Page 94 of Disturbing the Dead
That’s the only explanation. I’ve been unconscious in a hospital bed while my brain told me this wild and wonderful story.
And none of it is real.
None of them are real.
I can’t even hold on to a shred of hope that I really traveled through time, because the ending proves it was just a dream. I’d been in a tunnel, held at gunpoint by Mrs. Wallace, and I’d literally just finished telling her how I got there when I was strangled again and ended up back in my own time.
It is as if my brain knew it was about to wake up, and it had to finish the story fast, so it came around full circle to the beginning.
I want to curl up in a ball and sob for something I’ve lost. Something I never actually had.
My brain only wanted to entertain me while I slept, and instead, it feels like a betrayal. Like those dreams where I finally got on the major-crimes squad or I met an amazing man or discovered the doctors had been wrong about my grandmother’s cancer. It’s waking up to the disappointment of realizing my dream-come-true was only an actual dream.
I look back and poke at the oddities and tell myself those prove it was fake. I just happened to land in a progressive family? People I would like as friends? A suffragette chemist and her forensic-scientist brother and their police-detective friend? That should be proof enough that I dreamed it. Pass through time for real, and I’d have ended up the wife of a lout who spent every cent on booze while I worked my hands raw and popped out squalling children.
I had fallen into a fantasy Victorian life. But even knowing that, it still feels real.
When we reach the hospice, I gather my grief and stuff it away for later. Nan is still alive. I’ve spent what felt like six months thinking I’d missed her last days, and I hadn’t.
How many times did I imagine walking these halls, seeing Nan’s door ahead, my step quickening as I realized I wasn’t too late after all.
I find my smile then. I head down that hall, walking and then striding and then breaking into a run that has my dad laughing behind me. I wheel into the room, and she is there. A tiny woman on a huge bed, surrounded by flowers and books and half-eaten boxes of chocolates.
I run in, and she’s resting with her eyes closed. They open, slowly at first and then popping wide as her face lights in a smile, arms reaching for me.
“Mallory,” she says, and I burst into happy tears as I run to embrace her.
It’s evening. I’d arrived around lunchtime, and Mom made me go out to dinner with Dad. Now I’ve come back, and we’ve made Mom go out for a late dinner with Dad. My father is never one to turn down multiple meals.
Nan has been asleep since I got back, and I’m trying to read one of her books, but I haven’t turned a single page. I’m actively avoiding thinking about Gray and Isla, which is taking all my mental energy, like holding back a dam.
“What’s wrong?” Nan’s voice says softly.
I startle from the fake-reading to see her watching me intently.
“You’re doing an excellent job of hiding it, as always,” she says. “You and your mother put on a good face until you think no one’s watching, and then it falls away.”
I stand and roll my shoulders. “Tired, I guess, despite sleeping for two days straight.”
“There’s something else. Something making you sad.”
I tap the tray of pills at her bedside. “Huh. No idea why I’d be sad.”
“There’s no reason to be sad about that. I had an incredible life, and I’m ready to say goodbye. It’s leaving others behind that’s the hard part. What else is bothering you?”
“I…” I struggle for words, and then I blurt, “I had a dream. While I was in the coma.”
She tilts her head, sharp eyes studying me. “One that made you sad.”
I roll my shoulders again, as if I can slough off the melancholy. “It was a good dream. Weird and strange, but good, and I thought it was real and… and it’s not, and I’m having a bit of trouble dealing with that. Which is…” I wrinkle my nose. “Also weird and strange.”
“What did you dream?”
My lips quirk in a smile. “That I fell through time, into the body of a Victorian housemaid working for a forensic scientist.”
Her eyes glitter. “Now that does sound like fun. Tell me more?”
I lift one shoulder in a shrug. “It was just a dream.”
