Bridges in Flour and Water, Part 3

The plan, such as it was, had been to find Riley for their afternoon date. But after a half-hour of fruitless searching—Riley’s room, the gym, every likely stretch of the gardens—Andy found himself orbiting the Master’s Suite, then the terrace, then, inevitably, Laura.

He’d stopped thinking of the pull as supernatural. It was more like gravity, the way a song you once loved could draw your whole body back to the moment you first heard it. It was the old story: whenever he was aimless, or she was, they'd find each other. Like the universe couldn't accept them to be bored. Sam had called him a black hole, and Laura a gravity bomb. Perhaps it was unavoidable that they’d be pulled to each other. In this case, the moment was now: Laura, or rather both Lauras, seated at the wrought-iron table overlooking the ocean, each with a notebook open and a mug of something in hand.

Andy paused at the doorway, taking in the symmetry of it. The two Lauras moved with uncanny precision—same posture, same angle of head tilt, same focus as they both looked up and noticed him. He tried not to think of the duplication as weird; after a few days, it had become part of the landscape, like the color of the sea or the smell of coffee in the morning.

If he had to be honest, he was starting to find it hot.

Laura raised twin hands. “Hey, stranger.”

Andy grinned. “Is this the part where you start speaking in perfect unison to freak me out?”

Both of her flashed identical smiles. “Only if you ask nicely,” she chorused, then looked at him in amusement.

He crossed the tile, aware of the warmth coming off the pavers, and took the empty chair across from her. “I was looking for Riley,” he said, “but now I’m starting to think she doesn’t exist outside of a well-timed crisis.”

Laura—both of her—laughed, the sound doubling and then resolving into one. She tucked her legs up on the seats, making both of her selves small. “She’s probably on the cliffs, yelling at the wind.”

Andy could believe it. “How are you?”

A pause. She hesitated, then said: “I’m fine,” she said, then amended it almost immediately. “Not fine-fine. Just… upright. Which feels like a win today.” She considered, then added, “I missed you.” Her face held the admission with an almost devotional focus.

Andy leaned forward, elbows on the table. “You saw me earlier, in the kitchen.”

Laura shrugged—one shoulder, both bodies. “Doesn’t count. It was a group thing.”

He laughed. “A group thing?”

She rolled her eyes, but her expression was soft. “I mean, you’re busy. I get it. I just thought—today, maybe, we could…” Her voice trailed off, the confidence she’d faked dissolving. Andy felt the urge to fix it, but instead, he just sat in the moment, letting her fill the silence. That had always been the trick with Laura—if you waited her out, she’d eventually come around and say the real thing.

Which she did, after a minute. “I thought today might be ours,” she said, more quietly. “Just… lunch, maybe. One unshared hour. And I guess, I didn’t realize that’s just how things are now. That there’s always someone else.” Both of her looked up, the gaze direct and impossible to dodge. “Sorry. That sounds bitchy. I just…”

Andy put a hand over hers—the right-hand Laura’s, though it made both bodies still at the touch. “It’s not bitchy,” he said. “It’s fair. I want time with you, too. I just… I’m still figuring out how to do this without screwing it up.”

She met his eyes, a faint, rueful smile ghosting across both sets of her lips. “You always do that. Take responsibility for things you can’t control.” She squeezed his hand. “I’m not angry. Just—sad, I guess. That I have to wait so many more days to get time with you.”

Andy ran his thumb over the back of Laura’s hand—Ponytail Laura, as he’d started to nickname that body—while the other Laura tilted her head, as if waiting for his answer. He didn’t know which to look at; the effect was like being on the spot in a job interview, except the stakes were far worse than career mobility. Two pairs of Laura-blue eyes, same worry and longing, same old familiar unguardedness that made him want to solve every problem she had, even the ones that had no solution.

He said, “You know you can always just ask to see me, right? I don’t have to wait for Arabella’s calendar. We could just—”

Laura shook her head, a smile flickering across both faces. “You’d say yes, even if you had plans,” she said, “but you’d feel guilty about it the whole time. I don’t want you to feel bad. I just… want you to want me.”

Andy caught the small tremor in her voice, and realized it wasn’t even that she doubted him, but that she just wanted to hear it, plain and unhedged. So he said, “I want you. I always have. If there were more hours in the day, I’d spend them with you.”

Laura seemed to steady at that, both forms letting out a breath at once. Like she’d put something fragile back on a shelf instead of dropping it. The left Laura laced her fingers with his, and for a moment the three of them—one Andy, two Lauras—were a perfect, if weird, little trinity.

The sunlight slanted hard onto the terrace, throwing Laura’s black hair into shifting stripes of blue and silver. He let his eyes drift across the terrace, not wanting to overstay the intensity of the moment, and spotted Emi walking toward them along the pavers, arms folded across her chest. She saw Andy, then saw both of Laura's selves, and paused, uncertain.

Laura, in perfect unison, said, “Hey, Emi. Want to join us?” Andy was faintly surprised, given what Laura had just told him, but then he remembered what she had said, how she remembered Emi helping her, in the past. He remembered Emi’s conversation with adult Laura in the Garden, and Laura mentioning the promise she made to the six-armed girl. He couldn't help but smile fondly. With the three of them together again, without anger or jealousy, it suddenly felt as if another missing piece from his childhood had been put back in place.

Emi hesitated, then shook her head. “I don’t want to interrupt. Looks like you’re having a thing.”

Andy stood, waving her over. “It’s not a thing. Stay.” He pulled out a chair for her.

Emi smiled, face open. “Okay.” She came to the table, hovered for a moment, then slid into the empty chair across from Laura. Her six arms tucked neatly into her lap, a gesture Andy recognized as Emi’s version of trying to take up less space.

He wanted to say something, but before he could, a familiar shadow fell across the table. Mildred, resplendent in her full-service uniform, stood beside them with a tray and her usual bombshell air of disappointment. “Good afternoon, Master, Contestants,” she said. “Welcome to the terrace. Our lunch special is a quinoa salad with blood orange, grilled haloumi, and mint, served alongside house-baked flatbread and a tomato-basil gazpacho. Or, if you’re feeling more… hearty,” she glanced at Andy, “we can provide the carnivore’s option: beef tartare, fresh oysters, and a triple-cream brie.” Her smile was wide and practiced. “May I take your order?”

Andy looked at Laura, and she shrugged. “Quinoa salad, I guess,” she said.

Emi said, “Same for me, please.”

Andy said, “The tartare sounds good. And, uh, a ginger ale?”

“Make that three, please,” Laura said, then pinked slightly. “Well, four.”

Mildred wrote nothing down, but Andy could tell she had memorized every word. She turned, then hesitated. “And how are you today, Master?” she asked. There was no irony in her tone, only a practiced, unsettling neutrality.

He blinked, caught off guard by the directness. “I’m good. How about you?”

For a moment, Mildred’s composure cracked. Her eyes widened a fraction, and she seemed to recalibrate her smile. “I… That is twice now.”

Andy frowned. “Twice?”

She nodded. “You have asked me how I am today, and once before, exactly twenty-two days ago.” She looked at him with something like curiosity, or maybe accusation. “Why?”

Andy felt the others watching him, but he couldn’t help himself. “Does it make a difference?”

Mildred stared at him for a beat too long, then said, “It might.” She vanished, the click of her heels swallowed instantly by the breeze.

As soon as she was out of earshot, Laura said, “What’s her deal?”

Emi giggled. “There’s a betting pool. Sam thinks she’s a robot with Stockholm syndrome. Riley’s convinced she’s a demon in witness protection.”

Andy said, “I buy the robot theory, except she acts like someone who hates her own programming. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her do anything without resenting it just a little.”

Laura squinted. “But she remembers everything. And she always acts like she’s waiting for us to notice something.”

Emi said, “Maybe she’s a person who got stuck in a role. Like a really, really method actor.”

Andy looked up, staring in the direction Mildred had gone. “Or maybe she’s just… lonely.” He let the thought hang for a moment, then turned back to the table.

They sat in the sunlight for a while, not talking. Emi picked at a loose thread on her sleeve, her fingers working at it with delicate, deliberate care. Andy watched as Laura traced the edges of her mugs. It was comfortable, the kind of silence that didn’t need to be filled.

Lunch arrived with zero warning: Mildred appeared beside them, a flourish of plates and bowls, and distributed the food with flawless efficiency. She said nothing, but her eyes lingered on Andy for a second, then drifted away.

Andy tried the tartare. It was absurdly good, the kind of dish that could make him forget for a moment that he was in a magical prison/harem hotel. He said as much, and Emi smiled, relieved. “I never know if it’s going to be amazing or just… weird,” she said. “I had a coffee-flavored soup here once.”

Laura nodded, then caught Emi’s gaze. “Can I ask you something?” Her voice was careful, but soft.

Emi said, “Anything.”

“What happened to you? I mean—after I was gone.”

There was a hush. Emi folded her arms tighter, then let out a slow breath. “I, uh. It was bad for a while. I think it was bad for everyone, but—” She glanced at Andy, then back to Laura. “I stopped talking to people. Even my family. School was… I don’t know. I went, but it didn’t stick. Eventually, I stopped showing up. I got really good at pretending I was okay.”

Laura nodded, and the right Laura reached across the table to touch Emi’s wrist. “I’m sorry,” she said.

Emi shook her head. “It wasn’t you. You were just—gone. I kept thinking if I did everything right, you’d come back, but that’s not how it works.”

Andy watched as Emi’s eyes went bright, but she kept her composure. “I ended up moving out to California for college,” Emi said. “I thought if I went far enough, it would stop hurting. But then I just missed everyone more.”

Andy said, “You didn’t miss much, back home. We were all kind of a mess.”

Emi looked at him, then at Laura. “But you found each other again, right?” she said, her smile breaking through. “Even if it took this—” she waved a hand at the hotel, the terrace, everything, “—to make it happen.”

Both Lauras blushed at that, and Andy felt his own face go hot. “Yeah,” she said. “We did.”

Emi nodded, satisfied. “Good.”

There was a pause, then Laura said, “What about you, Andy? I mean, you told me some of it, but…” Her tone was gentle, but Andy still felt like a bug under a microscope.

Andy knew the question was coming, but it still made his tongue stick to the roof of his mouth. He forked a lump of tartare, chewed it, swallowed, and then shrugged, as if the answer could be made smaller by preemptive apology. “You already know most of it. School, work, a lot of feeling stuck. Never really left Warrenville until college. I tried to make myself a new life but it never quite felt like—like it fit.”

He wasn’t sure if Laura wanted the facts or the feeling. Both of her watched him, so he gave both. “I kept expecting you to just show up again, like a bad dream that would end when I woke up. But it didn’t.” He looked at Emi, then Laura, then at the sunlight wobbling on the rim of his glass. “After you were gone, I just… closed up, I guess. Lost touch with everyone who mattered, even the ones who tried to stay in reach.”

Laura listened without interrupting, which was new. She knew part of this, of course.

Emi set her fork down, eyes wet but steady. “You’re skipping the part where you made yourself into something that mattered.” She glanced at Laura. “Andy started a company. He put all that loneliness into something that made people feel safe, like if he couldn’t fix it for himself, he’d fix it for everyone else. I think that was kind of beautiful.”

Andy waved this off, but Laura smiled—a soft, sideways thing. “He told me about it,” she said.

Andy shrugged, uncomfortable with the attention. “It was just… work. It didn’t really matter to anyone but me. I mean, I guess it paid the bills, but—”

Laura looked at him, both faces set in a familiar challenge. “You always do that,” she said. “Downplay everything you accomplish, like it’s a fluke. But you built something from nothing, Andy. You gave my name purpose. You remembered me. I’m still… figuring out what to do with that.”

Emi nodded. “It’s beautiful,” she echoed. “And it helped a lot of people. I read about it, you know.”

Andy tried to wave it off, but Emi cut him off. “I mean it,” she said, quietly fierce. “You changed the world, even if you never wanted to.” She blushed, a pink that crept up her cheeks to the tips of her ears. “Sorry if that’s too much. It just—it matters to me, too.”

Andy opened his mouth to say something, then shut it again. The compliment made him feel exposed, like someone had unwrapped a gift he meant to keep for himself. He found himself looking at Laura, and then at Emi, and realized that for the first time in years, he and Emi weren’t alone with her memory.

Laura smiled—a soft, private curve of her lips—and said, “Thank you.” Both bodies. At once.

He reached for Laura’s hand, and Emi’s too, and for a long moment, the three of them just sat there in the sunlight, a tangle of hands and history, and the sense that if they stayed like this long enough, maybe everything would be okay.

They lingered over lunch, picking at the food until there was nothing left but crumbs and sticky fingers. Mildred reappeared, whisking away the plates with a blank smile, but Andy caught a flicker of something in her eyes—suspicion, or maybe hope.

“Thank you, Mildred,” Emi said as the server departed.

Mildred paused, studying Emi with those hard eyes of hers for the briefest moment. “Hm,” she said, “Interesting.” She hesitated—actually hesitated—then grunted, “Thank you. For the cranes.” She gave the barest nod to an astounded Emi, then melted into the background.

“Cranes?” Laura asked, confused. Emi, eyes wide, stared at where Mildred had walked off like she’d seen a monster. Andy blinked, surprised as well.

“I… I leave her origami cranes each day,” Emi said in a stunned whisper, “To thank her. I didn’t think…” She blushed, her face blooming with joy. “I’m so happy she liked them!”

Laura said something else, but Andy didn’t hear it, too focused on what had just happened. They had had more actual conversations with Mildred today—not with her alters in the stores, but with Mildred herself—than in the last two months combined. He remembered the vial she had given him for his birthday, tucked safely in the inventory Harper had provided everyone. And what did she mean with that comment on Emi?

When the last plate was gone, Emi looked at Laura. “Hey,” she said. “Can I show you something? After lunch?”

Laura blinked, both faces startled by the request, but then she nodded. “Sure,” she said. “What is it?”

Emi hesitated, then smiled, her expression impossibly gentle. “It’s better if I just show you.”

Andy glanced at Laura, who gave him a look that was part curiosity, part trust. Whatever Emi had in mind, she wanted Laura to see it, and Laura wanted to see it, too.

“Okay,” Laura said, and her left-hand self stood up, dusting crumbs from her lap. “Let’s go.”

They took the door back to the Main Lobby, Emi leading with an energy that was new for her—light, almost skipping, as if she was running on a secret. Andy trailed, hands in pockets, eyes drifting from the trees to the backs of Laura’s two selves, who walked side by side but never quite touched. Laura kept her gaze forward, like if she let herself look at Andy too long she’d slow down. At the Main Lobby, Emi picked the corridor that, Andy knew, led to the Dance Hall.

Emi slowed, glancing back to make sure Andy and Laura were following. Andy had only been inside during the birthday, but the space was always a surprise. Today, it was set for a reception, the floors gleaming, the air laced with something citrusy and sharp. The walls were whitewashed, hung with long blue banners, and the windows spilled in so much sun that the whole room seemed to vibrate with it. Andy idly wondered if this was the Dance Hall’s natural state, or if Arabella curated “vibes” the way Claire curated shelves—quietly, obsessively, as if a room could be a lever.

But what drew the eye was the far wall, where someone—Claire, Andy remembered, for his birthday—had arranged a mural of photos. The original collage was already a minor miracle, a sequence of blurry polaroids and crisp prints, each one a little time capsule from his life: toddlerhood, childhood, middle school class trips, birthday cakes, science fair trophies, a photo of the three of them (Andy, Laura, Emi) on a float in the Warrenville homecoming parade.

But now, staring up at the wall, Andy saw that the array had doubled, tripled, sprawled from the center to the very edges of the panel. There were photos from the party—a shot of Andy with Nick Reynolds and another with Mark Garret, both of them grinning like idiots and making faces at the lens. Next to those, there were pictures of him onstage, cutting into the cake shaped like Erin, Erin herself flushed and mid-laugh beside him, Dawn and Sam in the background holding up peace signs. There was one of him giving a speech, gesturing wildly, caught with his mouth open in a laugh that looked bigger than any he remembered having in months.

And then—his stomach flipped—photos of him dancing. With Sam, with Riley, with Emi, with every woman in the harem, and quite a few of the guests. In every frame, the light caught him in motion, always the center of the storm.

There were more: snapshots from before the fourth challenge, Laura’s birthday in the Hotel, before her return; Andy in the Master’s Suite, shirtless and slumped on the couch, weeping openly while the sky loomed gray in the window behind him; the women, all of them, crowding the beach, trying to make him laugh with water games and sandcastles; him on the stone bench on the Walk of Remembrance, guitar in hand, playing even though it was raining hard enough to soak through his jeans and plaster his hair to his face.

Laura gasped softly—just a subtle change, like her body had quietly renegotiated what “air” meant. Both of her stood very still, shoulders squared as if bracing for weather.

Emi reached out, plucked a photo from the wall, and held it up for inspection. “This one wasn’t here before,” she said, and her voice trembled—not scared, but something adjacent.

Andy peered at it: a shot of him, mid-jump, diving from the footbridge into the raging river. Rain pelted every surface. His arms were stretched forward, the veins in his neck stark and ****, and at the far right of the frame, just before the edge, a bare flash of Laura’s pale hand disappearing under the water.

He stared at it, and his whole body hummed with memory. “That’s—”

“I know,” Emi said. Her six arms drew in tight, shoulders bunching. “But who took it?”

No answer. Andy looked for the subtle evidence of camera type, timestamp, pixelation—any clue. There was nothing. Arabella, he thought. It must have been.

Laura, who until now had hovered just outside the blast radius of emotion, crept in. Both bodies scanned the grid, eyes darting from face to face, year to year, moment to moment. She moved like she was crossing a room full of sleeping dogs. He saw her hesitate at every photo she appeared in, her expression stuck somewhere between awe and grief—and a third thing, too: the wary concentration of someone determined not to be swallowed.

Laura started with the earliest photos—school pictures, birthday cakes—but it was the Polaroid that drew her focus, the one Arabella had planted as the original nucleus. She stared at it, the way a moth stares at a flame, both bodies caught by the image: Andy and Laura, thirteen, squeezed onto the hood of a beat-up Chevy, eyes luminous in the washed-out summer sun. It was less the composition than the aura—her arm cinched around his ribs, his hand knotted in the hem of her shirt, the two of them coiled so tightly they could have been trying to keep the world from splitting apart.

She pressed her left thumb to the edge of the Polaroid, like a forensic technician checking for the print of a ghost. She didn’t speak. She just let her breathing lengthen, steadying herself against the collage, her right hand drifting up to rest flat at the center of her sternum.

Andy moved beside her, closer now, as if his body could make a buffer for the ache. He remembered the photo well, and the dozens like it that had followed, photos not on this wall but safe at his parents’ house, every one a document of the myth that was “Andy and Laura, eternal.” Until the story was interrupted, just four months later.

Emi let them have the silence as long as she could, then gently said, “This is how I always remembered you. You know that, right?”

Laura nodded, once. “Yeah,” she said, voice raw.

Andy wanted to say he had every copy, that his mother kept backups in three digital albums, that he’d spent so many years trying to reconstruct the lost moments that he sometimes almost dreamed in pixels. Instead, he just touched her shoulder, a slow, anchoring pressure.

For a long minute, Laura just let the fingers of both her left hands rest on the frame of the Polaroid, as if she could reach through it and pull the memory back into herself. Andy watched her, acutely aware of Emi’s presence—how she held her breath, the way her six arms were slowly uncurling at her sides, each movement its own silent comfort.

The wall of photos was immense, the way memory could be immense: crowding, urgent, more than any single moment could hold. Laura’s left hand traced the nucleus—her and Andy, thirteen, pressed together in wild summer sunlight—and her right hand, unconsciously, mapped the years that followed: birthdays, awkward junior-high dances, high school graduation in borrowed cap and gown. In each, Andy looked both more and less himself, aging and un-aging in the impossible logic of old photos.

What stopped her, finally, wasn’t the childhood; it was a panel after Andy’s arrival at The HH.

She paused at the photo of Andy in the Master’s Suite, shirtless and haggard, clutching his knees on the edge of the couch. His face—smeared with grief, eyes red and fixed on something out of frame—was a punch to the gut. She stared at it, her face gone still. Andy could feel the charge in the air; he knew that look, knew how she pulled emotion inward until it threatened to swallow her.

He reached for her, but didn’t touch. “Where did this one come from?” His voice came out too careful, as if volume could bruise her. But he knew. This was a photo from the morning of Laura’s birthday. Challenge Day, before she came back. This was the grief of a man who thought that his loss could never be repaired.

Laura’s eyes flicked to him, both bodies at once. She made herself shrug, like it was a normal thing to see your own absence documented. “It’s not a bad picture,” she said. “It just… looks real.”

Andy felt his face flush, not sure he deserved the word. He watched as Laura shifted her focus, each set of her eyes scanning the wall in opposite directions. The further she went, the more impossible the photos became.

“Did you take these?” Laura asked, pointing at the cluster from the birthday party. Her tone was bright on purpose—one of her “upright” voices. Andy’s first instinct was to say no, but the more he looked, the more he realized he had no idea who could have taken them. The shot of him onstage, cutting the cake shaped like Erin, was perfectly timed: his mouth wide with laughter, Erin beside him, her mint-green skin aglow, Dawn and Sam photobombing in the background. There were others—Andy, dancing with Liesa; Andy and Riley arm-wrestling on the buffet table; Andy slow-dancing with Chloe, their faces close, the moment so private it almost felt wrong to look at it.

Andy said, “I don’t… remember anyone taking pictures.”

Emi stepped forward, brow wrinkled. “These shouldn’t exist,” she said. “But they do.”

The three of them stood there, silent, each measuring the shape of the impossible.

Andy tried to imagine who or what could have documented the hidden moments of their lives here—the raw, unfiltered misery of the Suite, the secret celebrations, the rescue from the river. “Is this an Arabella thing?” he asked, but the words felt stupid as soon as he said them. Of course it had to be, although he wondered why she had not mentioned it. Why she had even collected them, or placed them on the memory wall without being asked.

Laura, meanwhile, was lingering by the right edge of the wall, by the most recent photos. Andy watched as her expression shifted, little by little, from haunted to something else—curiosity, or maybe awe. She let herself take in the joy shots first—like she was choosing where to step on a flooded floor.

There were dozens of photos from the last week alone: the harem on the beach, building a sand fort and fighting a war with makeshift water balloons; Claire perched at the highest branch in the garden, reading with Dawn and Riley below; Liesa and Marissa, both in swimsuits, tangling in a tug-of-war with Sam refereeing and a crowd of onlookers howling with laughter.

And then—at the very top, alone in its own row—two photos side by side: the first, Andy on the Walk of Remembrance, sitting on the bench with Claire, Erin, Emi, Chloe, Riley and Myra, the guitar propped awkwardly on Andy’s lap, grief painted on his face, his tears mixed with the rain. He remembered the moment, the rain slanting hard enough to blur the shapes of the trees, the world shrunk down to the music and his sorrow for Laura’s absence. The second was them on the beach, after the bridge and the river: Laura, nude, sprawled **** before Andy as he knelt in the sand, his own face split open with fear and love and something else—something older and more helpless than either.

They stared at the final two photos for a long time. Laura’s hands hovered near the one at the very top, the bench-in-the-rain shot, but she didn’t touch it. Instead, both bodies leaned in, arms folded tight, studying the composition like it was an unsolvable equation. Her gaze kept snagging on Andy’s face in that photo and then sliding away, like eye contact with the past was too intimate.

Andy saw what she saw, though maybe not with her clarity. In the photo, he sat on the stone bench—soaked to the skin, hair plastered to his face, the guitar balanced on his knee. Claire, Erin, Emi, Chloe, Myra, and Riley ringed him in a loose arc, each with a face set to a different mode of concern or solidarity, or, in Riley’s case, just black defiance against the storm. The moment was suffused with a kind of blue-gray light that the real world never offered, a color of waiting for something that might never come.

Laura said nothing, but the right-hand self turned to Emi with a silent, searching look. The left-hand self kept her arms folded, as if holding herself together was a physical task.

Emi’s voice was small but clear: “It’s from your birthday.” She touched the wall, careful not to smudge the print. “The day of the Fourth Challenge. Andy always plays for you, every year.”

Both of Laura’s faces went slack, caught between awe and disbelief. She blinked hard—once, twice—like she was trying to make the information smaller. “Was that this year’s song?” she asked, her voice hoarse.

Andy felt the old, familiar heat crawl up his neck. He tried for a smile, but it barely made it past his lips. “Yeah.” His hands went to his pockets automatically. “It was the first time since you left that I didn’t play alone.”

Laura didn’t pull away. She went very still, and her left hands came up and rested flat over her hearts, like she was checking that something inside of her was still beating. Her right hands curled into twin fists at her sides. Her mouths opened like she meant to say something… and then failed her.

“Okay,” she said finally, the word too careful, too assembled. “That’s…” She swallowed. Her gaze lingered on the rain-soaked version of him longer this time. Like she was suddenly aware of the weight of herself, of how long she had occupied his life without knowing. “I didn’t fully realize,” she whispered, quietly. Stunned by the idea that she had been loved so steadily, and so expansively.

For a minute, the room was silent except for the faint echo of the sea through the open windows. Laura stood, her breath unsteady, as she stared at the photo of Andy playing the guitar on the rain-soaked bench. The memory was new to her—impossible, in fact—but she knew at once what it meant. Her left hand gripped the frame with white-knuckled intensity, and her right hand curled into a fist at her side, as if she might punch her way back into the moment and seize it for herself.

Behind her, Emi hovered. If she'd had more arms, she might have put every one of them around Laura, but instead she settled for a gentle touch to the shoulder and a soft, anchoring presence at her back.

Andy watched, unable to look away from the wall or the effect it had on Laura. He felt the tangle of pride and shame in his own chest; he'd wanted her to see this, and at the same time, he wanted to hide it all and pretend he'd never needed her as much as he did.

Laura spoke first. "Did you—" Both voices faltered, then reset, as if they were tuning themselves to the same frequency. "Did you really do that every year?"

Andy nodded. "Sometimes it was just for a few minutes. Sometimes for hours. I guess… I just wanted it to still mean something. Even if you weren't there."

Laura closed her eyes, and both bodies slumped as if the admission were a physical blow. "I don't remember any of it," she said, so quietly the words nearly vanished into the room. "I don't remember anything after the bridge. Not until—" Both voices cut off together, the ending carefully withheld.

Emi stepped in, more assertive than Andy had ever seen her. "You mattered to us, too," she said. "Even after… Even after we couldn't talk about you anymore. We still felt it. All of us."

Laura turned, both sets of eyes finding Emi. “Did you resent me?”

Emi’s face twisted, caught between surprise and hurt. “No,” she said immediately. “I was sad. But I didn’t resent you. Never you.”

Andy felt something in his chest loosen—not relief exactly, but confirmation. A missing piece clicking into place.

Laura nodded, swallowing hard. She ran her hands down the length of the photo array, as if trying to smooth away the years she'd missed. Her right hand stopped at the photo of Andy with the other women on the bench, all of them ringed around him in the rain, the guitar held in his lap like an offering.

She pointed, eyes bright but steady. “Why are they with you?” She asked. "I thought this was your thing for me."

Andy smiled, faint and unguarded. “It was yours. But this year… it didn’t feel right to be alone. They wanted to be there. I think—” He hesitated. “I think they missed you, too. Even those who didn’t know you.”

Laura looked at the photo again. For a moment, both her faces went still, and Andy saw the gears turning. When she finally spoke, her voices were perfectly in sync. "I like that," she said. "I like that you didn't stop."

Emi chimed in, her words careful and soft. "You changed things, Laura. Even from wherever you were. You made us all want to be better." She reached up and brushed Laura's hair behind her ear. "Even if you weren't there, you were never really gone."

The silence that followed was heavy, but not crushing. Laura kept her gaze on the photo, letting the truth of it seep in. She was still for so long that Andy thought she might have drifted off, or retreated somewhere inside herself. But then she turned to him, both faces serious, and said, "Can I ask you something?"

"Anything," Andy replied.

"Do you forgive me?" she asked. The question was raw, almost ****. Andy felt it like a step onto thin ice.

He didn't hesitate. "There's nothing to forgive. You never did anything wrong."

Laura shook her head, frustration flaring. "But I left. I let go. I didn't fight hard enough to come back.”

Andy stepped in, closing the distance. He put his hands on both her shoulders, steady and warm. "You did everything you could," he said. "None of this was your fault. Not then, not now."

He could see she wouldn’t accept it, but she didn’t argue, either. Emi watched, silent but supportive, her presence a gentle pressure in the room.

Laura inhaled, slow and deliberate, then exhaled. "Okay," she said. "Okay."

For a while, the three of them just stood there, facing the wall of memories. It was a strange kind of intimacy—one built on loss, but also on the certainty that even loss could become a kind of love, if you let it.

Emi broke the spell, clearing her throat. "There's another one," she said, gesturing to a photo tucked in the lower corner. "You should see this."

Laura turned, both bodies moving in perfect harmony. She reached for the photo and brought it closer, eyes scanning the image. It was the shot of Andy kneeling on the beach, cradling Laura's ****, naked form in his arms. His face was a mess of blood and sand, but the look in his eyes was unmistakable—terror, and relief, and awe all at once.

Laura stared at the photo, and her voice dropped. “That’s me,” she said. Not a question.

Andy nodded. "Yeah. That was the moment I realized you were back."

Laura traced the edge of the photo, her hand trembling. "You look… terrified."

Andy smiled, a little rueful. "I was. I thought I'd lost you all over again, back in the river." He hesitated, then added, "I didn't even know what to call what I felt. It was just… everything, all at once."

Laura looked at Andy, both faces searching his. "I don't know how to carry that," she admitted. "Being the reason you hurt so much."

Andy shook his head. "You don't have to. You're here now. That's all that matters."

They stood in silence, the weight of everything unspoken settling around them. Andy felt Emi's hand slip into his, and a second later, Laura's too. Four bodies, three people, one shared ache—awkward, imperfect, real.

After a while, Emi let go and stepped back. "I'm glad you're back," she said to Laura. "Even if it means the old hurts come up again. It's better this way."

Laura nodded, both faces softening. Andy squeezed her hand. "Always," he promised.

They lingered at the wall, letting the moment linger as long as it needed to. The sun shifted, casting new light on the photos, making them shimmer and glow. For the first time since they'd entered the room, Andy felt like maybe the past didn't have to be a wound. Maybe it could just be a reminder—a sign that, no matter how much things changed, some things were worth holding onto.

Eventually, Emi excused herself, promising to meet them for dinner. Laura and Andy stayed behind, neither willing to be the first to leave.

For a long moment, the Dance Hall felt hollow with the echo of everything that had just passed. They stood together, side by side, not quite touching, each caught between the shadow of old pain and the unfamiliar relief of having it met, maybe for the first time, with something like grace. The photo wall glowed in the late sun, every frame catching a different angle of what their lives had been—what they had managed, against all odds, to hold on to.

Andy reached for Laura, but this time it was her—both of her—who closed the distance. She stepped into his arms, drawing him in with a **** that was gentler than it should have been, given all the years between them. One of her bodies curled its arms around his neck; the other slid around his waist, so he was bracketed, enveloped in a double hug. He let his own arms go slack, content to be held, grateful for the grounding weight of her in his hands.

Neither said a word. They just breathed. He could feel the thrum of her heart through both chests, the pulse matching his own. The room didn’t need a soundtrack; the silence was a gift, and Andy let himself sink into it, eyes closed, the only awareness the press of Laura against him and the wall memories at his back.

He didn’t know how long they stood that way. Minutes, maybe. It could have been years.

The interruption, when it came, was mercifully soft.

“Hey.” The voice was low, husky, edged in something that was not quite apology. Andy turned, opening his eyes, and found Riley standing just inside the threshold. She wore her usual uniform—black boots, a faded band t-shirt, skinny jeans that looked painted on—but her hair was tied back in a loose braid, exposing the line of her neck. Her arms were crossed, but her posture was open. She looked, for once, entirely without armor.

“Sorry to bust in,” Riley said. “I just—” She stopped, catching the two Lauras holding Andy, and a flicker of something crossed her face. Not jealousy. More like recognition, maybe. “I needed to talk to you. Both of you.”

Andy saw something strange in Riley’s expression, something he didn’t think he had ever seen before. It took him a beat to realize it was fear. No, not fear—dread. He glanced at Laura, and saw that she must have noticed the same thing.

“Okay,” he said, taking the hand of the nearest Laura, “Let’s talk.”

Bonus art! Emily's Pathfinder character, Justina McCormick!

Tomorrow: Saelis!