“No?”
“Nah.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. What do you want me to say? I’m not a father.”
“But if you were.”
“But I’m not. And people don’t get do-overs. This is stupid.”
“But say you could.”
“How?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“What. A time machine? Aliens? A magical doorway?” He was teasing, but Abby wasn’t smiling.
“Damn it, Jesse, how is not the point.”
“Is there something about my future that I should know?”
The cigarette was burning to ash between Abby’s fingers. Jesse took it from her, smoked it down to the filter, and crushed it out.
“If I had a kid,” he continued, “… even if I could make it so they never existed, somewhere they would have existed. Right? On some… level? Or whatever? Well… you know what Mom always says. Once you have a kid, your life isn’t just yours anymore.”
He’d been looking at the side of the house. When he looked back, Abby was staring at him. It was getting creepy. “What?”
“So…” Abby whispered. “No?”
Jesse shrugged. “It just wouldn’t be right. Right?”
Abby’s eyes filled with tears, sparkling like snow-dust before cascading down her cheeks. In the next moment, she was hugging him. Jesse’s hands went awkwardly to her back. He hadn’t held her since she was small enough to carry.
“Hey, it… s’ok. What’s wrong?”
“I’m sorry, Jesse, I’m not a genius. I kind of figured you’d say that. But I hoped... I don’t know. I love you.”
“I… love you, too?”
Abby disentangled herself and swiped at her runny nose. “I gotta go.”
“Okay.”
She jumped off the swing and looked at him. She looked way older than she should.
Then, for just a moment, Jesse saw Abby standing on a ridge over a forested valley. She wore hiking gear and a cowgirl hat over short blonde hair, and that was weird. He’d never been hiking with Abby.
The wind kicked up, stronger this time. Abby bristled, her ponytail (black, not blonde) striving to break free from her head.
“It’ll pass,” she said. “It’s just the distortion.”
“What?”
“You won’t remember this part, anyway, but Jess... I only had a few minutes. I didn’t know what else to do.” She looked like she was about to start crying again, but she turned away.
Jesse watched her crunch back to the house. He felt dizzy and sick, like he used to get from reading comic books on long car trips. His head was full of Abby images—Abby in her car seat, sleeping slack-jawed and drooling. Abby in a cap and gown. Abby a grown woman on a mountain top, on a rooftop, in a white room. Abby yelling, crying, staring down at him while the world spiraled, shuttered, faded.
And his own voice, saying things he’d never said.
You’re the genius, Abby. All those degrees. Maybe youcan figure out how to fix me.
Jesse turned and spat a bad taste from his mouth into the husks of his mother’s tiger lilies. The weed was probably laced with something. Fuck.
He hoped Abby would be all right.
He dropped his coat in the hall so Mom wouldn’t smell it on him. He should have said something to Abby, too, told her to put on some perfume or something, but when he walked into the kitchen she was there with Mom already. The two of them stood at the counter in matching aprons, smothered in the aroma of roasting turkey and diced onions. They glanced at him before turning back to their work, twin gestures of feminine dismissal.
Jesse plucked a carrot stick from the vegetable platter and bit it in half. “So what’s your story about, Abs?”
“What story?”
“The one you’re writing.”
Abby scooped a handful of cut celery into the big metal bowl. “Well, I’m thinking about this one about a girl who can change into either a vampire or a werewolf, at, like, will? ‘Cuz her parents were one of each. And she falls in love with this guy who’s a prince from this rival cadre, but she doesn’t know it. But I haven’t started writing it yet.”
“What about the time-travel thing?”
