Samantha bent low to my ear. “Don’t react,” she murmured, waiting for my nod before she continued. “When I was seventeen, I had no idea, but I was pregnant. I thought I was just putting on weight the way you do when you grow up.”
I worked to keep my face passive, training it on the president’s broadcast. We weren’t live on air, but we were on the social streams.
... While every government official in the land is working to determine the origin of these emails, this information, the United States Military intelligence can indeed confirm they are real...
“My stomach hurt that morning. Bad. I was walking to school through this shortcut in the woods, and the pain brought me to the ground.I threw up.” Her normally steady voice was unrecognizable. “By the time I got to the edge of the woods, this overwhelming urge came over me... In retrospect, of course, I had to push. But I thought I was going to shit myself.”
“Oh, Sam.” I touched my hand to her forearm.
... I encourage you to live your life as you normally would...
“Do. Not. React.” Samantha’s voice was barely audible. “I had the baby. Flagged down a car to call 911, because the baby breathed a few times and cried, but it—she,” Samantha corrected herself, her voice thick with unshed tears, “was so, so, small.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“She died on the way to the hospital. They estimated that I’d been seven months along. My parents never told anyone. And most importantly...”
... We will meet this challenge as Americans, as one nation, as one world.
“I’ve never even said her name out loud,” Samantha whispered.“Not even to my parents. Her birth and death records are sealed. So are my medical ones.” She pulled away from my ear, scraping her hand along the twin tear tracks flooding her cheeks. “My daughter’s name and date of birth are listed as my Soulmail,” she said numbly. “Jayla Grace.”
Disbelief scrawled itself across my chest. If what Samantha was saying was true—and of course it was, Samantha was many things, and a bullshitter was not one of them—then Soulmail was undoubtedly also true. A fact. A whole new world. Jayla Grace, a secret only Samantha kept, was known somewhere else.
“Oh, honey,” I said.
“Places, everyone,” production called. “Going live.”
“Do you realize what this means?” Samantha asked, walking backward. “Come on, Olivia. Understand it.”
I furrowed my brow. Of course I did. It meant the official confirmation was correct. It meant Soulmail was real, that my boss had been through some real pain in her past, that there was something so elevated about it that it was able to break sealed records.
And then I inhaled, because I understood what she was trying to say. It meant two other things, at least. Two other new tracks.
First: A soulmate did not have to be romantic.
Second: A soulmate could be dead.
As the team readied itself to bring us back on air, I trapped a piece of my cheek between my molars. It made sense. There were plenty of people who never wanted to fall in love, or wanted to and didn’t. People who preferred being solo. People with the wrong partners. People who were already romantically in love with one person but had a gorgeous platonic bond with someone else—a friend, a kid, a cousin—where their molecules seemed to orbit one another. Soulmates, soul twins, soul sisters.
I found my ring and pressed my fingertip against the sharp prong I had always meant to get filed down and hadn’t.
“Use that,” Samantha called. “No names, but tell that angle.”
Just before we went live, I wiggled in the chair, trying to dislodge the underwear that had ridden halfway up the cleave of my butt. I took a deep breath and stilled.
Beside me, Richard frowned.
“You okay?” I asked.
“I am,” Richard said. “My wife texted me. Her sister’s soulmate was her husband.”
“Isn’t that a good thing?” I asked.
“It would be. They’re divorced.”
“Oh.”
“And she’s remarried.”
