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  “I went back to two weeks before the crash,” Zoë said, “and everything was fine. No one hated me. No one paid much attention to me. I was just an ordinary girl in an ordinary town where nothing much happened. I’d graduated from high school but I had no plans to go to college.”

  “With your talent?” Faith asked. “Were you crazy?”

  “That’s the odd thing,” Zoë said. “I was so ordinary that I didn’t know I had any talent. You guys may be too old to remember this, but funding has been cut in schools so much that we don’t have art classes anymore. My teachers used to tell us to draw a farm and we did. No one ever told me to draw the faces of my classmates, so I never tried. And at home I wasn’t exactly surrounded by creative people.”

  She ate a bite of food. “I have to backtrack a bit. When my parents died, I was just thirteen, so I was sent to live with my sister. She was ten years older than me, married and had two kids, so she didn’t exactly welcome me. All she talked about my last year of school was how glad she was going to be when I could get a job and help with the expenses.”

  “Nice woman,” Amy said.

  Zoë said nothing for a while. “Back then, while I was in it, I didn’t see how bad it was. When I went back, knowing what I do now, I saw how truly horrible it was. My sister had been the prettiest girl in the school. She was on the local floats and she won every beauty contest there was. The whole town celebrated when she married her male counterpart, the best-looking guy, captain of the football team, all that.”

  “The golden couple,” Amy said, and looked away. It sounded like her and Stephen. “But the real world is different, isn’t it?”

  “Right,” Zoë said. “She was pregnant when she got married and he got a job selling used cars. It’s amazing how soon that high school glory can disappear. When I went back, my sister looked old and haggard.”

  She looked down at her plate. “Well, maybe she didn’t look too old or too haggard.”

  “What did you do about the car crash?” Faith asked.

  “You once told me that if you had it to do over again, you’d just leave town,” Amy said.

  “That’s what I did,” Zoë said. “I figured that whatever was going to happen would happen whether I was there or not, and I wanted no part of it. I had access to a hundred and fifty dollars, so I took it, a few pieces of clothing, and I left town without saying a word to anyone. I went to New York.”

  “And it’s my guess that you looked up someone you’d found on the Internet,” Amy said softly.

  “I did,” Zoë said, grinning at her.

  “You two are leaving me out,” Faith said. “What man did you find on the Internet?”

  “Who said it was a man?” Zoë asked.

  “Oh, sorry,” Faith said. “I’m sure you found out you had a half sister whom you’d never met, so you looked her up, and she’s the one who’s made you smile like that.”

  Amy looked at Zoë. “You stole my idea, didn’t you?”

  “Yes,” Zoë said. “I ripped off your idea completely. That night when we came back from the eighteenth century, I looked for Russell Johns on the Internet. I’d read a lot of art history books but I didn’t remember hearing his name. But after we came back here, he was all over the ’Net. You know what for?”

  “His paintings of common people,” Amy said. “In Tristan’s time, he was always sketching us as we pulled bread out of the oven. He loved the washerwomen. Hey! Do you think we’re in any of his pictures?”

  “I don’t know about you two, but I saw several nudes of me,” Zoë said, and the three of them laughed.

  “In the Louvre,” Faith said, and that made them laugh more.

  “So what happened to him?” Amy asked as she buttered a slice of bread. “He was such a talented man.”

  “He married and had some children,” Zoë said softly. “I cried in jealousy when I read that.”

  “But not now,” Amy said as she nodded toward Zoë’s wedding ring.

  Zoë turned the ring on her finger. “No, not anymore. You see, I took Amy’s idea about descendants and I searched until I found Russell’s family tree.”

  “Don’t tell me!” Amy said. “You found out that one of his descendants lives in New York, you memorized the address, and when you left your sister’s you went to him. Is he a painter?”

  Faith and Zoë were looking at her in astonishment.

  “When did you get so good at stories?” Faith asked.

  “I think I’m like Zoë and her art. I think maybe I’ve always been good at stories, but I didn’t know it. So, am I right?”

  “Yeah,” Zoë said, “but he’s not a painter, he’s—”

  “A photographer,” Amy said, then when she looked at their faces, she said, “Okay, I’ll shut up. You tell your story, Zoë.”

  “Thank you. But, yes, he’s a photographer. He does some commercial work but he’s made his name by…” She looked at Amy as though daring her to say a word.

  Amy made a zipper sign over her lips.

  “Russ photographs people in ordinary situations doing ordinary things. He’s won a lot of awards.”

  “Russ?” Faith asked.

  Zoë shrugged. “Last name is Andrews, but the first is the same.”

  “And you are madly in love with him,” Amy said, then looked at them. “Am I allowed to say that?”

  Zoë laughed. “Of course. You want to hear something weird?”

  “I don’t know if I can stand weird,” Faith said. “I shock easily.”

  “When Russell and I were together, back in his time, he asked me a lot of questions about my life. I couldn’t tell him about Oregon because, well, it didn’t exist back then, so I told him as much as I knew about my early family history.”

  She looked at Amy as though challenging her to finish the story. Amy frowned in concentration for a moment, then her face lightened. “You didn’t! He didn’t!”

  “I’m lost,” Faith said.

  Zoë smiled. “It seems that the great painter, Russell Johns, sailed to the American colonies in the fall of 1797. He settled in Williamsburg, and today you can see his portraits of some of our forefathers.”

  “I hope he got Amy’s friend Thomas Jefferson,” Faith said, deadpan.

  “Who told you that?” Amy said. She looked at Zoë. “Who did he marry?”

  “A young woman with the last name of Prentiss.”

  “Your family’s name, I take it,” Amy said.

  Faith frowned for a moment. “If you’re related to Russell’s wife and your husband is descended from their children, does that make you and your husband cousins?”

  “Just like royalty,” Zoë said, and they laughed.

  “Okay, so now tell us what made the town hate you,” Faith said.

  “Ah, that,” Zoë said. “The entire memory of that came to me at what I think was exactly the time that my accident happened. I’d meant to pay attention to the date and take care of myself, but when I got to New York, I went to Russ’s that first day, and we hit it off rather well, so, uh…”

  “You were in bed with him when the wreck was to happen, weren’t you?” Amy said.

  When Zoë nodded, Faith said, “How are you doing this?”

  “I don’t know, but it’s like I can see it in print. I just seem to know. But I’ll stop talking. Zoë, tell us what you remembered.”

  “I don’t like to remember it even if I know it didn’t really happen. At least not my part in it.”

  “What did your sister do to you?” Faith asked, making the others smile.

  “Now you’re the storyteller,” Zoë said. “And you’re completely accurate. It was all my sister’s fault.”

  “I don’t want to hear another word,” Zoë said to her sister, Karen. She put her hands over her ears. She was sitting in Karen’s living room, on the old, worn-out couch, and her sister was pacing.

  “You have to help me. You’re the only one I can trust.” Karen put her hands on Zoë’s wrists and uncovered her sis