“I don’t understand”, Paul began. “She just happened to be there when you passed by at random? What are the odds on that? How long was she waiting there for you? If she could wait on the corner, why couldn’t she get to the police station or call us?”

I’d started to answer him when dad spoke up with an intensity to his voice that I hadn’t ever heard from his before. “Where is she now, Abby?”

Looking away from his steady gaze, I shifted my eyes to my hands and quietly answered. “In my room.”

He was out the kitchen and running down the hall before I could explain further. Uncle Magnum began to rise from his chair, but I stopped him with a hand on his forearm. We could hear dad coming back from my room a few seconds later. He was moving fast and his footfalls echoed angrily in the silence.

“She’s not there, Abby!” Accusation and pain. My heart beat faster and I almost shift away. This is what I was trying to avoid.

“She is. I placed her on the bed and sent her into L2. Just like I did with the table. She’s there, but not there.”

“Bring her back.” Insistence.

“We need to talk about…”

“No more talk. Bring her back.” Commanding. Towering over me.

“Dad.” Tears fill my eyes.

“Abby, I’ve been suffering with the pain of her loss for thirteen years. Please bring her back. I need to see her.” The desperation in his voice, in his whole being, sends the tears spilling down my face.

I try to keep my voice steady, but it comes out as barely a whisper. “She won’t know who I am.”

That finally got through to him. “What do you mean?”

“You’ve felt her loss for the past thirteen years. She hasn’t. She hasn’t even been gone for one second. In her mind, she’s still in that car. She’s still being kidnapped with four-year-old Abby. When I got scared, I must have shifted and since mom was holding me, she shifted too. Only when I snapped back to reality, I wasn’t strong enough to bring her with me. She’s been in stasis this whole time.”

Dad sits down heavily in the chair. He’s not in such a rush anymore. “Oh my God.” He breathes the words out as he covers his eyes with the palms of his hands, as if closing off his sight will stop the meaning of what I was telling him from sinking in.

“Wait? What’s going on? What am I missing?” Uncle Magnum shifts his gaze between dad and me.

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Dad answers before I can. “She’s still twenty-nine, Paul. She hasn’t aged at all. In stasis, no time passes. She’s still twenty-nine, Abby is still four, we still live in Raleigh, and she still works at the community center with Harry.”

“Oh my God.”

“That’s why I had to explain everything beforehand. She’s going to be in for a shock when I bring her back. Her whole life is about to change and if it were me, I’d be terrified. Both of you need to make her feel safe right away. I can’t help you. I’ll be a stranger to her.” Dad moves his chair next to mine and holds me until I calm down.

“Can you bring me to L2 to see her there? It might help to get over my own shock before I help her with hers.”

“I don’t think so, dad. Other people don’t keep their consciousness in the sub-layers and they go into stasis in the layers. I’d need to experiment with the different combinations of fields to see if there was a wavelength that lets you stay conscious. That could take a long time.”

“I’ll cope as best as I can then. Do you have any thoughts about how we can deal with the age problem, Abby?”

“It’s almost all I thought about on the way home from Raleigh. That and how to break the news to you guys. I’ve narrowed our options down to two and I think that mom will have to be the one to decide which option she’d prefer. The first option if for her to come back as Hannah. She looks way too young for forty-one, but she can get her hair cut shorter and styled in a more mature fashion, with a bit of grey mixed in maybe. That should add a few years to her look. We can also consult with a makeup specialist to see what she can do on a daily basis to look older. For the first few months, she can put on facial prosthetics or latex to cement her age in everyone’s minds. Afterwards, she can tone it down since most people will see what they expect to see. The main problem with coming back as herself is that everyone is going to want to know her story and how she was rescued. Most of that she can deflect with a general, “I don’t want to talk about it”, but we’ll still need to create a story for her escape or rescue.”

I paused for a few seconds before continuing. “The second option is for her to come back as someone else. We’d need to create a whole new identity for her. That way she doesn’t need any makeup and we don’t need a story to explain her absence.”

“She’d still look exactly like Hannah did thirteen years ago. People would notice that. How would you explain the resemblance?”, Uncle Magnum asked.

“We’d just tell everyone that she was your daughter.” His reaction made me smile for the first time today.

As Uncle Magnum sputtered, dad asked, “How would that work, Abby?”

“If Paul fathered a daughter when he was eighteen, then she’d be around twenty-five today. Mom’s only four years older than that and people can’t tell the difference between those ages. Being Paul’s daughter would explain the incredible resemblance to mom.”

“Who would I have fathered this child with?”

“Vanessa.” That stopped him cold.

“Vanessa and I were best friends, but only that.”, he insisted.

“I know that. No one else does. You told me that she took a year off after high school to travel. She could have had a baby in that time and put it up for adoption. Anyways, it the only way that I could think of without having to rely on more people to keep my abilities a secret. As it is, we’ll probably have to tell Zaidi Steven and Bubby Brandy.”

“Well, I really don’t like option two.”

“I didn’t think that you would. It would be awkward to have your sister pretend to be your daughter. It would also look weird for your brother-in-law to marry your daughter. Especially with an age gap of over fifteen years.” Now it was dad’s turn to wince. He didn’t like option two either.

“Perhaps your mother will have some better ideas. Let’s go ask her what she’d like to do.”