I froze halfway down the stairs. The singing stopped the second I moved. My husband was behind me asking what was wrong, but I couldn’t answer because the voice we heard was mine. Exactly mine.
The basement light flickered on by itself. There was a woman standing near an old table in the corner wearing the same blue dress I bought yesterday. Same hair. Same face. Even the tiny scar on my chin.
I actually thought I was losing my mind.
She looked at me like she’d known me forever and said, “You weren’t supposed to find the journal this early.”
My husband stepped in front of me and asked who she was. The woman looked confused for a second, then smiled at him and said, “You asked me that last time too.”
That’s when I noticed the shelves behind her.
Dozens of journals.
Each one labeled with years.
Some had our names on them.
One was already open on the table. Tomorrow’s date was written at the top of the page, and underneath it was a sentence I swear wasn’t there a second earlier:
“She finally came downstairs.”
I wanted to run, but then the woman quietly said, “If you leave now, he’ll find you again.”
I asked her who she meant.
She looked up toward the kitchen.
And that’s when we heard the front door open upstairs.
