“It’s a long story. Partly because the password was saved on my phone, which, if you’ll recall, spent a few months at the bottom of Lake Ontario. I got it back from the cops, but it’s dead.”
“You’resupposed to be at the bottom of Lake Ontario.”
He laughs, then motions for me to sit. I do, on my own bed, directly across from him.
“I’ve been waiting here for you for an hour,” he says, “so I cross-checked your chats against my screenshots. Guess the percentage in common?”
“Eighty-five percent?” I ask. Every test we did showed about 85 percent similarities between our timelines. All those sporting events and news stories. Our universes were 85 percent the same.
He shakes his head. “No, 100 percent.”
“Really?” But when I think about it, it makes sense, because the Jay I’m looking at now is the Jay frommytimeline. From my universe. Not the Jay I talked to from the five-months-ago universe.
But it doesn’t make sense because the Jay from my timeline and I didn’t know each other before he disappeared. Didn’t have all thoseconversations for the last few weeks. But if he’s here now, and he knows me, doesn’t that mean that the two Jays are the same person?
Maybe there’s no point in looking for the logic here. Kegan is wrong—it’s not a tech glitch. Itismagic.
Jay’s still smiling at me—that smile that looks too big for his face. We stare at each other like that, just smiling. I wonder if he’s thinking the same thing, that this is amazing, and exceptional, and miraculous, and it feels so right to be here on the same plane of existence for the first time. It feels ... normal.
He shakes his head. “You’re not what I was expecting in person. I thought you’d talk more. Look how much you talked in our chat.” He holds up the papers again. “And you were talkative at the Halloween party too.”
I frown, remembering that party. “Why didn’t you tell me that was you in the mask?”
He shrugs. “I was going to. But then you told me I was dead, and that kind of, I don’t know. Screwed up the vibe. By the way, you lookedadorablein that suit. I didn’t realize I had a thing for girls in Victorian menswear, but that might be my origin story. Do you still have it?” He wags his brows suggestively.
My eyes widen. This isn’t happening. Now he’s flirting? He just came back from the dead, and now he’s flirting?
I take a breath. “Jay, what thehellare you even doing here? How is this possible? Lance wasarrestedfor your murder last week, and his dad practically admitted to killing your father. He was being investigated for money laundering or fraud or something, and Taylor’s boyfriend turned out to be an undercover cop, and there was a big fight at a yacht club and your uncle punched Jack and he has a concussion, and you’re here talking about my Dr. Watson suit? Do you even know that Lance and Taylor are your cousins? Their mom is your father’s sister. Their father had a long-standing beef with your father and probably killed him in the Cayman Islands five years ago ... Wait, I’m sorry, if you didn’t know, that’s a lot to spring on you at once, and—”
“There you are.” He smiles.
I tilt my head. “Jay, you’redead. You’re supposed to be dead.”
He shakes his head, still smiling. “But I’m not. I’m here because of you, my little octopus. You and your ragtag group of friends figured it all out and saved me. I have no doubt Iwouldbe dead if you hadn’t got that message to me.”
I frown. “What are you talking about? What message?”
He hands me a phone, which has an open text on the screen. It’s a picture—a screenshot of Jack’s Instagram post of the photograph of Andrew, Denise, Stephen, and Salma at the yacht club more than two decades ago.
“When Jack sent it,” Jay explains, “I called him asking where he got the picture and why he was sending it to me now. He was drunk out of his mind. But he said John told him to send it.”
“Who’s John?” I ask. There’s no John in all this, is there?
“You’re John, Roomie. Dr. John Watson. I knew right away the message was from you.” Jay shakes his head. “Did you really ask him to send it?”
I nod. “Yes, last Monday.”
Jay looks confused. I don’t blame him. Jack said it started with a text and a picture ... and it did. A text that I asked him to send. I want to call Jack and tell him it worked, but I don’t want to stop looking at the person sitting in front of me.
I take a breath. “Okay, Jay. Tell meeverything. What happened when you went to your mother’s that day? And where have you been for the last five months?”
He nods. And then explains what happened. Basically, when he got to Scarborough that Sunday, the first thing he did was get shawarma, which was when he talked to Ausma about me. Then he went home. But soon after he got there, he got the text from Jack. Jay had no idea why his mother was in that picture, but he recognized some of the other people—Denise Murray and Stephen Everett. He knew them as the children of his mother’s boss, Helen Grant. He did not know thathis mother knew Denise and Stephen that long ago. He showed it to his mother, and Salma finally admitted that Stephen Everett was Jay’s father.
“So your mother knew who her boss really was?”
“Yeah, apparently way back, Helen arranged for a big lump-sum payment to Mom—basically prepaying for eighteen years of child support at once. Mom planned to have no contact with the family after that. But Helen kept in touch, checking on her every once in a while when I was a baby. Eventually she offered to pay for Mom to go to college and then hired her to work in her law firm.”
“But your mother never saw Stephen? Your father?”
