Chapter 30
Mid-November
I’ve been extracting myself from H&F. I feel like I already have one foot out the door, and they don’t need me anymore, they need a new assistant to replace Angela, who is pretty much doing my job.
Our job. Your job, really. I feel almost as much of a fraud doing your job as I feel being your husband’s wife.
Ever since I moved back into the art room a few weeks ago, to give us both some space, Rob’s become pretty withdrawn.
But it helps me, being in here, surrounded by things that make sense to me, by art from my previous life.
Or, should I say, our previous life. From when you and I were the same person.
I wish I could go back to being that person. Do you wish it too?
It’s all I think about.
I put my pen down on the dressing table and scan the artwork on the gallery wall. It always gives me comfort.
But then my gaze rests on a large piece that has been in the room only a few months.
Above the bed is giant, near-life-sized photo of us in Venice, at the ball.
Rob contacted the photographer without my knowledge and had it framed and delivered.
I jumped around with excitement as he pulled away the brown paper and bubble wrap protecting it at the time.
It’s fabulous. We’re in front of the ballroom’s elaborate paneled wall, in full eighteenth-century dress, wig, hat and masks.
It’s beautiful, but terrifying. We’re unrecognizable, me even more than Rob because of the full-face mask.
We could be total strangers — impostors. It seems unfathomable the woman is me.
I turn back to my journal. For months now, I’ve been addressing everything to her.
Other Josie. I realized some time ago that chronicling my journey was not only for my own record-keeping, to try to stay sane.
I’ve also acknowledged that I’m figuring my way out of this life, and this is a year’s worth of information she’ll need, if she comes back.
And I think she’s coming back.
So then, the question is . . . how would she do that?
It’s one that is easily answered, because she’s me. All I have to ask is: what would I do?
And it’s a no-brainer. I’d recreate the conditions that got me here in the first place.
A bike crash at that intersection, at that same time and date.
The first time, we managed to swap with each other by being in an impact at the exact same place and time in our respective universes.
So it stands to reason, if it can be called reason, we would switch back the same way.
There’s a catch, of course. We’d both have to do it at the same time. I’d have to take the same life-threatening risk, as she would, for it to stand any chance of working.
I think about what Other Josie will be doing in preparation, if that’s what she’s planning.
She’ll have probably been in the UK, spending time with David.
She’ll let him go — knowing that, truly, he’s not her brother anymore, he’s mine.
Hers died in Hawaii, at her wedding. At least this way she was able to have some time with him, and say a real goodbye, before giving him back to me. Before taking back her husband.
I never meant to steal your husband. You know that. The guilt of betraying you has been unbearable.
I know what you want me to do. You tell me in my dreams, insisting I give you back your love, your life.
I know you’re coming for him. I know how and when. It’s soon. And the answer is yes. I’ll do it.
Rob can’t bear it either and it’s been tearing us apart — first gradually, now rapidly.
We have no way of coming back from this.
His guilt is even worse than mine now. He feels he should have admitted to himself that he knew I wasn’t you, right from the start.
That he should have rejected this new version of his wife and searched for a way to get you back. He’s in agony over it.
If our plan works, if you get back here, if you’re reading this — you have to forgive him.
Please, please forgive him and try to move forward.
He’s suffered enough, and he does love you.
And since I turned out not to be a new-and-improved Josie after all, quite the opposite, I think he’d be much happier with you.
With you, he can be at peace again. You are his true wife, after all — I’m merely an unwitting impostor.
If you’re reading this, I hope you’ve read all my journal, from the start.
I’m sure you will. You’ll also understand this couldn’t have failed to happen.
Of course I fell in love with him — I’m you.
And of course he fell in love with me — I’m YOU.
Mostly you, anyway. Altered by circumstance, by life choices — but fundamentally you. It was the only way it could have gone.
But if our plan doesn’t work, if we’re stuck here, in each other’s lives — I’m going to try to make it work with him.
Because I’ll have done everything I could, and I don’t think I’ll feel the same kind of guilt.
Rob may, still. But he’ll also realize nothing can be done, and, well .
. . you know him. So goddamn stoic. He might learn to live with it.
Don’t forget, I love him more than I’ve ever loved anyone.
Still, if our plan doesn’t work . . . well, you won’t even be reading this, and I’m just talking to myself, shouting into the wind.
I guess I’ll stop this journal after that.
Then, maybe it’ll work out between me and Rob — or maybe it’s too late, we’re too damaged.
Maybe we’ll split up anyway. But that’s a decision we can only make after D-day.
I look back up at the intimidating Venice picture.
She’ll have a terrible shock, if she does return, when she finds out Rob and I got married. Slash, remarried. And that we went to Venice, where she wanted to go with him. And that I tattooed the back of her neck.
It’s all in the journal, though, so I have to trust she’ll read it and gradually understand.
Until then, I have little to plan. Aside from leaving behind as much information as possible, both in my journal, and my extensive notes at the H&F job, I’m all done. It’s not as though I can even pack a suitcase for a journey to another universe. No passport required.
Just nerves of steel and the resolve to do the right thing.
Even if it means losing the greatest love of my life.