ENH was gone now, as if it never existed.
The brown Cutlass Sierra Jeremy and David drove from North Carolina, and the lumbering red semi-truck Charlie navigated from Florida were also missing.
Outside where ENH once stood was a gravel lot, flattened and filled with white rocks, stomped down and evened out as if by a steamroller. In the distance, Sears’ tower hovered over the city like a singular spire. A chill clung in the air that felt like an early, insistent frost.
“I once thought about being a pianist,” James said. He was thinner somehow, yet dressed in the same lab coat he wore when he set to launch the missile from the silo in the underbelly laboratory that no longer seemed to exist.
The amassed group turned to look at him but said nothing in response.
“I was quite good when I was younger,” James continued. “Read sheet music effortlessly since second grade, but when I auditioned for the band in high school, I wasn’t as good as this other kid. I don’t recall his name. It doesn’t matter. But I decided that if I couldn’t play the piano for school musicals, it wasn’t worth playing. I wasn’t going to be a competitive piano player. So I quit.”
He turned and looked at Tabitha. She looked as he remembered her when she first arrived at the CERN facility in Europe as a doctoral student: tall and thin, her red hair long and beautiful and reaching mid-way down her back. She was a stunning woman with a charming smile when she wanted to show it.
“You should smile more,” James now said to her.
“I’ll try,” she answered, looking down at her hands, surprised by their size.
Next to her, Tony scratched at the top of his head and pulled his hand back quickly.
“My hair’s gone again,” he said, disappointed. “I kind of enjoyed having hair again.”
“I didn’t even realize you were bald,” Tabitha said.
“And I didn’t realize you’d grow up to look like that,” Tony answered. “But James is right. You should smile more. You’re a lovely young woman.”
“They’re gone again,” a voice said from behind them.
They turned to see Olivia standing with her hands pressed to her stomach.
“I don’t understand,” she said. “Are we right back where we started?”
David stood next to her, a hand over his eyes, shaking his head and weeping as Jeremy stood beside him, resting a hand on his brother’s shoulder.
“I can’t keep doing this,” David mourned. “Alive, then gone, then back, then beaten up, then dead again. And to see paradise like we just did. Did all of you see it? Were you there?”
“Something like that,” Gordon said. He, too, was openly weeping. His wounds from the day before, his blackened eye, and his broken bones all seemed healed and restored.
“I saw Marie there,” Charlie told Gordon and patted him on the back. “Were we actually there together?”
Gordon wordlessly nodded and looked up toward the sky as a single white cloud passed overhead across a deep cobalt morning. He shook his head and closed his eyes.
“David’s right,” Gordon said. “It’s too much for the mind to take.”
“I’m sorry,” Becca said from the edge of the group. She stood next to Frankie, holding his hand. Her hair was silver throughout, wrinkles adorning her makeup-free face.
“So you’re the one who caused all this?” Tony asked. “You’re Becca?”
“I am,” Becca said. “And I’d fix it if I could. But I’m not even sure what fixed would look like anymore.”
“I want my children back,” Olivia said. “That’s what fixed would look like for me.”
“I’m so sorry,” Becca said again. “I know that means very little. But please know I truly mean it. I’m so very, very sorry.”
Tabitha walked over to Becca and stood before her, Becca bracing herself. Instead, surprisingly, Tabitha extended her arms and took Becca into them.
Taken aback, Becca stood rigid for a moment but allowed herself to be held by the red-haired woman. She sunk into her arms for a moment. Then, without speaking, Tabitha released her and stepped back, smiling.
“Where do we go from here, then?” Tabitha asked, looking into the sky. “Is it over?”
“And what about the nuclear warheads?” Tony asked.
“We’ll have to wait and see if there’s fallout,” James said, scanning the sky. “But it all looks so normal.”
“Except the building is gone,” Charlie said. “And the truck.”
“And our car,” Jeremy said.
“Is it still 1986?” Gordon asked. “I mean, we all look like we’re at random ages. Am I seventy again, or am I thirty?”
“You look somewhere in between,” Charlie answered. “And so what? I escaped death a second time, then?”
“Me too, I guess,” David said.
“What does this all mean?” Olivia asked, hands to her cheeks. “I can’t accept our children are gone just like that. I just saw them. I just held them. They were babies.”
“And then teenagers again,” David said.
“What does that mean?” Olivia repeated and turned to release her tears into David’s shoulder.
“Again,” Becca said, walking tentatively to the mourning couple. “I’m so very sorry for your loss. Because of me. I’m so sorry.”
Olivia nodded, saying nothing, for there was nothing more to say.
