The Time Traveler's Wife - The Other Side

The Other Wife

September 2000

It's been a while since Laura saw Carmilla.

The pain of losing her mother has dulled a bit.

In that time, she's added Charmed, Xena, and course more Buffy paraphernalia to her life. She's also found a lovely picture of the picture some lady at the park took of her and her mother and put that up, along with countless others. Her krav maga lessons are going well, with quite a few belts having been obtained in the past few years.

She got a computer in her room, too.

And through it all, since she's not allowed to talk about Carmilla without raising all sorts of alarms, Laura begins wondering if she's just been making up her encounters with Carmilla in her head.

But she knows she didn't. Carmilla is her best friend.

One day, Laura comes home from school and does her obligatory call to her father.

"Hey, dad."

"Hi, honey. Get in okay?"

Laura braces herself. "Yep! I'm home from school. So, Danny was wondering if I could go see her play in her baseball game later..."

Sherman cuts her off. "No, you may not."

Laura huffs. "But why not? It's not like I have strep throat anymore! And she said her mom could pick me up on the way and then drop me off after--"

"--Because, those balls can pop up and they're dangerous and you're already accident prone. Plus, you could get snatched right off the bleachers! So, no."

Laura's hands balls into fists. "Fine. Bye." She slams the telephone receiver onto the cradle and stomps out of the kitchen.

"Bad time?" a voice asks, making Laura jump and grab her chest. She turns and realizes it's Carmilla.

"Sorry," she says, chuckling, "guess it is a bad time, after all."

Laura shakes her head immediately. "No! It's great to see you! I keep thinking maybe I did make you up in my head." She runs over to Carmilla excitedly with a beaming smile. "It's been forever."

Carmilla holds out her arms and Laura runs into them, squeezing her in a hug. "I'm as real as you, cutie," she says.

"The last time I saw you, you didn't gimme a date when you'd come back. You said it was the first time you ever traveled back to meet me," Laura says, taking a step back.

Carmilla laughs softly. "Yeah, that was about five years ago for me."

"So weird." Laura frowns before getting over it within seconds with a shrug. "Want a snack?" she asks, already heading back to the kitchen. "My sandwich making skills are way better."

"Sure," Carmilla replies. "Time traveling works up an appetite."

Laura starts getting some ingredients. "How long have you been here?"

"Couple hours."

Laura's eyes widen. She was upstairs... where my bedroom is... where my computer is... where I've been backing up my journal as a digital copy... "Wait. Where were you upstairs for the past couple hours?"
Carmilla grins mischievously. "Your bedroom. Nice computer. And even nicer AIM screenname. Laura2theletter?"

Laura covers her face, flustered. "Y-You didn't go through my files, did you?"

"Why?" Carmilla asks teasingly, a glint in her eye. "Something there you don't want me to see?"