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“Antoinette and–” Quinn stopped as the image of two women in the bathroom mirror, with the 1919 calendar in the corner, appeared in her mind. “The women before Deb and Harriet.”

“Yes,” Abby confirmed. “Before that, we can still see them and hear them, but not as clearly or not as much, so I think it was the same for Cheryl and Diana. I think they got stuck in the 1600s, so to speak, but there had to be couples before them.”

“I guess so,” she said.

“Do you not want to know about them?”

“No, I do, but… Abs, I think I’m just going to go.”

“What? Why?”

“I’m not sure I’m ready for this, after all. I thought… When you left and said that you needed time, I didn’t want to push, but then you showed up at my place, and I didn’t want you to go. I never wanted you to leave. I think part of that was me, but the other part was the fact that we’ve literally been married for decades, if you add it all up. Maybe even a century; I don’t know. I think I may need some time now. I thought we’d talk aboutustonight. That was the plan. And now, I’m still picturingthem. They’re happy, falling in love, reading to each other, seeing their son from another life, and here I am, standing in front of a girl, asking her to talk only aboutus.”

“I’m sorry,” Abby said softly. “I get like this sometimes. You should know that.”

“Like what? You talk about your past lives with other people, too?”

“No.” Abby smiled coyly. “I told you before, remember? I’m a writer, Quinn. This is part of it. I’m an anxious person as well. I also get obsessive about things and can’t get them out of my mind until I say them, do them, or write them down. So, what you’re seeing isn’t just me talking about our past. It’s me beingme, in a way. I can’t help it. It’s why I investigated Deb and Harriet and wanted to know what happened to Paul. If you’d been anyone else, I wouldn’t have responded to a single text today. I would’ve put on my headphones, ignored my phone altogether, and just typed for hours and hours until my brain finally settled for long enough to remember that I needed to eat something.”

“So, this is you? Part ofyou?”

Abby nodded and said, “Probably the most annoying part.” She let out a nervous laugh. “Do you still want to leave? Did I ruin it, like I’ve ruined everything else?”

“What? Everything else? What are you talking about?”

“Do you really want to ruin the night by letting me talk about myself for the rest of it? That’s how long it would takefor me to get through the fact that I’m a disappointment to just about everyone, have a hard time going into a store I’ve never been to before, can’t stand to be in big cities, and hate having to attend those events I mentioned earlier.”

Quinn took a step toward her and said, “You can talk about all of that. It won’t ruin anything. I want to know who you are, Abby. All of it. Even if we don’t know where it came from, you’re still you. I want to knowyou.”

“I was never like anyone else in my family, Quinn. I guess you’d call me the black sheep. My parents love me; I don’t doubt that or anything. But they’ve never truly understood me. They wanted me to be a doctor or a lawyer. When I told them I wanted to be a writer, they thought I’d never make a dime at it. They tried to get me into math and science instead of letting me take the creative writing courses I wanted, so I rebelled a little; made some mistakes as a teenager. Nothing major. Just skipping school, barely passing trig and chemistry, and smoking and drinking. That kind of a thing.”

“You smoked? Come on, you know that’s bad for you, Abs.” Quinn took another step toward her.

“I know.” Abby laughed. “I never liked it and stopped a few months in. My parents and the rest of my family are practical, logical people who don’t share a ton of emotions, so I grew up like that, too. Now, I’m being confronted with a whole lot of emotions at once,centuriesof them, and it’s a lot. I’m processing it by writing stories and trying to find out the truth of what happened because that’s how I deal with things I can’t handle or don’t know what to do with.”

Quinn took another step closer to her, placed her hands on Abby’s hips for the first time, and said, “I would really like to hug you right now.”

“Hug me?” Abby chuckled a little. “Not anything else?”

“Oh, I want to doeverythingelse, but I also really just want to hug you, Abs. Can I?”

When Abby nodded, Quinn wrapped her arms around her middle, pulled her in, and held her tight. A second later, Abby’s arms moved around Quinn’s neck, and it took her amoment, but then Abby settled against her fully.

It didn’t take long at all for Quinn to realize that she hadn’t ever felt this kind of completeness before. She didn’t even care about their past lives anymore. Right now, in this moment, she was just Quinn holding Abby, and Abby felt like hers.

“I…” Abby started, but then she just sighed instead, and Quinn could swear that she felt all the tension leave Abby’s body. “God, this is it, isn’t it?”

“What?” she asked, rubbing up and down Abby’s back.

“What it’s supposed to feel like. I’ve never just hugged someone before and felt this.” Abby went to turn her face to Quinn’s neck, and Quinn felt her lips rest there more than press to the skin.

“Neither have I,” she admitted.

“I don’t want you to go, Quinn. I want you to stay so that we can keep talking. I’ll quiet my brain down about everything, and we can keep getting to know each other. I want that. I want to know about your worst customer waiting tables, and your favorite book, and everything else, too.”

Quinn’s eyes went wide again, and she said, “The book.”

“Yeah, your favorite. What is it?”