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A chill slithered up my spine. This was far beyond seeing a man in a window or a horse running in an empty field. More terrifying than hearing the sound of car engines on an empty road. It was an entirely different reality. Complete and utter madness.

My thoughts stumbled ahead clumsily. Maybe they’d never found my mother’s body because she wasn’t dead. Maybe there was no trail to follow because she’d vanished. Not just from Jasper, but from this…

“Timeline.” I whispered the word.

Was that what you called this? A timeline? Putting it that way made it sound like there was more than one, and even thinking it made my stomach drop with dread. It was the most insane thought I’d ever had. So why didn’t I feel crazy?

From the moment I’d seen that envelope from Gran, I’d been pulling at a thread that seemed to have no end. Like the toss of a stone into a well, when you’re waiting, breath held, to hear it hit the dark water below. But that silence just kept going.

Dr. Jennings’s warning about paranoia and delusions resounded inmy head. I’d been recording my episodes in detail for the last year, but this was different territory. It felt dangerous.

I took the laptop from where it was buried beneath the papers on the desk and sat down on the floor. The light of the screen lit the dark room in a pale blue glow as I stretched my hands over the keys.

I swallowed hard before I typed “define delusion” and hit enter.

The search engine instantly populated.

Noun: a false belief or judgment about external reality, held despite incontrovertible evidence to the contrary, occurring especially in mental conditions.

Trying again, I typed “delusion vs hallucination.”

A number of articles came up, and I clicked on the first one. An illustrated picture of the human brain filled half the page, but the winding pathways were drawn like roots. From them, a large tree was growing, branches outstretched like uncurling fingers.

I scanned the text until I found what I was looking for.

Therefore, a hallucination includes seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, or feeling something that isn’t there.

My notebook was filled with those, and they seemed to track with Gran’s symptoms.

On the other hand, delusions are false beliefs despite evidence to the contrary.

I exhaled, somewhat relieved. Therewasevidence. It was scattered all over the sitting room like confetti. I hadn’t made up the coincidences between my mother and Nathaniel Rutherford’s wife. I also hadn’t imagined the connections between myself and their daughter, June Rutherford.

My hands tightened into fists automatically. That name still felt like a choking vine, but the irrefutable part of this was that people couldn’t just travel through time.

I’m not sick, honey. I’m just in two places at once.

I’d never really thought about those words. I’d never had to, because we knew that Gran’s mind was broken, just like my mother’s was. The pattern was there, and so was the inevitable outcome. But Dr. Jennings had said himself that this form of dementia or cognitive decline didn’t follow the rules in textbooks. He didn’t even have a theory about what it could be.

When I followed that line of thinking, it led to only one place. One question that felt like the tip of a needle. If I touched it, it would prick me.

What if Granwasn’tmad?

I stopped myself, backtracking the speeding train of thoughts before they led somewhere truly horrifying. The idea was a threshold. One I wasn’t sure I could come back from if I crossed it. But I didn’t feel like I had a choice anymore.

I went back to the desk, finding my notebook. My hands hesitated on its worn cover. I’d lost that apprehensive, nauseous feeling I’d had all the other times I’d opened it. There was something about it now that felt scientific. Clinical.

I turned to the first page, staring at the date.

July 2, 2022

8:45p.m.—At the greenhouse. Someone was calling my name.

The first time it happened, I was at the farm, in the greenhouse we used for starting our autumn harvest seeds. I’d stayed late after the fieldworkers had all gone home, and I was working when I heard someone calling my name. It was the very first time I heard that voice that was now familiar. The one that covered me in a feeling of warmth. It was so clear and loud that I hadn’t questioned it even for a second.

I answered, but the voice only called my name again. And again,until I’d pulled the gloves from my hands and walked outside, searching the darkening fields for a face. But there was nothing. No one. And the voice just went on.

It was several seconds before I realized what was happening, and it was like being hit by a rogue wave, the rush of it coming all at once. It didn’t matter that I’d been standing on that shore my whole life, waiting for it. It still felt like the world split in two when it finally arrived.