I will give fair warning that my original plan was to rate this story "M" just for this chapter. I have expanded it a bit, mainly by adding a few ideas about the time travel that I had but didn't use when writing the first draft, and if anything it came out as a bit lighter in tone, but it's still DARK.

Time travel feels a lot like just remembering things, and Professor Gummitch's book says that's because they're really the same thing. His book Space-Time For Springers opens with a quote from a psychiatrist who said, "The mind is not the brain. The mind is the brain in time." That's pretty trippy in itself, but Professor Gummitch's proof takes it further. He shows that because the mind exists in four dimensions, it follows logically that we can extend our consciousness into time. It's like we've all got a wormhole in space-time, right there in our heads. Remembering things is being aware that we exist in time as well as space. When we remember things so clearly it seems more real than here and now, like when you start to pick out things you didn't pick out, it's because we're actually starting to go back in time.

For a moment, that happens to me. First, I'm holding Tiffany, while she's struggling to get away, and I think I'm slipping back to the fight I just left after I almost got stuck. But in this memory, I'm on this bridge, and it's raining, because I'm remembering what happened tonight, and I know I can't go back yet. Then I see papers: Divorce papers, unsigned. A restraining order that is signed, prohibiting me from seeing my own wife, and when I look it seems like Nikki's name should be on it, but it's Tiffany, because history loves repeating itself. And before that, a single note on a fat file, that's the most terrible of all...

Then I focus on Catness's eyes, here and now, and she looks like she does when she looks at her reflection in the mirror, and I remember one time... It was the morning of that day... Catness loves mirrors and a lot of the time, she just stares. So this morning, she lifts up her paw and presses it to the glass of the one on the open bathroom door, and it's like more than play to her. At first, I think of the story of Narcissus, but the more I watch, the more it seems like Catness is studying the mirror and the double on the other side. I swear, she looks like a scientist or a philosopher looking for the deepest secrets of the universe, and I can't help thinking that she just might be figuring them out. Then Tiffany comes out of the bathroom, with a towel around herself, kneels, and puts her own hand to that mirror. When I see the two of them that morning, the similarity really is downright eerie.

The picture's so clear in my mind, I think maybe I'm back in time again already, until here-and-now Catness nails me across the cheek. She doesn't scratch hard or often, but when she does, I know something's got her ticked off. I manage to pull myself up a little higher, though I can feel the rail digging into my leg. It gives me another half a foot, if I keep my head up. I lean my head against the side of the bridge, and look into Catness's wide eyes.

"I have to go back," I say. "Back to that day." Catness keeps looking, just like she understands, and then she climbs right onto my shoulder.

That day is our "semiversary", six months after our first anniversary. I want it to be a new perfect day, and it will be, until the end.
Tiffany's been on some new meds for a while, and she's definitely doing better all in all, and lately, I feel like I've been seeing more of what I think of as the "sparkle moments" when I see her just blazing happy. Seeing her and Catness are looking at the mirror, I come up from behind, put my arm around Tiffany, and tell her my plan.

She asks me to make love to her then and there, and of course I do, while Catness wanders off on important cat business. Then we have breakfast, and then we go out. We walk in the park, and today, there's a cheesy little carnival there. Besides us, the youngest people there without kids in tow are a smattering of high schoolers. Quite a few people give us funny looks, and I'm pretty sure they would call security on me if I was alone. But nobody hassels us, and we chat with kids and adults, and now and then Tiffany lets Catness peek out of a canvas carryall bag, and she has that intent philosopher-scientist look.

I win handily at the carnival games, and when the kids ask how I did it, I show them how to do better. Soon, Tiffany's laden down with cheesy prizes When I win a purple hippo bigger than a lot of the kids, a nice guy at the stand agrees to hold it and our other prizes for us until the end of the eat all the junk food you only see at carnivals, cotton candy and snow cones and funnel cake and a plate of fried clams. We go on every ride that will hold an adult, though as often as not we have to convince someone that it will hold me. The parachute jump and tiltawhirl are truly thrilling, a ride called the "Octopus" is a lot of fun, and we have a cheerfully savage duel in the bumper cars. But what Tiffany likes best is the ferris wheel, and we ride it five times before the end of the day. The last time is at sunset, just before we gather our prizes and head for home. Tiffany lets Catness out of the bag, and all three of us look out at the city lights coming on.

I relive all this as future-me in now-me's head, and I enjoy it even as it breaks my heart. That hurt helps, because it keeps me seperate from now-me. More than that, it keeps me alert for the signs of what made things go wrong. We look at her a lot. Even as now-me is waddling home with arms full of prizes and the hippo slung over our back, the window of loving eyes stays on Tiffany. But there have been no signs, and when Tiffany looks at us with tears in her eyes, I cannot doubt that she means it when she says, "This has been the happiest day of my life."

It is pretty late, and now-me is ready to order delivery from a Chinese place, but Tiffany insists that I fix her a nice spaghetti dinner. Now-me's in a happy daze, listening to Tiffany's chatter like a happy song whose words aren't really supposed to mean anything. But I'm listening, and I catch it.

"Pat," she says, "have you ever been so happy it broke your heart, just because you knew you had to come down? I don't want to come down."

Even now-me notices, and he's about to say something I just now remember: "You don't have to come down."

I give my hardest, most desperate push yet, and now-me says instead, "Everybody has to come down. It's just the cost of going up. But no matter how high or how low you go, I'll still be with you."

When we're done eating, we make love, and I really think things have changed, until Tiffany leaves now-me to go to sleep while she takes a bath. It's all I can do to get me up when I hear the water stop running.

We call Tiffany's name as we approach the bathroom door, nicely. There's no answer. We knock, and call more urgently. Nothing. We knock the door halfway off its hinges. The tub is full, but Tiffany is nowhere to be seen.

This time, we find Tiffany on the couch in the living room. The prizes I won for her are piled around her and in her lap, and Catness is in her arms. Three half-empty pill bottles are on the coffee table. We grab for the phone, and I see her eyes open a little. We are here sooner, but still too late.

"Please don'," she says, and she actually smiles. "An' please... don' be mad. Don' bring me down."

"Why, Tiffany?" I shout. "I gave you the happiest day of your life, and you do this! Why?"

"'Cause Pat... I can't come down." Then her eyes close, and Catness curiously touches her nose.

The medics get there in time; I'm told it wasn't even a close thing. But I feel all over again their eyes on me, wondering what I did to make her do this. She goes away to the hospital, and soon enough she will be on her way to the other kind of hospital, with a note in front of her big fat file that might as well be a life sentence: Dangerous to self and others.