Time After Time (16 page)

“Dad?” He looks at me again. I think about my 50-50 grind down the side of the staircase and how I faked my fall at the bottom. I picture the look on that little girl’s face. I remember how hard Dad hugged me when it was all over. “It was really fun.”

“It was pretty incredible wasn’t it?” And there it is: the look I saw on his face when we first returned. He looks triumphant and proud, and I feel emptiness deep in my gut when I wonder if it’s the last time I’ll see this expression. “Actually, I was kind of excited to do it again, but…oh, well.” He shakes his head and rests his hand on my knee. “Thanks for taking me along.” He gives my leg a comforting little shake, and then, for something to do with himself, he reaches past me and grabs the glass off the table. “I’ll go get you some more water. I’ll be right back.”

As soon as he’s out of the room, I stand up. My legs still feel wobbly and weak, and I grab on to the side of the chair to steady myself. Just as I’m heading for the door, the glow of the monitor gets my attention, and I feel the urge to see that news story for myself.

I hobble over to the desk, sit down in the leather chair, and reach for the mouse. I start to open a new browser window, but I don’t need to because there’s already one on the screen. It’s a news story from this morning, about a local boy who was last seen at his bus stop but never arrived at school.

Dad wasn’t exaggerating when he said he was looking forward to our next do-over.

He’d already found it.

I’m halfway up the stairs when Mom sees me from the top landing. She starts racing down the stairs and I grab the railing. “You’re home.… What happened to you?” She blinks fast, like she’s trying hard to focus.

“I’m fine.”

“You’re
not
fine, Bennett!” Her eyes travel from my face to my jeans and back up again.

“It was just a bloody nose.” I stare blankly at my shirt.

“
That’s
a bloody nose?” She presses her lips together and her chin trembles. “Where have you been all night? Please, just tell me what happened to you.”

She looks at me with this glassy stare, and I can see how hurt she is. There are so many things I’d love to tell her, but I’m in so deep now I don’t even know where to start. When my eyes meet hers, I feel like a five-year-old who just fell off the play structure and needs comfort and reassurance. If I told her everything, I bet she’d give me that.

“Where have you been?” she repeats softly.

“I don’t know, Mom.” My voice cracks when I say it, and I suck in a breath. I can tell from the look on her face that she believes me. But I can also tell that it’s not enough. If I ever want to make it to the top of these stairs, I need to come up with something better.

Mom rests her hand on mine, encouraging me to say more. “I woke up in Dad’s office like this.” I pull my T-shirt away from my body and shake my head. Then I look down at the banister, hesitant to go on, choosing my next words carefully. I’ve never really talked with my mom about what I can do. We always just, sort of, dance around it. But now there’s no other approach than a direct one. “Dad told you what we did, right?” Mom nods. “I must have blacked out afterward.”

She crosses her arms. From the neck down, she looks angry, but her face gives her away. “This whole time?” she asks, and she shakes her head as if she can’t believe she’s asking such a ridiculous question.

I shrug, trying to look cool, like it’s no big deal. But I feel my face contort, blowing my cover. I look straight into her eyes. “I honestly don’t know where I’ve been.”

Mom’s expression turns into this odd mix of sympathy and alarm.

The fight-or-flight instinct kicks in, making me tighten my grip on the handrail and pull my shirt away from my body again. “Can we please talk about this later? I’d like to clean up.” Without waiting for her to respond, I plant a kiss on her cheek and squeeze past her.

“Do you need anything?” she calls from behind me.

Yes. I need to be able to be in two places at once. I need to not miss anyone and I need for no one to miss me. “No, thanks,” I say as I turn the corner.

In the bathroom, I work quickly to wash the blood from my face with soap and hot water. I run a comb through my hair, but even when I’m done, it still looks greasy and stringy. I pull my shirt off over my head and toss it into the garbage can. It’s one of my favorites but now I hope I never see it again.

I close my bedroom door and lock it behind me. My eyelids are heavy, and even though I feel the gravitational pull coming from my bed, I ignore it. After all that’s happened, I realize it’s the stupidest thing I could do and that the number of things that could go wrong are practically infinite. But I have to go back and see Anna. Just for a few minutes. Just long enough to tell her that I’m okay and to find out if my version of what happened on the cross-country course matches hers. Then I can sleep.

My jeans feel like they’re glued to my skin. I peel them off and toss them into the hamper and dig through my drawers until I find my favorite sweats and a Cal Bears hoodie. I change my socks and slip my feet into my shoes. My eyes burn and start to water, but I wipe them with the back of my hand.

My backpack’s loaded and I’m almost ready to go. I head to the mini fridge in the closet and grab a Red Bull and reach under the bed for a couple of room-temperature bottles of water, then set everything on the nightstand so they’ll be in easy reach when I return.

I’m standing in the center of my room, about to close my eyes, when there’s a knock at the door. I swear under my breath and chuck my backpack into the corner. “Come in,” I say, once I’m lying on my bed as if I’m about to doze off. The knob turns and clicks a few times.

“It’s locked,” Mom calls out from the other side, and my legs feel heavy as I make my way across the room to open the door. “Can I come in?”

No. I’m about to leave. I
need
to leave. But I take a few steps backward and open the door for her. She walks in and heads for the turret window over in the corner that overlooks the bay. She runs her fingers along the molding, then crosses her arms, keeping her back to me.

“I remember the day we moved into this house.”

“Mom,” I say. “I’m really tired.” I cover my eyes with my hand. Do we have to do this now?

She continues as if I hadn’t spoken. “You and your dad were on your way over in the moving truck and I walked around, room to room, trying to figure out which ones you and Brooke were going to choose. I was standing right here, admiring this view, when Brooke walked in and said this was the one she wanted. But I talked her into taking the other one.”

“Why?” I ask.

“This one was the nicer of the two. It had this view and I thought it should be yours. You’re the one who got us this house, after all.” She turns around and looks at me. “I gave your father a lot of grief about what the two of you did…”

“We just bought some stocks.” It was more than that, but I don’t feel like getting into it with her right now. I’ve been down this path before, arguing over the nuances of manipulating the market and buying stock based on information neither one of us should have had or been able to use. But last time I checked, insider-trading laws didn’t mention anything about time travel.

“I’m not going to ask you to justify what you did, Bennett. Even though I thought it was wrong, I understand why you did it.”

I don’t say anything.

“You did it to make us happy. To give our family a better life.”

“Yeah.”

“And probably to get your dad off your back.” She smiles.

I smile back. “Yeah, maybe that too.”

She gives me this meaningful look and steels herself, like she’s preparing to say something important. “I’ll always appreciate what you did for our family, Bennett, but I want you to know something.” She takes a few steps closer to me but stays just out of my reach. “You didn’t have to do this.” She holds her arms out to her sides and glances around the room.

I shoot her a skeptical look and she shakes her head. “Don’t get me wrong. I appreciate all of this…I admit, I’m a bit of a sucker for the finer things in life, and life has been a lot easier with, well, everything we have. But I don’t need it.”

She looks resolute, but I can’t help raising an eyebrow.

“I mean it. Your dad didn’t like his job, and I didn’t like living in that tiny apartment in an unsafe neighborhood. And yes, money was tight and we fought about it a lot. But you know what?”

I shake my head.

“Your dad and I love each other, and we love you and Brooke more than you two will ever know. This family would have been fine without all of this.” She must see a trace of disbelief in my eyes because she adds the word “Really,” and gives me a stern look to demonstrate her conviction.

I still must seem doubtful. I’ve seen the way she cherishes her car and her designer clothes. “You’d give this all away?” I ask, pointing to her pearls.

“Absolutely. In fact, it would be nice to be rid of the guilt.”

I look in my mom’s eyes and see that she means it.

“Dad told me what the two of you did for that family yesterday. And he told me about the fire…” She trails off. Then she takes three steps forward and wraps her arms around me. “I hope he didn’t talk you into—”

I cut her off in midsentence. “He didn’t talk me into anything, Mom. I swear. It was completely my idea.” I feel my face getting hotter. “If you would just stop worrying and see that I have this under control.”

“Do you?” Mom shoots me a sideways glare. She’s right and she knows it. Two days ago I could say those words and mean them, but today…yeah…not so much.

“Look…I love what you did for those kids, Bennett, I really do. But you’re
my
kid, and I know it’s selfish, but I don’t want to trade your safety for
anyone
else’s.”

I shake my head at her. “Come on… This isn’t about my safety.”

“Yes, it is. I’ve spent far too many nights wondering where my kids are, Bennett. It is about you being here, in this place, living like a normal person.”

I knew the word “normal” would pop out of her mouth eventually. Without even thinking about it, I hear myself say, “Mom. I’m still going back to visit Maggie.”

Her jaw drops. I reach over to the desk and pick up the photo of my grandmother and me. “I told you this picture was taken when I was living with her a few months ago, in nineteen ninety-five, but that wasn’t true. She didn’t look like this in nineteen ninety-five. This was taken in two thousand and three, just before she died.”

Her hands are trembling as she takes the frame from me.

“I’ve been going back there for years. I take care of her.”

Mom looks for something to hold on to but there’s nothing in sight, so she takes two steps back and sits on the edge of the bed. “You go back?” Her lip quivers when she asks, and when I nod, she covers her mouth with her hand.

“All the time,” I say.

Mom sits on my bed staring at the photo, and as I watch her, I realize that now would be the perfect time to tell her about Anna too. All I have to do is grab the album from the bottom of the drawer, say something simple like
I also go back
to see her. This is Anna
, and start turning pages. Then she’d get it. She’d have to.

But before I can move, Mom looks at me, her eyes welling up, and pats the mattress next to her. “Tell me about her.” she says, referring to my grandmother, not my girlfriend.

And instead of going over to my desk, I sit down next to my mom and tell her everything, from the flowers Brooke planted in Maggie’s garden and the bills we paid right down to the details of the room I’ve been staying in when I visit. The tears spill down her cheeks, but she hasn’t even heard everything yet.

I ask her to tell me what happened between the two of them.

“Our fights were about such unimportant things, and I honestly don’t know why I let it go on so long,” she says, her whole body trembling as the tears fall even faster. “I let a few stupid disagreements keep me away from my mother and keep her from knowing my kids…” She takes a deep breath. “And she was all alone when—” She can’t finish her sentence, but she doesn’t have to.

I scoot in closer and fill the gap between us. “She wasn’t alone,” I say quietly and mom looks up at me. I tell her how Brooke and I went back to the day Maggie died, and how we held her hand as we watched her slip away. Brooke called 911 and we disappeared as soon as help arrived.

She hugs me hard and I relax in her arms, relieved to finally have everything out. I try to think of a way to tell her about Anna too, because it would be nice to come clean completely, but this doesn’t feel like the right time. “Thank you,” she says as she rubs my back.

Then Mom leans back and stands up. She brushes her hands on her pants and adjusts her shirt, looking around the room like the walls are closing in and she needs to escape. She gives me a peck on the cheek, tells me she loves me, and looks me right in the eye. “Please do me a favor,” she says, her voice a bit steadier. “Don’t travel for a while. I need to think about all of this, okay? For now, I just need to know you’re here and safe. Will you do that, please?”

Without waiting for an answer, she says, “I should let you rest.” She’s about to leave when she stops and turns around. “Oh, and call Brooke, please.” She glances over at my desk, like she’s expecting to find my cell phone where it usually is. “She’s worried.” The latch clicks shut behind her.

I look at the door, thinking about my mother’s request and wishing I could respect it. I look at my bed, wishing I could lie down and sleep for the next ten hours or so. I look out the window, hoping the Jeep is still in the garage and that my phone is still in the glove compartment, and wishing I could call Brooke and tell her everything. The risks are huge. But the pull to see Anna—to tell her I’m okay and let her help me piece together what happened yesterday—is stronger than all the others.

Once my backpack is out from under the bed and in place again, I stand in the center of my room and let my eyes fall shut. I’m tempted to picture the cross-country track and arrive there again, just a minute or two after I estimate I was knocked back, but I’m still worried about wiping out the bike accident. So instead, I lock my mind on yesterday, a little before midnight. I picture Anna’s room. I visualize the clock on her nightstand. I let myself go. A few seconds later, I open them.

I’m expecting to take in her familiar shelves lined with trophies and CDs, but instead, my eyes open to a view of my boring white room. I close my eyes and try again. When I open them, I’m right where I started.

This can’t be happening.