Wayfarer (Passenger 2)

She felt the pressure of eyes and turned to find a young girl staring up at her, sucking on her thumb as she held her mother’s hand, waiting for the light to turn. Etta tried to smile, but she’d noticed others giving her a wide, silent berth, and could only imagine her smell and how out of place she looked, despite having lived the whole of her life on these streets, moving through the veins of the city.

When the little girl and her mother crossed Fifth Avenue, heading home, or to a shop, to some real, concrete destination, the wave of longing and uncertainty and desperation finally broke over her, and Etta began to cry.

You’re overwhelmed, but it’s all right, she told herself. You are all right. Give yourself a minute. Give yourself time.

But there was nowhere for her to go.

There was no one.

Unless…

Etta turned, crossing the street just as the signal began to flash. Her jog turning into a full-on sprint through this new, slightly changed version of the Upper East Side. She dodged sleek city cabs in their familiar shade of yellow, delivery bikes, and the parade of evening dog walkers.

The sun was setting at her back as she turned onto Alice’s street, and she felt her heart jump at the sight of her brownstone, looking almost exactly as she remembered it, the pots of flowers still alive on her stoop. The front windows were dark, but she tried knocking anyway; she stepped back, and then knocked again, practically bouncing in anticipation.

When there was still no answer, when she was sure her heart would beat its way out of her chest, Etta dug down in the base of the pot of pansies, dumping the dirt out onto the stoop, well aware that Martha, Alice’s snoop of a neighbor, was watching her through the window. Her hand had just closed around the spare key hidden at the bottom when Martha’s front door opened.

“Etta, is that you?”

She straightened slowly, hoping she’d managed to clean the better part of the blood from her skin. “Yes. It’s me.”

The old woman, already in her paisley silk robe, pressed a hand to her chest. “My goodness, we were so worried about you and your mother when we didn’t see you at the service. It’s been months, doll; how have you been? Alice was so excited for you to come back to the city for a visit. And goodness, you look as if you’ve crawled out of the ground—”

Service.

Months.

Etta had to swallow the bile down, forcing a smile that was more of a grimace. “I’ve been…traveling.”

Martha seemed to accept this, at least. “That house has been sitting empty for an age! If you’d like a referral to an agent to sell—”

Etta’s hands were trembling so hard, she could barely fit the key into the lock. It was a difficult door no matter the timeline, apparently. She had to shoulder it open.

“Careful, there!”

She stumbled inside, her chest heaving, and slammed the door shut on the woman. Gasping, Etta dropped to her knees, bracing her hands against them until she had the courage to look up. The whole apartment smelled as she remembered it: the cinnamon-apple potpourri Alice favored, and Oskar’s pipe smoke, which had lingered long after he’d passed away. Etta leaned forward, pressing her face to the old blue floral rug covering the hardwood, and let it muffle her scream of frustration.

She’s dead.

She’s still dead.

And her home was as buried as she was—every piece of furniture, every piece of art, every surface was covered with white sheets. Etta breathed in through her nose as she stood, leaving a trail of dirt across the pristine floor in the living room. The floorboards squeaked as she approached the couch and placed a knee on it, pulling the fabric away from the painting hanging there. The city sang its medley of horns and trucks and rattling garbage containers outside, and all the while Etta stared at the impressionist field of red poppies, raising a hand to touch the paint, to brush the dust from its frame.

She moved from room to room, uncovering pieces of Alice’s life. Photos of herself smiling naively, unscarred in and out, with her mother; neat stacks of bills; an unfinished novel on the bedside table. Her violin, the one she’d gifted to Etta years ago in the old timeline, rested in its case on the bench at the foot of the bed. Etta sat beside it, flipping open its latches, and for a long while did nothing but stare at it. Brush the glossy surface, breathe in the wood and rosin with her filthy fingers.

“I’ll be seeing you….” The words emerged broken, battered. In all the old familiar places.

But there was one painting she had never seen before, resting just outside the floor of Alice’s closet, as if she’d gone to hang it up and forgotten about it. Having grown up in the halls of the Met, Etta recognized the Renaissance style of the piece, from the pose of the young woman to the warm, vibrant tone of its colors.

It was so unlike the other pieces in the apartment that it drew Etta forward for closer inspection. The ivory dress with its square cut was detailed with gold thread, but otherwise simple in style. The subject’s golden hair was plaited down her back, crowned by a circlet of lush red roses. In one hand, she held a map; in the other, a key.

The eyes staring back at her were her mother’s.

Her fingers touched delicate brushstrokes, and the roses blurred in her vision like an open wound. This was Rose Linden’s natural time. Alice had indicated it to her the only way she could, by keeping this relic of the past. Sensing, or knowing, that Rose would never get around to telling her daughter herself.

Etta couldn’t push the chill out from beneath her skin, any more than she could stop the shaking that overtook her as the vicious reality set in. She did not think she could ever forgive her mother, not fully, for taking Alice’s life, no matter the reason. But she pitied Rose deeply; she felt an unwanted empathy trying to imagine making that decision with the trauma of her past, and the promise of more death to come, ringing her neck like a noose. She understood now that Rose was as much the hero as she was the victim of her own story, blooming in blood.