In an alternate timeline, Alyssa has surgery that requires doctors to stop her heart while they operate. Once she’s essentially dead, she has another encounter with The Storyteller from Rebecca Too who sends her on an adventure to a different fictional universe.
Alyssa finds herself part of events that occur just before Genevieve arrives in Atlanta. Dropping in on her sister, Alyssa learns that she and Leah have not yet patched up their differences. She retreats to Piedmont Park where she encounters the individual who will become The Storyteller, only now he’s still an unpublished author and playwright with just one script that has never been produced.
Alyssa realizes that Fox Tower is no longer part of the Atlanta skyline. The future Storyteller, informs her the Fox Theatre was never torn down but was saved by preservationists in the 70s. This causes Alyssa to recall their previous encounter.
“In this play you wrote, does a woman wake up in the hospital thinking she’s someone else?”
“How could you possibly know that?”
“You are The Storyteller. You just don’t know it yet.”
While she’s digesting the news, Alyssa gets a phone call from Rebecca Asher eight years after Rebecca was killed in a car accident in Alyssa’s original timeline. She learns that when Rebecca stopped in Braselton for a smoke break, she decided to get some ice cream at Mayfield Dairies. Driving away from town, she encountered a truck that had run off the road after crossing the median when the driver fell asleep, and she pulled over to offer assistance.
Rebecca still works as an entertainment reporter for Creative Loafing. She tells Alyssa that Steven passed the bar exam and is looking for work among the firms in town. Neither Rebecca nor Steven have ever met Leah.
At home, Alyssa hears from Zelda Burch and correctly assumes it’s Genevieve communicating with her. She reveals that she knows who Genevieve is and instructs her not to inform Abigail that Alyssa’s onto them. While alone, Genevieve makes contact with Alyssa directly, who’s vague about how she knows so much about Genevieve and what’s coming up so as not to disrupt how events need to proceed.
Genevieve tells Alyssa of the alternate path her life has followed. She’s well acquainted with her Aunt Regan, who’s a graphic designer in Seattle. In this reality, Regan did not win the artistic competition and instead another girl from her school went to Paris. There, she befriended Eloise Bellamy, who decides to study abroad and enrolls at the Seattle Art Academy. She meets fellow student Regan her first day of class, and they become friends. Over time, their friendship grows into a romantic relationship and they split their time between the US and France. Genevieve knows Eloise as Regan’s partner.
Alyssa works with Rebecca in figuring out how to get Genevieve and Leah together and to repair Alyssa’s relationship with her sister.
In the end, the doctors shock Alyssa to restart her heart and she returns to her reality.
