Page 156 of Under Story

Laurel could not have expected her own reaction. Love poured forward freely. The woman was stranger and familiar both, forgotten and remembered. They were separated absolutely by the membrane of the screen. Laurel wanted to tap her shoulder, take her hand. She wanted to call: Dear, look at me!

And then, for seconds, the other Laurel did. She paused, as if she’d heard something, and stared into the eye of the camera. She appeared to be thinking, or asking an internal question. There was an agedness to her expression—a somber seeing, flecked with interest.

In her vision, Laurel had sensed that her double was suffering. Now she knew that to be true.

Something has happened to her, Laurel thought. But she hasn’t given up.

—

When Laurel returned to Madison, she packed the house. It felt wrong to give the other Laurel and Eli’s possessions away, but she had no way of knowing whether the couple would ever return.

Though it took up too much space, she couldn’t part with her double’s oak desk. She kept several other items that seemed to be sentimental. On the mantel was a vase that looked handmade: it was indigo, with golden seams, as though broken pieces had been joined. A green blanket had been patched twice, rather than replaced. Lastly, she saved the other Laurel and Eli’s writing, along with their most precious-looking books. The latter included an antique called The Book of Camouflage. After centuries of digital text, it was an early physical volume.

Laurel hoped that she’d chosen correctly. It was difficult to know what had been precious to Laurel and Eli Two, in part because the house had looked so impersonal when she arrived. Eli had suggested that it had been denuded for renters, but Laurel had always wondered if that was the only reason.

On her final walk-through, Laurel searched the utility room, then the basement. The laundry room was empty, as was the slanted crawl space where she and Eli had kept luggage. Laurel didn’t bother to scan her office; she knew that space backward and forward. The closet in the bedroom stored only stirred-up dust.

As she walked across the bedroom, the creaky floorboard whined. In both universes, it was partially concealed beneath the bed; only the last four feet, which extended to the wall, saw foot traffic.

Now she knelt to examine the plank. There was an open gap on one side. Her fingers wouldn’t fit, but a knitting needle might.

Laurel ran down to the moving truck. She had to rearrange half of the cargo to find a pair of needles. Back in the house, she took the stairs two at a time. When she inserted a needle, the plank lifted easily, as though, for years, it had wanted to.

The cavity below was narrow, but deep. Files were wedged inside. Whoever put them there must have been loath to leave anything out: every millimeter of space was occupied. The first thing Laurel extracted was a drawing of a fish. The maker had spackled fins with glitter, and the lips bulged forward in a kiss. There was a trio of report cards—eighth grade, seventh grade, sixth—and a crinkled piece of paper, torn from a notebook: Dear MOM I miss you I cod olmst cri for sum resin wen you go.

The next item was a high school portrait. The woman inside had turned in a three-quarter view, but her eyes looked straight into the camera. There was warmth in her expression, an alertness and quiet wisdom, but also a glint of daring. She looked like Laurel, if Laurel’s hair were wilder, wavy, more like Eli’s; or like Eli, were his nose straighter, more like hers.

She turned the frame over.

Celeste, freshman year, someone had written.

Laurel had always loved that name…

Lifting a clear sleeve of photos, she knew what she would find. Here was Eli Two, in old age, with a walker; Celeste, perhaps fifty, held a telescope up to his eye. There was Laurel Two—with glasses, and a gray braid!—making her way to Celeste on all fours. The photos zigzagged through decades: birthdays and holidays, trips and graduations. As Laurel and Eli became younger, so did Celeste. She posed after a dance recital or curled in the dormer nook, reading. Eli carried her through the hallway on his shoulders. In the final picture, Celeste crawled into the arms of Laurel Two, her mother.

—

Laurel paced the bedroom in a state of desperation.

She needed to know more. Or perhaps she was finally sure that she could handle what she learned. No longer did she doubt her own resilience.

There was only one person with whom she could speak truthfully. First, she collected the items below the floorboard with as much care as she could: she would be their steward. She put them in her truck, and then she left for the cemetery.

—

Laurel told the guards that she had come to see Kenji Nakamura.

On her previous visit, she had barely noticed the building’s interior—just the rush of sound, the upward ramp, and, at last, the crying babies. This time, she was surprised to find the waiting room calming. The walls had been painted in subtle shades of blue, and classical music played on low volume. A middle-aged man flicked through a magazine; a younger couple waited with their toddler, who sorted through a bin of colored blocks.

A nurse entered. She was pushing an elderly man in a wheelchair. Seeing them, the middle-aged man bounded over.

“Who’s that?” the nurse asked her patient.

The man croaked unintelligibly, beaming. The younger man kissed his forehead.

“Hi, Dad,” he said.

“Isn’t it wonderful when they start smiling?” asked the nurse, as they disappeared into a corridor; and then Kenji Nakamura appeared. He did not look as surprised to see Laurel as she had thought he might be.