West

It was nothing compared to the anguish building inside me. Taylor had lived ten thousand lives … ten thousand missions to help people … and I just helped erase all of them.

Everyone was gone but Carter. I picked up my phone with numbed fingers, unable to process anything.

I can't stay here. You have to send me home. I texted.

I was shaking with cold but not wanting to leave this spot. I had last seen Taylor here, and it didn't … couldn't be real that he was … gone. Not dead, but gone. It made no sense. I still smelled him on my skin. How did he never exist if I remembered him?

I can't, but I'll take care of you. Trust me, said Carter's text.

I began to cry too hard to read the next one that came through.

The shadow emerged again, and I froze for a split second before all out sprinting away. I tore past the barns, caught myself from falling in the mud between the barns and house and raced up the stairs. Tearing the door open, I didn't bother to close it but bound up the stairs to my room and slammed the door.

It was warm, quiet and cozy, and I immediately began to calm. I could almost pretend nothing had happened, that Nell was bringing me tea and Taylor at his office in town.

The storm beat against the house and roof. I stood for a long moment in the center of my room, wishing it was the first day here again when I viewed this as an adventure.

Better yet, wishing I was visiting the house as a tourist in the twenty first century.

I flung the phone onto the bed and wriggled and tore my way out of my clothing until I stood naked in the middle of my room. I opened every drawer and wardrobe, seeking what had to be there. Nell hadn't thrown away the phones of the girls who came before me; she must have kept my clothing, if not the clothes of all of us somewhere.

It took an hour of searching, of tossing my room and smashing one wardrobe against the floor. I found my yoga pants and tank top hidden in a cubbyhole in the wall behind the wardrobe, along with the clothing of the other visitors from my time.

Reclaiming my only connection to my world, I collapsed on the ground, hugging them.

They were real. They were mine.

Holding them helped stabilize my reeling emotions, and I sat on the floor of my dressing room, listening to the storm outside. Somehow, the clothes made returning home seem possible. Or maybe it was my desperate attempt to rationalize all that happened, to hope, to not break down into the madness that claimed Nell and John.