Chapter 20
What struck her first was the cacophony of machinery: whirring, clanking, growling. Then came the smell of printing ink and the fresh, woody scent of paper. Casey looked around her. “Is this a printing press?”
“A book bindery, yes,” Margo replied.
People walked purposefully, going about their business unaware that they were being observed.
A pair of swing doors pushed open, and Other Casey walked in with an expression like all her Christmases had come at once.
She was accompanied by a woman in jeans and a smart Fair Isle jumper.
Other Casey was sharply dressed in a green fitted peacoat over a black dress with brightly colored folk embroidery on the bodice, and ankle boots.
Her long hair had been heat styled into perfect, loose, honey-tinted waves.
“Looks like this Casey got all the style genes,” Margo quipped admiringly.
“I can be stylish,” Casey returned.
Margo guffawed. “Prove it!”
The woman in jeans led Other Casey to a machine that was deftly enveloping clumps of bound pages into thick paper book covers. “And here at last, it all starts to come together to resemble a book,” the woman said. “Your book, to be precise.”
Other Casey’s face broke into a smile that could only be described as radiant.
“My book,” Casey whispered, awed.
“Your debut novel,” Margo clarified. “In this glimpse, you didn’t accompany Sam to his audition.
You took your slot with the literary agent instead.
Sam broke up with you via text while you waited to give your pitch.
Twenty minutes later, you were offered representation and three years after that, here we are. ”
Casey watched her other self, saw the joy in her expression, felt her excitement bursting out of her like sunbeams, and she wanted to cry with happiness and weep with dejection.
She had been sure that the proposal had been the catalyst for the downturn in her fortunes, but here was another decision made earlier in that same year, which had also changed everything.
“Like I said before,” Margo began, “every decision causes a ripple, and none is too small to have an effect.”
“It’s not fair,” said Casey, more weary than petulant.
“This is but a glimpse, a fraction of a whole life that you might not choose were you to be shown the full picture.”
“Somehow, I find that hard to imagine,” she said, looking admiringly at the cut of her other self’s clothes.
“Are you truly so naive as to imagine that any person on earth has a perfect life? There is light and dark in every lifetime. Perfection is an illusion.”
Other Casey had reached the end of a production line, where a man wearing ear defenders reverently handed her a bound copy of her book. She took it as if she were being handed a newborn baby. “It’s warm,” she said, smiling down at it beatifically.
“Hot off the press,” said the woman in jeans and Margo simultaneously.
Casey leaned over her other self’s shoulder to look. The cover was navy blue and the title in a black gothic font read, Hollow Eyes: A Novel of Love and Death.
“Chirpy,” said Margo. “Is that the novel you would have pitched?”
Casey frowned. “I don’t know, it’s a different title, but it could still be the same story. It was a horror; I’ve only ever written horror.”
After the thank-yous and goodbyes, Other Casey stepped out onto the street, still clutching her book, and Margo and Casey followed.
With a popping sound and a squeal, Other Casey was suddenly covered in glitter from a confetti cannon.
As the glitter cloud floated to the ground, a jolly voice called out, “Congratulations!!” It was a voice Casey recognized, and her heart gave a hard thump when she saw that the person holding the cannon was Grace.
“Grace is alive!” Casey instantly burst into happy tears.
“She’s alive! She didn’t die in this timeline.
” She ran and threw her arms around Grace, but of course only clutched at air.
She stumbled but quickly regained her footing and stayed close by Grace as the two women linked arms and began to walk along the street together, chatting and laughing animatedly, like the old friends they were.
She couldn’t stop looking at Grace’s face.
She was even prettier than Casey remembered.
Gosh, Ellory looked so like her, and Conner had her nose; she’d forgotten that.
Everything would be all right: Nate would be okay, the kids still had their mum.
Her tears fell and fell, but she barely noticed.
It was like seeing an angel. Grace was here, alive and well, and Casey’s heart was so full that her whole body fizzed with happiness and sheer joyous relief.
“This life!” She laughed, taking Margo by the shoulders. “This is the life I want!”
“Be careful what you wish for,” Margo replied.
“Where are we going?” asked Other Casey as Grace continued to pull her along.
“I’m taking you for afternoon tea at the Grand Weaverston Hotel,” said Grace, beaming back at her.
Other Casey laughed. “Really? Oh my god, that place is well fancy!”
“Yes, it is. And so are you—you are fabulous and you deserve to be celebrated. We’ve never had an author in the family. Mum and Dad are already there with the kids. You, my darling girl, are going to be treated like the queen that you are!”
Other Casey stopped walking, her eyes welling with tears. “Thank you,” she said.
Grace cupped her face in her hands. “Your brother would be so proud of you, Casey. So, so proud.” Her voice cracked on the last word, and she pulled Other Casey into a hug.
“I miss him.” Other Casey sniffed into her shoulder.
“Me too.”
Casey, who had been watching Grace with a bemused awe, felt her legs go out from under her. No. No. No. That couldn’t be right. She couldn’t catch her breath. The pure happiness that had suffused her body a second ago drained out of her and she began to tremble.
The two women continued speaking above her head while she sat slumped on the cold pavement, feeling like life itself was leeching out of her.
Margo came and sat beside her. “I’m sorry,” said the spirit.
“In this timeline, it was Nate who went out to get custard from the corner shop, not Grace, and it was Nate who died when a man had a fatal heart attack at the wheel of his car and drove it onto the pavement.”
“I don’t want to be here,” Casey whispered. “I don’t want to be in a timeline where my brother’s dead. Take me back, please.”
“Okay,” said Margo, kissing the top of Casey’s head. “Let’s go home.”