Except for Thelma. Technically, she was nowhere. Merely a chrononaut traveling to awhen.
In group, Jed from history class often talked about how he hated coming up with bullshit backstories about “where he was” when some big deal happened.
“So, they all think I’m this ‘Gen X’ shit or whatever,” he said, sitting right beside Thelma in the circle. At first, she had been put off by his cussing and other brash mannerisms, but over the weeks that added up to months, she came to find his honesty charming.Reminds me of my cousin, Sam.He had died before Thelma disappeared.Pacific Theater.Before he went off to the Navy, though, he used to be one of Thelma’s favorites because of how easily he spoke to people and made new friends. Something she always aspired to do, too. “That means I’m supposed to be able to say what happened when the Challenger exploded. Oh, and let’s not forget where the hell I was on 9/11!”
The others in the circle nodded. Even Thelma, who didn’t know what a Challenger was, but had heard plenty about the terrorist attacks in New York City.One of the very first things I learned about from recent history.Like Jed, Thelma was pressed to come up withwhere she waswhen it happened. Luckily for her, the FBI provided a script for her to follow.In fifth grade. At home. Eating breakfast while my mother watched the news on TV.Unlike Jed, Thelma was classed as a “Millennial,” something that sounded “cool” to her ears. Although shedidrather prefer the “Silent Generation” moniker she had when she looked it up in her textbook.
“Nobody cares that I actually saw Billy the Kid,” Jed muttered. “Whatever.”
Part of group was going over these little gripes, but everyone was also required to check in and talk about “how it was going.” Thelma was still the most recent addition, so most of the focus was on her and everyone giving her sagely, experienced advice, such as how to talk to people and even dating, something that Thelma wasnotthinking about at all.
Especially since they all assumed she might want to move on from her husband—with another man.
Dating within group was not unheard of. Jo from the 18thcentury was married to a young man named Damien Whitlock, a chrononaut from 1996 who always sat beside her and held her hand when they came and went. Jed was steadfastly single, claiming that he never got along with modern women and that they terrified him on a sexual front. Girls like Lizzie didn’t talk about it, and everyone goaded her for those “Victorian” mores, when in truth she eventually confessed in class that she liked the idea of never having to marry at all.
“Just watch out for Frank,” everyone told her at some point, including the group leader, therapist Crystal Myers. “He wants to date every young woman who comes through group. Only one to turn him down was Lizzie, and she gave him the fattest swollen lip you’ve ever seen.” Jed pointed to the corner, past Frank’s narrowing eyes as she gruffly stared down the rest of the group. “Right in that corner, huh, Frank?”
There were other new faces to meet in group. Faces that either graduated from history classes or went on different nights. Almost immediately, Thelma got along with a 1930s chrononaut named Pauline, with whom she would quote some of their favorite pre-code movies and gush over their mutual love for Katharine Hepburn. Thelma thought it a grievous crime that the fog had taken Pauline beforeBringing Up Babywas made, and they vowed to watch it together some night.
Then there was afamilythat had traveled together in their car, much like Thelma had. Marie and Lyle Keeler had a six-month-old son named Adam when they drove into the fog sometime in the early ‘70s. Now, Adam was eleven and had adapted to modern life since it was all he remembered. Marie and Lyle often talked about how hard the time traveling had been on their relationship, but were committed to staying together, not only for the two other children they had, but for the families that were still around and because “who else do we have in this, besides each other?”
Some strangers became fast, trauma-bonded friends because they all happened to be standing on the same block when a fog rolled in. Some small children were suddenly orphaned and forced to grow up beneath the government’s thumb, let alone during a time they didn’t recognize. There were tales of older people who had passed on but left behind legacies of working with the FBI to create better programs for unwitting chrononauts. One had gotten into a bit of trouble because he used his natural writing talent to publish several science fiction novels about a “time-traveling” fog that made the FBI quite angry with him.
Because there was only so much governments could do to keep this all a secret from the public. Conspiracies littered the media and the internet. Talk show hosts treated it like an open secret. TV shows alluded to it.
Families of time travelers had talked, after all. People had written about it, after all.
It was those families—and relationships with them, if chrononauts still had some around—that defined many of the group discussions. Something Thelma could more readily weigh in on as the weeks went by and she got to know the man her son had become.
“There are times when I catch him looking at me,” she shared one afternoon, with half the circle listening attentively and the others nodding off. “I mean,reallylooking at me. He can’t believe I’m real. But it’s not in that… you know… ‘blessed Father, thank you for this miracle’ kind of way. He thinks I’m a ghost. Hetreatsme like a ghost. Or a child! A childlike ghost. My own son. I get that he’s lived much longer than I have now, but you’ve got to be kidding me. He knows I would have smacked his bottom before his father even heard about it if he had evertalkedto me like that just a few months ago. You know,myfew months ago.”
Many nodded. Crystal leaned in, pen flicking between her fingers.
“Sometimes, I think he’s angry that I’m here. Thatthishappened. He spent his whole life thinking that something terrible had happened to me. That I was dead. Maybe he’s mad that I came back when he was this old, and so much has happened. I don’t know. I just know that I get more respect and humanity from my granddaughter, who never knew me back then.”
Grumbles and mutters percolated among the others. Crystal was about to give her input when Frank, who seldom said anything when not put on the spot, spoke up.
“It’s ‘cause he resents you. No sense dancing around it. It’s exactly as you said.”
Everyone else quieted down, with some like Jed and Jo glaring at him for being so blunt.
“What do you mean?” Thelma asked with a thin breath.
“The same thing happened to me with my brother.” Frank sniffed and rubbed his nose. As his foot recommenced its jittery dance against his knee, he explained, “We never got along well, you know. I was brains, he was brawns. When we were kids, we could never agree on something to do. Pretty soon, he was beating the crap out of me, and I was taking punches at his lackof wit. Well, I went off to college. He went into welding. Pretty soon, I was making so much money that I started paying for our parents’ bills. Keep in mind that my brother lived down the street from them. He could afford his own home back then, but he couldn’t afford to take care of our parents—and he was the older one.
We fought about it constantly. Got to the point where I hated coming home because he was always there, half-drunk, ready to call me every name in the book because he felt so inadequate next to me. Well, that went on for years. I was smart enough to draw up a will because I was single and making all that money on stock trading, so I wanted to make sure my money went to the right people if I died. Apparently, a couple of years after I ‘disappeared,’ my will kicked in and my brother discovered I left him half and my parents the other half.
When I reappeared here, he was still alive. The FBI contacted him and asked him to take me in. It lasted about four weeks because we were alwaysfighting.Back to taking swings, only now he was thirty years older and beating up someone half his age. Cops got involved. FBI got involved. When we had to go to therapy together, I asked him why the fuck he couldn’t begratefulthat I was alive. He even got to keep my money! Do you know what that bastard said?”
Thelma silently urged him to keep going.
“He said, right in front of the therapist, that I was dead and should have stayed dead. People aren’t supposed to come back from the dead. We’re supposed to lie still under the ground or go sing hymns for God. See, my brother spent thirty fucking years grieving me. The rumor was that I killed myself, and nobody wanted my family to know. Drug overdose, jumping off a building, I dunno. They had convinced themselves I was dead. Got me a burial plot and everything. My brother took it so hard that he couldn’t even spend the money he got from me. Justspent the next thirty years taking care of our parents until they also died, and then lived in our old house. He used their share of the money to cover their funerals and to fix up the house. Pay some bills, I dunno. All I know is that after that trip to the therapist, my brother tied a rope around his neck and left me all that I left him. I got all my money back, but now I have no fucking family.”
Someone reached over and attempted to pat Frank’s shoulder, but he shrugged them off. Jo pensively stared at the floor in the center of the circle. Lizzie rolled her attention away from Frank and back toward the nearest window.
Thelma lowered her hand from her mouth.
Does Robbie… resent me?
