Chapter 1 (Joshua’s POV)

  I stood barefoot on the cellar’s clammy concrete, my breath fogging the stale air, while the letter in my shaking hands re?arranged everything I thought I knew about my family, the Gate, and the strange half?ruined world on the other side.

  “If by some grace you encounter my beloved wife, Mirabelle, tell her that Richard still keeps the porch light on.”

  I stared hard at those words a lump in my throat and an ache in my chest.

  A woman from the other timeline. A wife he apparently never stopped waiting for, Could this have been my Mother?

  Moisture beaded on the copper door behind me, collecting in gleaming rivulets that slithered down the engraved skyline. The metal still radiated faint warmth from my passage, as though the Gate itself eavesdropped on my discovery. Light from the grimy window blotched across the door in ragged patches, making the etching—skyscrapers cracked, rivers frozen mid?wave—seem to writhe.

  For a long minute I could only hear the basement: the plink?plink of water into the rusty bucket, the slow tick of the furnace’s contracting metal, my own pulse banging in my ears. Dad had kept this secret for half a century. How many times had he slipped through? Why had he stopped? And why—after marrying my mother, after raising me—had he never breathed a word?

  Questions felt like roaches skittering under my skull: impossible to pin down, multiplying in the dark.

  I set the letter gently on an overturned milk crate and knelt to rummage through the rest of the basement detritus with new eyes. Dad’s old boxes used to bore me—tax forms, service manuals, decades of Popular Mechanics. Now each lid lifted felt like prying into a coffin. Under coil?bound ledgers I found scraps that suddenly mattered: maps of lower Manhattan marked with grease?pencil arrows, faded Polaroids of a younger version of him standing beside architecture I recognized from Anna’s world—an overgrown Bethesda Fountain, the cracked lions at the Public Library’s steps. In every shot, his smile was wide, but his posture leaned as though he were listening for something off?camera.

  My hands trembled as I thumbed a pocket notebook dated 1968. Inside: meticulous notes on “currency drift,” and a scrawled equation linking Dow Jones figures to gold ounce weights. Dad had been doing exactly what I promised Anna—using the Gate as a bridge for arbitrage decades before Bitcoin, before high?frequency trading, before any of us realized two realities could be balanced on a single copper hinge.

  No mention of why he stopped. No mention of Mirabelle beyond a few wistful lines: M. likes the lilacs in Central Park even now. Says the city smells sweeter without traffic. I closed the notebook, hands suddenly cold.

  I climbed the basement stairs, still clutching the notebook. Each step groaned like a reprimand. The kitchen greeted me with its petty domestic normalcy—crumbs on the counter, an overdue electricity bill magneted to the fridge, yesterday’s coffee ring drying on the stove. The dissonance made my temples throb: this bland suburban kitchen existed alongside nightmare skyscrapers where ferals prowled, alongside a woman named Mirabelle who might still be alive somewhere, waiting for a man who died with secrets in his chest.

  I sank onto a barstool, the cold linoleum sending a shock up my calves. The cash bundle—sixteen thousand dollars, minus debt and toll—lay on the table like a brick of potential. I had errands to run, tools to buy, an attic of hardware stores to raid. Anna was hammering nails into rotted windows right now, trusting me to return before sunset in her world. But the letter pulsed louder than the Gate’s timer.

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  “Be kind, and they will help you.”

  Had Dad penned that after hope, or after regret?

  Grief is strange: you can mourn someone for years and still discover new ways to lose them. Dad’s funeral had been a tidy affair—folded flag, eulogies that skipped the drinking, the loneliness, the vacant eyes aimed at a porch light every evening. Now I felt a second burial—this one of the father I thought I understood. The man who taught me to sand wood grain, who spent Sundays screaming at Knicks games, who sat catatonic on the anniversary of 9/11 because, he claimed, “some wounds belong to the city.” He’d been carrying an entire other city in his memory. And a wife.

  A sudden fear stabbed me: what if Mirabelle was still alive—but not the same? Seven decades in a roamer?ridden Manhattan could turn hope into something feral. Would she know me by his eyes? Or would she swing a pipe first and ask questions never?

  I breathed deep, letting the damp basement funk bleed out of my lungs, and forced thoughts into rows like chess pieces.

  To?Do Before Next Transit:

  Pawn run: convert $16,000 to Food, material’s and other goods that could be useful in an apocalypse.

  Hardware store sweep: ??inch plywood, framing nails, rolls of 12?gauge wire, a crowbar worthy of Anna’s Gentle hand.

  Pharmacy drop?ship: cash?only wholesalers in Jersey for antibiotics, antiseptic, iodine swabs, bandage rolls.

  Comfort kit: vacuum?sealed coffee, bars of soap, toothbrush two?pack.

  History dig: pull Dad’s safety?deposit key, search for more journals—answers about Mirabelle.

  The shopping list felt surreal—half prepper fantasy, half love letter to a woman I’d never met.

  Before leaving, I walked to the front door and flicked on the old carriage lamp mounted beside the frame. Its bulb—a dusty, energy?wasting relic—soft?glowed against the late?morning sunlight. Pointless in daytime, but symbolism matters. Dad had kept a porch light burning for half a century. I could manage a few hours.

  I turned back inside, grabbed my phone, keys, and a hoodie, then hesitated. On the hall table sat a sepia photo of Dad and Mom—my mom—circa 1990. He was holding her hand, smile honest if a little weary. Was Mirabelle my Mom? About the door? I touched the glass, feeling guilt prickle. Secrets reproduce like bacteria; sooner or later you breathe them onto everyone you love.

  Cash bundle In my inner pocket, I paused at the basement door once more. The copper door remained silent now, its glow banked like coals. I pictured Anna pacing the cottage, short sword gleaming, and forced resolve into my spine.

  “Hold fast,” I whispered to no one, then shut off the kitchen light and stepped into the bright, ordinary street where people hurried to work, unaware a portal to apocalypse lived behind a peeling visage.

  Every dollar in my pocket felt lighter than Dad’s letter in my chest. But for the first time since the Gate upended my life, I felt direction—an arrow forged from grief, guilt, and a promise to a stranger who might be family.

  food, plywood, antibiotics, answers.