Page 29 of Evermore

“Maya,” Finn said softly, moving toward her with hands that wanted to offer comfort. “I'm not Mom. Whatever's happening to me, it's not the same thing that happened to her.”

“You don't know that. Memory loss, confusion, behavioral changes—those were all her early symptoms too.” Maya wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, trying to regain composure. “And you're making the same mistakes she made, isolating yourself from family while depending on someone who might not stick around when things get difficult.”

“River isn't going anywhere.”

“How can you possibly know that?”

Finn wanted to explain about the recognition he felt when he looked at River, the way their connection seemed to transcend normal relationship timelines, the sense that they'd been looking for each other without knowing it. But explaining supernatural certainty to someone trained in psychology wouldonly reinforce Maya's concerns about his judgment being compromised.

“I know because I trust him,” Finn said finally. “I trust what I feel when I'm with him, and I trust that he feels the same way.”

Maya studied his face with the careful attention she'd learned during their mother's illness, looking for signs of delusion or wishful thinking. “And if you're wrong? If he leaves when your condition gets worse or the novelty wears off? What then?”

“Then I'll deal with it. But I'm not going to push him away because of possibilities that might not happen.”

Maya was quiet for a long moment, clearly struggling with wanting to protect him while respecting his autonomy. “I'm setting up an appointment with a neurologist in Boston,” she said finally. “Someone who specializes in early-onset memory disorders. Will you go?”

“Yes.”

“And will you consider slowing things down with River until we have more information about what you're dealing with?”

Finn felt his chest tighten with the impossibility of that request. Slowing things down with River felt like asking him to stop breathing, like cutting off the one source of stability and joy he'd found since his mother's death.

“I'll consider it,” he said, the lie coming easier than he'd expected.

Maya nodded, clearly recognizing the non-commitment but accepting it as the best she was going to get. “I'm worried about you, Finn. Not just medically, but emotionally. You're making decisions that could affect the rest of your life based on feelings that developed under unusual circumstances.”

“I know you're worried. But I need you to trust that I'm capable of making my own choices, even if they're not the choices you'd make.”

After Maya left, Finn spent the evening alone in his apartment, surrounded by evidence of knowledge he couldn't remember acquiring and haunted by his sister's warnings about moving too fast with River. He tried to focus on reading, on normal activities that might ground him in familiar routines, but his mind kept circling back to the impossible restoration work and the marine biology notes that suggested he'd been living a life he couldn't remember.

As night settled over Beacon Point and the lighthouse beam began its rotation, Finn's emotional turmoil reached a breaking point. The familiar disorientation began creeping in around the edges of his consciousness, but this episode felt different from the beginning—more gradual but also more pervasive.

Instead of the sudden confusion that usually marked his episodes, reality seemed to be shifting subtly around him, like looking at the world through water that was slowly becoming more turbulent.

The walls of his apartment appeared to shimmer slightly when he wasn't looking directly at them. Books seemed to rearrange themselves on shelves just outside his direct vision. The lighting in the room shifted in ways that had nothing to do with the darkness gathering outside his windows.

Finn rubbed his eyes, thinking fatigue or stress might be affecting his perception, but the subtle wrongness persisted. Everything looked almost exactly as it should, but with tiny details that didn't match his memory of how things were supposed to be.

The coffee mug on his side table was a different color—still ceramic, still the right size and shape, but blue instead of thegreen he remembered buying specifically because it reminded him of sea glass. When he picked it up to examine it more closely, it felt exactly right in his hands, perfectly familiar despite the color change.

“Okay, this is new,” Finn muttered, setting the mug down and looking around his living room for other subtle alterations.

The framed photograph on his bookshelf showed the same scene—him and Maya at last year's harvest festival—but Maya was wearing a red sweater instead of the blue one he distinctly remembered her buying specifically for the occasion. In the photo, she looked exactly like herself, happy and relaxed, but the wrong sweater made the entire image feel like it belonged to someone else's memories.

Panic started building in Finn's chest as he noticed more small changes. The pattern on his throw pillows was slightly different, the same general design but with details that didn't match what he remembered choosing. A book on his coffee table had a different cover design, though the title and author were exactly right.

Everything was wrong, but only by degrees. Like someone had taken his apartment and made tiny adjustments that preserved the overall feel while changing specific details that only he would notice.

His phone trembled in his hands as he dialed River's number, desperation overriding embarrassment about calling for help with something that sounded completely insane.

“Finn?” River's voice was warm with concern, probably because Finn rarely called this late. “Everything okay?”

“I need you to come over,” Finn said, his voice shaking with fear he couldn't control. “Something's happening to my apartment. Things are changing, but they're not changing, and I can't tell what's real anymore.”

“I'm on my way,” River said immediately, without asking for details or demanding explanations. “Stay on the phone with me until I get there.”

The ten minutes it took River to drive from his cottage felt like hours while Finn sat carefully still in his reading chair, afraid that moving around might trigger more changes. River listened without judgment, asking practical questions about what he was seeing and how he was feeling, his calm presence providing the only anchor Finn had to consensus reality.

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