Part 4: The Stranger Who Knew My Coffee Order.

Ava stared at the text until the screen dimmed on its own.

You.

Her thumb hovered over the reply box. Every rational thought told her this was a prank, a wrong number, someone's idea of a bizarre joke. But the photograph in her lap the one with a date eleven years out, the one showing a shirt Theo hadn't bought yet made "rational" feel like a word that no longer applied to her life.

She typed back with shaking hands: Who is this really?

The reply came instantly, like it had been waiting.

New message: You know who. Ask me something only I'd know. I dare you.

Ava's mind raced. She thought of the scar above her eyebrow, the bike accident nobody photographed. She thought harder something smaller, something buried.

What did I whisper to Mom the night before she died?

Her mother had passed four years ago, alone in a hospital room Ava had left for exactly six minutes to get coffee. Six minutes she'd spent replaying every day since, wondering if her mother had woken up while she was gone, wondering what she'd missed.

The reply took longer this time. When it came, it wasn't the confident, breezy tone of before.

New message: You said "I'm not ready to do this without you." She heard you. She smiled before she went. You've never told anyone that. Not even Theo. Not yet.

Ava's breath caught somewhere between her chest and her throat. No one knew that. She'd never said it out loud, not to her sister, not to a therapist, not to anyone.

Her phone buzzed once more.

New message: I need you to trust me on this next part, because it matters more than the wedding, more than Theo, more than any of it. Something's coming for what we have. And it isn't eleven years away. It's three days.

Ava sat frozen on her bedroom floor, the photograph of her future happiness in one hand and a warning from her own future self in the other and for the first time since the diner, she wasn't sure which one to believe.

to be continued... ⏳