"Did you just feel something?"

"What was that?"

"Angela, I need an explanation. About all of this. Right now."

The voices seemed to come from very far away, but Angela knew they were important. With difficulty, she pulled herself away from the aftermath of the influx of memories that had all hit her in a single instant. She realized that she was still standing outside the time cave, with Jonah's kid parents, who were both talking at once.

Angela squinted at them. She'd been about to say something, hadn't she? But then… it had happened, and it had distracted her, and she could no longer remember what she'd been planning to say.

"How do you know Jonah? Where did he just go? Why did it look like he just disappeared into thin air?" Linda shot the questions at her, rapid-fire.

"And where the heck are Jordan and Katherine?" Michael added.

Jordan? thought Angela, her brain still fuzzy from whatever had just happened. The feeling reminded her of timesickness, except that her senses seemed okay. It was only her brain that felt messed up. Who's Jordan?

"Jordan stayed home sick today," said Linda. "Wait—why are we standing here in the middle of the woods with a stranger when our son is home sick?"

"Don't ask me! I don't even know how we got here, or how we turned into kids, or anything! This day is crazy!" Michael exclaimed.

Neither of them seemed to be experiencing the same difficulties Angela was having with thinking. It took Angela ages to just to process the meaning behind Linda's words: Jordan stayed home sick today… our son is home sick. She seemed to be implying that this "Jordan" was their son. For some reason, it had never crossed Angela's mind to wonder if Jonah and Katherine had other siblings. She'd always assumed it was just the two of them.

Because neither of them ever mentioned another sibling, right? And that morning that JB and I were at their house, Jonah was worried about Katherine being missing and bringing his parents to safety, but he didn't say anything about anyone else.

Maybe this really was timesickness, and her hearing was distorted enough to hear "Jonah" as "Jordan"?

Linda and Michael had started running toward the trail that would take them to the high school. "What are you guys doing?" Angela yelled at them.

"We need to get home!" Linda called back. "We need to find our kids, make sure they're all okay."

"I have a car," Angela told them hesitantly. "But—I don't think either of your kids are at home right now."

Michael and Linda both slowed down and turned around to face her. "Where's your car?" Michael asked. "Where are your keys? I'll drive."

"Jonah and Katherine aren't at home right now," Angela tried to explain. She was starting to be able to think more clearly now, but she was still at a loss as to knowing how to explain the situation to Michael and Linda. "If—when they come back, they'll probably come right back here."

"Jordan's at home," Linda maintained. "We can at least go check on him, and then we can go find the other two…"

"Who is Jordan?" Angela asked.

"Our son. Now where's your car?" asked Michael, looking like he was about to run off into the woods again.

Angela was still debating with herself about whether to let them drive to the house or make them stay here until she had told them everything she knew, when suddenly Linda cried out, "There! I see a car; it's in the cave! Let's go!"

Linda and Michael tore into the cave like cheetahs, and Angela chased after them. Michael hopped into the driver's seat and snatched the keys up from the cupholder, where Angela had left them so long ago. "I found the keys!" he exclaimed gleefully, jamming them into the ignition.

Linda hopped into the passenger seat, and Angela had just enough time to throw herself into the back before the car started shooting backward at racecar speed.

"Be careful! Don't crash!" Linda screamed.

"It's fine! I've got this!" Michael yelled back.

Angela cringed, bracing herself for an impact, but it was a clear shot out of the cave, so Michael made it out without any issues. Once in the clearing outside the cave, he spun the car around in a haphazard three-point turn and began driving back the way Angela had come originally.

It was only then that Angela realized someone was missing.

"Wait!" she cried. "Where's Tete?"

Neither Michael nor Linda answered her, so she leaned up to see if maybe Linda was sitting on him, or if he'd been squished to the side when Michael and Linda had gotten in. But he was nowhere to be seen.

"What happened to the boy who was right there?" she shouted, pointing at the seat that Linda now occupied. "What did you guys do with him?"

"What boy? There was no boy here!" Linda yelled back. "The car was empty!"

Angela rubbed her temples, trying to think if she and Jonah had moved Tete out of the car when they'd woken up Jonah's parents. No, they hadn't. Jonah had gone into the backseat, woken up Michael and Linda, and then the three of them plus Angela had all walked out of the cave together, leaving Tete alone in the front seat.

Had he come out of his catatonia at some point while they were all outside, and decided to get up and walk around? Angela would have noticed if he'd walked out of the cave, but did this mean he was still wandering around inside the cave somewhere, and she just hadn't noticed because she hadn't thought to look for him?

"We have to go back," she told Michael urgently. "We left my friend behind in the cave. He's not in his right mind, and he's going to be really confused when he sees that we've all left—"

"We have to make sure our kids are okay first," Michael argued.

"But they're not even at your house! They're not even in this century!" Angela fumed. "There's nothing we can do to help them right now."

Michael drove out of the woods and back across the stretch of grass next to the high school. Angela could still see the tire tracks she'd left earlier. Michael flew over the curb into the parking lot, and then out onto the road.

"Michael, slow down!" Linda warned. "We can't get pulled over. Especially looking like this!"

Michael slowed down slightly, whipping his head from side to side as if checking for cops. "Where even are we?"

Linda looked around too. "Isn't this the school we went to for that adoption conference last month? Oh—it is! Clarksville Valley High School."

"So we need to head south to get home," Michael muttered, getting in the lane to merge onto the southbound highway.

"Please," Angela begged him. "Can we just go back and get my friend first?"

Neither Michael nor Linda answered. They turned onto the highway, and Michael immediately drifted over into the fastest lane.

Angela's brain seemed to be working a little better now. She realized that she was still wearing her ID card Elucidator around her neck. "Elucidator, take me ba—" she broke off, realizing that if Michael saw her disappear, or noticed that she was no longer in the car, it might distract him to the point of getting in an accident. "Never mind. Show me what Tete's doing right now."

TETE IS NOT PRESENT IN THIS TIME PERIOD.

"What?" Angela gasped. "What do you mean? Where did he go? Who sent him there? Did he wake up? Is he still Tete or is he JB now? What happened?"

OVERLOAD OF QUESTIONS. I CANNOT ANSWER ALL THOSE QUESTIONS AT ONCE.

"Well, answer them one at a time, then!" Angela snapped, consumed with worry about her friend.

"Who are you talking to back there?" Linda turned around to stare at Angela and the empty seat next to her.

"I—no one," said Angela hurriedly. She didn't have time to try to explain Elucidators to Jonah's parents.

"You still haven't told us how you know Jonah," Linda reminded her. "Do you go to school with him? Or—no, you said you're usually older, like us, right? So how did you meet him? And do you know Jordan and Katherine too?"

Angela opted to answer the easiest question. "I know Katherine. I'm only just hearing about Jordan now. Is he on break from college? Or visiting for Thanksgiving?" If Jordan was much older than Jonah and Katherine and didn't normally live with them, that would explain why Angela hadn't known of his existence.

Linda let out a laugh of disbelief. "College? No. Jordan's Jonah's age—legitimately Jonah's age. He and Jonah are—are twins."

"Twins?" Had Linda's brain been messed up by the un-aging, or by whatever Angela had felt for that instant-that-lasted-forever outside the time cave? Neither Linda nor Michael had seemed strongly affected by whatever it was at the time, but did it have some sort of weird after-effect that made people believe things that weren't true?

If Jonah had a twin, Angela definitely would have known about him.

Oddly, Linda looked mildly perplexed by the idea too. "Yeah," she said after a slight hesitation. "Jonah and Jordan are twins. We have twin sons and a daughter. Three kids in all." She squinted for a moment, then shook her head as if clearing her thoughts and asked, "What about you, do you have any kids?"

Angela shook her head, still distracted by the notion that Linda thought Jonah had a twin. "Not yet, but I have six nieces and nephews who I see pretty often." Wait—how was that possible? She hadn't seen her family in years. But… yes she had, she'd just been to a big barbecue at her parents' house in Mayville over the summer, and her brother and sister had been there with their families, and some of her cousins had shown up, and her elderly grandparents had flown in from Chicago…

Angela was suddenly thrust backward as Michael floored the accelerator. Angela looked up and saw that he was now passing the car that had been driving in front of him in the fast lane. The speedometer was pushing ninety. "Michael, you really, really can't afford to get pulled over right now," Angela reminded him. "There's no way the cops would believe you're the person on your driver's license." She remembered Jonah warning her of the same thing back when she'd been the one driving like a maniac, and JB had said—

JB! Angela had briefly forgotten that she'd been trying to figure out where he'd gone. "Show me where JB went right after he left the time cave," she instructed the Elucidator.

For a moment, Angela thought the Elucidator hadn't heard her, because nothing happened. Then words appeared on the screen: I AM HAVING TROUBLE FOLLOWING HIS TIME PATH.

"What do you mean, you're having trouble?" Angela groaned. "Wait, is it because I said JB, and he's still technically Tete? Can you follow Tete's time path?"

The words on the screen remained the same.

"What is that?" Linda was staring at the Elucidator.

"It's like a futuristic version of an iPhone," Angela explained as succinctly as possible. "Oh!" Now that she was out of the 1930s, she should be able to call people again, right? "Elucidator, call Hadley."

She held her breath, waiting for the Elucidator to start ringing. But all that happened was different words appeared on the screen: TRANSCHRONIC COMMUNICATION IS NOT SOMETHING I CAN ACCOMPLISH RIGHT NOW.

It was a different answer than it had given her the whole time she'd been in 1932, but it still wasn't the one she wanted. "Why not?" she asked forcefully.

The Elucidator didn't answer, and Angela started to worry. Had Jonah failed in his attempt to change Lindbergh's mind? Was her Elucidator's sudden inability to do anything a sign that this time stream was indeed coming to an end?

They were in Liston now, still cruising down the highway at breakneck speed. There was Liston High School, which Angela had visited last year to speak to the students about pursuing a career in aviation. There was the plaza where she'd run into her old co-worker Elizabeth last month, and they'd reminisced about the three years they'd worked for SkyTrails before the company went out of business.

But I didn't work there for three years. I got fired after one day! Angela thought, remembering that crazy night that had altered the course of her life forever.

A weird thought started trickling its way into her brain. Her life had been changed forever because of the time crash. But as she and Jonah had just learned back in the cave, there were two other versions of her in different dimensions that hadn't been affected by the time crash, because in those dimensions there hadn't really been a time crash. Just a plane that appeared on the runway and took off a few minutes later without drawing much attention.

Was Angela now somehow remembering what life had been like for the other versions of her?

They're not other versions, she thought, as Michael made a fast, sharp turn past the public swimming pool where Angela had taken her brother's kids the last time they'd visited. These are my memories. They're just as real and clear as the ones of traveling through time and getting to know the missing kids and spending thirteen years researching physics. But I know the two sets of memories didn't happen together.

She remembered the sensation she'd felt outside the time cave—like everything in her body had been squeezing together in a way that had felt physically impossible. If it was possible for time to split, was it also possible for it to un-split?

As the car veered into Jonah's neighborhood, Angela closed her eyes and tried to remember a version of her first night at SkyTrails in which everything had gone uneventfully. She couldn't. All she could remember was the plane, the babies, the FBI, the confidentiality papers she'd refused to sign. The disability papers her supervisor had written up after firing her on the spot.

But yet, she had continued working for SkyTrails for three years after that.

Angela didn't even notice they'd pulled into Jonah's driveway until the car came to a screeching halt, and both Michael and Linda jumped out and started running toward the house without even bothering to take the keys out of the ignition. Angela reached over and shut the car off, then followed them inside, bracing herself for the moment when they'd realize their kids were nowhere to be found.

To her great surprise, the first person she saw when she entered the house was Jonah, standing right next to the door.

And to her even greater surprise, the next people she saw, sprawled out on the floor and the chair a few feet away, were Katherine and another Jonah.