Page 60 of Maybe Some Other Time

A heavier breeze cut off whatever Thelma had wanted to say next.

As she pulled her jacket closer around her body, she thought of the last time she saw her husband.

Making toasted cheese sandwiches for our children.

It was an image many of the other women she knew would have killed to have, since they had husbands who refused to cook themselves anything but cereal and milk.

But Bill was a cook in the Army, and a lot of it was second nature to him.

“Before I married you,” he once told Thelma, “I made myself a good meal almost every night. Then you taught me what real home cooking is.”

“I do miss him,” she said when the breeze died down. “He was one of my best friends and a good father. But I also feel terribly about him, because he really did love me, you know? He was far more dedicated to our family than I was. I had an affair, for God’s sake.”

“If you could go back and marry Sandy instead, would you?”

Gretchen must have thought a lot about these questions. Yet Thelma still resented them a little, because she had not expected to be asked that right beside Sandy’s grave.

“There is no sense in that question,” she said to Gretchen.

“Not only was that impossible back then, but if I hadn’t married my husband, then I wouldn’t have had my children.

I wouldn’t have gone out one night and come forward in time.

” She managed to catch Gretchen’s gaze when clouds covered the sun above them. “You and I would have never met.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I mean…” Thelma tucked her bottom lip into her mouth and licked it while attempting to put her thoughts together.

“To be honest, Gretch, I don’t know if there’s a God.

So much in my life has rarely made sense when I try to pair it with my faith.

I used to think that things were much more rigid, you know?

That I must have been punished for my sins by being thrust into the future, to endure this kind of shock to the system, and to see how it affected my family.

You know, like Jimmy Stewart in It’s a Wonderful Life . ”

“I guess I follow…”

“But the more I experience this world and get to know the people in it, the less I think of it as a purgatory for the sinful and more as just… something that happened. Maybe it wasn’t on purpose.

Maybe it really was a fluke that I drove into that fog.

It could’ve been anyone! It could’ve been no one!

But it was me. Heck, maybe my car driving through that neighborhood prevented some kid from going outside that night.

Who knows? Better me than some sneaky eight-year-old like my Robbie getting into all sorts of trouble.

There’s this girl in my group named Jo who was a teenager in the 17 th century when she traveled to the future! How could she have been punished?”

Gretchen nodded.

“It is what it is. I’ve traveled into the future, and I can’t go back. I count my blessings. And one of those blessings is having been able to meet women like you, Gretch.”

In classic Gretchen fashion, she cleared her throat and looked away, hand scratching the back of her head. She’s so adorable. How do I help myself? All Thelma could do was laugh and swallow some of the chilly Christmas air.

“I got to meet my granddaughter as a smart young lady who is already in a healthier relationship than either her father or I was ever in. I get to enjoy the wonders of the internet! I get to eat food from all around the world! Do you know how much my ancestors would have killed to know Ethiopian food? Chinese food? I’ve had margaritas in the biggest glass you’ve ever seen, Gretchen! ”

“I know! I was there!”

“And I got to hold your hand in public. In the middle of Las Vegas.” Thelma was drawn to the headstone beneath the tree.

“Do you know how much we would have killed for that back then? It was always one of my dreams to sit with her beneath a tree just like that one and share a kiss while we picnicked on a warm summer day.” She bit her lip again.

“Bill and I did it all the time before the children were born. Nobody thought about a man and a woman doing that.”

“I wish I could have met her.”

“Who?”

Gretchen gestured to the grave. “Her. The woman who dedicated so much of her life to trying to figure out what happened to you.”

“I feel so terribly about it. Neither she nor Bill got any closure. My children can have closure, but not them.”

“I’m sorry, I still can’t get over you being Robert’s mother. That man has been a canker sore on my life since I was a kid. Even tried to stiff me on babysitting money way back when.”

“We look very silly, I know, but that’s how it is.”

Gretchen stared at her for a while, Thelma trying not to let it get to her, while Miriam undoubtedly continued to watch them from the parking lot. Becky and Emma don’t have to be tailed by the FBI. Probably because the authorities didn’t know that they knew.

“I’ve never met a woman like you before,” Gretchen said, her voice nearly lost to the cold air. “I don’t just mean a time traveler. I mean someone who makes me feel the way you do.”

The sudden heat on Thelma’s face tuned her into her blushing. “Not everyone gets to kiss a time traveler, true.”

“The whole reason for your old-fashioned style, your faith, and your hopes and dreams is because you were born in 1930.” Gretchen clicked her tongue into a thoughtful tsk.

“Crazy. But when I finally force myself to accept it, that shit like this just happens to some people, it makes a lot of sense. I totally would end up with someone from the Silent Generation.”

Thelma didn’t let herself get too excited when she heard words like “I would end up with someone” out of Gretchen’s mouth. “I don’t know what that is,” she sheepishly said, “but I like the way you say it.”

Gretchen scooted a little closer. “I’m sorry for being such an ass this past month.

I’m… well, to be honest, I’m super embarrassed about it.

It’s a big reason I haven’t apologized to you yet.

But the thought of letting Christmas go by without at least clearing the air between us hurt my head.

Although knowing I was speaking to someone who should be like, ninety, hurts. ”

“I look good for eighty-nine, don’t I?”

“You look great.” Gretchen suavely moved into her next thought.

“Do you want to come back to my place until your dinner reservation? I’ve got this great pie my aunt sent home with me yesterday.

I can’t eat it all by myself.” When Thelma didn’t immediately respond—and instead coyly looked at her as if she could do better—Gretchen continued, “Maybe we could watch a movie with some hot cocoa? There’s still a lot of Katharine Hepburn movies I haven’t seen.

” She diverted her gaze. “That woman was prolific, huh?”

Thelma finished claiming the space between them as she, too, scooted closer. “Do you know what I want from my life now that I’m here, Gretch?” she softly asked.

“What?”

“I want to do all the things I couldn’t do back then, either because of the time or because I was stolen away from my family.

I want to go back to school and get my degree.

I want to get married to a woman. And I want another kid or two, because there’s this empty hole in my heart that never got to finish raising my children.

” She bit back the part of her that still mourned that—now was not the time.

“Those are the three main things. So, the question is, Gretchen Stewart…” Their shoulders brushed together.

This was the closest she had been to another woman since Vegas, and Thelma suppressed any butterflies wreaking havoc in her chest, her stomach, and her hungry loins.

“Do you think my credits from 1949 would transfer to a four-year university?”

Gretchen collapsed against the bench, pulling Thelma down with her into a kiss that Miriam Ortiz could go home and tell her wife about.

The pie wasn’t as good as one of Thelma’s, but something told her that Gretchen’s aunt used subpar pumpkin.

Times have changed, haven’t they, Betty Crocker?

Thelma was content to eat it with whipped cream straight out of a can, though, because it was with Gretchen, in her house, in a world where nobody cared if they saw them kissing at home.

Because there was a lot of kissing to catch up on.

“Hey!” Gretchen lurched back as Thelma left a dollop of canned whipped cream on her nose. “You’re a handful, aren’t you?”

“You tell me, Ms. Stewart. You’re the one here who’s had her hands all over me before.”

Just for that, Gretchen grabbed her at the kitchen table, sliding a kiss right on her neck as Thelma put the fork in her mouth, laughing and trying not to stab herself on the tongue.

Although they had left the cemetery at the same time, they had to take their separate cars, and Thelma arrived thirty minutes later because she stopped by the only grocery store still open on Christmas and picked up a few things to make her “world-famous” snickerdoodles.

They baked in Gretchen’s oven now as they fought to keep their hands from roaming all over one another, letting bygones be bygones now that the shock was gone from Gretchen’s system.

Yet when their mouths weren’t occupied with pie, cookies, or tonguing, they went over whatever questions the one had for the other.

“So you didn’t stay in the ‘50s long enough to see Kennedy elected?”

“No. Barely heard of him, honestly. That family sounds quite tragic, though. By the way, did you know that there are now like ten billion people on this planet?”

“I don’t think it’s quite that many yet, but we’re working on it. So, how much were groceries in one week?”

“About twenty dollars. Crazy that you pay that for a whole meal in a regular restaurant now! Do you know how two women could have a baby now?”

“Uh, you either use a donor or do something like IVF.”

“What do you mean by a donor?”