1 I have an anxious attachment style. The clinicians call it relational hyper-vigilance, but in plain terms, I simply cannot breathe without the certainty of being loved. I need the weight of another person’s presence in the room just to feel tethered to the earth. So when Daniel asked for a divorce again, the world inside my head collapsed into static. I lost all reason. I seized the glass kettle from the counter—water still bubbling furiously inside—and shattered it against the hardwood right at his feet. Boiling water and jagged shards exploded across the floor, scalding his leather shoes. “You’re going to see her again, aren’t you?” I screamed, my voice shredding in my throat. Daniel didn’t flinch. He didn’t even look at the mess on the floor. He just stood there, tall and agonizingly composed, looking at me with the weary patience one reserves for an unruly child. “Valerie can only be here today,” he said evenly. “I have to go.” A year ago, Daniel had asked for a divorce for the first time, all for the sake of a cocktail waitress he had picked up in some downtown lounge. Back then, I had fought like an animal backed into a corner. I refused to sign, made scene after humiliating scene, and ended up brawling with both of them until the police arrived and an ambulance hauled them to the emergency room. During those dark weeks, Riley stayed on my couch every single night, holding me while I shook. My mother went even further—she stood on the railing of her fifth-floor balcony, threatening to jump if Daniel didn’t break it off and come home to his marriage. In the end, Daniel had yielded. He cut off all contact with Valerie. He returned to being the attentive, devoted husband he had always been. I honestly believed our life had weathered the storm and returned to its rightful axis. Until this afternoon. He brought up the divorce as casually as the weather, turned on his heel, and walked out the front door. I tailed him. I kept three car lengths behind his sedan through the gray city traffic, my knuckles white on the steering wheel. Before I pushed open the heavy wooden door of that private suburban dining room, I had braced myself for every conceivable horror. I expected cheap perfume, stolen kisses, the brazen vulgarity of an affair laid bare. Instead, the scene through the crack in the door turned the blood in my veins to ice. Valerie was seated at the head of the long table. My mother was sitting directly beside her, her face soft with an aching, maternal tenderness I hadn’t seen in years, carefully peeling shrimp and placing them onto Valerie’s plate. Daniel was kneeling slightly by Valerie’s chair, his fingers wrapped tightly around both of her hands. “Valerie, please don’t go back to that other world,” Daniel murmured, his voice trembling with a raw, desperate reverence. “Just stay here. Stay with us.” Valerie let out a soft, melancholic sigh. “I can only cross over for twenty-four hours once a month, Daniel. Just being able to look at all of you… it’s enough for me.” Across the table, my best friend, Riley, was dabbing at her mascara with a linen napkin. “They say love conquers all,” Riley choked out through her tears. “It’s all Laurel’s fault. If she didn’t cling to you like a parasite, you two wouldn’t have to suffer like this!” My mother’s voice cracked as she chimed in, wiping her eyes. “Thank God you grew up safe in that other reality, my darling. I had to fake that ridiculous suicide attempt just to keep Laurel from digging any deeper. It terrified her, but I’d do anything to keep you safe. Anything. If we could find a way, we’d cross over just to be with you…” My hands dropped from the brass door handle. The strength drained out of my body all at once. Riley’s sleepless nights by my side. My mother’s desperate threats of death. Daniel’s sudden, quiet repentance. None of it had been about saving me. It had all been an elaborate, coordinated barricade constructed to shield another woman from my wrath. My agony, my terror of abandonment, the frantic desperation that had nearly driven me out of my mind—it had all been a punchline. A necessary performance to keep their precious Valerie safe. A heavy tear fell from my chin, splashing hot against the back of my hand. At that exact second, a voice—neither male nor female, reverberating from nowhere and everywhere—echoed directly against my ear. “Do you want to cross into the other timeline? Back to the family that truly loves you?” I dug my nails into the meat of my palms. The sharp, grounding sting of torn skin was the only thing stopping me from kicking that door off its hinges and screaming until my lungs gave out. The voice lingered, humming in the cold air behind my neck. I lowered my head and stood in the silent hallway for what felt like an eternity. “Yes,” I whispered. I had fought and begged and humiliated myself for an entire year. I was exhausted down to the marrow of my bones. If this was what they wanted, they could have it. “Tomorrow evening. The basement of the Southside Club. That is the point of confluence.” The voice dissolved into silence. I took one slow step backward, then another, retreating down the carpeted stairs until the shadows swallowed me whole. When I stepped outside into the raw November wind, the cold air rushed down the collar of my coat, freezing my ribs, freezing the breath in my throat. I have no memory of how I drove back to the house. When I pushed open the front door, the apartment was warm and quiet, filled with the Scandinavian oak furniture and custom brass fixtures Daniel had spent months picking out for me. I curled myself into a tight ball on the corner of the sofa, clutching a velvet throw pillow until it was soaked through with my tears. Eventually, my thoughts grew heavy and blurred. I slipped into a dream. In the dream, my mother was holding my hands, the corners of her eyes crinkling with unconditional warmth. It was the year I had collapsed during my senior year of college, failing my honors thesis and spiraling into a clinical depression so severe I couldn’t get out of bed. She had walked away from her director position at an international marketing firm—torpedoing a twenty-year executive career—just to move into my apartment. She cooked three meals a day from scratch, carrying the trays to my bedside and feeding me spoonful by spoonful. “Don’t cry, Laurel,” she had whispered back then, brushing the matted hair from my forehead. “If you can’t work, you don’t work. I’ll take care of you for the rest of your life.” And Daniel. Daniel, who suffered from severe claustrophobia. I remembered the afternoon our apartment elevator stalled between the sixteenth and seventeenth floors during a summer blackout. He had been trembling uncontrollably, his skin clammy, hyperventilating in the suffocating heat. Yet when he heard me begin to weep in panic, he had forced his entire body into stillness, wrapping his arms around me like a shield and holding me in the pitch black for three straight hours. “I’m here, Laurel. Don’t be afraid. Nothing is going to touch you.” He used to track my cycle on his calendar. If I so much as pressed a hand against my stomach, he would hover by the bed with hot water bottles and pain medicine, sweat beading on his forehead from pure worry. That love had been solid. It had wrapped around me like a weighted blanket, heavy and suffocatingly safe. “You actually had an older sister,” my mother had mentioned offhandedly one Sunday afternoon years ago over tea. “A terrible childhood fever took her when she was five.” That forgotten sentence suddenly roared in my ears, shattering the dream into fragments. The memory twisted, shifting violently to the first time I caught Daniel cheating. It had started with minuscule anomalies: the passenger seat of his car pushed three inches forward; his phone placed consistently face-down on the nightstand; the faint, metallic scent of an unfamiliar laundry detergent. The day I finally confirmed my suspicions, my hands shook so violently I dropped my keys three times in the driveway. I followed his car to a boutique hotel downtown. When I forced open the unlatched door of room 402, their bodies were still tangled together on the white sheets. I had grabbed the heavy ceramic bedside lamp by its cord and swung it with everything I had. Daniel’s reaction had been instantaneous. He didn’t try to defend himself; he whipped the heavy down comforter over Valerie, rolling his entire frame over hers, encasing her in a human vault. My fists, my slaps, the brutal ceramic base of that lamp—every single blow landed on Daniel’s spine, his shoulders, the back of his skull. From beginning to end, Valerie hadn’t suffered a scratch. Daniel took the beating without a sound, then raised his head, his eyes bloodshot and terrifyingly cold, pointing a shaking finger at the door. “Get the hell out!” he had snarled. Standing over them, watching him shield that woman with his very life, I had choked on my own breath. Back then, drowning in agony, I had vowed that I would never let them have their happy ending. Never. My eyes snapped open. Cold sweat had soaked through my silk pajamas. Sometime while I was asleep, a heavy wool throw had been draped over my shoulders. Daniel was sitting on the edge of the coffee table, leaning forward, looking down at me in the dim living room light. For one fleeting, treacherous second, I thought the nightmare was over and we were back in our old life. Then the air shifted. The faint, unmistakable scent of night-blooming jasmine drifted from his collar. It was Valerie’s signature perfume. I stared at him, my voice completely flat. “I agree to the divorce.” Daniel froze. His eyes narrowed slightly, searching my face for the familiar signs of an impending theatrical breakdown—the trembling lip, the manic gleam of a woman testing his boundaries. When he found none, his expression softened into practiced indulgence. He leaned in, wrapping his arms around me through the blanket, pulling me firmly against his chest. “Stop talking out of anger, Laurel,” he murmured into my hair. “We aren’t getting divorced.” “I was out of line earlier. I shouldn’t have lost my temper,” he continued in that soft, soothing baritone he used whenever I was on the verge of a panic attack. “I made those glazed braised short ribs you love. Come to the table and eat a little, okay?” He coaxed me with the practiced ease of a master handling a skittish pet. My fingers gripped the edge of the sofa cushion, the fabric biting into my skin. Seeing that I remained silent, he patted my head gently, stood up, and walked into the kitchen to reheat the food. I watched his tall, broad-shouldered silhouette disappear through the doorway. My gaze fell upon his phone, lying unattended on the glass coffee table. Ever since his theatrical repentance a year ago, that phone had remained completely unlocked—a performative gesture of total transparency. A soft chime echoed in the quiet room. I reached out and tapped the screen. The notification center was entirely empty. My fingers hesitated. I dragged down the settings menu, navigated the internal storage, and uncovered the hidden dual-profile interface. A secondary messaging application popped onto the screen. There was only one pinned contact. The display name was simply: Wife. My breath caught in my throat. A dull, throbbing ache spread from the center of my chest outward to my fingertips. Wife. Then what was I? I clicked into the thread. Valerie: Daniel, stop fighting with Laurel. I can only come through for one day a month anyway. For the other twenty-nine days, just let her keep you company in my place. Daniel’s reply had been sent three minutes ago. Daniel: I only want you… Every time I have to be sweet to her, I feel like I’m betraying you. Valerie: Be good. My fingertips were numb as ice. I scrolled upward through the history. Hundreds upon hundreds of pages. An endless, sprawling archive of his devotion. “A cold front hit the city today. Is it cold in your world?” “I walked past that boutique florist on 4th Street. They had the white jasmine you love. I hate that I can’t send them to you.” He wrote her multi-thousand-word letters. He recorded ten-minute voice memos late at night when I was asleep beside him, whispering how much he missed her, how agonizing the separation was. He had given all of this to me once. Completely and without reservation. That was why his sudden betrayal a year ago had nearly driven me insane. And now, he had transferred every single drop of that devotion onto another woman. With an intensity that far surpassed anything he had ever felt for me. Before I closed the application, my eyes caught two familiar profile pictures under the shared media tab. My mother. And Riley. I opened my primary account to check their feeds. Nothing. I closed my eyes, swallowing the bile rising in my throat. Of course. They had both blocked me from their secondary circles. I clicked into my mother’s recent post via the hidden profile. The photo showed Valerie leaning over a porcelain bowl of steaming chicken soup. The caption read: “God has finally shown mercy. My sweet girl is home at my table where she belongs.” And Riley’s post. A close-up selfie of her and Valerie, their cheeks pressed together, both of them beaming at the camera. The caption read: “The best big sister anyone could ask for. No matter the distance between worlds, I’ll always be in your corner.” Daniel had liked the photo and left a comment: “She didn’t have much of an appetite at lunch. Make sure she eats something sweet.” I stared at those glowing pixels until my retinas burned. For the first time, I looked closely at Valerie’s face without the veil of blinding rage. The tilt of her brow, the curve of her jawline—she really did look remarkably like the faded photographs of my mother in her twenties. She truly was my sister from that other timeline. Then what about the Laurel in that other world? Was she happy? Was she alive? And why did Valerie have to tear through the fabric of dimensions just to rip away every single thing that belonged to me here? “What are you looking at so intently?” Daniel walked out of the kitchen carrying a steaming porcelain dish of short ribs. When his eyes landed on the bright screen in my hand, the gentle smile on his face vanished. He froze for perhaps half a second. Then, without a hint of panic or shame, he unclipped his linen apron and set it casually on the back of a dining chair. “So you found it,” he said, his tone dropping into a cool, level cadence. “I found it,” I rasped. “Well, since you know, there’s no point in playing games anymore.” Daniel used a pair of tongs to place a tender, glazed rib onto the small plate in front of me. “Valerie doesn’t get to stay in this world for long. I don’t want her burdened with unnecessary guilt.” “She’s spent the entire year feeling like she ruined our marriage,” he continued smoothly. “It eats away at her. So, Laurel, you’re going to cooperate.” I looked down at the rib on my plate. The rich, sweet aroma made my stomach violently heave. “And if I don’t?” Daniel set the tongs down with a sharp clack. He was still smiling faintly, but his eyes were empty. “You don’t have a choice.” “Your mother is on Valerie’s side. Riley is on Valerie’s side. If you try to make a scene, the only person who ends up humiliated and alone is you.” He leaned across the table, his voice dropping into a terrifyingly intimate whisper. “You can’t survive without us, Laurel. You know that better than anyone.” I used to, I thought, looking right through him. Not anymore. Less than twenty minutes later, the front door buzzer chimed frantically. My mother and Riley hurried into the foyer, out of breath, having clearly sped over the moment Daniel sent the alert. They carried themselves with an uneasy mix of hostility, hyper-vigilance, and patronizing guilt—treating me like a volatile explosive that needed to be disarmed before it damaged something valuable. My mother crossed the living room in brisk strides, catching both of my hands in hers. “Laurel, sweetie, Daniel explained everything to us on the phone,” she said, her voice trembling with manufactured warmth. “You can’t hold this against Valerie.” “You have no idea how hard her life was over there,” my mother pleaded, squeezing my fingers tightly. “Her family fell apart, and she had to drop out of school, working three jobs just to survive. She barely made it out alive.” “Can’t we just show her a little compassion? Can’t you share a little bit of the love you get every day?” Riley pushed forward, her tone sharp with long-simmering resentment. “Don’t be so damn selfish, Laurel! Valerie is here for one day a month. Is it really going to kill you to step aside for twenty-four hours? You have Daniel for the other twenty-nine days! You get everything!” I pulled my hands out of my mother’s grip. “A year ago,” I said, my voice eerily quiet, “wasn’t she the home-wrecking slut who ruined my life?” I looked directly at Riley, then at my mother. “You called her a parasite. You helped me track down that hotel room. You wanted to ruin her.” I tilted my head. “How did she suddenly turn into the saint of this family?” My mother’s face went rigid. Riley’s voice spiked an octave higher. “That was a complete misunderstanding! Daniel’s drink was spiked that night at the lounge—Valerie was set up just as much as he was! She was a victim!” A memory of the raw chat logs flashed across my mind. The very first exchanges between Daniel and Valerie, where she had brazenly admitted to slipping something into his bourbon for quick cash, and Daniel had pinned her against the VIP booth wall, threatening to destroy her if she ever came near him again. They had hated each other at the start. I didn’t bother bringing it up. What was the point of presenting facts to people who had already rewritten reality just to absolve themselves? “Whatever you say,” I said, standing up from the sofa and walking toward the entryway. Daniel moved with startling speed, planting himself squarely in front of the door. “Where do you think you’re going?” “I told you. Whatever you want. I don’t care anymore.” My mother lunged forward, wrapping her arms tightly around my waist from behind. “Laurel, stop acting crazy! Are you going to go hunt down Valerie? I’m begging you, leave your sister alone!” Riley blocked the hallway beside Daniel, her arms crossed, her eyes narrowed with disdain. “Oh, stop the dramatic act, Laurel. Someone with your pathetic need for attention? You expect us to believe you don’t care? You’re heading straight to the Southside lounge to ambush her, aren’t you?” I looked at the three of them. The hollow, drafty cavity that had sat in the center of my chest for months finally cracked wide open and fell away. There was no pain left inside it. Just empty space. Daniel grabbed my wrist, twisting it just enough to force me backward, shoving me roughly into the guest bedroom. “Since you can’t behave like an adult, you can sit in here and clear your head.” The heavy oak door slammed shut, and the lock clicked from the outside. I leaned my forehead against the cool painted wood and spoke in a clear, measured voice. “I really don’t care.” “I’m not going to touch her. And I’m done begging for your love. Let me out.” Riley’s sneer came through the wood. “Who are you trying to fool? You can’t even go a single afternoon without Daniel calling to check on you. You’d die without us.” My mother sighed heavily. “Laurel, stop throwing a tantrum. Just reflect on your behavior in there. Tomorrow, once Valerie is safely gone, we’ll unlock the door.” Their footsteps receded down the hallway toward the kitchen. I slid down the door until I was sitting on the hardwood floor, drawing my knees to my chest. It didn’t matter. In less than twenty-four hours, I would have a real home. A home with people whose love wasn’t a calculated transaction. I wouldn’t need their scraps anymore. I lost track of how much time passed in the dark. Eventually, the faint electronic chime of the front door smart-lock drifted down the corridor. “Daniel? Mom? Riley? Are you guys still awake?” The three of them scrambled toward the entryway in an instant. “Valerie! What are you doing out in this weather? Why didn’t you call Daniel to pick you up?” My mother’s voice was dripping with anxiety. “I just… I needed to see Laurel,” Valerie said, her voice wavering with a delicate, fragile tremor. “This is all my fault. If I don’t apologize to her face-to-face, I won’t be able to live with myself.” “You don’t owe her an apology!” my mother cried. “None of this is on you!” “She’s right, Valerie,” Riley added urgently. “Laurel is completely unhinged right now. Don’t go near her, she might actually hurt you.” “No… Laurel is a good person. She’ll understand.” Soft footsteps approached the guest room. The brass lock clicked, and the door swung open. Valerie stood framed in the light of the hallway, her eyes glistening with unshed tears. Daniel, my mother, and Riley hovered half a step behind her, a protective human phalanx ready to intervene. “Laurel, I’m so sorry,” Valerie whispered. She took two steps into the room, closing the distance between us. Then, keeping her back to the three people in the hall, she leaned down, her lips brushing past my ear. Her voice dropped into a razor-thin, venomous murmur. “I never suffered a day in that other world, little sister.” My breath hitched. “You died years ago over there,” Valerie whispered, the corners of her mouth curling into a cruel, triumphant smirk. “Mom and Dad gave every single penny of their estate to me. I only came across to see what it felt like to take everything from you all over again.” A blinding spike of rage erupted behind my eyes. My right arm snapped upward on pure instinct. Yet, an inch before my palm could connect with her cheek, I forced my muscles to lock. I couldn’t do it. If I struck her, I would be handing them the exact weapon they wanted. In their eyes, I would become the monster they had already decided I was. I exhaled sharply and began to pull my arm back down to my side. At that exact fraction of a second, Valerie threw her head back and let out a blood-curdling scream. She threw herself backward, slamming her own body hard onto the floorboards. “Laurel! What the hell is wrong with you!” Daniel tore into the room like an animal. His hand closed around my throat with crushing force, slamming the back of my skull violently into the drywall. The impact sent a white-hot flash of nausea exploding through my head. “Laurel Hayes! You vicious, evil little creature!” My mother charged forward, her palm swinging across my face with a sickening crack. Riley helped Valerie up from the floor, wrapping an arm around her trembling shoulders, looking at me with undisguised disgust. “You make me sick, Laurel. You really do.” Daniel released his grip on my neck. Seeing my chalk-white face and the way my knees buckled, a flicker of startled hesitation crossed his eyes. “She’s only here for one day,” Daniel said, his voice ragged, trying to steady his own breathing. “You couldn’t even give her one damn day?” “Tomorrow, after she leaves, I’ll spend the entire month making it up to you. You can scream, you can break things, you can do whatever you want. But not tonight. Sit in here and think about what you’ve done.” He turned away. “Valerie, let’s go.” They ushered Valerie out of the room, their murmurs of comfort fading down the hall until the heavy front door slammed shut behind them. I slid down the wall, curling onto my side on the cold floor. A sharp, tearing cramp seized my stomach, and cold sweat broke out across my forehead and chest. By midnight, the fever had set in. My skin was burning up, but my teeth were chattering so hard they ached. The pain in my abdomen felt like a serrated knife twisting through my organs. I fumbled across the floor for my phone and dialed Daniel’s number. It rang for nearly a minute before the line clicked open. In the background, the energetic thrum of a high-end lounge playlist competed with the bright, sparkling laughter of Valerie and Riley clinking glasses. “Daniel…” I wheezed, my voice barely audible above the noise. “I’m burning up… my stomach… please…” The line went quiet for two beats. Then came Daniel’s deep, exhausted sigh. “Laurel, stop it. Go into the bathroom, take some ibuprofen, and go to sleep. I’ll be back first thing in the morning to stay with you. Don’t ruin tonight. Just be good, okay?” The line went dead. I stared at the black screen. The last tear slipped down my temple, drying instantly against my feverish skin. Gritting my teeth against the blinding pain in my gut, I dialed 911. Twenty minutes later, the local paramedics forced the front door and carried me out on a stretcher. By late the following afternoon, I had discharged myself against medical advice. The Southside Club sat in an industrial zoning pocket south of the river, an old brick warehouse converted into an underground venue. I used the concrete wall for balance, walking down the damp, poorly lit basement stairs one agonizing step at a time. In the center of the cavernous concrete cellar, a ring of iridescent blue light pulsed quietly in the air, rippling like oil on water. Four figures stood before the shimmer. Daniel held Valerie tightly against his chest, his eyes rimmed with red. My mother held Valerie’s left hand, weeping into a handkerchief, while Riley openly sobbed against Valerie’s shoulder. “Valerie, come back earlier next month,” Daniel whispered, his voice cracking with emotion. “We’ll be waiting right here.” “Why can’t the rest of us just cross over with you…” my mother wept. Valerie nodded meekly, playing the dutiful, tragic martyr to the very end. They clung to one another in an agonizing tableau of grief and devotion, as if parting on the threshold of death itself. I stood in the deep shadows of the stairwell, watching them. My heart was completely still. Not a ripple. Not an ache. I pushed off the wall and walked straight toward the pulsing blue vortex. “Who’s there?!” Daniel spun around instantly. My mother and Riley turned, their tear-streaked faces hardening the moment they recognized my silhouette. Daniel’s brow furrowed in furious disbelief. “How did you find this place? Haven’t you caused enough damage for one weekend?” My mother stepped forward, pointing an accusatory finger at my face. “Are you really going to push your sister until she dies? Get the hell back home right now!” I didn’t slow down. My boots struck the concrete in a steady, unbroken rhythm. My right foot crossed directly into the blue light. Daniel’s face drained of color as he realized what was happening. “What are you doing?!” “You can’t go through there!” he yelled, lunging forward. “We tried it dozens of times! It doesn’t work for people from this side!” The atmospheric vortex inside the blue ring suddenly surged, whipping my dark hair across my face. I looked at the three of them, and for the first time in an entire year, a genuine, completely unburdened smile touched my lips. The gravitational pull seized my chest, dragging me forward into the light. “Maybe it didn’t work for you,” I said softly, my voice carrying clearly over the hum of the portal. “Since you all love her so much… you can have each other in this world.” “As for the other one…” Before I could finish the sentence, the blue light flashed blindingly, and their horrified, frozen faces vanished into the dark.
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