“Why?” Grandmother challenges. “You’ve seen evidence of exactly two presents. I’ve seen evidence that Beau died that night in our world. Beau’s seen evidence that you don’t exist in his. You’ve looked at your own memorial in the same place as his. So why does there have to be another way?”

“Because this is happening,” I shout. “This doesn’t happen every day, Grandmother, or at least not to everyone. There has to be a better reason for why I can change things. Why Beau and me out of everyone in the world? Why do we get a second chance? What makes us special?”

“Maybe nothing,” Grandmother says. “Maybe chance. Or maybe someone thinks the choice is just the kind of gift you would appreciate.”

“Or maybe it’s because the world would be better with both of us in it,” I counter, “or because things are broken and when we’re together, they’re less broken. Maybe it’s because we’re connected or we fit or we’re right together, and if time is really flat, then maybe it saw all of that. Maybe, even though Beau died, time itself saw every possible world where we could love each other and that was as good as us having loved one another. Because we could’ve loved each other anywhere, in any world, and maybe the reason we can change things is because the thing between us is big enough to reach through every branch in time. Maybe our love couldn’t die, even when we did. Something’s pulling us together, Grandmother. Something brought him back from the dead to me. Even if I go back to the night of that accident and die, why would death and time be any stronger this time? It has to mean something. It has to mean a future.”

“Maybe there is another way, Natalie. But I’m not going to promise you something I can’t give you.” Her words are stretched taut and shivering with tears, her voice wild and round, a meniscus about to flood the lip of a glass. “I’m not going to tell you that you get a future with Beau because I don’t know that. I won’t be the one to tell you that you can have it all, no matter how badly I want Beau to have a chance to live. I want to believe in that future, Natalie, but I don’t. You say you saw it? Well, I never did. Even if you can make a future, who’s to say it’s really you in it? I mean, look at us. We’re the same person, but we’re living different lives. If you can create a world with you and Beau in it, it’s still not quite you, just like you’re not quite me.”

It feels like she’s dropped a weight on my chest. “Then lie to me,” I beg. “Because I’m doing this, and I need you to tell me it’s going to be okay. I need you to lie to me.”

When her mouth shifts into a smile, tears break and slip down her cheeks. “It’s not a lie,” she whispers. “It will be okay.”

I shut my eyes against the tears, and Grandmother’s stories flash through my mind, a warm current of electricity woven throughout my life, like Grandmother Spider’s web and Alice’s trails of light, guiding me and teaching me everything I know about love. But that whole web hurts, like it’s growing through my veins, all the life I want to live pulsing alongside the one I want to give Beau. The things I want to lay out in front of his eyes and place in his hands and sing into his ears and the places I want him to be carried, the thousands of golden sunsets on that day-warmed porch.

“I saw it,” I rasp. “I saw how all of it would be.” How we would fit, what would be built between us. “I was there. What do I do with that?”

“Sweet kid.” Grandmother reaches out and swipes a piece of tear-dampened hair away from my eyes. “I may have never seen it, but it never left my heart, this whole time. You take your hope with you to the end, just like I’m doing.”

I look up into her face, searching for her meaning, and she presses her finger to her lips, eyes dipping toward the ground. When she speaks again, her voice is hoarse and rough. “I’m dying.” Her confirmation is little more than a squeak, and she takes a long second to build her voice back up. “This isn’t about me anymore. It’s about you, and what you want.”

“Dying?” I whisper. “How?”

She closes her eyes. “I won’t tell you that. I don’t want to ruin any surprises, or give you any fears. Everyone dies, honey, and you already know that now, at eighteen.”

“And even Jesus was scared to die,” I remind her.

“He was.”

“You can’t tell me anything? Give me any hint?”

She folds her hands together to steady her trembling. “I can tell you that the pain of living is worth it. That if you live, your life will be as full of love as it is darkness, and for every moment of pain, you’ll have one of joy too. The one thing you won’t feel is what you feel now with Beau, and that doesn’t make your life any less worthy of being lived. But then again, worthiness isn’t a factor in whether we’re alive or loved.

“You have the choice to either appreciate the impossible and unwarranted gift of being alive or to give it to someone else. To use your love to remake the world. Whether you give it to Beau or keep it, Natalie, the world’s going to keep right on being terrible and beautiful all at once.”

I’ve been so afraid of those terrible things, of everything falling apart and of never knowing who I am or finding the place I belong. But here I am, looking at myself at the end of time, and she was never alone, not really. God, it’s a painful sort of relief, seeing that some version of me has already lived and that all those fears eventually fell away, unrealized. I still want the whole picture all to myself, to get to the end of my world and slip quietly from there, but there’s no real choice to make. I don’t know for sure what will happen when I go back to the night of the accident, but I know I’ll go. Not because Beau’s future is so big or because mine is so small, but because love is giving the world away, and being loved is having the whole world to give.

“How much time do I have?” I ask.

“Hours,” she says. “Minutes. I don’t know, Natalie. Not much.”

“I’m so scared.”

She pulls me into a hug and smooths my hair away from my face, exactly as Mom has a billion times. Mom. The last thing I said to her was I don’t have a mother. There are so many things I need to do. See my parents, Jack, Coco. Tell my mom to stop carrying around her guilt and promise her it’ll be made right. Say goodbye to Megan, tell her how much I love her. Comfort the Kincaids, who will have their son back, if this works. Thank Rachel for loving me brutally, enough to hate me for leaving her behind.