Chapter Fifty-Three
Maggie
Maggie meant to stoke the fire—maybe fluff her hair—but as soon as she was safely inside the room she started to pace.
She needed to hide the clock, someplace dark and secret.
She needed to put it on a shelf, right out in the open and hidden in plain sight.
She needed to brush her teeth and put on fancy underwear and also go back in time and become the kind of person who owns fancy
underwear.
There were a hundred and one things that Maggie needed to be doing, but she couldn’t pick a single one, so Maggie kept on
pacing.
Until she stopped.
The tiny flashlight was already back in her pocket, but the fire was going strong by that point, and in the bright orange
glow she saw her laptop and a bundle of cords sticking out of her bag. And she remembered: laptops run on batteries.
“Come on, come on, come on,” she was chanting two minutes later as she waited for the laptop to turn on. She found the right
cord and adapter and plugged the nanny cam in and, suddenly, she was back in the hallway, looking at Eleanor’s office door
in black and white.
She hit rewind on the recording and watched the clock turn back. Literally. Figuratively. She saw herself walking the halls
with Ethan in reverse and way too quickly. Night turned into day, then night again. She watched Sir Jasper enter the room,
and part of her wanted to cry out, to stop him. But it was too late. You can never change the past.
She was so lost in thought that it took her a moment to realize that she’d let it go too far, so she hit play and watched
as she stood there on the first night, arguing with Ethan. She could almost feel his breath on the back of her neck and hear
the whisper. I could always pick you out of a lineup. Her arms were covered with goose bumps by the time she watched herself walk away.
For a while, the hall stayed dark and empty. She could see the corner of the tray on the screen. It was right there. All alone
until—
A shadow passed in front of the camera, too close and too fast to see clearly, and Maggie remembered that she’d never really
liked scary movies. She knew she should wait for Ethan, but the shadow on the screen told her someone was leaning over the
tray. They were barely out of sight. If only they’d move a foot or two. If only...
The knob turned. The door opened. And then there was Eleanor, backlit by the light and haloed in the glow. She was smiling
and laughing and happy. And... there. Eleanor was still there, and Maggie hit pause. Not because she wanted to freeze the
image. No. She wanted to freeze time.
Maggie had never known a world without an Eleanor, but now she was gone—she was gone and she might never come back and—
Maggie’s eyes turned hot and liquid—tears ran down her cheeks, but she didn’t even wipe them with her sleeve. She was too
busy looking at the last known picture of Eleanor Ashley, trying to burn the image into her brain. The picture of her smiling
and laughing and—
Maggie hit play.
Taking a tray from someone whose back was to the camera.
And then that person was shifting. And turning. And that time, when Maggie hit pause, it stopped on the smirking face of Ethan
Wyatt.
It didn’t make sense. It had to be a mistake. She was determined to stand there until she could find some rational explanation
because—
The floor creaked. A searing pain sliced through Maggie’s head, and in the next moment, she was falling. She was sleeping.
She was gone.