The universe is sending me to...Lyme Regis?

To walk with ghosts and dinosaurs—or perhaps something else entirely.

There have been some strange, too-coincidental events in my life. Like the time my boyfriend dumped me the day we were moving to North Carolina, so instead I drove six hours south to my mom, who—and I don’t say this lightly—was suffering from near-fatal surgery complications and hadn’t yet told me. I wound up caring for her for several months, helping her get back to good health.

I assume this is how the universe works for everyone. Some might call it God; some might call it divine intervention; some might call it the Great Purple People-Eater in The Sky. I call it the universe, lower-case, and I don’t claim to know or understand what it is.

It and I have a special relationship, one that’s typically not profound. Usually it manifests in annoying ways—I swear it knows when I’m about to step outside, even for three minutes, so it can revv up one of my neighbor’s lawnmowers. But sometimes, its movements are strange, hard to ignore, and harder to explain.

Right now, it and I are having one of those moments. I’m on a plane, and then a train, and then a bus, to Lyme Regis, England, and I don’t really understand why.