by Dan Alatorre
I shrugged. “I don’t need a trip. I need a friend.”
She hugged me. “Oh, Peeky.”
I wrapped my arms around her, happy to push back the bad memory I’d just help put into her head, temporarily replacing it with this beautiful one. “Hey, you’re wasting time. I don’t know how long we have here.” I looked at her. “Your mother loved you. And right now, just over there, she can show you how much.”
Melissa held the frame of the machine with one hand and touched the other to her face. “What should I do?”
“Watch. Enjoy. Remember this moment, not the other one.” I nudged her. “Go on, get closer. But not too close.”
Melissa smiled, taking a step toward them. Her mother was alive and happy again. I knew it wouldn’t quell her pain, but at least for a few minutes it might let her forget. How could it not?
She had been right. Using the machine was a mistake. I understood that now. We weren’t able to control things or change them. It was foolish to think we could.
Melissa stood there, watching her young beautiful mother play with her twelve-year-old self. She saw her father, sitting in a beach chair nearby, enjoying his daughter and wife building a sand castle.
The little girl held up a shell.
Her mom leaned over, explaining about how each grain of sand has a story to tell. The twelve-year-old Melissa didn’t seem very interested.
Dread shot through me. Had I caused her best memory to be taken from her? Had she remembered it wrong? I looked in horror at Melissa’s face.
But she was smiling.
Beaming.
She seemed filled with joy at the sight of her family. They were happy, healthy, young and alive.
Mrs. Mills said something to young Melissa.
Twenty-two-year-old Melissa leaned forward. “What did she say?”
Twelve-year-old Melissa leaned forward. “What did you say?”
Mrs. Mills said it again, louder, grabbing her daughter and squeezing her in a massive bear hug. “If I held you in my arms for a thousand years, it still wouldn’t be enough.”
The little girl squealed with delight. “How many?”
Her mother rocked her back and forth in her arms. “A thousand!”
Melissa gazed at me. This time, her eyes were filled with tears of joy.
A thousand.
“I know this won’t make everything right between us, but-”
She put her hand over my mouth. “You did fine.”
She sniffled, taking the scene in.
The machine began its whirring again. Melissa slowly moved to sit on my lap. She covered her ears and squinted her eyes, watching as long as she could, savoring the images before they disappeared.
Then she turned to me. The noise was already too loud to hear, but she mouthed the words. “Thank you.”
Then there was a brilliant flash.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Florida Mining and Minerals, site number 32 was dark and quiet. The little hill looked out over the pond, waiting in the warm night air.
Melissa and I stood there, our hands on each side of the machine.
It hardly made a splash when it dropped into the water.
Some bubbles made their way to the surface for a few seconds, then the ripples faded from view and the pond was still again.
In some ways, it was as though the machine had never existed.
But it had existed. And its existence had changed things in ways that could never be repaired.
I peered at Melissa as she drove us back to Tampa. “Just like a ten-year-old trying to sneak out with the family station wagon, right?”
“Right. Nothing good could ever come of it.”
“Can you forgive me? For making you-”
“Peeky, you hurt me a lot this morning and you put me through hell tonight. That’s going to take a while to get over.” She turned to me and smiled. “But you also gave me the greatest gift anyone has ever given me, and that means a lot.” She stared at the road. “So let’s give everything some time.”
I nodded. “I don’t have a lot of time left. I have an appointment with your father in a few hours.”
“Yeah, I know. I’ll drive you.” She sniffled. “We’ll get donuts.”
“Don’t start crying again. You’ll make me cry.”
“I think I’m cried out for one night.” She sighed. “How about we listen to some music for a change?”
She turned on the radio. We drove the rest of the way without speaking much, digesting what had happened over the past few hours. We made a few quick stops along the way. One for gas, one for my suitcase.
And one for Barry.
He smiled as we pulled up in front of the hospital. “You didn’t think I’d let you leave without saying goodbye, did you?”
The hospital had given him a new pair of crutches to go with his new cast. He balanced uneasily on them.
“You still can’t use those things,” I said.
“Bah.” He chucked them into the truck bed next to my suitcase. “It’s easier getting around without them.”
“Hey, you use those until you’re back to 100%.” Melissa frowned. “Doctor’s orders.”
She climbed into the truck.
Barry nudged me. “She’s really getting into that whole bossing people around thing, isn’t she?”
“Yeah.”
“Kinda hot, huh?”
“Yeah.”
We climbed into the truck.
Mr. Mills was waiting outside his office when we walked up. He was smiling, too.
Melissa kissed him. “You’re in a good mood this morning.” A wry smile crept over her face. “Where’s Janice?”
“At the hotel. Get your mind out of the gutter.” He straightened his suit jacket. “I got some good overnight polls, that’s what I’m smiling about.”
She winked. “Uh huh.”
“I’d ask how your night went, but I don’t think I want to know. You two look a mess.” He glanced at Barry. “At least one of you got cleaned up.”
A few uniformed officers stepped up to Mr. Mills. “Peeky, these are customs officials. They’ll be taking over from here.” He stepped back. “If you’d like to take a moment to say your goodbyes, now would be the time.”
I looked at my friends. “There isn’t enough time to say I’m sorry as many times as I want to, but – I’m sorry. For everything.”
Barry nodded. “Peeky, you did some really shitty things. But you did some really great things, too. You helped open my eyes.” He gazed at Melissa. “I can’t be unhappy about that.”
He put his hand out. I shook it.
Melissa looked at me. “I’ll never forget what you did.”
I stared at my shoes. “Please try.”
“You know what I mean.” She reached out and hugged me. “You’re my friend. I’ll miss you.”
“There’s a saying. ‘If you know a man’s story, you have heard his confession.’”
She squeezed me tighter. “Okay, then. We know each other’s stories pretty good now. That’s what makes us friends.”
“Peeky, I hate to see this happen to you.” Mr. Mills patted me on the shoulder. “It’s time to go. But who knows, in six months, maybe a well-placed letter from the new mayor of Tampa will go a long way to helping you come back. Between that and a job waiting for you here, who knows? Chin up, okay?”
“Okay, sir. Thank you.”
Melissa looked at her father. “What was that all about? What job?”
“Oh, I’ve had Troy and some staff members doing some digging. This whole business about requiring people to turn over their fossil finds to the state, it’s a bunch of hogwash. It’s practically communism.” He stroked his chin. “I was thinking it ought to be more like the shipwreck laws, where the person who digs the goodies up gets to keep them, and the state gets a share. That’s more fair. It would give people an incentive to go out and spend resources finding these things.” A big grin crept over his face. “That could s
prout a whole new industry for our fine state. Just the thing a new Governor wants.”
Melissa smirked. “You mean mayor.”
“Give me time.” He straightened his jacket again. “Anyway, Troy made some calls. The legislature would look kindly on revising the state statute. So our office is creating a new wing to create private dig sites around the state.” He winked at her. “What do you think? I’ll need some smart people to head it up. Any interest?”
Melissa’s jaw dropped. “Are you offering me a job running a new department at the law firm? I’m no lawyer.”
He waved a hand. “Lawyers, we have. Smart young diggers, we’ll need. Will you do it? The person in charge will have to find good people to run dig sites all over the place. I can’t do that and be mayor, too.”
“I just might be interested.” She turned to Barry. “What do you think? Want a job?”
He looked at her. “So, I’d be… under you?”
She tilted her head and grinned. “I guess so, yes.”
Mr. Mills cleared his throat. “Okay, let’s keep this rated G, people.”
Barry smiled. “Sounds very interesting. I’ll think about it.”
“Come on! It would give us a chance to do what we love, with who we—you know—who we know can do the job.”
“I said I’ll think about it. Maybe we should have a meeting to discuss it further.”
She took his arm. “Maybe we should. My place or yours?”
“Yours. Mine burned down, remember?”
Mr. Mills cleared his throat again. “Well if you’re going to have a meeting like that, I just have one thing to ask. Melissa, do you have a- ”
“Daddy!”
“- umbrella? It looks like rain.”
“Let’s go return Mandy’s truck before he changes his mind.”
“Mandy’s truck? Where’s my BMW?”
She slipped her arm into Barry’s and started walking. “Goodbye, Daddy. I mean boss.”
“Okay, sounds like you’ve accepted the job. Here’s a new cell phone.” He tossed it to her. “Business calls only.” He turned to me. “See that, Peeky? Get things straightened out and come back as soon as you can. Here’s my card. You call me and we’ll help arrange everything. Maybe you’ll be back in less than six months.”
“Thank you, sir. I don’t know what to say.”
“Say the truth.” He wagged his finger at me. “From now on. It’ll be a job requirement.”
“Deal.”
* * * * *
In his office, Mr. Mills took out a cell phone and dialed it. Melissa answered on the other end.
“So, Missy, did you dump it?”
“Just like you said to, in the pond.”
He bristled. “I said a swamp. Doesn’t matter, it’s gone now.”
“What will you do about the lawsuits?”
“Oh, I’ll handle it. It’s hard to sue over something that doesn’t even exist. For all they know this was all an elaborate hoax by some rowdy graduate students.”
“Sounds good to me.” She sighed. “Dad, there’s something I’ve been needing to ask you.”
“Fire away.”
“Well, if you could go back in time and change things, would you?”
“It doesn't really matter, honey. We can't.”
“But what if we could? What if I was able to go back in time… and save Mom?”
“But sweetheart, you couldn't. As painful as it is for me to say this, the night your mother passed away was the night she was supposed to. I’ve thought about a million things I could have done differently, blaming myself that I didn’t go jogging with her. That’s not how it works. It's just the plan of life. A big part of me will always wish it would have turned out some other way, but life… had other plans.”
Melissa held back her tears. “But I had a time machine. I did go back. What if I went back in time and I caused it—her death?”
“I think you're misunderstanding me. You can't cause it just like you can’t uncause it. Things happened a certain way. Going back and trying to interfere with them might add a new variable, but it could never change the outcome.” He sat back in his chair. “Sometimes I think you science types get everything backwards. You have to understand that there is something greater than yourself at work in life. Have a little faith.”
“Faith.” She sighed again. “In God? Sometimes I don’t know if God even exists.”
“It’s the not knowing that requires faith. But I know God exists—because I have you. Nothing will ever convince me that your beautiful face and energetic spirit are some sort of grand accident. I look at you and I see something divine was at work. I just can't explain it.”
“I guess I don't understand.”
“If it was easy to understand, philosophers wouldn't still be debating the first questions two thousand years later. Did you have to know everything about that machine in order to use it? No, you went on faith. Give yourself some credit.”
“Okay, I’ll try. Thanks, Daddy.”
“Bye bye, sweetie.”
* * * * *
Findlay sat alone in his apartment waiting as the phone number he dialed connected.
“Findlay. How’s it hanging?”
“Just great. Looks like I’m going to jail.”
“Whoa, you broke your cherry? Welcome to the party, pal.”
“Yeah, you could have reminded me that all you MIT assholes went to jail after you got busted in your Vegas card counting scheme.”
“Hey, caveat emptor, motherfucker. Buyer beware. Besides, it was practically common knowledge. So what’s up? Why are you calling me now?”
“Well, come to find out, your tracker never really did its thing. I mean, I peeled off the tape and stuck it onto the bottom of the time machine, but my computer never did receive a signal.”
“You found the time machine, didn’t you?”
“Not because of you. The tracker never transmitted.”
“What do you want, a refund? Because there’s no refunds on illegal shit, fuckface. Run a diagnostics test. Maybe it’ll sync up with the tracker.”
“I shut my computer down already. I have to pack everything up. I’m going to fucking jail. My arraignment’s in two days.”
“Yeah, they move fast on that hacker shit. Hope you have a good lawyer. Wait, you said you peeled off the tape?”
“That’s right.”
“One piece of tape?”
“Right. Peeled it off and stuck the tracker on the underside of the time machine.”
“You didn’t do it right. There were two pieces of tape to remove.”
“What do you mean?”
“One to make it stick, and the other to uncover and activate the tracker’s transmitter. No wonder it never pinged your computer. You left it covered. It never activated.”
“So what happens now?”
“Nothing. It won’t transmit while that thing’s on there. I mean, it might fall off in a year, or if it got wet enough the tape might come off or something. The paper tape would break down in the elements, but if it gets wet, the device is going to corrode pretty quickly, too. That stuff isn’t made to last forever.”
“Fuck!”
“Calm down. Maybe it’ll get wet.”
“Yeah, maybe.” He hung up the phone. “Asshole.”
* * * * *
At the bottom of a pond at Florida Mining and Minerals site number 32, stuck to the underside of the time machine, was a paper-covered tracking device.
The spillway waters were notoriously corrosive. They soaked through the tape and into the device in a few hours.
Before the minerals ruined the sensor completely, they dissolved the paper enough to send a ping out.
To Findlay’s computer.
Which he had just shut down.
THE END
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Acknowledgements
Books this fun
don’t happen in a vacuum and the list of people I need to thank is almost endless, but most of you know who you are.
Allison Maruska, my friend, editor, and writing partner, who spent countless chunks of her time reading, critiquing and editing this book to make it as good as one of hers. I think we succeeded. Thanks to Joe, Nathan and Silas, too, for doing without her while she and I went over her suggestions for hours and hours (or days). My wife Michele knows the sacrifice, guys. Thanks.
Authors CJ Andrews and Larry Rueschhoff, two super helpful members of my critique group who gave their valuable insights along the way. You guys are the best. CJ went on to edit Poggibonsi for me, she’s that good. Look for their books soon.
J. A. Allen is an up and coming writer whose book Old Souls will be out soon. Jenny does the video show Writers Off Task With Friends with me and Allison each week, and her friendship, input and attitude are always inspiring.
My amazing beta readers, blog followers, Facebook fans, and newsletter subscribers, for providing terrific help with some of the toughest questions I came across. You guys ROCK.
About The Author
Best-Selling author and humorist Dan Alatorre turned his sights on fatherhood in “Savvy Stories,” and the results were hilarious. Since then, Dan has racked up a string of #1 Bestsellers in family humor, novels, illustrated children’s books and cookbooks, and has been published in 12 languages throughout 14 different countries. His romantic comedy Poggibonsi: an Italian misadventure, set in Tuscany, is set to be released sometime in summer 2016. Probably.
Dan’s success is widespread and varied. In addition to being a best-selling author (he claims it was a slow week at Amazon when that happened) Dan has achieved President’s Circle with two different Fortune 500 companies.
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