Page 8 of Maybe Some Other Time

“Come on.” Wilcox patted Robbie’s shoulder. “There’s a lot to go over. You two can catch up later.”

As for Thelma, who sat back down on the couch with her face in her hands, there was no getting used to this again. She had faced her aged son, met her granddaughter, and encountered irrefutable proof that this was now her life.

Megan’s head remained on a swivel between her father and grandmother.

“Can I stay here?” she asked Agent Ortiz. “Can I talk to her?”

Miriam glanced at Thelma, who slowly nodded.

They sat together on the couch. Megan kept her hands to herself, but she seemed the type of touchy girl who had to actively hold back her desire to prove to her five senses that her grandmother was real.

“Sorry about my dad,” she said. “You’ve gotta understand… my whole life, I was told you were missing. Probably dead.”

Thelma swallowed.

“Now, here you are. Looking just like your pictures. Like you haven’t aged a day at all.”

“Well, that’s where you’re wrong.” Thelma opened her purse and withdrew one of her candies she kept for her breath, or when an oral fixation got the best of her in public. “I have aged a day.” She handed Megan the candy. “One whole day.”

Megan slowly opened her hand. The candy landed on her palm. “What’s this?”

“Something grandmas do. They give their grandchildren candy.” Thelma looked away. “My daughter… your Aunt Debbie. She loved them.”

Nobody had told her what happened to Debbie. She was afraid to ask.

“Aunt Debbie’s still alive, you know.”

Thelma’s head swerved back around. “She is?”

Miriam kept one eye on Megan as she said, “Yeah, but she’s sick. Been sick for a long time. She lives in a home.”

Something sank in Thelma’s stomach. Perhaps it was the acknowledgment that she had known, this whole time, that something had happened to one of her children. “A home?”

“You know. For old people.”

“Oh… but she’s younger than your father. She would only be sixty-five.”

“Doesn’t stop dementia.”

“De… dementia…”

Thelma had to sit with that. All while her granddaughter awkwardly unwrapped the candy and made a sour face when she tasted it—as if Thelma hadn’t bought it fresh a week ago.

Perhaps, unlike her, it had aged sixty years overnight.

Agent Ortiz showed Thelma outside when the sunset was about to begin.

It was Thelma’s first time outside since being apprehended at her car. She didn’t know what to expect. Not in the middle of the city, which had been rough in the 1950s. Was it still a place she’d rather not be?

But there was a park across the street from the FBI building, and Miriam received permission to take Thelma there for some fresh air before they returned to her hotel room.

She closed off her perception to the way modern cars looked, but she couldn’t drown out the cacophonous sounds of their motors.

Nor could she hold her breath against the fumes infiltrating her lungs as she and Miriam crossed at the light.

The agent was always a few steps ahead, but her attention was on Thelma, who could walk into traffic at any moment.

She didn’t want to. She was dedicated to remaining steadfast.

The park boasted a few walking paths, some benches, and a fountain that sprang water straight from the ground.

Someone’s dog ran through the next burst of water that was perfectly timed with a few birds flying by overhead.

When Thelma turned her head back toward the couple with the dog, she noted the plain T-shirt and baggy shorts of the man.

He was so ridiculously casual that Thelma wondered when she last saw a man’s bare legs that weren’t her husband’s.

“It’s been a crazy day, huh?” Miriam asked as they sat on a bench far away from others.

Thelma couldn’t respond at first. She was focused on the orange of the sky and the warm breeze that felt good against her cheeks.

“I don’t think ‘crazy’ quite covers it, Miriam.

My husband is dead.” She had found out earlier.

Died of a heart attack in 1982. He wasn’t even sixty.

“My daughter has dementia. My son… it’s like he’s looking at a ghost. Is that how these ‘reunions’ usually go? ”

“I’ve only seen a few, but… yeah. It’s a lot for people to take in.

” Miriam swung her arm back behind the bench, her left hand lingering in her lap.

It wasn’t the first time Thelma noticed a wedding ring on her finger.

A married woman working a job like this.

How about that? Those things piqued her interest more than the bright, loud cars and the glass buildings in the distance.

“Before I started this gig, I had no idea that time travel was a thing. Never mind that we had known about it for over a hundred years, or that it comes from that thick fog we sometimes see. Now we’ve got it down to a science.

We see the fog forming, and we start shutting the area down under the guise of road safety, all because we know some time travelers might come through.

Then the hunt for their identity, their loved ones, begins.

Yours is one of the fastest I’ve seen. You’re lucky that your kids never moved away from LA. ”

“Suppose so. Hopefully, my Robbie comes around. At least my granddaughter seems… nice. Very kind and helpful.” Yes, those were two nice things she could say about the gregarious Megan, whose stomach hung out of her shirt and whose arm sported a tattoo, of all things.

They were quiet for a moment. Thelma couldn’t stop staring at Miriam’s hand.

“Why don’t we go back to my hotel room so you can go home to your family?” She gestured to Miriam’s ring. “Your husband must be waiting. Do you have children?”

“Ah… no kids. It’s really not a big deal. My w—I mean, my spouse knows what kind of hours I keep. It’s why they work third shift.”

Thelma’s perceptive ears had picked up what Miriam was about to say. “Your… wife?”

The woman blushed. “Yeah. Same-sex marriage is a thing now. You’ll find out about that in your history classes.”

“I see.” She considered that for a moment. “I see. ”

“Yeah, so, um…”

“A wife. How about that?” Thelma chuckled. “That was unheard of to me two days ago. Yet here I am. Next to a woman with a wife.”

“Uh…”

“I wonder if Sandy ever got herself a wife?”

“Who’s Sandy? Your sister?”

Thelma stared off into the distance, remembering her oldest friend’s gentle touch, her happy kisses, and her romantic way with words.

I wonder if she’s still alive. Would it be possible to find her?

To say how much she missed her? To opine that they couldn’t have had one more afternoon together?

Even if she’s alive… she would be in her late eighties.

Sandy hoped she would become the bigshot writer she always dreamed of being.

“She was the maid of honor at my wedding.” Thelma still wore her wedding ring, but she thought of Sandy, naked, in a marital bed that belonged to someone else while the husband was away at work. “She was important to me.”

“Oh, I see.”

“Can I tell you a secret, Miriam? Something that I’ve always wanted to get off my chest?”

“Sure thing.”

Thelma focused on the purple clouds appearing on the skyline. They reminded her of the color of Sandy’s favorite winter sweater, which “garishly” mismatched her orange and brown wardrobe.

“I was in love with her. But it wasn’t meant to be.”

Miriam continued to stare at Thelma from the corner of her eye; Thelma continued to gaze at the hazy sunset.

“Did she know?”

Thelma smiled, sighing with her whole chest. “Of course. I told her as much a few hours before I ended up here.” The breeze picked up, bringing with it the scent of pavement and poppies. “She knew how it was. We all did.”

Miriam opened her mouth.

“Maybe things could have been different…” Thelma interrupted. “If we could have been married.”

She wouldn’t have had her children, though. But she also wouldn’t have run out at seven in the evening, only to drive far into the future.

I wouldn’t have abandoned my children to whatever fate God saw fit for them.

She wondered if Robbie and Debbie had been steadfast in their adversity.