Strangers Among Us

How Objects Behave on the Edge of a Black Hole-3

Years passed. A moment passed. And a hand touched Maggie’s arm. She jerked, slamming her elbow against the side of the tub. Her mother’s face hovered, barely visible through the blur of tears.

“Are you okay?”

Maggie shook her head. She couldn’t manage words, sniffling and choking on a bitter laugh. Stupid question. Of course she wasn’t okay.

“What’s happening?” Her mother sat on the floor, leaning against the tub.

Maggie sat up, wiping tears with the back of her hand, smearing salt. Her gaze moved around the bathroom—razor, strands of hair on the floor, towel rack knocked from the wall, notebook.

Beyond the door, a floorboard creaked. Her mother had shut the door behind her. If Jan stood in the hall after sending her mother in, Maggie couldn’t tell. She breathed in and out, an exercise her doctor encouraged in any stressful situation. It didn’t work.

“I threw away my pills.” Maggie didn’t look at her mother, keeping her in her peripheral vision.

“How long?” Her mother’s lips flattened—the slightest tremor betraying her.

“Only a few days. I’m sorry. I wanted to . . .” But Maggie’s voice failed. How could she explain?

After a moment, strong fingers squeezed hers. Her mother didn’t push, or ask for an explanation, and Maggie was grateful.

“Can I tell you something?” Her mother still held Maggie’s hand.

Maggie glanced up through still-damp lashes. The thin-pressed line of her mother’s lips turned into a frown, but not directed at Maggie. Her gaze fixed on the cabinet beneath the sink, though clearly not seeing anything in the room.

“When your father and I were getting divorced, before everything was finalized, he still had house keys. When things got nasty between us, he tried to mess with my pills—hide them, steal them. With everything going on—work and school and lawyers— I didn’t notice right away. That was before the patch, or anything like that of course. It was the worst feeling in the world, going back to not knowing what was real, feeling like maybe I wanted to kill myself. I think that’s what a sick part of your father hoped would happen.”

The expression on her mother’s face was one Maggie had never seen before—lost and hopeful and sad all at once. Maggie had a vague memory of walking into the living room—she couldn’t have been older than five—and seeing her mother standing in front of the TV, ceaselessly flipping channels. She remembered wanting to watch cartoons, and being upset, then afraid. That memory had the quality of a nightmare now, the light from the TV making her mother look inhuman, and Maggie calling her and getting no response. Jan had taken Maggie’s hand, led her to their room, and read to her from a picture book to calm her down.

Jan must have phoned their grandmother, though Maggie didn’t remember that part. A year or two after Maggie had first been diagnosed, her mother told her how, before she was medicated, she used to think all the people on TV—in shows and commercials—would whisper terrible, awful things about her the moment she couldn’t see them. But if she kept flipping and flipping, keeping her eye on them, it would be all right.

“I can’t imagine ever making myself feel that way on purpose,” her mother said, giving Maggie’s fingers another squeeze before standing up. “So I understand whatever you’re going through right now must be really bad. I’ll make an appointment with Dr. Parsons tomorrow.”

Again, there was that look of sadness, mixed with hope. The faintest of smiles touched her mother’s lips as she paused at the bathroom door, a world of pain behind it. As her mother left, Maggie thought she caught a glimpse of Jan quickly closing her bedroom door across the hall.

Maggie didn’t bother to knock before barging into Connor Barston’s office. She’d bullied her way past the flustered receptionist, and no one else had tried to stop her.

“My sister had a puzzle box on her desk. What did you do with it?”

“You can’t be in here.” Barston rose, his face shading to red; Maggie cut him off.

“And you can’t take things that don’t belong to you. I have security footage showing you in Jan’s office.”

She held up a flash drive, her own, and blank, hoping Barston wouldn’t call her bluff.

“Your sister was keeping her research notes in there. That’s SWAN property.”

Maggie couldn’t help smirking. “You couldn’t figure out how to open it.”

The director flushed deeper.

“If there’s anything groundbreaking, I promise to share.” Maggie held out her hand.

Barston scowled, but after a moment, produced the box from the top drawer of his desk. He held it out, showing the corner that had chipped the last time Maggie had seen the box. Her pulse snagged. She snatched it, tucking it under her arm and pressing it close to her side to keep from trembling.

She pivoted on her heel, muttering, “Asshole,” under her breath as she walked away.

June 11, 2021

Maggie used the back of a kitchen chair for balance as she kicked off the stiff shoes her mother had insisted she wear to the church. A run laddered up the left leg of the stockings; her mother had insisted on those as well.

“Gran would have hated that service,” Maggie said. “She only joined the church for the choir.”

Jan stood by the counter, setting up to make coffee. She shot Maggie a look. Their mother only shook her head, looking weary. Another needling remark tried to rise to Maggie’s tongue, but she clamped it down. Today, of all days, why was she trying to pick a fight? “I’m going to change,” she said instead.

“Your grandmother’s friends will be here soon.” Her mother’s voice followed her, as tired as her pinched expression.

“It’s too hot.” Maggie kept walking.

If she turned around, the space inside her might open up and reveal that instead of being hollow, it was full of stored up pain. Or she would say something else awful—sarcasm, antagonism, a shield against the hurt inside. Her head ached, not just from the still air of the church, or the cloying scent of the ostentatious spray of flowers draped over her grandmother’s coffin.

The old bedroom looked the same. Her bed and Jan’s, neatly made, sitting side by side. No ghost version of Jan perched on the end of her bed, but Maggie smoothed the comforter nonetheless.

“You could at least try thinking about someone other than yourself for once.” Jan, Real-Jan, leaned in the doorway, arms crossed.

“Could you shut the door? I’m trying to change.” Maggie reached for the duffel bag she’d brought from home. Jan didn’t move, but something changed in her expression, catching Maggie off guard.

“I’m moving to Arizona. I’ve been offered a job.” She’d never heard Jan’s voice quite so hesitant before. Was Jan looking for approval? Looking for Maggie to tell her not to go?

“That’s . . . far.” Maggie swallowed, surprised to find a salty taste in her mouth.

To distract herself, Maggie unzipped her duffle bag. The puzzle box lay on top of the folded clothes.

“I guess I better give this to you now, then.”

Maggie had brought the box with her from her small apartment. Until this moment, she hadn’t decided whether to give the box to Jan.

“Why do you hate me so much?” Maggie hadn’t meant to say anything at all, but the words slipped out as Jan’s fingers closed on the box.

Jan’s mouth opened in surprise, and something inside Maggie recoiled, a sick part of herself pulling back the moment Jan revealed a crack in her armour.

“Never mind. Forget I said anything.” Maggie let go of the box.

Jan let go at the same moment and it crashed to the floor, a chip splintering off the edge.

“It’s because you always ruin everything.” Jan bent to retrieve the box, a quaver in her voice.

Jan straightened, holding the box against her chest, and Maggie was surprised at the brightness in her eyes, tears waiting to fall. Maggie opened her mouth, then snapped it closed. Something about Jan’s posture, her expression, made Maggie think of a dam, cracking finally after years of holding back a flood. “Before you came along, everything was fine. Mom and Dad loved each other, and me, and we were a family.”

Jan didn’t raise her tone; there was no animosity. It sounded like a rehearsed speech, Jan finally severing the last ties between them so she could move across the continent with a clear conscience.

Maggie wondered whether her sister even believed the words.

“Dad was an asshole.” Maggie’s jaw clenched, heat behind the words she hadn’t expected. “He tried to make mom sick during their divorce. He wanted her to kill herself.”

The slap came too quickly for Maggie to avoid it—the crack of palm against cheek—and it left her ears ringing.

“You always take her side.” Jan’s nostrils flared. “You, and mom, and Gran. You and your little secret club. There was never any room for me. Dad was all I had.”

Maggie gaped. Did Jan really think they’d tried to exclude her? A shared history of f****d up brain chemistry was just that, nothing more, nothing less.

The light in Jan’s eyes cracked. The same hand she’d used to slap Maggie flew to cover her mouth, and tears slipped from her eyes. “Maggie.” It was barely a whisper.

But it was too late. It had always been too late. They’d grown up in the same house, but they were strangers. The thought twisted inside Maggie’s stomach, sour and hard.

“I liked you better when you were a ghost.” Maggie snatched the duffle bag from the bed, slamming Jan’s shoulder and throwing her off balance as she reached for the door. “I’m going to stay in a hotel. You can explain that to Mom.”

Maggie sat behind Jan’s desk, the puzzle box in front of her. She had the door closed, a spare chair wedged under it in case Barston changed his mind and decided to intrude.

She stroked the polished wood, ran her fingers along the grain, thinking back. A Thanksgiving here and there, their mother’s funeral, of course—Maggie could count on one hand the number of times she’d seen Jan in person since giving her the puzzle box. She ran her finger along the edge, pausing at the chipped corner.

Maybe she did ruin things, but so did Jan. Something else they had in common. Was that why it was so hard, why they’d never been able to get along? Deep down, they were too much alike, too stubborn. On the rare occasions Jan reached out, Maggie pulled back, and vice versa. They could have worked together, Maggie’s designs informing Jan’s research; Jan’s research pushing Maggie’s designs. They could have done something great together, maybe changed the world.

Maggie closed her eyes, calling up the memory of Jan’s ghost, and placing her fingers against the puzzle box accordingly. There was a faint click. Maggie opened her eyes. Old-fashioned, half-sized cassette tapes filled the box. She slipped the first one into the recorder she’d found in Jan’s desk earlier and pressed Play.

“The mythology of black holes.” Jan’s voice filled the small office space.

This time, when Maggie’s hand wanted to creep to the back of her neck, she didn’t stop it.

“All black holes are metaphors,” Jan said.

Maggie glanced at the legal notepad, which she’d replaced on Jan’s desk, mentally tracing the words.

“For instance, if one could observe an object moving toward a black hole, to the observer, once the object reached the edge it would appear to slow down. At a certain point, it would seem to stop, caught infinitely on the point of crossing the event horizon. However, to the object itself, time would move normally. It would cross the event horizon, and from that point, there would be no escape.”