Her dad stands inside the doorway, with…her mother. They’re laughing, and her father strokes her mom’s hair.
Samara stays perfectly still because she doesn’t want it to end. She doesn’t want her mom to disappear, like she did before.
Ashmina turns. “Sammy? What are you doing home?”
“You drove all this way just to say goodbye?” her dad asks.
Her mother moves toward her, her arms outstretched. “You could have come a few hours earlier, no? Helped us with the last of the packing?”
Samara closes her eyes and feels her mother’s warm, tight embrace. She inhales her sweet, earthy perfume. She holds on to her, and doesn’t let go even when her mom pulls away.
“What’s the matter?” Ashmina holds her at arm’s length. “We’ll see you at Thanksgiving. You’ve already bought your ticket.” She tugs at Samara’s hair. “What have you done with your hair? It’s different. I’m not sure I like it—”
Samara laughs, but it turns into a sob.
“Oh, Sammy, don’t worry. I’ll still nag you just as much as before. It’ll just be over the telephone.”
Samara nods. “What can I do to help?”
“You can put the suitcases in the car.” Her dad points to the worn blue luggage standing by the door.
She kisses them both and they get into the car. They look excited, giddy even. Her mom asks her dad if he’s got the passports, and he pats his front pocket. They close their doors. They wave at her and she waves back. She follows the car down the driveway, waving, and waving, until it turns onto the main road and disappears into the trees.
* * *
—
When Mark comes downstairs Livi’s still on the couch. Her mom hasn’t come to pick her up yet. “Did your mom call?” he asks.
“She just texted. She’s still at work.”
“Let me get Noah some water, and then I’ll drive you home.”
The door to his study stands ajar, and a strange beeping comes from his computer. He moves closer to the screen and blinks at the real-time data from his research ponds. He starts. He clicks from one pond to the next: E, F, L, P. They’re empty. His frogs are gone.
How long has the alarm been going off? He presses keys on his computer. Since this morning at dawn. 6:47 A.M. That’s when he was in the forest. That’s when he found the Other Mark. He recalls his dirty, twisted face. His hands squeezing his neck. The beeping from his computer continues, on and on. What has he done?
He dials his graduate student, Katie. She picks up on the third ring. “Are you seeing what I’m seeing?” he asks.
“What are you talking about?”
“Check your feed.”
There’s a pause, and the noise of Katie tapping at a computer keyboard. “Where are they? It’s only October. They shouldn’t be moving for months—”
“Listen, I want you to get in your car and drive as far away from the mountain as possible. Check the direction of the wind and go the opposite way. You know the projections about Broken Mountain. Lava flow isn’t the danger, it’s ash.”
“Mark—”
“Once you’re in your car I want you to call the USGS, and tell them what’s happened.” He rubs his patchy beard. “They might not listen but—”
“There could be another explanation. A malfunction in the collars—”
“All of them at once?”
“I don’t know.” Her voice has a shade of panic in it now. “There could be another reason—”
“Promise me you’ll get in your car and go.”
By the time he hangs up he’s already at his son’s bedside. He shakes him awake. “Put on your shoes as best you can,” he tells him.
He runs downstairs and checks the garage. Ginny’s car is still there. He opens the front door; he calls her name. “They’re gone!” he yells, and his voice—exhilarated, terrified, and echoing across the deserted cul-de-sac—sounds like it belongs to someone else. “My frogs are gone.”
There’s no answer. All is still. Mist cloaks the mountain. The only sound is the drip of rainwater from the trees.
* * *
—
Ginny’s hand rests on the cold metal of the hatch door when she hears Mark calling out the front door. She can’t make out everything he’s saying, something about his frogs.
He’s yelling louder now. She hesitates for a second and then grabs the hatch wheel. “In here.” Her sneakers slide in the mud as she strains to pull open the door. She climbs inside and Edith follows.
Ginny closes the door as quietly as she can.
“Will he look out here?” Edith breathes.
“No,” she says. “I don’t think so. I told him I was going out.” They feel around until they find a camping lantern and turn it on. Its yellow light reveals a fully furnished room. A rug covers the floor; shelves line the walls. Three metal cots are made up with green fleece blankets and flannel sheets. There’s a water tank, a generator, and a chemical toilet. On the shelves are stacks of batteries, paper towels, crates of bottled water, bungee cords. Books too. A few of her favorites are stacked on top of some board games, Monopoly and Ticket to Ride.
The room smells like cement and rubber and fabric softener. When she sees the three pairs of shiny rain boots that take up a bottom shelf, a tall black pair and two shorter pairs, one green-and-white striped, and another bright blue, she feels guilt, and under that, a deep sense of loss.
Edith picks up a box of instant oatmeal from a shelf and puts it back, a bewildered expression on her face. “Why did your husband build this?”
“Because I wasn’t around to stop him.”
“You were with me.”
“You tried to tell me,” Ginny says. “You said something bad was going to happen, and it did.”
“It’s not your fault Noah got hurt. Your husband has obviously gone off the deep end—”
“If I agree and say it wasn’t my fault, that might even be worse.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m his mother. I’m supposed to keep him safe.”
“Yesterday at the hospital you convinced me we should be together. You said you were going to leave your husband—”
“I know.”
Edith gestures around the room. “Has seeing this changed your mind?”
“No.” Ginny sits down on one of the cots and puts her head in her hands.
Edith sits next to her.
“Whatever I choose someone’s going to get hurt,” Ginny says.
Edith sighs. “That sounds about right.”
“I don’t want to give you up.”
“So don’t.”
Ginny wants to believe she and Edith could be like the two happy women she saw in her kitchen, and who stood at the foot of her stairs. But she can’t think of them without remembering the man who looked just like Mark, out in the driveway. His dirty, tormented face. She tries hard to imagine another way forward for her and Edith. What that might look like. They can’t be those two women. But maybe they could be something else.
* * *
—
Cass steps from the shower with the baby in her arms, wraps a towel around them both, and sits down on the bath mat with her back against the tub. She lets Leah’s mouth find her breast. She watches the hazy shapes they make in the fogged mirror on the back of the bathroom door. Then she reaches for the pages she wrote earlier, an expansion of her argument from her old paper. She has it down on paper now: her life, the life she shares with Leah and Amar, is only one of an infinite number of possible lives in the multiverse. These other realities are not hypothetical. They are real. She knows this because she’s seen one of them with her own eyes—and her neighbor Mark has too.
She holds the pages with one hand so she can support Leah with the other, and when she looks up again the refl
ection in the mirror has cleared. Her hair is damp, her dark eyes tired but focused. A faint streak of mud still marks her cheek, from Mark’s dirty coat, and she wipes it away. Leah’s body drapes over her own. Their pink limbs are tangled up with each other, making it appear as if Cass has more than two arms, more than two legs.
Dear Amar,
I saw something so strange. Any way I say it will sound crazy. I know that. But here goes—I saw myself in the nursery. I was there, real as anything. Another me. At first I thought it was some kind of premonition, a warning. But now I know I was wrong. I wasn’t seeing myself in the future. I was seeing another version of myself now.
Love,
Cass
She unlatches the baby, whose eyes have fluttered closed, and lays her on the bath mat. She opens the cabinet under the sink and takes out the pink box. She goes through the steps again: takes the cap off the pregnancy test, pees on it, and counts. But instead of setting the test on the back of the toilet she holds it in her hand. It’s different this time.
She watches the little window in the test. A minute passes. Slowly a faint pink line appears—only one.
Then the floor jolts against her bare feet. There’s a metallic taste in her mouth. She drops the test, scoops Leah up, and holds her to her chest. The baby blinks and whimpers. Then the vibration, stronger than she’s ever felt before, stops. Cass stands still and listens—
Soft footsteps come from the hallway. But she’s alone. She holds her breath and opens the bathroom door. Someone’s moving down the hallway. The woman. The pregnant woman who looks just like her.
She steps back, and covers Leah’s head with her hands. The woman comes closer with a halting, loose-hipped step, her T-shirt pulled tight across her large belly. She smells like Burt’s Bees peppermint foot cream.
She passes by the bathroom door like Cass isn’t there. Her face is sweaty. She kneads her lower back with two fists and moans like she’s in pain, like she’s in labor. “Are you—” Cass tries to speak but her voice is a croak. She tries again. “Are you all right—”
But the woman doesn’t respond. She climbs down the stairs, slowly, groaning with each step, and then she’s gone.
THIRTY-THREE
MARK TELLS NOAH and Livi to wait on the front porch with the cats in their carriers, and runs to the main road, his heart hammering against his ribs. The street is deserted and shiny with rain. He calls his wife’s name again and again, but she doesn’t answer. Even the normal evening sounds—the rustle of ground squirrels, the hoots of owls—are eerily absent. He hesitates, looks back at the kids. He can’t wait, he has to keep moving. He hurries to knock on both his neighbors’ front doors. Samara answers almost immediately, and frowns when she sees him. He explains as quickly as he can about the frogs. “Go get your dad.” Her expression is incredulous, but she does what he says.
He turns to his new neighbor’s house, and Cass has cracked open her door. “Did I hear you right?” Her cheeks are flushed; she seems to be breathing heavily.
“Yes, hurry.”
“Where?” she asks.
“Yes, where?” Samara’s father, Manish, dressed in striped pajamas and leather slippers, has joined his daughter on the front porch.
“To the shelter in my backyard. We’ll be safe there. All of us.”
Manish stares at him like he’s grown a second head.
Cass opens her door wider, her large, pregnant belly pulling her oversized T-shirt taut. “I can’t do that.” She holds on to the doorjamb and moans. “I have to stay near a phone.”
“Are you all right?” Samara moves toward Cass. “Are you in labor?”
“I don’t know,” Cass breathes. “Maybe.”
“And you’re alone?” Samara asks.
“Yes, my husband’s on a research trip—”
“We need to stop talking”—Mark raises his voice—“and get inside the shelter.”
But no one moves.
For a second he thinks they’re all going to stay inside their houses, that they won’t follow him. But then they do, Manish pulling a jacket over his pajamas, and Cass tugging her dog along on a leash.
Mark helps his son up from the porch, and leads the whole group through his muddy backyard to the shelter.
“What about Mom?” Noah asks, his voice tight with fear.
“She was here,” Samara says. “I just saw her—”
“I’ll find her,” Mark says. “Once you’re inside.”
And then they’re at the hatch and Mark reaches for its wheel, the metal cold and wet in his hands—just like he has so many times in his fantasies, and in his nightmares. He can feel everyone breathing behind him as he turns it, once, twice, and swings the door open wide.
He blinks when he sees the light. There are people inside. His wife and a red-haired woman he has never seen before sit on a cot. They jump apart.
* * *
—
Noah pushes his dad aside. “Mom!” he yells. He scrambles inside the shelter, one-handed, and hugs Ginny despite his splint. “We didn’t know where you were.”
“What’s going on?” Her voice sounds high-pitched and unnatural.
No one answers. Other people climb into the bunker, Samara and her dad, Manish, Livi, and their new neighbor, Cass, along with her dog. She stumbles, her pregnant belly awkward on the steps, and Mark reaches out to help her, holding her hand as she climbs inside.
Ginny waits for Mark to point at Edith and ask, “Who the hell is that?” But he doesn’t. He doesn’t look at her. He doesn’t look at Edith. He sets the cats down and pulls the hatch closed. He moves across the room and flips a switch on a large white box and a whirring hum fills the room.
It’s Noah who speaks first, his words coming out in an excited rush. He tells Ginny and Edith how the frogs have disappeared from their ponds, how Broken Mountain is about to erupt.
“That sounds…” Edith says. But she doesn’t finish her sentence. She doesn’t say crazy.
Samara says, “I thought Broken Mountain was a dormant volcano—”
“Shouldn’t we be getting in our cars and driving away?” Manish interrupts.
“This is the safest place to be,” Mark says, “for the next few hours.” He points to the white box. “Because of this filter.”
“Really, Mark?” Ginny finds her voice again. “Because—”
“Yes, really, Ginny.”
Noah looks from his mom to his dad.
She wants to say something more but doesn’t.
The cats meow loudly. Noah and Mark pull their crates into a corner and Livi sits on the floor and talks to them softly. Edith moves to where Cass stands near the hatch door, her dog pressed protectively against her side. She’s breathing hard.
“Are you okay?” Edith asks. “Are you having a contraction?”
Cass nods. Her lips are pressed together; she moans.
“Remind me—how many weeks are you?” Ginny asks.
“Let’s have you lie down on your left side.” Edith helps Cass to one of the cots. “Get your baby as much oxygen as we can.”
“Thirty-seven weeks,” Cass tells Ginny.
“When is this eruption going to happen, then?” Manish asks Mark. “I mean, is it imminent?”
“I don’t know,” Mark says. “It could be fifteen minutes or fifteen hours.”
“Fifteen hours…” Manish looks up at the ceiling of the bunker and his expression turns panicked. “I can’t stay down here for fifteen hours.”
Mark puts his hand on his shoulder. “Everything’s going to be okay.” His voice is strong and steady. “We just need to sit tight.”
“I don’t know. This whole thing seems far-fetched—”
“Is there a blood pressure cuff down here?” Ginny asks.
“In the medical kit, on the th
ird shelf.” Mark still doesn’t look at her.
“Is this it?” Samara holds up a plastic container full of medical supplies.
Edith attaches the blood pressure cuff to Cass’s arm and squeezes its bulb. “What luck,” she says to Cass in a gentle voice, “to have a doctor and a nurse down here with you.”
Ginny finds a stethoscope and moves it around Cass’s abdomen. She listens hard. Cass smells like sweat and peppermint.
“It’s 120 over 80,” Edith says to Ginny. And then to Cass: “That’s in the normal range.”
“How long have you been having painful contractions?” Ginny asks.
“About an hour—”
“Have you been timing them?”
“They’ve been coming every ten minutes.” Her face contorts with pain. “They’re coming faster now.”
Edith sits down next to her on the bed. “Take a couple of deep breaths, okay? Contractions every ten minutes is a long way from having a baby—”
“I’m not due for another month,” Cass tells Edith. “My husband’s not even here.”
Samara hovers near the bed. “Can I do something?”
“If everyone could be quiet for a minute,” Ginny asks. The room goes silent as she moves the stethoscope to the warm underside of Cass’s belly and strains to differentiate the baby’s heartbeat from Cass’s.
She smiles when she hears it, finally, faster and lighter than its mother’s. “I hear a steady heartbeat.” She takes the stethoscope out of her ears and hangs it around her neck. “When was your last OB appointment?”
“Two days ago.” Cass hugs her stomach and her dog licks her hands. “Everything was fine.”
“And the baby’s position?”
“Head down.”
Ginny nods and stands up. She takes off her watch and asks Samara to time Cass’s contractions. “And Manish, can you hold on to the dog?”
She motions for Mark to follow her to the hatch door, and forces herself to look him in the eye. “If our neighbor’s in labor,” she whispers, “I need to drive her to the hospital right now.”
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