Mrs. McIntyre slams the door of her bright red Prius hard. She’s wearing one of those Russian-style faux-fur hats that you see in old movies with a matching infinity scarf. The blacks and reds of her outfit play well off her lipstick and the slight rosiness of her cheeks.
“Are you going to stand out here and get frostbite, or are you going to get in the car?”
Claire and I stand in a silent stare down. What is she doing here? How did she find me?
“Let’s go, Andre. That isn’t a request,” she says softly, subtext heavy in her voice. She’s not demanding; she’s asking, pleading. This isn’t the same Claire McIntyre I’ve known.
And that scares me.
I study her eyes and look over in the general direction that I saw Dave and his friends walk. I have less than two minutes left. Two minutes to stop him from getting in that car. Two minutes to—
“I’m sure you have a lot of questions about why I’m here,” she says.
“Along with other things, yes, that would be a fair statement.”
“As do I. I’ll explain everything to you, but you have got to get in the car,” she urges. “Andre, if he sees you—let alone me? Do you know what that would do to time? I’m risking a great deal to save you from your own mistake.”
“I made a choice, a promise,” I insist. “I can’t just—”
“To Blake? Did he put you up to this?”
“To myself.”
“Those are the best promises, but they can be easily broken when logic comes into play. I, for all intents and purposes, am logic.” She gestures to her car again, this time with a flourish of her hand. “Please,” she whispers.
“If I don’t, what are you going to do?” I ask. “If I go and stop Dave…”
“Two things could happen: one, you succeed and change history in a way that cannot be fixed, which violates—”
“Rule number three.”
“Or two, the more likely outcome, I’ll go back in time and stop you from stopping him.”
“And you know I’ll do the same.”
She smiles, the type of grin where only a corner of her mouth lifts.
“Then we’ll just keep going back and forth until one of us slips up and creates a paradox that has bigger ramifications than either of us can resolve,” she concedes. “And I surely don’t want that. And something tells me you don’t want that either, Andre. And that you’re smart enough to know that there really is no other choice for you here.”
One minute left.
“Fine,” I concede. I circle around her car and slip into the passenger’s seat, closing the door behind me. The warmth of the leather seat sends a shiver up my spine, and the blast of dry, hot air relaxes my joints.
Claire follows, and before she even has time to put her seat belt on, I speak.
“What are you doing here?”
She pulls off her gloves, finger by finger, until the thirty remaining seconds pass. We watch as Dave’s car peels out of the parking lot and he drives toward us. My breath hitches as he passes us, bobbing his head to some music, tapping his fingers against the steering wheel. He looks…happy. Like that meeting, whatever it was, replenished some well that he had been yearning to fill.
And he has no idea what’s about to happen. No idea that in a mile he’s going to die. Just like that.
“You and I aren’t that different, Andre,” she finally whispers, forcing the words out. “We both want to do the right thing. We’re both type A people. We both do what we believe is best, consequences be damned.” She turns to me, and her eyes are slightly red. Tears glisten at the edges of her eyes. But they don’t fall. “The difference is, I’ve learned with age that some things cannot be changed. Some things have to happen. And this is one of them. Blake really didn’t put you up to this?”
“No. I promise. I think, if I’d told him, he would’ve been against this as adamantly as you are. He isn’t as dense or contrarian as you think he is. I’m doing this because I think it’s the right thing to do. I don’t think Dave should die. And I don’t think this is the life I was supposed to lead. I’m doing this for a lot of reasons, but they are all my own. And, honestly, I can’t understand why you wouldn’t do this. How are you okay with letting your son die?” I blurt it out before I can stop it. “You’re a time traveler. You can stop things like this. Fuck the rules.”
I know I’ve spoken out of turn by the way she pauses and closes her eyes. I can hear her counting to ten in her head, even if I can’t actually hear it. Mom does the same thing when she’s angry and holding it back.
“No, Andre. I can’t,” she finally says when she opens her eyes.
“You can’t or you won’t?”
“I’m here because I come here every day,” she says, her voice breaking just slightly. “I come here to watch my son’s last moments. To see him happy. To know that instead of coming straight home from the store, where I’d sent him to pick up eggs, he swung by Jameson’s to get a quick drink with friends. To know that I called him, yelled at him, and guilted him into coming home, and because I did, because he peeled out of the parking lot at that exact second to get home to me, he died.”
She takes a breath, covering her mouth with her hand. I hear her whimper and choke it back. I feel the tightness in my chest winding.
“But I can’t change it, Andre. That’s one thing I cannot do. You’re right, fuck the rules. I can’t change it because that’s my code of conduct. Because those are the lines I live by and will not cross. Because if we do not have lines, Andre, with all this power that we have, what will we become? We cannot, even with this power, choose to change things just because we don’t want to feel pain.”
“But why can’t we?” I argue. “There is a line between abusing power and using it to make the world better, Mrs. McIntyre. You’re smart enough to know when not to cross that line.”
She chuckles, but it’s one of those chuckles that is filled with sadness instead of comedy.
“Stronger men and women than me have thought that they could do exactly what you’re suggesting, Andre. And every time, they realize that they have done more harm than good. And it breaks them.”
She turns in her seat to face me and touches my shoulder, forcing me to look at her.
“It will break you too. You will make one change and find two other things that you need to change. You’ll change those two, and then find four more. You’ll never be happy. You’ll never create the world you want, and before long, the world you now reside in will become so different, so horrific, that you will do anything in your power to end it.
“But, more importantly, just because we have won the genetic lottery, doesn’t mean that we get to be immune from heartbreak. That’s what makes us human, Andre. And when you have a power that exists outside the law, feeling human is the only way you remind yourself that you are human.”
Another group of college students comes out of Jameson’s. Police cars speed by. The group looks up, but they continue on with their conversation, heading to their cars.
She sighs, leaning back in her seat for the first time. “Did you consider what would happen to you if you went through with this? To your liver?”
“I’m willing to take that chance.”
“You may be, but what about everyone else? The eight billion other people in the world? Even assuming that David’s death didn’t have bigger ramifications on the global stage,” she reminds me gently but firmly. “You can’t just assume that you can change one thing and that’s the only thing that will change. That’s rarely what happens when you meddle with time. It’s why we don’t.”
An ambulance speeds by.
“I’m having tea now,” she says in an almost dreamy tone. “When David dies. Blake is upstairs playing that stupid Call of Duty game. My husband, he’s at work… God bless him. He’s going to be the last to find out, and I’m going to have to tell him.”
We sit in silence for what feels like ten minutes, neither of us sure what to say.
“Ask the question that you want to ask, Andre,” she urges.
“I don’t…”
She holds her hand up, opens a compact mirror with her free hand, and stares into it while dabbing at her eyes. “Take a moment and think. What’s the question you want to ask more than anything. Something you’ve been wondering for the past month? Something I didn’t fully answer before? Even if you haven’t thought it yet, not consciously at least, you know what it is.”
I have no idea what she’s talking about. My mind is filled with other things. Dread at having to face Blake again, anger at myself for thinking this would actually work. Pain. Hurt. Fear. All of those things. But a question? What could she…
And then it clicks.
“Why did you pick me?”
She smiles, closing the mirror with a loud click. “There we go,” she muses. “Finally, you ask.”
Claire turns to me in her seat. The belt slides against her chest and pulls tight with a loud click. She reaches over, placing her hand over my own, and gives me a firm yet soft squeeze.
“I put a lot of pressure on you,” she says. “Throwing you into my world and not preparing you. Expecting you to continue our family line. I didn’t even ask if you want to—have children, I mean. And I don’t need to know. That’s not a weight I should put on anyone, not my own children and certainly not you. I take full responsibility for that. For you being here. For not…focusing enough on you.”
“And on Blake,” I remind her. “He’s the one who’s suffering. He…feels lost without Dave. His older brother was his guide, no matter how put together he seems.” I hesitate, but she squeezes my hand again, a silent confirmation that I should keep going. “He told me all of this because he felt like he couldn’t come to you,” I say quickly, so I can’t take it back. “And there’s a reason for that.”
“Because I’m prioritizing my own guilt and feelings over my son?” she asks. “Trying, including by bringing you into our family, to keep a piece of David going?”
I hesitate. “Is that a question or…”
“I already know the answer.” She smiles, gently moving her hand to my cheek and squeezing it. “I think about that every day. We all deal with grief differently, Andre. I watch my son’s last moments over and over again, trying to find a way to keep his memory living on—figuratively and literally. My husband buries himself in his work, in the languages of the past, to distance himself from time travel, and in turn, distance himself from David’s memory. And Blake? Blake is trying to fill the hole that his brother left in our family, without being swallowed up by the weight of his memory, and he doesn’t even know that, in doing so, he’s tearing himself apart.”
“So why don’t you do something about it?” I ask. “I don’t mean that in a bad way.”
She chuckles again, softly. “No, of course not. You mean it in the most honest way possible.”
She falls silent, sitting back and looking out the window, as if the answer is out there. It’s starting to snow, just a bit. Flurries dance in the air, twirling a beautiful ballet as they descend from the heavens.
“I suppose it’s because I can control this,” she says, gesturing around her. “I know how this story ends. I know what it’ll feel like, and I know that, when I want it to, the feeling can be over.
“I cannot control how Blake feels. I can’t fix that. I can’t remove his pain. You tried to. That’s not only brave, but also—”
“Stupid?”
“Kind,” she says gently. “It’s a kindness. Knowing what you’d sacrifice? You only do that for someone you care for. Someone you love.”
“I don’t know about that,” I scoff.
Claire arches a brow. “Really, now? You went through all of this because, what? You’re a good person? Come on now, Andre. That’s admirable, but foolish. Everyone has some selfishness in them. What you tried to do goes against the rules of human self-preservation. And the only reason humans go against that is because of love.
“He needs someone, Andre. For the longest time, I thought it was me. I thought I could fix everything if I could just…give him space. David was like that. He figured things out on his own, so I assumed that Blake would follow in his footsteps, given the chance. I was wrong.”
“I don’t…think that’s what he wants or needs, though,” I say. “I don’t think he’s looking for you, or anyone, to fix things or try to replace his brother or anything. I think he just wants to feel like there’s someone who has his back.”
“Someone who will put him first?”
“Exactly.”
The quiet settles once more, but it’s heavy with a tenseness and tenderness I’ve never felt. Should I squeeze her shoulder? Let her sit and absorb what I said? I don’t turn to face her; that seems wrong, like I’m expecting too much from her.
Eventually, Claire sighs. “I don’t know how to do that,” she whispers. It seems like it’s both terrifying and cathartic for her to admit that. “I don’t know how to be that for him. But you obviously do. Case in point: this whole experiment. That’s why I wanted him to teach you time traveling, not me. I thought that being close to his brother might give him, in some way, some closure. Help him work through his feelings. Put his anger and hurt to good use.”
There’s a momentary pause as Claire wrings her hands together.
“I’ve failed at being his mother, haven’t I?”
I shrug. “That’s the good thing about being a time traveler, isn’t it? We get do-overs.”
She smiles, and for the first time, she lets the tears fall down her face. I don’t move to comfort her. I just sit there, we both do, in the moment, listening to the faint sounds of the world outside and silently agreeing to never come back here again.