Simone sat playing with the watch on her wrist. It was a strange thing, unlike any watch she had ever seen before. It had no hands to tell the time; she only knew it was a watch because of the numbers that appeared on its face whenever she pressed the button on its side. She could find no mechanism to adjust the time. It could not have been more than ten minutes since the three of them had entered Madeleine’s office to hear her strange story, which Madeleine claimed explained what had happened, yet the watch insisted it was 2:40 p.m. She would have to ask Jon about it when he finally stopped talking to Madeleine.
She knew Madeleine had to be making all of this up about the doors, but it did explain a little about why she was wearing the blonde girl’s clothes. Then there was the way Lucienne had looked at her when Lucienne, Colette, and Mireille had passed her while she was following Jon and Madeleine earlier. It was as if they had never seen her before. The way they had looked down their collective noses at her.
She had known the three of them for several years now. She had shared dressing rooms with them, rehearsed beside them, and gone out for drinks with them after performances. Yet somehow she had become a stranger to them.
Across the room sat Madeleine and Jon, huddled over a notebook that Madeleine was slowly translating for the foreigner.
“Zis is what she wrote before she vanished. Zat was ten years ago now,” Madeleine said quietly as she thought about her old friend.
The woman had shown her all of this before disappearing, explaining that someone would need to help future newcomers understand what was happening. Was that her role now? The village wise woman. The thought almost made her laugh. She barely knew more than the young American standing beside her. Yet he was desperate to help his friend, no matter the cost.
She remembered when she herself had been that impulsive, but that had been many years ago.
Still, he had made up his mind. That was why she had dug out the old journals. Perhaps there was something hidden within them that might help him. What she had not anticipated was having to translate them line by line, but he seemed like a decent young man who wanted nothing more than to help his friend.
“So if we repeat everything that happened, but reverse what occurred, it should undo the confusion about where they belong?” Jon asked.
“I think so, yes,” Madeleine replied, sounding noticeably less certain than she had only a few minutes earlier.
At least that was what Jon thought.
He knew he should have gone to speak to Karyn and tell her what they had discovered, but he also knew he would never be allowed into the dressing room while the chorus girls were changing. She would be safe in there, he told himself. Madeleine had personally seen to that with the instructions she had given her assistants before he and Simone had followed her to the office.
Since then they had spent what felt like hours searching for answers, even though he knew very little time had actually passed. After all of that discussion, all of the journals, all of the theories, the best plan he had managed to come up with was to repeat exactly what had happened before, only in reverse.
Great plan, Jon. One of your best.
Despite himself, he smiled quietly.
