The café was quiet in the late morning, sunlight slanting across tables, casting long shadows that moved lazily with the window panes. You had arrived first, slipping into your usual seat, laptop open and papers spread, trying to immerse yourself in college work. But the moment she walked in, you forgot timelines, deadlines, and all the mundane tasks you’d attempted to anchor yourself to.

Moira McTaggart. Across countless timelines, in every variation of your life, she had been there, always the same—fierce, brilliant, impossibly kind, and infuriatingly unapproachable in her way. Yet here, in this timeline where memory was a stranger, she was just another customer ordering coffee, unaware that she was your wife in every world you’d ever known.

She spotted you, hesitation flickering in her eyes, then a smile, small and wry. “Fancy seeing you here,” she said, voice calm but layered with something familiar, something that tugged at your chest.

You looked up, heart hammering. “Yeah… fancy indeed,” you said, though your mind screamed. How do I even begin?

She slid into the seat opposite you without waiting for an invitation. Her gaze swept over your scattered papers, a quirk of curiosity lighting her features. “Still the diligent student, I see,” she said. “Though, I’d say your concentration is… off.”

“Something like that,” you admitted, though you couldn’t take your eyes off her. There was something grounding in her presence, even when your timeline didn’t remember the shared nights, the whispered secrets, the life built together across all those impossible worlds.

For hours, conversation flowed easily. You talked about classes, the changing city, the new café around the corner. Yet beneath each mundane topic, the familiarity hummed. Small touches—a brush of hands when passing a sugar packet, the way her eyes softened when you laughed, the way she leaned in slightly as if instinct demanded proximity—reminded you that this wasn’t just a random encounter.

When she finally stood to leave, she paused, turning her gaze on you with that piercing insight that always made you feel both seen and vulnerable. “You’ll figure it out,” she said softly, almost to herself, almost as if speaking to a timeline that had never known you. Then she was gone, leaving the scent of coffee and faint perfume behind.

You sat there, heart thundering, mind racing. Somehow, the universe had found a way to give you a moment, a fleeting connection to a woman who existed in every iteration of your life. And in that moment, you knew: even if memory failed, even if time erased, Moira McTaggart would always find you.