Two Weeks Later

S he'd nearly told her a hundred times. For two weeks now, it had been on the tip of Violet's tongue, but she still hadn't told the woman she was going to marry that she'd had a sneak peek into their future and known that they were meant to be all along. Not knowing how Rachel would take that news had gutted her every time she'd chickened out and hadn't done it, but it had been five years now, or, really, six, that she'd been holding on to this secret and keeping it from the only other person who should have known it this whole time, and Rachel deserved to know about it at least before they got married. Violet just hadn't expected Rachel to want to get married in Greece right after the proposal.

Part of the problem was that while they'd spent their nights alone in their room, most of their days had been spent out and about in public, at museums, restaurants, or just walking around. While Violet didn't think any stranger would believe her, necessarily – in fact, they might think she was pitching a movie to Rachel more than telling her something incredibly important and real about their relationship – she preferred not to bring up this kind of thing with other people in the vicinity.

And they'd actually gone to get their marriage license, too, but they'd stood outside the building and hadn't gone in. Rachel had been the one to suggest that they wait, after all. She wanted her family to be there, and Violet had agreed. Instead of getting married, they'd returned to their room and made love. They'd ordered in food that night, ate it under the stars, overlooking the water, and made love again, acting as if they had gotten married and this was their honeymoon.

On the last night of their trip, Rachel lay in her arms as she talked about their day and how much fun she'd had on the trip overall. Long gone was her awkwardness that used to permeate her being whenever she wasn't directly focused on trying to stop it in front of certain people. Violet loved that awkwardness. She loved everything about this woman.

Rachel was down to earth and liked to plan, just like her, but where Violet had a plan A and a plan B for the next ten years locked in her head, Rachel reminded her that sometimes, plan C was the better option when A and B needed to change. She was also smart with money and had been long before it had been their money. Violet couldn't help but get turned on whenever she watched Rachel sitting in front of her laptop, staring at a spreadsheet as she talked to Violet about their finances and what they could afford or not afford to do. Just watching Rachel squint at the screen did things to her, but when the woman used some complex equation to demonstrate her point to Violet about not doing one thing in order to do two bigger things later, or she talked about current and possible future interest rates and how that would impact the sale value of the house, Violet would go weak in the knees.

Rachel was terrible at cooking. Every meal she'd ever attempted to cook for them had been bad. Violet had given her recipes with explicit instructions and had even given her lessons a few times, but no matter what Rachel tried, she could not cook a meal that tasted how it should have. Violet loved that about her, but she loved Rachel even more because she still tried. Five years into this thing, Rachel was still trying to teach herself how to cook. She'd even gotten herself actual cooking lessons for beginners and would start those a week after they returned. Violet didn't mind cooking for them, but sometimes, she'd get home from work, and she would be too tired. If Rachel had had a better day, she'd be able to make them something for dinner. If not, they could always order food in, but Violet handled cooking at least six of the seven nights a week, and Rachel wanted to help carry the load.

She loved Rachel's kindness, too; how she was with their dogs, how Violet knew she'd be the best mom in the world, and how Rachel always made sure that Violet ate lunch even when she was busy at work. Sometimes, it was a text or email reminder. Other times, it was Rachel actually bringing her food. Violet tried to do the same for her, but admittedly, she often forgot that people were supposed to eat something midday. She loved their nights together when they shared a blanket on the sofa and slowly sipped the same merlot that they'd ordered at the bar that first time, the only wine Rachel actually liked. She loved everything about Rachel, even when they were fighting about something big or small. She couldn't wait to marry her.

All of that contributed to Violet not being sure if telling Rachel about the device and her vision was the right thing to do where their future was concerned. It was possible that Rachel would be upset. It could ruin the whole thing, and those daughters they'd had in that vision wouldn't end up existing at all. Rachel could leave her if she was really angry about Violet not sharing this very important detail. She might not believe her at all. She could tell Violet that she'd imagined the whole thing, and that would be the end of it. She could just brush it off as some fever dream and ask Violet to check her own temperature while she laughed at her. But Violet also knew the woman she loved, and that wasn't Rachel.

"Babe?"

"Yeah?" Violet asked, returning her attention to the woman who was sitting between her legs, drawing shapes with her fingertips on the arm Violet had wrapped around her middle.

"Are you tired? Want to go to bed? We have an early flight tomorrow."

"I'm okay. Sorry, just… trying to think about how the airport will be tomorrow to map everything out. You know how I am."

"We'll be fine. We'll get there three hours early."

"I know," she replied.

Rachel turned in her arms then and stated, "Something's bothering you."

"Just the normal travel anxiety."

"No, that's not it," Rachel argued.

She knew Violet so well after only five years together; Violet wondered how much more she'd know her after the next fifty or so together.

Violet shifted on the bed and crossed her legs, which meant that Rachel had to shift back to do the same.

"What's going on?" Rachel asked. "Are you regretting not getting married here? I know we said we'd start planning when we get back, and that probably sounds overwhelming, but–"

"It's not that," Violet interjected. "Love, if you want a big wedding, we'll have a huge one. If you want a tiny, intimate thing in our backyard where Apollo is the ringbearer, and Janus is… running around, chasing his tail, we'll do that."

Rachel laughed a little and said, "It's not his fault. He's still just a puppy."

"Sure. Let's go with that," Violet teased, knowing how much Rachel adored the dog they usually called Janny. "And I want to marry you more than anything. I would love our friends and family to be there as well, though, so as beautiful as Greece was, it wouldn't have had those important people around us there for the event."

"Oh, you just gave me an idea," Rachel said as her eyes grew three sizes.

"I can tell. You have your idea face on."

"What if we had an intimate ceremony with friends and family in Greece?"

"We just left Greece. We're in Italy now and about to go home."

"I mean, we go back." She took Violet's hand. "I can move some money around, and we can fly people here. The family, at least, and maybe a few friends. We can probably find a house to rent for a week, too. That would be cheaper than a hotel. And we can get married by the water in a simple ceremony."

"You want to get married in Greece?"

"We loved it there, and it'll make our parents happy."

"We did, yeah," Violet agreed with a soft smile aimed at Rachel's dark, beautiful eyes.

"Why do you have a sad face, then?" Rachel asked.

"I don't have a sad face. I'm smiling."

"It's your deep-in-thought smile, when you have forty other things rolling around in your head, and not at all your super happy smile."

"My super happy smile?" She laughed.

"Violet, what's going on? Does this idea sound terrible to you or something?"

"It sounds perfect. It's us. It's exactly what I want." She squeezed Rachel's hand. "I love you more than life; you know that, right?"

"You can't say something like that with that sad smile thing going on."

Violet knew Rachel wouldn't let this go, so it was either time to make up a lie, which she didn't want to do, or tell her the thing she'd been holding back for the entirety of their relationship.

"Can we talk?"

"Yes, that's what we're doing," Rachel said.

"I have something I need to tell you, and I don't know how you're going to take it."

"Just say it, Violet. You're freaking me out here," Rachel replied and slid her hand out from Violet's, making Violet only worry more.

"I don't mean to scare you." She took Rachel's hand back and entwined their fingers. "I just have to tell you something that happened before we met. Well, I guess it happened after we met at that initial interview when I got my job, but before we talked at the elevators and really met."

"You were with someone you haven't told me about? "

"What? No, babe. You know my entire relationship history."

"Okay. Then, what?"

Violet cleared her throat and said, "Remember me telling you that the pool had to be fixed?"

"Yes."

"Well, it broke because something was buried beneath it, and it somehow caused cracks in the foundation, so they had to dig it up and fix the pool."

"Something was buried in our backyard?"

"Yes," Violet said, still loving how Rachel called it our backyard. "And, well, they gave it to me, the thing they dug up. I didn't know what it was. It was a case, really, and it had been under the ground for a long time, or at least since I'd bought the house. I wasn't going to open it at first because I had no idea what was in it, but something in me just finally broke and told me to open it at least just to know if it could be thrown out."

"What was it?"

"I don't know," Violet said and shrugged a shoulder.

"You don't know?"

"No," she said. "I opened it, saw it, and honestly, I still don't know what it was."

"What are you talking about here?"

"Rach, it's this device thing. A machine of some kind. I tried to look it up and find out what it was online, but I couldn't find anything. It doesn't have a charging cable, but there's a cord or something hanging off it. I don't know what to plug it into. It has a weird shape and looks like someone made it in their underground laboratory or something. I don't know how else to explain it."

"Okay… What does this have to do with anything?" Rachel asked.

"There's a button on the thing, and I don't know why, but I pressed it. I didn't expect anything to happen because it had been buried for over a year, at least, and it wasn't plugged into anything, so it shouldn't have worked."

"But it did?"

"I think so. Something happened."

"What?"

"I opened my eyes, but I don't remember closing them." Violet took a deep breath. "And then, I wasn't in the garage anymore."

"What do you mean?"

"This is the part that matters, Rach. And, God, I hope it doesn't change things with us because it'll sound like I'm making it up, but it's not made up. It's as real as we are, and I know that now. I didn't know it for sure then, but I know it now."

"Know what now?"

"I was in a hospital room, wearing the same thing I had on in the garage. The hospital looked different, too. I didn't understand it at first, but it looked like it was… really advanced. I saw machines there that I hadn't seen before, and I'd spent so much time with my mom and grandmother in the hospital that I felt like I knew all the machines that come standard, if you know what I mean. Anyway, there were two old women there. One looked like she was sleeping at first. The other one was holding her hand and crying. At some point, I figured out that the one in the bed was already gone, not sleeping, and a younger woman walked into the room to tell her mom that they needed the room or something. They talked, and it became clear to me that the older women were her mothers."

"Sorry. I'm confused."

"So was I," Violet said. "But just hang in there for a second, and I'll explain what this has to do with us."

"Um… Okay."

"The older woman talked to the woman in the bed and told her that she loved her. They had wedding rings." Violet looked down at Rachel's engagement ring. "And one of them had a scar on her hand."

Rachel looked down at Violet's hand, taking in her scar.

"You–"

"Yeah," she said when Rachel said nothing else. "The woman said some more things to the woman in the bed, and she got up and met her daughters in the hallway."

"Daughters?"

"They were adults, and they were twins," she explained. "Two girls. Dark hair. Blue eyes."

Rachel tilted her head in the very Rachel way, but she didn't say anything.

"I heard someone in the hospital call the older woman by her name, and the older woman called the dead woman by my name."

" Her name?"

"They called you Rachel Bailey-Armstrong." Violet squeezed Rachel's hand. "And you were the older woman who had just said goodbye to me."

"What are you talking about, Violet? "

"Right before I met you that day when you interviewed with Mark and we had our first real chat in the elevator, I pressed that button, and I saw a vision of my future. I had no idea who you were, and I was in shock and disbelief. Then, I was shocked even more because there you were. You were interviewing at my company and your name was Rachel Bailey. You had the same eyes as the older woman in the vision except hers were a little faded with age. I knew when I saw you, Rachel, that it was supposed to be you and me."

"This is…"

"Crazy, I know. I know how it sounds. But I swear to you that it happened. It was real. I have no proof of it other than what I know I experienced and learned in that vision, but I couldn't have just made it up. I didn't know your name the day you sat by me while we waited for our interviews. No one said it."

"You're telling me that you think you saw our future?"

"Yes," she said, letting it sit there for a moment.

"And you die in it?"

"We all die in the end. I was older. So were you. It's not something that happens tomorrow. It seems like we had a long and happy life together."

"But you die, Violet?"

"I'm older than you, my love. It was likely always going to be me going first unless something happened to you. And, God, I hope that's not the case."

"And we had daughters?"

"We had twins. They had children already. I didn't see them or their significant others, though. I don't know much beyond what I've already told you. But I saw them, and they looked like you, sweetheart. They were beautiful. They were strong and there for you after I'd gone. I remember feeling proud of them, even though they're not even born yet."

"Yet?"

"You said you wanted to talk about kids soon."

"Babe, you can't think I'm actually going to have these kids?"

"Yes, I do. Do you know why?"

"I know it was a vision, and you think it's–"

"You named them," Violet interjected.

"I what?"

"Two years ago, we were lying in bed, and you brought kids up seriously, not in passing, for the first time since we'd gotten together. You pulled an app up on your phone and wanted to play a game about names."

"I remember."

"You went to a Greek section of the app saying your mom would kill us if we didn't give them Greek names or, at least, middle names."

Rachel covered her mouth with the hand that Violet wasn't holding.

"You said you liked Dora," Violet added. "And I turned to you and looked–"

"Shocked," Rachel finished for her. "Your face went pale. I thought you might have hated the name."

"So you checked the app again, trying to give me a different name, and said Daryn."

"It was just on the list. I–" Rachel paused again. "I hadn't even heard of that name with that spelling before, but I liked it. I liked how it sounded. And you said you liked Dora, too. It reminded you of your grandmother."

"Her name was Doreen," Violet said.

"And you're saying that these twin women have these names?"

"You put the app away then. I think you interpreted my reaction as not being ready to talk about kids, but it wasn't that. It was that you'd said the two names I heard in that vision. Twin girls named Dora and Daryn. The names both meant–"

"Gift. I remember. It's why I liked Dora, to begin with. I saw the meaning and thought what a gift it would be to have a baby with the love of my life, and I said it out loud. I–" She shook her head. "Violet, you couldn't have actually seen this thing, you think, right?"

"I did," she replied.

"And you're telling me now because?"

"Because you proposed, and we're getting married. I picked out an engagement ring for you, and it matches the one on her hand in the vision, Rach. I went ring shopping, not even thinking about the ring from the future, and at the first store I walked into, there it was – that exact engagement ring with the wedding band that went with it. I had to buy it because I knew it was yours. Then, we were talking about getting married here, and I realized that I had to tell you before we did. I needed you to know because it's been unfair for you not to. That whole first year about killed me. I meant what I said to you the night we got together. I was dying because I loved you, and I knew you were the only one for me. It was unfair for me to put that on you then, though. You said you needed time to focus on work, so I waited. Then, it was perfect. You and me, our life together, and I wanted nothing more than to be with you forever."

"But how much of that do you know is because of whatever you saw? Maybe we–"

"No, don't," Violet stopped her. "Trust me on this. What I saw in the future is how it's supposed to be, yes, but my love for you has nothing to do with what I saw there. That vision was maybe a few minutes, and it was a glimpse into what could be, but nothing was set in stone, Rachel. Had you and that woman lasted, I never would've said anything. If you loved her, I would've wanted you to be happy with her. As much as I wanted a life with you, I wasn't going to try to force it just to get to that vision. Everything we've had has been because we love each other. And when I marry you, that's because you're the only woman I ever want to be with. I want every lifetime with you and every alternate reality or timeline; all of them, if there are more out there, are for you and me."

Rachel teared up a bit, and Violet worried that she was about to tell her that she couldn't marry her now.

"I also told you because, in that vision, you said that I told you about this. I still remember your words almost exactly. ‘I know we said we'd remember that we were gifted this life. We knew that this would happen. We'd end up here, with you in this bed and me sitting in this chair, wishing for more.' You said that and more to me before you kissed my hand and let me go." Violet teared up herself, unable to control her emotions. "And I don't know what would've happened had I not seen this vision. Maybe we still would've ended up together. Maybe not. All I do know is that it was real, and it led me to you, my love. It led me to you, and it led us here."

"Do you still have it, the device thing?"

"It's in the garage. Still in the case, but there's a padlock so that no one else can accidentally use it."

"It's in our garage?"

"In the cabinet you never go into."

"When we get home, I want to see it."

"I tried pressing the button again. Nothing happened. I don't think it works anymore."

"You pressed it again? Why?"

"Because you were dating her, and I got scared. I worried I'd lost the future I wanted, and I wanted to know if waiting was the right thing to do or if I should just give up because you'd moved on and I'd lost you. Nothing happened; no vision. I assumed whatever power it had was gone after the one use, and I didn't know how to charge it."

"You thought you'd–"

"Lost you, yes."

"What would you have done if it showed you a new future with someone else or no one at all?" Rachel asked.

"I don't know. I asked myself that question a lot back then, but I don't know. Before you started dating her, I was going to wait for two years because you said you had goals, and I wanted you to have them. Then, you were dating, and I thought I should've said something about how I felt sooner. I guess if I had seen a future without you, I probably would've left work."

"What? Why?"

"Because I couldn't see you all day, every day, and know that I lost the only true thing that ever matters in life, Rach. That kind of love – it's once in a lifetime, if you're lucky. And I felt it in that vision. I felt it even though the older Violet was already gone. I could feel how much you loved me and how much I loved you. Nothing else would have compared to that, so I would've gone and let you have the life you wanted with someone else because there was no way I could watch you fall in love and be with her and not fall apart myself." Violet wiped her cheeks as the tears fell. "I know it was wrong, not telling you sooner, but I've wrestled with it for years because there was always a chance you'd be angry with me and leave, and I couldn't handle that."

Rachel pulled her into a hug and said, "I'm going home with you tomorrow. The only place I will ever go is with you." Rachel held her tightly. "I'll never leave you, Violet. You're the only thing that matters to me, too. I love you. If that's our future, I want it. I want you and me forever. I don't want to watch you die, but none of us gets the choice of how that happens. I think I need to see this thing to try to understand more, but I believe that you experienced something important and that it led you to me."

"You do ?"

"Yes. And I still plan on marrying you in Greece."

"And the kids?"

"I guess we should plan for two cribs," Rachel replied and kissed Violet's cheek. "I love you."

"I love you, too."