentatively. Not the way I’d kissed her before, always holding something back, always braced for the moment she’d pull away.
This was different. This kiss was the kind that rewrites history, that makes you understand why people do stupid things for love, that burns through every careful defense you’ve ever built.
My hands were in her hair, her back was against a tree I didn’t remember walking toward, and the cold was gone because everything was heat and want and finally.
When we broke apart, she was breathing hard. So was I.
“Wow,” she said.
“Yeah.”
“That was—”
“Yeah.”
I pressed my forehead to hers, both of us catching our breath, the world slowly coming back into focus around us. The river. The joggers. The late afternoon light that made everything look like it was made of gold.
“I’ll call you from New York,” I said. “Every night.”
“Long distance is expensive.”
“I don’t care.”
She laughed, a real laugh, surprised and warm, and I thought, This. This is what I’ve been waiting for. This is what I almost gave up on.
I kissed her again, softer this time, and when we finally started walking again, her hand was in mine and the future felt like something worth hoping for.