Leo’s mind raced. A hole in the air. The red balloon. A woman who lived between years. “Mia, is she hurting you?”
Leo looked at the red thread. “Then bring her back. Please.”
He pressed his palm to the windowpane. “I see you too,” he whispered.
I see you -2019-
“Teach me to see her,” he said. “Not through a crack. Through the wall. Show me how to live in 2020, 2021, all the years after, and still know she’s in the long now. Still know she sees me.”
“You’re not supposed to see me,” she said. Her voice was the static from the payphone, shaped into words. “But you kept looking. Most people stop.”
Rivas ran forensic tests. No fingerprints. No DNA. The ink was ordinary ballpoint. The paper was generic. But the images—they were new. The Ferris wheel had a banner advertising a fair that hadn’t existed since 2018. The carousel’s paint job matched a restoration completed only last month. Whoever sent these had access to places and moments that should have been gone. i see you -2019-
He was standing in the doorway of Mia’s room, holding a worn stuffed rabbit, when the air in the corner shimmered. Not like heat. Like a memory of light. And then he saw her—not Mia, but the lady. She was young and old at once, dressed in clothes from no decade he knew. Her eyes were the color of old photographs.
Leo stepped forward. The air grew cold. “If there’s a crack, there’s a way through.”
The lady smiled. It was a terrible, beautiful thing. “That’s the hard way. That’s the way without proof.” Leo’s mind raced
The shimmer faded. The room returned to quiet. The red thread dissolved into ordinary air.
Until Christmas Eve.
Leo’s heart seized. Mia used to say that when they played hide-and-seek. “I see you, Daddy,” she’d giggle, before he turned around. He flipped the card. Nothing else. No return address. No plea for ransom. Just the date stamped in the corner: A woman who lived between years
And for one impossible moment, the snow fell upward. Then it stopped. Then 2019 ended, as all years must.
“I don’t need proof,” Leo said. “I just need to know it’s true.”