From Tragedy to Time-Travel Series: A Tribute to My Sister

On a warm August evening in 1990, my world changed forever. It was the day I learned my sisters had been in a horrific accident, and that one of them had not survived.

Earlier that day, my younger sisters, Erin and Sharon, had been preparing for an overnight camping trip. As twins, they shared the same passion for adventure even though they were polar opposites in every other way. Sharon, the taller one pictured with me above and with Erin below, radiated a warmth and kindness to match her soulful brown eyes and chestnut hair. She brightened any room with her infectious laughter, witty jokes, and talent for turning everything into a song.

By contrast, Erin, the more petite twin, possessed a self-assured, almost tyrannical temperament that earned her the nickname ‘Tasmanian Devil’ within our family. Her intense gray eyes and turbulent moods often sent the rest of us scrambling for cover. Don’t get me wrong; Erin wasn’t always in a state of upheaval, as evidenced by the lighthearted photo below. Yet, in her stormier moments, she was truly a force to be reckoned with.

The day of the tragedy, Erin had been all set to embark on their ninety-minute journey to a favorite lake spot up island. Sharon was more hesitant. In fact, she expressed her reluctance to me while Erin waited in the crammed Celica hatchback, honking impatiently every few minutes.

“Ugh. I really don’t want to go,” Sharon had said. And I, busy with my own trivial twenty-something problems, responded, “Just go. You’ll have fun.”

That remark has lurked in my thoughts ever since. Would Sharon still be alive today if I’d urged her to stay home?

I would never get the chance to find out. Just a few hours after I’d encouraged her to go, Erin–bruised, scraped, and still trembling with shock–recounted the accident to our family as we sat in stunned silence around the kitchen table.

Sharon had been driving, the music blasting out of the open windows. The pair had been bouncing in their seats to the bassy beats of Pump Up the Volume by British recording act M|A|R|R|S. Sharon had been going faster than she should have, perhaps not focused enough on the conditions of the rural lakeside road.

What followed sounded like a scene out of an action movie.

According to Erin, they hit a patch of loose gravel, causing Sharon to lose control of the car. It rolled a couple of times over the embankment and plunged into the lake upside down, sinking instantly.

Erin remembers scrambling out of the window, kicking her way to the surface, where passersby helped her to the shore as she screamed hysterically about her trapped sister. While a few bystanders stayed on shore trying to console Erin, others repeatedly attempted to reach Sharon in the submerged vehicle.

A fleeting moment of hope arose when a helicopter pilot, scouting the area for forest fires, witnessed the accident and raced to the scene. He lowered a sling to bystanders who secured it around the car, flipping it right-side up. Finally, the bystanders pulled Sharon out of the car. It would have made for an incredible rescue story, but my sister had been trapped too long, and a fairytale ending was not to be.

Distractions

In the aftermath, Erin and I, who’d suffered a strained relationship that began in childhood, could have drifted even further apart. However, in the weeks following the accident, we found comfort in each other’s company, often falling asleep together in front of the TV. I recall being unable to shut off my thoughts; our shared silence, punctuated by reruns of Cheers or a Movie of the Week, helped us cope.

While my own guilt lingered, it was nothing compared to Erin’s. As her physical injuries healed, her mental wounds festered, and for a time, I feared she might never recover. Even if she did, I believed a healthy relationship—like the one I’d enjoyed with Sharon—was completely out of reach for us. She was too broken. Too self-destructive. Too consumed by her own challenges to consider anyone else’s.

A year following the accident, Erin gave birth to a daughter, whom my husband and I ended up raising. It’s been a bittersweet journey but one I wouldn’t trade for anything. That little girl is all grown up now with a family of her own.

Erin and I did manage to find our way back to each other in 2018 when our family converged to take care of our mother, who’d been diagnosed with cancer. Mom passed away two months later, and I regret that she never got to see Erin and I rebuild our relationship.

But I digress. That’s a story for another day. This tale is about how losing Sharon inspired my time-travel thriller series and the characters found within it.

A Note From Beyond

A few days after the tragedy, two somber-faced police officers arrived at my parents’ door to deliver the items retrieved from the crumpled car, their condolences doing little to numb our grief.

In Sharon’s possessions, tucked into a purple Velcro wallet was a soggy slip of paper that I recognized instantly. It had come from a small notebook that Sharon had purchased less than a week before her accident. Written on the paper in her distinctive left-handed script—somewhat blurred from its exposure to water—were the following eerily prophetic words:

“From now until the end of time no one else will ever see life with my eyes, and I mean to make the most of my chance.”

I remember reeling back in shock, knowing she’d penned the note only days before. As I reread the sentence over and over, I wanted to believe that Sharon had authored the quote herself, yet it captured a wisdom and depth that I hadn’t known her to express before. That she’d misspelled ‘until’ did make me wonder if these were indeed her words, but I remained unconvinced.

I began scouring her possessions for clues to the quote’s origin, coming up empty-handed. I broadened my search—asking her friends, enquiring at libraries, and reaching out to anyone who might know. At one point, I even appealed to ‘Dear Abby’ for help, hoping her readers might recognize the words. A few weeks later, I received a polite typewritten reply from Abby’s office stating she could not publish my question, wishing me luck in my search. The mystery would persist.

In the mid-1990s, with the internet emerging as a standard feature in homes, I expanded my search efforts online. Despite periodic searches over the next two decades, nothing ever surfaced, and I began wondering if the words had indeed been my sister’s all along.

But then, in 2013, I finally got a hit.

The marvels of technology led me to Christopher Darlington Morley, an American journalist, novelist, and poet born in 1890, a full century before Sharon’s death. It seemed the words Sharon had scrawled on the scrap of paper were part of an essay Morley had penned in 1920—his words tumbling through time to find me just as I was giving up hope.

It’s worth noting that Fordham University Press had published a collection of Morley’s essays in 1990, the same year Sharon died. Needless to say, I tracked down a copy of Christopher Morley’s Philadelphia without delay, and when my cloth-bound hardcover copy arrived in the mail a week later, I could finally slide that puzzle piece into place. There, immortalized in an article entitled Sauntering, were the words Sharon had scribbled in blue ink twenty-three years earlier. They leapt off the page at me, filling my heart with joy, relief, and sorrow all at once.

To this day, I still have unanswered questions.

Where did Sharon–an unassuming 21-year-old high-school dropout from Victoria, Canada–find the words of an accomplished American journalist who’d died in 1957? Had she come across an excerpt from the book in our local newspaper? Did she see it on TV? Did some unknown person pass it onto her, thinking she needed to hear it?

Inspired by Morley’s words and my sister’s interest in them, I brushed the dust off my writing pad and began penning a story that combined the mystery of a missing twin with the fantastical element of time travel. The creative process not only offered me catharsis but also allowed me to explore themes of guilt, redemption, and destiny. By reimagining the outcome of a fateful day, I was able to transform a personal tragedy into a narrative of possibility and hope, much like the serendipitous journey of Morley’s words through time.

Thus was born a twisty-turny time travel thriller series.

In the first instalment of the TimeBlink trilogy, protagonist Syd Brixton wrestles with a haunting regret similar to mine: she leaves her eleven-year-old sister Isla in a park for fifteen minutes, and in that brief window, Isla vanishes. The agonizing ‘what if’ following Isla’s disappearance is a key theme in this book; however, the story is much more than that. It is an enduring tribute to Sharon, a reflection on the bonds of sisterhood, and a search for closure through the written word.

Have I found that closure? Absolutely. There are still times, of course, that I wonder how different life would be had I not urged Sharon to go on that trip, but my practical side insists she would’ve gone no matter what I’d said.

One thing is constant after all these years: While Sharon may no longer walk by my side, her final message has endured as my guiding mantra. You nailed it, sister. No one else will ever see life with my eyes, and I mean to make the most of my chance.

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If you’ve read the TimeBlink series, are you surprised by how our charismatic Dr. Morley Scott got his name? Here’s another fun fact: Syd’s older sister Kendall represents what I imagined Sharon would be like in her forties. Do you think I did her justice? Comment below or email me directly. I respond to all my readers’ questions and comments.

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