Peter tried to talk to his father about his conviction that he was on a return trip from the year 2020. Howard Wyatt took a can-do, Power of Positive Thinking approach to the discussions. His attitude was, “It’s great that we can talk this through, Pete. You have a brilliant mind, and whether at the end of this process we mutually come to the conclusion that (a) you’ve created an entire world in your imagination or (b) that you have indeed somehow been transported here from the future, we’ll arrive at that agreement through a logical analysis of the facts. Wherever they lead.”
Peter knew his father. The judge did not consider for one moment that his son had upended the laws of physics and rewound his consciousness across fifty years, but he was going to play the role of impartial judge while working to reverse-engineer the verdict he wanted to achieve.
Peter’s mother gave every indication of being open to persuasion. “Let me ask you something, Peter,” she said to him in the kitchen one evening when his father was in the library reviewing petitions. “Why do you define what’s happened to you as your being an old man who’s traveled backward in time?”
“Well, Mom,” Peter said while putting away the dinner plates, “because as far as I can tell, I’m an old man who’s traveled back in time.”
His mother shook her head. “You misunderstand me. Let’s accept that what you believe you’ve experienced is true. Why not define it this way: You’re a fifteen-year-old boy who’s somehow had a vision of his entire future life. You haven’t come back, you’ve experienced a premonition.”
Peter tossed a can of Bosco in the trash. He said, “What’s the difference?”
“The difference is how you think of yourself. It seems to me that if you insist on an identity as a displaced sixty-five-year-old, as a time traveler marooned in a past century, you will never be able to adjust and move forward with your life.”
“I’m not going to give up on going home to my wife and children.”
“I’m not suggesting that. I’m only saying that if you accept yourself as Peter Wyatt, born in 1955, fifteen years old in 1970, and destined to live well into the next century, you can accept all this foreknowledge as a sort of gift. A gift of prophecy, if you like.”
Peter leaned against the sink. He was silent, and so was his mother.
He finally said, “I appreciate what you’re saying, Mom. And maybe you’re right, maybe that is a positive way to think about all this. I’m not an old man who’s come back but a young man who’s seen the future. But my being here has already changed things. And thinking that way doesn’t alter the fact that I have to return to Janice and our children.”
“Don’t you see, Peter?” his mother said. “You are returning to them. You’re returning to them every day. It’s just that it’s going to take you a lifetime to make that journey. You shouldn’t wish any of that time away.”
That stopped Peter cold. What penalty would fate impose on a man who was offered a whole extra life and spurned it? What new hole was he digging for himself?
Neither of Peter’s parents asked him if they would be alive in 2020, which was statistically unlikely. The father didn’t ask because he believed it was all imaginary, and the mother didn’t ask because she knew it would make Peter uncomfortable, and anyway, that he didn’t mention them when he talked about his future life suggested the answer. She never expected to live to be ninety-eight years old.
When he found himself alone with his father, Peter tried to remember things he’d wondered about later in life and wanted to ask him. Mostly it was questions about the Wyatt family’s background, which had become the subject of Thanksgiving Day speculation with his sisters after the judge had died.
Were they actually descended from the Pilgrims? Had their great-grandfather really fought at Gettysburg, and with what company? Howard was delighted that Peter was such a good audience for the family history. It was the first time any of the kids had ever cared. He even opened up about his service in the South Pacific during World War II.
They were driving home with an order of Chinese food when Peter asked him, “Dad, had you already been married before you met Mom?”
The car accelerated and the judge said, “Who told you that?”
“When I was about fifty, I got a tax bill on some property in New Hampshire I’d never heard of. I called and said it was a mistake, but the town clerk had your name and birthdate on a plot of land in the White Mountains. He said you had purchased it in 1946. I drove up there. The land was empty, just woods, but it was adjacent to a house and property that had been the home of a Mrs. Mary Appleby. I went to the town hall and checked the records. The late Mrs. Appleby had been born Mary Sotto, in Bethlehem, Rhode Island, and before she married Mr. Appleby—also deceased—she had apparently been briefly married to Howard Wyatt of Rhode Island, with whom she’d bought the house in New Hampshire. Needless to say, I was curious.”
His father’s face was rigid. He squeezed the steering wheel.
“Who told you about this, Peter?”
“I told you—I got a letter…”
“You got a letter in the future. Right. And you couldn’t ask me because I was already dead? What year did all this happen?”
“A long time from now, Dad.”
Howard Wyatt turned his car into the driveway of a shingled, three-story house, put it in park, and turned and faced his son.
“I need to know how you heard about this.”
“Dad, I told you…”
“Peter—we’re all with you during this tough time, but I need you to search your memory and try to remember how you really heard about this.”
“It’s not going to change, Dad. So, you were married to this woman…”
“No I was not. It was annulled. Legally, we were never married.”
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
His father stared at him. “How old are you right now?”
“You want me to say it?”
“In confidence between father and son, with God as our only witness—how old are you?”
“I’m sorry, Dad. I’m sixty-five. I heard about this around the year 2005.”
“Did you tell your mother? Your sisters?”
“I didn’t tell anyone. I settled the taxes and sold the lot, and that was the end of it.”
Peter didn’t know if the anguish in his father’s face came from the hidden history coming to light or from believing his son’s madness was now going to infect the family. Judge Wyatt was not a man used to making confessions. It went against his Yankee rectitude.
“Mary Sotto was a girl I knew before the war. She was a nice girl from a bad neighborhood. Her father was a drunk who would disappear on long benders, for weeks at a time. Her mother was, frankly, a tramp. When I got out of the service I saw Mary a couple of times. I guess you could say we dated. It wasn’t serious. Anyway, she…” He could barely force out the words. “She got in trouble. She came to me. She was worried her father would beat her up, or her mother would force her to get a coat-hanger abortion. She had relatives in New Hampshire who would take her in, but only if she had a marriage certificate. The baby had to be”—he smiled coldly—“made legitimate.”
“So you married her?”
“We never lived together. I went to the New Hampshire town hall with her and her aunt and her grandmother and we were married by a justice of the peace, had a nice lunch at a local restaurant that the grandmother paid for, and I kissed her on the cheek and took the train back to Rhode Island. A few months later she sent me photos of the baby, a little girl. Thirty days after that we filed for an annulment. I never saw Mary again.”
Peter hesitated before asking, “Is there a chance the daughter was yours?”
His father said, “Very, very unlikely. Apparently Charlie Appleby was in the wings the whole time. He worked in the printworks, same sort as her father. A bum. Bernie Sherman knew him over there. Bernie told me later that Charlie and Mary conspired to set me up. They figured my family had money and would pay to avoid a scandal. Bernie said she never expected me to agree to marry her. I guess I was a sucker.”
“The property in New Hampshire?”
“I agreed to put a down payment on a little place on the GI Bill to help set her up. Her family took over the debt after the annulment. Charlie Appleby moved right in.” The judge chuckled. “Actually, he was probably there already. He was probably waiting until I got on the train to come out from behind a hedge. I didn’t remember that the land behind it was a separate lot. Mary must have kept paying the taxes on it until she died.” He swallowed. “And then they came looking for me and found my son. You must have thought your old man was a real phony.”
“No, Dad, not at all. I just figured it was something that happened when you were young that was nobody’s business. I’m glad I had a chance to ask you.”
“Now you know I was a goddamn fool.”
“I know what I knew already. You were a man who always did the noble thing.”
A man carrying a rake appeared from behind the house and walked toward them. Howard Wyatt waved at him vaguely and backed the car into the road.
“Do you suppose this is why you came back in time, Peter?” Howard asked with a nervous smile as they drove away. “To solve the mystery of your old man’s hidden wife?”
“Well,” Peter told him, “if I’m gone when you wake up tomorrow, you’ll know that was it.”
They drove for a while before Howard said, “You were fifty when you learned about Mary Appleby?”
“More or less.”
“I’m fifty this year, you know. In September.”
“Fifty is a good age, Dad. You’re secure and settled but still young enough to explore, to travel, to learn new things. I took up golf when I was fifty. Maybe we can play sometime.”
Howard nodded, lost in thought.
When they got home with the Chinese food, his father said to Peter in a soft voice, “Don’t mention any of this to your mother.”