Not the same book. This one is smaller, bound in midnight blue instead of burgundy, silver lettering instead of gold.
The title gleams:The Transplanted Life.
I open it.
The first page is an illustration. A girl at a crossroads, one path leading back to a door markedOrigin,the other leading forward into color and light. She has dark hair and violet eyes.
She looks exactly like me.
I turn the page.
The text is handwritten, elegant script that seems centuries old.
You came through Hewhay's. You fell asleep reading a story, and you woke up inside it.
You're wondering if you can go back.
Here's the truth: there's nothing to go back to.
Your life wasn't copied into this world. It was moved. Transplanted whole. The apartment in Providence exists here, in this world's timeline. The job at Lauve exists here. The people you know—your mother, your boss—they exist here, exactly as you remember them.
There is no parallel you wondering where you went. There is no hole in another world where your life used to be.
This is your life now. The only one you have.
I turn another page.
You're worried about your mother. Whether she's scared. Whether she's looking for you.
She isn't.
In this world, you've always been here. You've always been Bailey Sutton of Providence, photography assistant at Lauve Studio, reader of too many books, owner of a secret dimple that only appears when you really smile.
The only thing that's changed is you.
I turn another page. The handwriting here is different—older, more formal.
Perhaps you're wondering how this is possible.
Hewhay's doesn't follow the rules you know. It exists outside of time, outside of the boundaries between worlds. It opens doors to people this world needs—and closes doors behind them so gently that no one notices they were ever open.
When you came through, Hewhay's didn't just move your body. It moved your story. Your history. Every thread that connects you to other people was lifted, carried, and rewoven here. Your mother's memories were adjusted—not erased, but shifted. She remembers raising you. She remembers your childhood. She remembers everything that matters. The only difference is that those memories now belong to this world instead of the old one.
I stare at the words.
My mother's memories wereadjusted.
That should horrify me. Some cosmic force rewrote my mother's mind, changed her understanding of reality, and did it so seamlessly she never noticed.
But the horror doesn't come.
Because if the alternative was my mother waking up tomorrow and not knowing where I was—if the alternative was her calling the police, filing missing persons reports, spending the rest of her life wondering what happened to her daughter—
Then maybe this is kindness.
Maybeknowing what souls needmeans knowing that some doors need to close completely. No cracks. No drafts. No lingering grief for the people left behind.
I turn to the final page.
