Revelations
It had taken some effort, but Izzy had managed to convince Sheryl to let her go on her own after sitting in the shade under her watchful eye for a little while and guzzling a bottle of water she’d found in her beach bag. It was like the other woman didn’t trust her to walk and chew gum at the same time, let alone fend for herself on what she’d found out was Key West, Florida. Whatever her other-self had been known for, common sense didn’t seem to be it.
The sense of déjà-vu had only gotten stronger as she left the beach and reached the parking lot and automatically got behind the wheel of a bright red convertible, dropping her beach bag into the passenger seat next to her. Happy Graduation Princess! Here’s your present… Izzy put a hand to her head as the memory washed over her, graduating from University of Florida last spring and getting the car as a graduation present. The speaker was clearly male, and older. Her father? Step-father maybe?
Whoever he was, he obviously wasn’t hurting for money. And she was barely twenty-two, memories of a wild night celebrating her birthday last Tuesday fuzzily taking shape in her head.
Almost on automatic pilot, the blonde drove through the streets of Key West until she parked in front of a well-kept two-story home in Old Town. The key on her key-chain worked, and Izzy stepped into a freshly renovated interior. Her sense of automatic pilot intensified to pull her upstairs and into a sea of pink.
Everything was pink: pink bedspread, pink sheets, pink throw pillows, pink curtains, pink paint on the walls with white trim, pink loveseat by the wall. Everywhere she looked there was pink, the only pieces of furniture in the room that weren’t pink were the white desk and dresser. “I like pink, but this is ridiculous.” The witch muttered to herself as she stared at her bedroom in dismay, still dressed in the sandals and tiny pink bikini she’d found herself in a short while earlier. To add insult to injury, the center pillow had Hello Kitty prominently displayed on front. What kind of person had this Izzy Shaw been? Why was she here in the other’s place? This was her second alternate dimension, but at least this time she didn’t have a gun to her head a minute after her arrival.
She paused at the pictures displayed on her dresser, besides herself the only person she recognized was her mother. The man beside Sarah Shaw was not her father, but the younger man next to Izzy had to be Bobby, the resemblance was too strong. Fragments of memories tugged for her attention: her stepfather did something with taxes, Bobby had gone into law.
Bobby was still alive.
Her mother was still alive.
What event in the past had changed the course of her family’s lives? Her mother had never remarried in Izzy’s own time-line and that obviously wasn’t the case here. Izzy wiped away a tear, and forced the emotions back to deal with the task at hand.
A quick perusal of her closet and dresser found plenty of pink in her wardrobe, but (thankfully) not all of her clothes were that color. A few business suits and shoes indicated she had some kind of professional job, but she didn’t get the sense that she was supposed to be at work today. A change of clothes containing no pink was selected and deposited on the bed, and the tech-witch made her way to the adjoining bathroom to wash off the salt and sand from her excursion into the Caribbean waters.
A good look in the mirror confirmed that she was indeed twenty-two again. She was maybe a little healthier and better fed than she had been in her original time-line judging from the condition of her body and how she filled out the bikini (there would have been no way she’d have felt comfortable enough showing so much skin then) but definitely herself at twenty two. Izzy stepped out of the sandals and undid the strings on her bathing suit to step into the shower, and it was clear her alternate self didn’t believe in tan lines. The witch felt her face heat up even though no one else was in the house.
She was starting to get a picture of this dimension’s Isabelle Shaw and Izzy didn’t like what it was revealing.