One Month to Say Goodbye Forever

1.

I passed the exam for the county clerk's office.

I hadn't even had the chance to tell my boyfriend, Timothy Sawyer, and yet on my very first day of work, I ran straight into him.

He was the first appointment I had to process. A couple, there to get their marriage license.

Him and another girl.

His pupils jumped when he recognized me behind the counter, and the hand holding Pansy Fox's let go, fumbling and quick.

His voice shook a little when he asked me,

"Why are you here?"

"Weren't you supposed to be taking the bar exam today?"

I lowered my eyes and caught the way their sleeves were still pressed together.

My heart clenched hard, then went quiet, accepting.

I knew he would end up inseparable from Pansy Fox. I just hadn't expected it to start this early.

I come from ten years in the future.

...

I gripped the pen in my hand until it nearly bit into my palm.

Timothy stared at me, no shortage of worry on his face, moving closer to explain in a rush.

"Whatever this looks like, Laura Swanson, it isn't what you think..."

"Today is just a fake marriage with Pansy Fox."

"She paid me three thousand dollars to help her fend off her family pushing her to marry."

I nodded, understanding now.

So that was where the three thousand dollars came from, the money Timothy gave me later, when I was in grad school.

I pressed my lips together, but still I couldn't stop myself from asking.

"So the fake marriage gets its license before the two of us do?"

I looked up at the pleased little smile on Pansy Fox's face.

And my mind went straight back, ten years forward, to the stretch of time when I found out the truth.

By then, Timothy and I had already been married seven years.

He'd become a successful businessman, a big boss, and he'd built another home somewhere else.

In that other home, he and Pansy Fox kept a cute hairless cat.

They had a mischievous little boy.

The place was full of photos of the three of them, close, a family.

I'd always wondered why, every year on August 17th, Timothy was never home.

Today, at the clerk's office, I found out.

That day, it turned out, was the day the two of them got their marriage license.

The boy who kept telling me he loved me most, right now,

ten years from now would do so many loving-Pansy-Fox things behind my back.

My heart ached faintly, but I forced myself awake again, at once.

The past in my head is no invented dream. It's what I truly lived through before I died.

And this rebirth isn't without a deadline. I've never forgotten the voice in my head from the moment I woke.

In one more month, I'll vanish from here completely.

This time I didn't choose the lawyer's career from my last life, the long distance between us.

Instead I took the exam for the local clerk's office nearby, wanting this one month, to spend as much of it with Timothy as I could.

"Laura, the person I love most is you, no matter what."

"Getting the marriage license today is just doing Pansy Fox a favor."

"If it upsets you, I won't take the job. Right, are you hungry?"

"We left in a hurry this morning, you didn't eat breakfast, did you? I was going to wait outside your testing center, and hand you something the second you came out."

Timothy's stream of words cut into my memory.

The moment he finished explaining, he left Pansy Fox standing there without another glance.

He took me by the wrist and pulled me toward the door.

From the passenger seat of the car he grabbed a cup of coffee and a warm breakfast sandwich, steam still rising off it.

And pushed them into my hands.

The car door didn't close fast enough. I still saw the pink sun jacket Pansy Fox had tossed onto his passenger seat.

"Timothy."

I caught hold of his sleeve, trying to keep the tears out of my voice.

"Do you remember what I told you? That I come from ten years in the future, that I took the place of the me who was here before."

"In one more month, I'm going to disappear completely."