He knows why.But they both needed her to say it out loud, to give life to the ghost that continued to haunt the space between them.
“Because I was having an affair, and spending extra time with her was more important to me. I spent the whole day at home.”
That obnoxiously loud clock ticked in the kitchen, but it couldn’t drown out the pain throbbing inside Thelma’s head.Holding back tears takes more strength these days.Cryingwouldn’t do her any good right now. She must be resolved. Strong.Steadfast.
The veneer cracked when she allowed the gravity of her words to crush her.
“It’s my fault.” She attempted to shield the ugly tears shaking her to her core, but every sob she swallowed returned as a bellowing hiccup that rocked the couch. “It’s my fault!” Her other hand covered her eyes while her lips quivered and her thighs clenched together, as if to tell all catastrophic energy topiss off.
Robbie sat still beside her.
“If I hadn’t been soselfish…” Thelma flung herself back against the couch, drinking her own tears and jamming her thumbs against her bottom lip. “If I hadn’t been the opposite of what my family needed…” Her eyes squeezed shut. It didn’t help. “I wouldn’t have had to leave that night. I would have stayed home and taken care of you!”
She expected him to agree with her, to really give his mother the sulfuric words she deserved to inhale. But all Robbie did was sit there, slumped.
Defeated.
“It’s my fault,” he said between his mother’s spasming sobs. “I shouldn’t have asked for what we didn’t have.”
“What are you talking about?” Thelma spat through salty tears drowning her lips.
He swung around, looming over his mother with those blueish-gray eyes. “At church, the Sunday school teacher said that you can’t just ask God for whatever you want. You have to show the people around you that you’re working for it, too. God only provides to those who are capable of receiving his gifts, right? So, I shouldn’t have asked for what we didn’t have!”
He even remembers the Sunday school lesson the weekend before I left?Was that whole week burned into Robbie’s memories?
“We’re talking about milk, Robbie. We’re talking about you being alittle boy.”
“I hate the stuff. I never drank it again.”
Thelma scraped herself off the couch. They still didn’t touch, but for the first time since arriving in this time, she sensed a bit of that wall crumbling between them.
“I love you more than you could ever know,” Thelma said. “Seeing you like this… older, a father… it messes with me too, you know. It’s hard for me to play being your niece. Being the daughter of my own sick daughter! But it’s what we have to do to move forward.” She sighed, releasing the fear that had built within her. “To dwell on the past will prevent us from achieving what we were put on this planet to do. I’m not sure what that is, really, but as soon as I find it, I intend to welcome it with open arms.”
Robbie grunted. “Dad never stopped thinking about you. ‘Til the day he died, he wanted to know what happened to you. He didn’t even care when he learned about the affair. By then, just getting closure for your disappearance was all that mattered.”
“I’m sorry he never got to find out what happened. He might have actually believed it.” Thelma struggled to laugh through her drying tears. “He was like that. Always open to the unknown. You get your taste for sci-fi from him. Oh, I bet his eyes lit up at the moon landing. I wish I could have been there with you all.”
Her son softened. “Since this whole nonsense started this year, I keep thinking… what would I have done if I suddenly appeared in the future, and my daughter was my age now? How would I get her to believe me? Then I’m angry again, because why should I be put in that?”
“Every single person I know in the group doesn’t know how it happened. They were just out one night and caught up in a fog. None of us can go back.” Thelma buried her hands between her thighs to keep from touching her face. “If I could, I would, honey. I’d give up anything I’ve found here just to go back to that time and resume our lives. I’d give up the freedoms I’ve found in this time if it meant I got to be your mother.”
They looked at each other.This time, I will see him for who he is.A man who had been through much only to come out the other side older… and wiser. If he opened his mind to it.
“And now I’ve got the chance to be your mother again, Robbie. You’re sick. You can’t get through something like this on your own, no matter how strong and stubborn you think you are. I’m willing, you know? I’ll nurse you. I’ll get you your favorite things. I’ll drive you to your appointments. I’ll step in and tell off Megan for being a silly girl when you feel too ill to be her father in that moment.”
“She’s a good kid, huh?”
It was so like him to deflect. “She’s incredible. Just like her parents.”
Thelma didn’t know what to expect that night. While Robbie was not the type to give in to his tears and beg for his mother to hold him, well… he didn’t have to do either of those things. But the fact that he didn’t question Thelma pulling his head into her lap, where she stroked his ear, his hair, was the difference between now and six months ago, when he wouldn’t even acknowledge her existence.
She leaned back, this time joining the couch as a partner, not an entity to be absorbed into its nothingness. Robbie’s head went with her lap, her hand never leaving his hot cheek or the fluttering eyelashes that she—yes,she—had created with her own body nearly seventy years ago.
The blood in his veins was the blood in hers. The hair on his head came from his grandmother, a svelte brunette who knew sporadic Norwegian words and quilted until her hands bled. The eyes in his face spoke of his father, who had never stopped taking care of his children or caring about his cheating wife’s fate.
But the heart that beat in Robbie’s heart was purely his own. His soul had been a gift from God.
And this moment? With them sitting together in peace, owning up to who they were?
