Page 141 of Under Story

On Christmas morning, Laurel woke early. She lit a fire and wrapped Eli’s present: one of the record players that had just come on the market. Then she drank her coffee on the couch, one hand on her stomach. In recent weeks, Silas had become less active. Laurel’s sensitivity to smell had faded along with her craving for pineapple. What seemed natural in one direction felt fraught in reverse: instead of nourishing Silas’s body, his life force was fueling hers.

She heated Maisie’s holiday scent on the stovetop and tucked cinnamon rolls into the oven. When Eli came downstairs, they played hearts, which had been Pete Salter’s favorite thing to do on Christmas. That afternoon, Eli made an ambitious mushroom Wellington. They ate in front of the tree before opening gifts. Eli reveled in the record player. Then he handed Laurel a sizable box, carefully wrapped.

He watched as she loosened a long green ribbon. Inside the box was a camel-colored wool coat, lined with eucalyptus silk.

“I know it’s not the most romantic present,” he said. “But your blue coat has that hole in the pocket, and this felt like you.”

The coat waited in elegant folds.

“It’s gorgeous, Eli,” said Laurel.

“Oh, good.” Eli mimed wiping sweat, and Laurel kissed him. He kissed her back. But when she leaned into him, he patted her knee and said, “It’s been a nice night.”

Laurel nodded rigidly. The next weekend, she invited Maisie to go ice-skating on Lake Monona. The sun was high, the temperature frigid. They sat on a bench to lace their skates.

“When you were pregnant,” Laurel said, “did you and Noah sleep together much?”

“Honestly?” Maisie double-knotted the bow in her laces. “All the time.”

“Really?” asked Laurel.

The lake seemed to glow with cold. They hobbled down to the edge.

“It felt weird, because we were miserable. But we also had this urge. Maybe it was hormonal,” Maisie said. “Or a way to comfort ourselves. Like—even if we didn’t have the girls, we still had each other.”

Laurel had to keep from crying as she stepped onto the ice.

“You shouldn’t feel guilty,” Maisie added. “Our therapist said it’s pretty common. She even framed it as a sign of a healthy relationship.”

Schools had resumed, and the lake was relatively empty. A scattering of ice fishermen sat on overturned buckets.

Laurel skated toward the horizon and said, “We’re sort of having the opposite problem.”

“Oh.” Maisie glided in parallel, leaving a few feet between them. “Honey, I’m sure that’s normal, too.”

“Maybe. He seems so distant.”

Maisie’s wedding ring glinted in the sun. Laurel and Eli hadn’t remarried. In the antiuniverse, it seemed superfluous: they were more committed here, a world away from home, than they’d ever been.

But she would have said yes again if he’d asked her.

“This distance,” Maisie said. “Has it happened before?”

“Not really,” said Laurel. It was a lie. After Silas died, she and Eli had barely touched, though she couldn’t say that to Maisie.

—

Tess invited Laurel to every horror movie night. Samir dragged her out for karaoke. Laurel continued to gather with the parents of Silas’s classmates, and she never missed her biweekly lunch with Clare.

Even so, she was lonely. Only Eli knew her completely.

Laurel found herself thinking of her double. She still didn’t understand why they aligned in some ways but diverged in others, nor why Laurel and Eli Two had wanted to visit her world in the first place. She didn’t even know whether they had crossed successfully. Initially, Laurel had wanted them to succeed for selfish reasons: whisked out of the way, they wouldn’t interrupt her search for Silas. Now she was glad to think that the other Laurel had filled her place. Assuming that Laurel Two, like she, had kept her identity a secret, Laurel’s loved ones were mercifully ignorant: she might have lost them, but they wouldn’t have to know that they’d lost her.

In some ways, Laurel Two felt as unknowable as ever. In others, she seemed tantalizingly near. Frequently Laurel thought about the vision she’d had in the cave. She remembered the office, the despair—the sense of another presence, weakening. In that moment, the other Laurel had been as accessible as her own brain.

She hadn’t discussed the experience with anyone, not even Eli. It made her uneasy, and it fascinated her. Sometimes, her interest took on a morbid tone, as though she were considering the soundness of her sanity.

Lately the memory had begun to provoke a new feeling: the desire to comfort her double. It was a protective instinct, though not one that she associated with motherhood. More like what Laurel might feel for a sister, if she had ever had one.