Abby scowled at him. “I don’t write time-travel. Sci-fi is stupid.”
“What about the thing with the dying, and the kid…?”
Jesse trailed off. He felt nauseous again, like what happened outside, but more of an aftershock than a wave—and with it, another déja vu ‒ like memory of something he’d never done. Handing Abby a bundle, tight and warm. It smelled of hospital sheets and powder, and it was somehow the most important thing in the world.
Sierra.For the mountains. And Elizabeth. For Mom.
“Jesse, what are you talking about?” Another clump of celery went into the bowl. “God. You’re so weird.”
Jesse put the remaining half of the carrot back on the plate. His appetite was gone.
Abby(II.)
Maybe youcan figure out how to fix me.
Dr. Abigail Walker rode the shuttle straight from the hospital to her offices at Phalynx Corp. Her com buzzed in her pocket, unanswered. At home, Abby’s partner, Michael, would have just learned of Jesse’s death.
She inhaled a cigarette as she jogged between the platform and the security terminal. Pausing to deposit the stub in a vacuum slot, Abby caught a glimpse of herself in the vid-feed. Red-eyed, haggard. She’d been keeping a vigil for weeks, fussing over the tubes and monitors, the bioplastic cap sewn over the missing parts of Jesse’s brain and skull. All for nothing—she couldn’t save him. He’d told her that, his eyes fixed over her shoulder, indifferent, his body a shrug with every induced breath. In the end, the machines cried out for him, the nurses swarmed like pink vultures on his blanketed bones, but it was too late. Her brother was gone long before he became a corpse. He was gone even before he put the gun to his head, that day on the roof of the rehab clinic.
Where did it start? How far back?
All down the long white corridor to her suite, Abby rewound history in her head, looking for a way in. When, she wondered. Not if—she was reasonably sure she could do it, even if it meant subverting the goodwill of her employer. She’d been playing with the idea for years, even went so far as to submit a research proposal. It’d been tabled for ethical concerns—the long-term effects of temporal displacement on cellular evolution had yet to be determined. But Abby had the resources. She had a treasure-trove of data in her lab and a strand of her own thirteen-year-old hair. (She’d tossed the New Moon t-shirt in a box just after the Thanksgiving that Jesse announced he was dropping out of college. For whatever reason Mom had saved it, airtight in a bin in the attic, unwittingly preserving that precious bit of DNA).
Abby swiped her ID card, entered her office, and brought her terminal to life. A photo at her work station caught her eye—Jesse and their mother at the military hospital in Sacramento, where Sierra was born.
Even then, holding his infant daughter, Jesse hadn’t been all right. Too thin. A certain look in his eyes. Or was that only hindsight?
On the day of his suicide, Jesse had laughed at her. You’re the genius, Abby, he’d said. All those degrees. Maybe you can figure out how to fix me.
And maybe she could. She could go back. As to whether or not she should… she’d figure that out when she got there.
The family photograph zeroed out. Grabbing a data key and her ID, Abby headed for the lab.
Sierra
The little girl had been making birds. Graceful, sweeping shapes that disappeared back into gravy almost as fast as she could carve them with her spoon.
The other children ate their dinners, happy, crammed in around Mama Lucy’s glass coffee table. There were cartoons on the big screen. Later, everyone would get a slice of pumpkin pie.
The little girl didn’t care about pie. Also she didn’t like this cartoon, or this house, and Mama Lucy was not her mama. Her mama went to sleep with a needle in her arm and never woke up.
There was a knock at the door and Mama Lucy swished through the family room to answer it. The girl could see the front hall from where she was sitting. She recognized Miss Millie, the lady who had taken her from her house and brought her here. Miss Millie saw her looking and smiled. Mama Lucy smiled too, the way she only did when other grownups came over.
The third lady did not smile. She was tall and blonde, with a face the little girl thought she should know but couldn’t think why. Then she realized it was not unlike her own. The little girl felt her heart begin to flutter like birds’ wings inside her chest.
“Hi, sweetie.” Miss Millie came over to the coffee table. She put her hands on her knees and bent closer, her voice quiet, though everyone in the room was listening. The other kids kept their eyes on the cartoons, forks going up and down into mouths. They were watching with their ears.
“Could you come into the sitting room for just a little bit? You’ll be back in time for dessert,” she added, as if this mattered. The little girl was already leaving her spoon in the gummy mashed potatoes and rising to her feet.
They led her into the tiny room off the front hall where Miss Lucy kept the dressy dolls no one was allowed to touch. They sat her on the checkered sofa. The blonde lady sat on the chair. Miss Millie and Mama Lucy went into the kitchen for tea.
The lady smelled like cigarettes. Her fingers twitched like she needed one real bad, like the little girl’s mother’s used to do. “I’m Abigail,” she said.
“I’m Sierra. Sierra Elizabeth.”
“Yes, I know. I’m your aunt.”
Sierra was about to say that couldn’t be right—her mother didn’t have any brothers or sisters. Then she closed her mouth, not wanting to seem stupid. She’d had a father, once, too.
“Do you remember your dad?”
Sierra shook her head. “Miss Lucy says he died, too.”
“Yes.” After a while she added, “Sierra…. That’s the reason I’m here. I’m your closest relative now. If you want… you can come live with me.”
Sierra picked up one of the dolls from the basket on the floor and began to tug its auburn hair.
“When did my dad die?”
“Friday.”
Friday? “Why didn’t he come before?” Sierra asked, trying hard to sound like she didn’t really care about the answer. She’d been living with Mama Lucy for seven months.
“He would have if he could. He was sick.”
“My mom said he was a loser junkie.”
The lady—Abigail—could have said the same thing about Sierra’s mom. It would have been true. But she didn’t. Sierra appreciated that.
