by E. C. Myers
“You about to hurl in there?” Ephraim asked.
“No.” Nathan pouted. “I just realized I left my camera in the future, with my video in it. Good-bye, Pulitzer.”
Zoe smiled from behind the circulation desk when Ephraim entered the Summerside Public Library at closing time. The last patron shuffled out past him. Ephraim flipped the sign to “Closed” and locked the sliding glass doors.
Zoe stood and stretched her arms, arching her back.
“Need any help?” he asked.
“What kind of help are you offering exactly, mister?”
“Well, we are all alone.” He leaned over the counter, and they kissed.
“You know how much books turn me on,” she said. “But we aren't quite alone.”
“Nathan and M.S.?” he asked.
“They're in the stacks,” she said.
“He's always wanted to do that,” Ephraim said.
Zoe grabbed his hand. “Eph, I have to show you something in the back.”
“Subtle.” But then he saw her troubled expression. “What's up, Zoe?”
She led him to the small room where they repaired damaged books. She opened a creaky wooden drawer and pulled out an old book. The blue cloth cover had black spots, and the binding was coming apart at the seams.
“I debated whether to show this to you, but we decided we wouldn't have any secrets, right?” she said.
He nodded.
“Okay. I was restoring this and I found something interesting. I'm not sure what it means,” she said.
She positioned the book on the counter in front of him. He ran his fingers over the title engraved in gold on the spine. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass.
“This is one of Jena's favorite books,” he said. “She gave me a copy for Christmas.” He still felt self-conscious talking about her around Zoe.
Her mouth twitched. “It's one of my faves, too. That's why I was taking particular care with it. Anyway…”
She carefully lifted the front cover to reveal a fading bookplate fixed on the inside of it. Ephraim read it aloud.
“Generously donated to the Summerside Public Library on March 3, 1992, by Mrs. Jena Kim Everett,” he read. The hair on his neck rose. “What?”
“March third. Her birthday,” Zoe said. “Our birthday.”
He fingered the silver ring on his right hand nervously, twisting it counterclockwise. He'd had the coin melted down and molded into two thin bands; Zoe wore the other ring as a necklace.
Every now and then, Ephraim felt a phantom tingling sensation from the metal, or thought it was warmer than it should be.
“How?” Ephraim asked.
“I'm only guessing, but if universes can branch and merge, maybe they can also be grafted onto each other. At some point, our different timelines connected and merged. It might have been because of Jena. Ultimately, she belonged to this universe, and that was one way of putting things right.”
He turned the first page of the book. “This is a first edition…printed in 1954.”
“It shouldn't have been in circulation. Rare books belong in the case upstairs. After I freaked out about my discovery, I was curious. So I did some research.”
“Of course,” Ephraim said. He was counting on Zoe's investigative skills to locate his mother's analog in this patchwork universe. If the other Madeline Scott didn't want to be a part of his life, at least he could see her one last time and say a proper good-bye.
“I searched through ledgers going back to when the library was built. Jena donated thousands of books to the library. And I finally found out who funded the Memorial Fountain in Greystone Park: The Kim Foundation.”
Ephraim perched on a stool beside the desk. He paged carefully through the fragile book. Jena had handled this same volume, two decades ago.
“I already checked for other messages,” Zoe said.
“The book is the message,” he said. “What else did you find?”
She wrung her hands. “An obituary.” Tears filled her eyes. She pulled off her glasses and swiped at them, smearing mascara in dark slashes under her eyes.
The page he was turning fluttered as his hand trembled. “She's dead?”
Zoe slid a grainy and blotchy photocopy of a small clipping from The Herald Statesman.
“It's dated March second, 1994,” he said numbly. “The day before you were born.”
“There was a short news article with it. She left a suicide note.”
“No,” Ephraim said.
“But they never found a body,” Zoe said. “It's like she just…”
“Disappeared?” he asked.
“This is Jena's universe. Maybe she couldn't exist here after she was born. She would have been, like, her own analog?”
“The multiverse correcting itself? Even if she realized that could happen, why make it look like a suicide?”
“She had plenty of time to plan for that day. She would have wanted to make sure no one was blamed, or blamed himself.”
Ephraim pushed the obituary away.
“She lived a good life,” Zoe said.
“She was only fifty-eight,” he said.
“Well, you should read that obituary. She wrote it herself. It's beautiful. She led the life she wanted. She was rich, because of a few smart, almost prescient investments over the years. And she gave all of it back to Summerside.”
“Did she have any kids?”
“There are Everetts, but they aren't Jena's.” She looked at Ephraim. “I did do a little more digging.”
He smiled. “You had a busy day.”
She stuck her tongue out at him. “Hugh Everett and Jena Kim were married for a year before she broke it off. He continued his work on parallel universes,” she said.
“He promised he wouldn't,” Ephraim said.
“Thank goodness no one believed him,” Zoe said. “It must have been frustrating knowing he was right, but not being able to prove it. In the end, he got married and had two kids, a daughter and a son. He started a video game company in the eighties: Crossroad Games.”
Zoe stashed the obituary and book in the desk drawer.
“She always wanted to leave Summerside, but she just ended up coming right back here,” Ephraim said.
“She could have gone anywhere, Eph. She came back because she wanted to. Sometimes no matter how much you want to get away, there's no place like home.”
He pressed the palms of his hands against his eyes. “Thanks for telling me.”
“Sometimes it's better not knowing, isn't it? Imagining that all our other selves are still out there, living their own lives, going on when we stop?”
“And maybe they are. Jena's universe might have spawned another reality before it crossed ours.”
“Anything's possible.” Zoe smiled. “I'm more interested in the future right now.”
“Dinner?” he asked.
“You know me so well.” She pulled him to his feet and gave him a quick kiss. “Let's order something at my place. My parents are visiting Grumps tonight.”
The shifting multiverse hadn't only taken people away; mercifully, it had also given back Zoe's mother and grandfather.
“I'm in the mood for Mexican,” he said, as Zoe said, “Let's have Chinese.”
“Hmm,” Zoe said.
Ephraim reached into his back pocket and pulled out the quarter he'd gotten from his dad's key ring. Half-melted, with one edge dinged, it was no longer a fair coin.
“Let's flip on it,” he said.
“Ephraim, let's not.” Her hand covered the coin in his hand.
He grinned. “Heads, I pick dinner.”
He flipped the coin and caught it easily. He turned away and peeked at it.
“Mexican it is!” he said.
Zoe grabbed his right hand and forced his fingers open. She laughed when she saw his hand was empty.
He made the quarter appear in his left hand. He rolled the coin down his knuckles, then passed it back to his right hand.
“Show-off,” she said.
“How about best out of three?” he asked. He flipped the quarter again, but she grabbed it out of the air before he did. She clutched it to her stomach with both hands.
“Afraid to see if it's your lucky night?” he teased.
“I just want to stay in this universe a little longer. I can do magic too,” she said. She waved her right hand in front of his face. “Now you see it, now you don't!” Ephraim noticed her slipping it into her bra with her left hand, but pretended he didn't.
“If you get it back later, it'll be your lucky night,” she said.
They compromised on dinner: They ordered Mexican and Chinese and stayed in for a movie that neither of them saw much of.
As Zoe and Ephraim kissed, he was distantly aware of the sound of a coin clattering to the bare wood floor and rolling under the living room couch. It spun for a few moments and stopped. Heads or tails? he wondered.
Zoe sighed and pushed him away. “Fine. Check if you want to,” she said.
He checked under the couch, but he couldn't see it there or anywhere else in the vicinity. He slid his hand along the dusty floorboards.
The quarter was gone.
“So? Heads or tails?” Zoe asked.
He smiled. “Both.”
E. C. Myers was assembled in the United States from Korean and German parts and raised by his mother and a public library in his hometown of Yonkers, New York, on which Summerside is loosely based. He has worked as a doorman, food server, security guard, web designer, software consultant, technical writer, video editor, tape librarian, digital media manager, and blogger, and he now writes copy for a pediatric hospital. E. C. attended the Clarion West Writers Workshop in 2005 and is a member of Altered Fluid, a prolific writing group in New York City. His website is www.ecmyers.net.
