The static roared. Then silence.
The lady smiled. It was a terrible, beautiful thing. “That’s the hard way. That’s the way without proof.”
He made a choice.
He showed it to Detective Rivas, who sighed and said, “Could be a copycat. Could be a sick joke.” But Leo noticed how Rivas’s eyes lingered on the dash before the year. Those hyphens. Like a frame. Like someone had carved a moment out of time. i see you -2019-
But Leo never stopped looking. And in the quiet places—the crosswalks, the chapels, the doorways—he sometimes caught a flicker of red, or a laugh that didn’t belong to anyone present. And he would smile, and keep walking, because he knew: somewhere in the long now, someone was watching. Someone was always watching.
The lady shook her head. “Bodies don’t travel well. Thoughts do. Memories do. That’s how she sees you. That’s how you heard her. But if you try to come here—you’d scatter. You’d become a million moments of yourself, none of them whole.”
“The years, Daddy. They’re not like walls. They’re like… water. Sometimes you can see through to the other side. The lady found me after I followed the red balloon. It went into a hole in the air. I didn’t mean to go so far.” The static roared
Rivas ran forensic tests. No fingerprints. No DNA. The ink was ordinary ballpoint. The paper was generic. But the images—they were new. The Ferris wheel had a banner advertising a fair that hadn’t existed since 2018. The carousel’s paint job matched a restoration completed only last month. Whoever sent these had access to places and moments that should have been gone.
The lady was silent for a long time. Outside, snow began to fall on a 2019 that was almost over. “If I send her through,” she whispered, “the crack will close forever. I’ll be alone again. In every 2019.”
And for one impossible moment, the snow fell upward. Then it stopped. Then 2019 ended, as all years must. It was a terrible, beautiful thing
Leo stepped forward. The air grew cold. “If there’s a crack, there’s a way through.”
“Daddy?”