What if the life you didn’t live was as real as the one you did?
We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from The Possibilities, a mind-bending novel about time travel and parenthood by Yael Goldstein-Love—publishing with Random House on July 25.
Hannah is having a bad day. A bad month. A bad year? That feels terrible to admit, since her son Jack was born just eight months ago and she loves him more than anything. But ever since his harrowing birth, she can’t shake the feeling that it could have gone the other way. That her baby might not have made it. Terrifying visions of the different paths her life could have taken begin to disrupt her cozy, claustrophobic days with Jack, destabilizing her marriage and making her husband concerned for her mental health. Are the strange things Hannah is seeing just new-mom anxiety, or is something truly weird and sinister afoot? What if Hannah really did unlock a dark force during childbirth?
When Hannah’s worst nightmare comes true and Jack disappears from his crib, she must tap into an extraordinary ability she never knew she had in order to save him: She must enter different versions of her life while holding on to what is most important to her in this one to bring her child back home.
Down in the kitchen I set the pump up on the table, cleaned the flanges; they’d been sitting in the closet now for months, since I was always with Jack to nurse him. I settled down to milk myself, but nothing came. Even though my breasts were hard and ached with the pressure building up in them, I couldn’t get a drop. I sat there crying, not producing. Because where was Jack, where was he, he needed to nurse, and how was a person supposed to stand this? No one was even out there searching after telling us that we were only meant to wait.
Buy the Book
The Possibilities
It was after seven o’clock now. Late enough that I could call the detectives and ask them for an update. I chose the top card, the older detective, the one who seemed like she could maybe be a mother herself.
“Detective Rodriguez speaking.”
“I’m sorry for calling so early. I hope I didn’t wake you. This is Hannah Bennett. Are there any—” What was the word? Words seemed beside the point. “Leads?”
“I’m sorry, what is this regarding?”
“Regarding—regarding Jack. My son. My missing son.”
“You’ve reported him missing?”
“Yes. What? I—is there some extra step I need to take? I don’t think you mentioned that last night, unless I maybe— I’m sorry, maybe I misunderstood. Is that why no one’s out there now, why they’ve stopped looking?”
“What you need to do is call your local dispatch and file a missing persons report. How old is Jack? If he’s over eighteen, they might not send a detective out to you for twenty-four or forty-eight hours, depending. Most missing people return within forty-eight hours of their own accord. That’s the good news.”
“But I did all that. And they sent you. You were here. You were in my house.”
“OK. I need you to calm down. I can tell you’re feeling frustrated and frightened. I get it. I would be, too, if I didn’t know where my kid was. But it’s seven a.m. and I’m playing some catch-up here. You say you spoke to me about your son. Jack?”
“Yes, last night. You were here. And your—the other detective.” I reached for the other card but it fluttered to the floor beneath the table. “He’s eight months old? You took our Nest cam? You sat right here, right where I’m sitting.”
I was trying to picture Detective Rodriguez, to match that image to this voice. A tall woman with lively gray eyes, a tight bun, a kind and competent demeanor, which was probably why they sent her out on calls to frantic parents on the worst nights of their lives. Was that not this woman? Was that not this voice? Could there be two Detective Rodriguezes, and somehow they had gotten their cards mixed up? A farcical mishap at the printer so that now I was trying to get information out of the wrong person?
“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be brusque, but I was not at your house last night. Can you tell me how you got this number?”
“From you! Or someone, someone with your name, I—I’m sorry, I’m sorry I’m not being calm, but Jack is only eight months old. He’s missing. My husband and I called last night and someone came out to see us, two detectives, and there were other people, people looking in the yard and on our street. I thought—I was under the impression we’d done all that we were supposed to, and now you’re telling me that—I don’t know what you’re telling me.”
“Did someone say they’d opened a file?”
“Yes! Absolutely. Footage from the baby monitor, and, and all sorts of questions and—You took the whole camera, actually, the Nest cam. You took his, his lovey, it has a cow face. You asked all sorts of questions. Someone did. I thought it was you.”
“Well then, we’re A-OK. We’re going to get this sorted. All right? It’ll be in the system. I’m going to go look into this and get up to speed and call you back. Yeah? OK? Hannah, you said your name was? And the child is Jack? Surname?”
“OK, yes, please do. Please do call me back as soon as you can. Bennett, our name is Bennett. Hannah and Adam, our son is eight months old, Jack, he went missing last night, just after eight p.m.”
I was still sitting there trying to make sense of the call when Adam shuffled in.
“There must be two detectives by that name,” he said when I described the conversation.
He had taken the chair across from me and was holding my hands across the table. His hair was flattened on one side, and he had a crusty line of dried saliva on his chin.
“That was my first thought, too. But I just—I don’t know. I had the sense that they were going to stay out there looking. If that’s not true, then what’s anyone doing?”
“Last night was surreal. We were in shock.” Adam gave my hands a squeeze. “Now it’s more real.”
My hands hurt when he squeezed them. That sting across the palms, as though they should be raw and red, scored with cuts from my fall up on the fire trail. I yanked them back and turned the palms up. No cuts, of course.
Adam reached for my wrists, concern across his face, but I ducked beneath the table to retrieve the fallen card. The younger detective, Detective Palmer, squat and blond and skeptical.
It went straight to voicemail. I left a message. As soon as I put the phone down it started ringing.
Adam reached to answer, and I let him.
“No, this is her husband, this is Adam. Right, Jack.”
“Rodriguez,” he mouthed at me.
He looked so pale, I was almost surprised I couldn’t see through him. I wasn’t sure he wasn’t still in shock. I wasn’t sure I wasn’t myself. But he was using his I-am-a-man-who-trucks-in-facts voice, and just now I was grateful for it. For his practical approach to life, for being the sort of person who could get this sorted promptly.
“We did. No, we did. I don’t understand. That’s impossible. You sat here at this table. I am looking at a glass you drank from. It’s still sitting here, half-full of water. Well, is there another Detective Denise Rodriguez? No. I’m really asking. That’s not what I—I am as calm as a person could possibly be expected to be in this situation. What—How am I supposed to—No, don’t do that. No, I do not consent to your hanging up, I’ll wait while you talk to—Hello?”
The look on his face as he placed the phone into my palm: as if the facts had turned around and trucked right over him.
“She says they have no record of our reporting a child missing.”
From the book The Possibilities by Yael Goldstein-Love. Copyright © 2023 by Yael Goldstein-Love. Published in July by Random House, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC.
