Dr. Jennings’s warning about paranoia and delusions resounded in my head. I’d been recording my episodes in detail for the last year, but this was different territory. It felt dangerous.
I took the laptop from where it was buried beneath the papers on the desk and sat down on the floor. The light of the screen lit the dark room in a pale blue glow as I stretched my hands over the keys.
I swallowed hard before I typed “define delusion” and hit enter.
The search engine instantly populated.
Noun: a false belief or judgment about external reality, held despite incontrovertible evidence to the contrary, occurring especially in mental conditions.
Trying again, I typed “delusion vs hallucination.”
A number of articles came up, and I clicked on the first one. An illustrated picture of the human brain filled half the page, but the winding pathways were drawn like roots. From them, a large tree was growing, branches outstretched like uncurling fingers.
I scanned the text until I found what I was looking for.
Therefore, a hallucination includes seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, or feeling something that isn’t there.
My notebook was filled with those, and they seemed to track with Gran’s symptoms.
On the other hand, delusions are false beliefs despite evidence to the contrary.
I exhaled, somewhat relieved. There was evidence. It was scattered all over the sitting room like confetti. I hadn’t made up the coincidences between my mother and Nathaniel Rutherford’s wife. I also hadn’t imagined the connections between myself and June Rutherford.
My hands tightened into fists automatically. That name still felt like a choking vine, but the irrefutable part of this was that people couldn’t just travel through time.
I’m not sick, honey. I’m just in two places at once.
I’d never really thought about those words. I’d never had to, because we knew that Gran’s mind was broken, just like my mother’s was. The pattern was there, and so was the inevitable outcome. But Dr. Jennings had said himself that this form of dementia or cognitive decline didn’t follow the rules in textbooks. He didn’t even have a theory about what it could be.
When I followed that line of thinking, it led to only one place. One question that felt like the tip of a needle. If I touched it, it would prick me.
What if Gran wasn’t mad?
I stopped myself, backtracking the speeding train of thoughts before they led somewhere truly horrifying. The idea was a threshold. One I wasn’t sure I could come back from if I crossed it. But I didn’t feel like I had a choice anymore.
I went back to the desk, finding the notebook. My hands hesitated on its worn cover. I’d lost that apprehensive, nauseous feeling I’d had all the other times I’d opened it. There was something about it now that felt scientific. Clinical.
I turned to the first page, staring at the date.
July 2, 2022
8:45 P.M.—At the greenhouse. Someone was calling my name.
The first time it happened, I was at the farm, in the greenhouse we used for starting our autumn harvest seeds. I’d stayed late after the farmhands had all gone home, and I was working when I heard someone calling my name. It was the very first time I heard that voice that was now familiar. The one that covered me in a feeling of warmth. It was so clear and loud that I hadn’t questioned it even for a second.
I answered, but the voice only called my name again. And again, until I’d pulled the gloves from my hands and walked outside, searching the darkening fields for a face. But there was nothing. No one. And the voice just went on.
It was several seconds before I realized what was happening, and it was like being hit by a rogue wave, the rush of it coming all at once. It didn’t matter that I’d been standing on that shore my whole life, waiting for it. It still felt like the world split in two when it finally arrived.
The next entry was three days later, just when I’d begun to convince myself that I’d imagined the whole thing.
July 5, 2022
2:11 P.M.—A horse running on the side of the road. She disappeared.
The pages were filled with dozens of other dates and times. Music. The smell of bread baking in the oven. There were times I’d seen someone in a reflection or heard footsteps in the house. Once, I’d even called Mason out to the farm late at night, convinced someone had broken in.
Each time, I pushed the hallucination away, breathing deep and closing my mind to it until it stopped. I repeated the words. It’s not real, June.
If Gran really was in two places at once, could that mean that I was, too?
A tap on the door sounded, and I turned to see the shoulder of Mason’s jacket through the curtain.
I let out a frustrated breath, closing the notebook and covering it with a few of the pages that were scattered across the desk. I stepped carefully over the documents on the floor until I was in the hallway. His shadow rocked back and forth in front of the window before I opened the door, and he took a step backward when I pushed through the screen.
His brow furrowed, his gaze going from me to the inside of the house as I closed the door behind me. “Hey.”
“Hi.” I tried to sound normal.
Mason’s clothes were covered in dirt and pollen, which meant he was on his way home from work. “I called earlier,” he said. “Was worried when you didn’t come by the farm.”
“I’ve been busy.”
“Too busy to call me back?”
I shrugged. “I’ve just been dealing with some of the paperwork left from Gran.” I glanced at the street, where a car was pulling into one of the driveways. I could lie to Mason, but I couldn’t look him in the eye when I did it.
He wasn’t buying it. I could tell by the way his head tilted a little to one side. “June.”
“What?”
“What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” I snapped.
“Nothing?” His eyebrows lifted knowingly. “Really?”
I stared at him, digging my heels in.
He let the silence drag out for a few seconds before he stepped past me to the door.
“What are you—” I caught hold of his arm, but he pulled free, letting himself inside. “Mason!”
I followed, wedging myself ahead of him in the narrow hallway. When he reached the sitting room, I put a hand on his chest to stop him. But he froze as soon as he saw what I was trying to hide.
His eyes moved over the room slowly, landing on every scrap of paper I’d laid out. He was still—not just physically, but something about his countenance shifted, making the house feel colder. When he finally looked at me, there was fear in his eyes.
“June.” His voice lowered. “What is this?”
I exhaled heavily, pressing both palms to my cheeks as if to cool the heat igniting there. “It’s just family stuff.”
“Why is it all over the house like this?” He was holding back now, being careful.
“I’ve just been . . . looking into something.”
“Looking into what?”
“Just something about my mom.”
“What about her?” he pressed, his voice taking on an edge.
“Nothing!” I shouldered past him to the kitchen. When I reached the counter, I folded the foil back over Ida’s old Pyrex dish and yanked open the fridge.