Chapter 7 - The Friend I Never Had
Vanessa Lane was not supposed to be my ally.
In my life, she was the woman whose name appeared on my husband’s phone after midnight.
The heart emoji.
The late meetings.
The smile Daniel tried to hide when her messages arrived.
I had built an entire version of Vanessa in my head before I ever spoke to her.
Young.
Smug.
Beautiful in the effortless way exhausted wives are trained to resent.
Then I met her in Ethan’s world.
She was thirty-seven, dark-haired, wearing a green coat and carrying a grocery bag with a baguette sticking out of the top.
She looked at me outside her office building and dropped the bag.
Oranges rolled across the sidewalk.
“Claire?”
I stopped.
“You know me?”
Her face went white.
“No.”
“You just said my name.”
“I’ve seen you online.”
“That is a terrible lie.”
She stared at me.
Then at Ethan, who stood half a step behind me.
“I can’t do this here.”
“Do what?”
She picked up the bag.
“Come with me.”
We followed her three blocks to a coffee shop.
She chose the table farthest from everyone else.
Before I sat down, she said, “Which one are you?”
I felt Ethan stiffen.
“Excuse me?”
“Which Claire?”
My heart pounded.
“You know.”
Vanessa closed her eyes.
“I knew this would happen again.”
“Again?”
She looked at Ethan.
“You didn’t tell her?”
“Tell me what?”
Ethan held up both hands.
“This is new to me.”
Vanessa laughed without humor.
“Of course it is.”
I sat across from her.
“Start talking.”
She looked at my face for a long time.
“Eight months ago, you came to my apartment.”
“I have never been to your apartment.”
“I know.”
The words sent a chill through me.
“You were crying. You asked me if Daniel still loved you.”
“In this world Daniel is your husband.”
“Yes.”
My stomach twisted.
“And you have a daughter.”
“Sophie.”
“How old?”
“Six.”
I thought of the social media picture.
Vanessa continued.
“You knew things about Daniel you couldn’t possibly know.”
“What things?”
“The scar over his eyebrow. His father’s death. The way he hates cilantro. The song he plays when he can’t sleep.”
I knew that song.
Tom Petty.
Always Tom Petty.
“What did I say?”
“You said you were his wife.”
My hands turned cold.
“Did I tell you I had children?”
“Yes.”
“Names?”
“Lily and Noah.”
Ethan swore quietly.
I leaned closer.
“What else?”
“You said you thought Daniel was having an affair with me.”
I stared.
“What did you tell her?”
“The truth.”
“What truth?”
Vanessa’s expression hardened.
“That Daniel in your world was crossing a line emotionally, but I had not slept with him.”
I stopped breathing.
“How could you know that?”
“Because she showed me messages.”
“What messages?”
“Screenshots.”
I felt sick.
“She had his phone?”
“She said she found them.”
“What did they say?”
Vanessa hesitated.
“Tell me.”
“She asked him why he stayed married if he was miserable.”
My jaw tightened.
“And?”
“He said because of the kids.”
I looked away.
The coffee shop blurred.
Vanessa continued carefully.
“He also said he still loved you.”
“That makes it better?”
“No.”
“What did you say?”
“I told him to stop using me as a place to avoid his marriage.”
That surprised me enough to look at her.
“You rejected him?”
“I’m married too, Claire.”
“To Daniel.”
“In this world.”
The absurdity almost made me laugh.
Vanessa’s eyes filled with tears.
“I love my husband. Your Daniel is not my Daniel, even if he has the same face.”
There it was.
The sentence I had not been able to understand until now.
Same face.
Different life.
Different choices.
“What happened to the Claire who visited you?” Ethan asked.
“She stayed for about an hour. Then she got dizzy. I went to get water.”
“And?”
“When I came back, she was different.”
I leaned forward.
“How?”
“Calm. Confused. Angry that I was in her apartment.”
“Another switch.”
Vanessa nodded.
“She didn’t remember coming to me.”
“Did you tell her?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“She threatened to call the police.”
Fair.
“Did the first Claire say where she came from?”
“She called it Home Four.”
Ethan and I exchanged a look.
“Home Four?” I asked.
“She said she had started numbering them.”
My stomach tightened.
“That means she had crossed more than once.”
“Yes.”
“How many?”
Vanessa reached into her purse.
She pulled out an old phone.
“I kept this.”
On the screen was a video.
Vanessa pressed play.
My face appeared.
Not the woman in my house now.
At least I did not think so.
This Claire’s hair was shorter. Her eyes were swollen from crying.
She spoke directly to the camera.
“If I forget this, show me. There are at least seven. Maybe more. We don’t swap randomly. We move toward lives we envy.”
I felt every hair on my arms rise.
Video Claire continued.
“The first crossing feels like an accident. After that, the wanting matters. Regret matters. Jealousy matters. The more you imagine another life, the thinner the distance gets.”
She looked off camera.
Vanessa’s voice asked, “Why are you telling me?”
“Because one of us figured out how to choose.”
The video Claire looked terrified.
“She calls herself Cora.”
I whispered, “Cora?”
“Not her real name. A way to distinguish herself.”
On screen, Claire said, “Cora does not want to visit. She wants to replace.”
I looked at Ethan.
“The woman in my house.”
Vanessa paused the video.
“There’s more.”
She resumed.
“Cora’s children are gone. I don’t know how. She blames herself. She keeps looking for a world where they are alive.”
My chest tightened.
Lily.
Noah.
I finally understood the sad smile Ethan described from three years earlier.
The better mother.
The homemade lunch.
The pancakes.
Not random.
Grief.
But grief did not excuse theft.
The video ended with Claire leaning close to the camera.
“If Cora finds a world with both children alive, she will not leave voluntarily.”
I sat frozen.
Vanessa turned off the phone.
“That was eight months ago.”
“Why didn’t you find me?”
“Which you?”
I had no answer.
Ethan asked, “Do you know how to send her back?”
“No.”
“Did she mention a trigger?”
“Only that the first divergence mattered.”
“The first choice,” I said.
Vanessa nodded.
“She said every cluster has a hinge. A moment where the lives split.”
Mine was obvious.
Ethan.
New York.
Chicago.
The night I chose not to go.
Vanessa studied me.
“There’s something else.”
“What?”
“The Claire in that video said Cora had a rule.”
My mouth went dry.
“What rule?”
“She never stays in a life where Daniel chooses her.”
I frowned.
“That makes no sense. She is in my house trying to keep my husband.”
Vanessa shook her head.
“No. Listen carefully.”
She repeated it.
“Cora never stays in a life where Daniel chooses her.”
A terrible thought formed.
“What if Daniel hasn’t chosen her yet?”
Vanessa nodded.
“And what happens if he does?”
“I don’t know.”
My phone rang.
Daniel.
I answered immediately.
“Daniel?”
He sounded exhausted.
“Claire, I need you to stop contacting Lily.”
“What happened?”
“She ran away.”
I stood so fast the chair scraped the floor.
“What?”
“She left the house twenty minutes ago.”
“Where is Noah?”
“With Mom.”
“Where is she?”
“The other—” His voice broke.
For the first time, Daniel could not call her Claire.
“The woman here is looking for Lily.”
“Daniel, listen to me. Lily will go somewhere she thinks I would go.”
“Where?”
I knew instantly.
The place I had taken her after every terrible report card, every friendship breakup, every fight with Judith.
The lake.
The old pedestrian bridge near Lake Shore Drive.
And suddenly I remembered something else.
Fifteen years earlier, that was where I had stood after telling Ethan I would not go to New York.
That was where a taxi had nearly hit me.
That was where my entire life had split.
“The bridge,” I whispered.
Ethan’s face changed.
He knew exactly which one.
I looked at him.
May you like
“The first door.”
Then I told Daniel, “Get to Lake Shore Drive. Now.”
