“Yes, my group from therapy at the FBI office. We go out and do things together. Next month, we’re doing a trip to Mt. Shasta. Skiing. Oh, it’s been so long since I’ve gone skiing, but I’ve got Nordic genes, so it should be okay, right?”
Gretchen must have been shocked that Thelma could talk to her so candidly after what happened a month ago, for she said, “I don’t know if that’s how it works. Also, I’m sorry, group therapy at the FBI office?”
“What a shame.” Thelma crossed one leg over the other as she leaned her head back and gazed up into the trees. “All that tracking on you, and you still don’t really know anything, huh?”
Scoffing, Gretchen fluffed her coat around her so it could absorb her crash against the bench. “It’s taken a while to let it sink in, you know. Time traveling… all those weird feelings I had about you…”
Thelma wrapped her arms around her green purse in her lap. “I bought this at Bullock’s in 1956. I had a three-year-old dancing around my legs, and between her whining and theshopgirl’s smug demeanor, I nearly committed homicide at the counter. But Debbie was a good girl. She just needed a nap. You see, we had been at the doctor for her checkup and…” Thelma stopped. “You’re not interested in those details.”
“I still have a hard time wrapping my head around it.”
A leaf fluttered down from a tree. Thelma’s gaze followed it until it landed a few inches away from Sandy’s headstone. “Me too, and I lived through it.”
“So you just… drove into the future, huh?”
“Yes. Was going out to the store, and the next thing I knew, I was surrounded by FBI agents in the most awful clothing material. They said they don’t know how it works, but they can tell when a fog is coming in, so they shut the whole area down and get ready.”
“So they told me.”
“What else did they tell you?”
Gretchen shrugged. “Things I wish you had told me instead.”
She snorted. “Would you have believed me?”
“No.” Although they sat intimately together on the bench, neither dared to touch the other. Their relationship, which had made wonderful strides despite Thelma’s prudish reserve, had collapsed in the interim.Now, we start all over again.If there was a starting point to begin with… “But, to be fair, the whole cult story didn’t make sense, either.”
“I still can’t get those details straight.”
“I could tell.”
Her candor made Thelma snort again. “Why did you drive out all this way? You couldn’t have even been sure I was still here.”
“I had a hunch. Besides, it’s a nice day for a drive. Even if you weren’t here, it wouldn’t have been a total waste of time and gas.”
“A hunch, huh?”
“You have this tinge to your aura that says you care a lot about the people who have been a part of your life. So, if Robert said you were visiting Sandy’s grave out here, I figured you’d be here a while. Especially since she meant so much to you.”
“She did. And I guess I meant a lot to her, too.”
“Yeah, I read some of her stuff. The nonfiction about true crime, I mean.”
“Oh? Not the pulp fiction?”
“Not really my thing.”
“Uh-huh.”
“No. Really. Not my thing.”
“What’s your thing, Gretch?”
“Oh, I don’t know… getting involved with time-traveling housewives, I guess.”
“I’m not a housewife anymore,” Thelma said with a cautious smile. “I’m actually a widow. Although the legal history the FBI set up for me says I’ve never been married. No wonder I can’t keep the story straight. By the way, you know my friend Pauline?”
“Hardass woman who looks like she’s seen some things?”
