Fifteen years on the force, ten as the county sheriff, I thought I’ve seen the grisly worst. Mostly ranch accidents. Hooves and horns through skulls, barbed wire through most everything, I got a stomach lined with steel, a gag reflex that doesn’t gag. And here I am, bent over, OJ, eggs, biscuits and gravy on their way out.
Sarah, my deputy, she’s hurling, too. Side by side, buckled over, we’re retching, flinging spittle and digested food from the griddle off our hands. Looking like newbs is what we are, as if we’ve never seen death days after. But this gruesome display defies physics and my iron constitution.
This ain’t no accident.
The victim is a woman, blonde, in her twenties or thirties. She’s wearing urban-camouflaged fatigues, smattered with blood and her insides. Her face unrecognizable. Her body size and type indeterminable. She’s an amoeba of contorted body, crushed from a fall. From where? That’s what Sarah and I got to figure out.
Standing, I block the sweltering sun with my hand and look around. Not a building nor high ground in sight. Brown prairie grass and big Montana sky stretch to the horizons.
“Someone could have dumped her here, George.” Sarah swats at a magpie with her cowboy hat, her long black hair blowing in the wind. The magpie chatters and flutters a few feet away. The flies, too many to do anything about, feast.
“Naw.” I scan the ranch land, inhaling whiffs of fetid air. “No tire marks anywhere.”
“Could have done it by horse.”
“Could have, and a cumbersome transport that’d have been, but heck, look at that.” I point to where the woman’s parts lie scattered. “There’s a crater the size of a buffalo wallow, mostly dirt and such. She fell right here. I’m sure of that…only that.” I crane my neck up at the endless blue above, not a wisp of white anywhere. “An angel in God’s Country.”
Sarah packs a can of Copenhagen and pops a pinch in her mouth, never letting that badge or her condo fool anyone. She’s cowgirl, through and through. Raised on a ranch, her adopted ma and pa still live on that ranch. And get her on that ranch? She outrides, out-ropes, out-wrangles damn anybody. Fine deputy, too.
She spits black juice on the ground. “What’s an angel doing without wings?”
“Dying is what.” I shake my head. “Awful way to go. Tossed from a plane or helicopter, I reckon. Only thing makes sense.”
“You recognize them fatigues?” Sarah creeps to the body.
I follow, careful not to step where blood has sprayed. Grass crunches under each step. My nose is now used to the smell of decay, and I catch hints of the prairie with the wind, a dry, sweet smell, like coriander. The flute-like call of a western meadowlark warbles nearby. I crouch for a closer look, feeling all my forty years, and ignore the tickle of flies on my nose, then ear, then cheek, their buzz a grating constant of my job. “They’re for urban warfare. Anyone with a credit card can order them online. But look here.” I point to a small green flag with six yellow stars sewn onto her breast pocket. “You recognize that flag?”
“New to me,” Sarah says with a smirk I can’t place. I’m about to ask why the grin, then it vanishes as if it never before existed, like a rainbow after the air dries out. Her eyes are misty, a thousand yards away. It’s the look she gets when admiring a newborn foal.
“You all right there?” I snap a picture of the flag with my phone.
She sniffles and wipes her eyes. “Sometimes this job just gets to me. It burrows under my skin. Makes me want to shed it.” She swallows, gutting tobacco spit.
Her answer doesn’t sit right. It tastes off because of that subtle smile seconds before her tears swell.
“I know the feeling.” I look toward the heavens from where the woman fell. “You know where to next.”
Sarah stands and walks to our two ATVs, which we rode in on from an overgrown dirt road that’s not worthy of a name or map. “Airport.”
Sarah and I are sitting in the office of Jed, the airport manager. The heads of a deer and a pronghorn stare at us from the wall. The room smells of a cigar. Atop a liquor cabinet sits a bull skull next to a bottle of bourbon that’s half-full, rather half-empty.
Jed strolls in, tosses his hat on his desk, and says in a booming voice as loud as his personality, “George and Sarah, sight for sore eyes! What brings you to my airport?” Jed, with his boots, rodeo belt buckle, and blue flannel stretched over a whiskey gut, looks like he shops where most males this side of the country shop.
I stand and give him a Montanan handshake, firm and honest. Sarah stays sitting, her mind somewhere else, where it’s been all day.
Jed goes to the liquor cabinet. “Want an afternoon pick-me-up?”
Sarah shakes her head.
“Jed,” I say, “you know damn well I’ve been off the sauce for years.”
Jed smiles as toothy as the Cheshire Cat. “You were a lot funner on it.”
“Hell-raiser’s what I was. Ain’t no fun in that.”
All booze got me were headaches, heartache, and grief, the razor-sharp kind. With that thought, I get that nausea that comes a-swirling whenever I think of Billy, my son. He’d be eighteen now. Perhaps, is eighteen. I doubt it. He and my wife Laura vanished fifteen years ago, without a crumb left behind. She had run off for Missoula by then, told me not to follow until sober-dry.
This dumbass stayed wet, then they went missing. Their case froze cold a year later. That’s why I sought the badge, thought it’d get me the skills needed to find them. Nope.
I eye the bourbon longer than I should, then take a seat.
Jed pours himself a drink, plops two rocks in the tumbler, and plops himself into his black leather chair. He leans back, hands laced behind his head. “What can I do you two for?”
“Gotta look at your flight logs. See who’s been up the last week.”
Jed laughs. “I’ll save you trouble and tell you who’s gone on up. We’re bout as slow as a turtle on duct tape.”
“Go and tell us, Jed. But we still gonna check.”
Jed sips from his tumbler, swishes, and holds up a finger.
Sarah grimaces. “What’s that, Jed?”
“That’s how many have taken to our friendly skies these past two weeks.”
I sit up straight. “One? That’s it?”
Jed nods. “As I said, a turtle.”
“Who’s the pilot?”
Jed smiles, leans on back. “You’re staring at him.“
Sarah scoffs. “What’s the freaking point of an airport?”
“Go ask your dutiful public servants of the County Commission,” Jed says, leaving out he’s one of the three commissioners.
“Never mind that,” I say. “What about flight paths? Can we see if any planes or helicopters have flown nearby?”
“That’s public. You can get that on the World Wide Web.” Jed types on his MacBook and swivels it around for us to view the screen. A map of Montana shows, dotted with silhouettes of little airplanes. “See.”
“This is now?” I ask.
“Uh, huh.”
“What about from last week on?” I say.
He swivels back his Mac, takes a sip, looks at me, and lifts his glass. “Come on, George. Live a little.”
I sigh. “Asshole.”
He chuckles, types and clicks, and shows us the result. Red lines, labeled with letters and numerals, streak across our great state.
“How do you zoom to one spot?” I ask.
“The trackpad.”
I zoom to where the woman landed. Nada. No red lines.
“Can you take us up?” I asked.
“When?”
“How bout now?”
Jed rattles the ice cubes in his otherwise empty glass. “Not sure if the FAA would like it.”
“I ain’t telling,” I say.
Sarah looks at her phone, pockets it, and taps her foot on the ground. “You sure that’s a good idea?”
“You got a fear of flying?” I’m peeved though trying not to show it. While ranked a deputy, I consider her my partner. We’re supposed to know each other inside and out. Hell, she knows all my failings, as a dad, as a husband, as anything besides this job. My job’s my life, all that remains of it, anyhow. And her failings? Little. A tall drink of beautiful, she’s a catch for anyone in the market. She bats in the other league, and we’re in the sticks, so her prospects for a girlfriend are near zilch. Why doesn’t she move to Bozeman or Missoula? The ranch, she says. Secrets, I say. She’s got them. That alone about her chafes me.
“What I got is a fear of drunk pilots,” she says.
I get her sentiment, but time ticks fast when solving a murder.
“Ah, heck,” Jed says, swatting the air. “This is my first drink of the day.”
I toss him a breathalyzer.
Practiced, he blows until he hears the beep. He looks at it and smiles. “.02.” He pats his stomach. “I got room for another.”
“Not the time though. Let’s go.” I get up.
Sarah looks at her phone again, then up at me. “Sheriff, what sense does it make to fly over?”
Sheriff? She only addresses me as sheriff when something chaps her hide. She’s got a point, procedurally, anyhow. The coroner already carted off the body, but I’m not going up there for the evidence. Sometimes a diamond is a square until you look at it from a different perspective. I’m A-okay with her disagreeing, need her to sometimes; I can be a blockhead. What I don’t like is the public appearance that the law’s not walking in lockstep. And in this rural county, we’re all the law it’s got.
I squint my eyes at her, cocking my head, my telltale sign I’m not pleased.
Sarah huffs and stands. Most days, Sarah’s as cool as a winter creek. Something ain’t right.
We’re chugging along, several thousand feet up, cruising altitude for the Cessna, a four-seater. I’m upfront next to Jed. Sarah sits in the back alone. The sidewalls of the tin can rattle. The interior smells of gasoline and leather. I’ve never flown in a plane so small and don’t like it, got visions of my fiery death dancing in my head. A different perspective, I tell myself.
The prairie below is brown velvet that stretches forever. Four trumpeter swans, their slender white bodies meant for the sky, fly in formation and pass underneath a lonely cotton ball of a cloud. Below them, sunshine sparkles off a patchwork of ponds, a birder’s paradise. I used to take Billy there to fish each Sunday, the closest thing to church I ever got. I think the All-mighty approved. Why else did the ponds exist? Damn, I miss my boy and hate myself sick.
“Any barf bags?” I say into the mic of my headset.
“The world’s a barf bag.” Jed leans across my lap and pushes open my window. Warm wind rushes in, and the plane tilts to the left. Jed laughs and shoves his window open. The plane evens out, steadies. “I can fly this thing by windows alone!”
“Jed,” Sarah says in her headset with that pissed off expression she wears when questioning perps. “There’s very little to like about you.”
Jed bellows his baritone laugh. “We’re coming up to the coordinates in two or so minutes. Damn prairie as far as I can see. Now will you tell me why we’re flying to nowhere?”
I turn to Sarah. She’s staring at the home screen of her phone, her leg twitching as if a little motor is inside.
“Texting your girlfriends?” I ask.
“What?”
“You’ve been staring at your phone all day. What’s up, buttercup? I want my deputy back.”
“It’s nothing.” She pockets her phone, takes out a tin of Copenhagen, and starts flicking her wrist to pack it.
“I need tall boots for that manure,” I say.
She pinches enough tobacco to raise the neck hair of a bull rider, stuffs the wad in her bottom lip, and scowls.
“Okay.” I raise both hands in surrender.
“T minus one minute,” Jed announces. “Why we’re here? Hell if I know.”
“We’re about to fly over a crime scene,” I say.
Jed raises his eyebrows at me. “Give me the gory details.”
“It’s confidential.”
“Then I’m glad I brought my binoculars.” Jed hawks a loogie out his window. “Wish I had my GoPro.”
“No use,” I say. “They’ve cleaned it up.”
“Then why are—“
Sarah cuts in, “That’s what I’m saying.”
“For a different perspective,” I say, annoyed. Fact is, I doubt any good will come from this ride. For one, Sarah’s about as effective as a blind eagle right now. Something—I call it intuition—got me up here. I want to trust it.
“And here we are,” Jed announces.
Only yellow police tape, held by wooden stakes below, hints that a woman fell from the sky. It flaps in the wind around the perimeter. In the back of the plane, Sarah presses her nose to her window, then clamors to the other side to gawk. Back to hers, back to the other, she’s a dog between two squirrels in opposite trees.
I turn. “Are you okay?”
“We shouldn’t be here.” Her uniform at her armpits runs a darker brown from sweat. “Sorry, but I got to do this.” She scrambles up front and grabs the stick, her hat falling off.
“What the—“ Jed screams.
I’m first stunned motionless by the insanity of Sarah’s move. I grab her wrists—they’re slick with perspiration—and wrestle her hands off the stick. She’s not letting down, flailing from my grasp before I snatch her arms. I push her to the backseat and use my body to hold her down. I got the weight advantage, but she’s ranch scrappy.
She stretches for my gun.
I grab it first and chuck it in the front seat.
Who is this woman? Not my deputy, she’s old Yeller gone rabid. I pull my cuffs out and cuff her wrist to the back of the chair.
She punches my temple with her free hand. Light blazes my vision like a camera flash, the sensation a reminder of barroom brawls long ago. She hits me again, stinging my ear. I catch her third attempt, readjust my body on top of her, and grab her cuffs. I cuff her free hand to the chair.
I climb to my seat, panting. “What the hell, Sarah!”
She spits her chaw up front, smattering us and the windshield with flecks of tacky tobacco.
“Jesus, George!” Jed screams at me while Sarah kicks his back seat, again and again. “Don’t the law do no background checks?”
Jed needs—check that—deserves an explanation why my deputy tried to kamikaze us. I’m at a loss for words, for anything. I’m sure I look how I feel, bewildered, winded, feeling my age and all of Sarah’s scrap. Nose pressed to the window, breath frosting the glass, I try to buy time.
“George!” Jed says, “What do you want me to do?”
“Get out of here!” Sarah screams between grunts and kicks. “Get out of here!”
An alarm on her phone goes off, the melodic chime barely audible over her screams and grunts.
“Get out of here!” she says.
Beside Sarah, a crying girl appears. Just like that! Once an empty seat—Presto!—it’s occupied. A toddler. Her face beat red, a vein on her forehead throbbing, she’s wailing. Blonde hair, blue eyes, her semblance to Billy is uncanny. I’ve gone nutso!
“What the—!” Jed slaps the dashboard of instruments and gauges.
Okay. I’m not the only one.
“No!” Sarah twists her body so her brown cowboy boots are pointed at the girl. “She should be dead!” She does the unthinkable, kicks the girl with both legs. The girl, maybe twenty-five pounds, soaking wet, careens into the window and thuds her noggin on the glass.
Sarah recoils her legs, a rattler before the strike, her knees almost touching her face.
I leap back, between the two.
Sarah horse kicks me into the girl, then batters me again, this time my head. What must be one of her boot heels, feels like it, anyhow, rams into my chin. The jarring pain travels up my side jaw and gives me an ice cream headache without the damn ice cream.
“Jed, hold her feet!” I scream.
Jed’s on Sarah like a tick on a hound, and I scoop the girl over my seat. Her screams, the poor thing, ring my ears. I’m shushing her, rocking her, telling her all will be right. I don’t believe my words. What the hell? The girl appeared from nowhere. And Sarah expected her, didn’t want us to be here. The dead woman who fell from the sky. Sarah. This girl. The three are connected. How? I ain’t got the faintest.
Jed’s upfront again, piloting our bird.
“Take us back,” I say.
“No kidding!” He glances at me. ‘You’re bleeding.” He wipes blood from his lip that’s grown in size.
“You, too.”
Sarah keeps kicking his seat. “This girl’s dangerous! You gotta believe me! Dangerous, a war criminal!”
“She’s a toddler!” I scream back.
Jed flies us back to the airport. He doesn’t say a word. The toddler whimpers in my arms. I hum a soft song I last hummed to Billy, rocking her, wiping wet strands of hair that stick to her face. Sarah never strays from her hysteria, kicking and screaming and cursing the whole flight through, accusing a girl of three of war crimes, accusations as implausible as a toddler boarding a Cessna mid-flight, as improbable as a woman falling from the sky, not by plane, not by helicopter, but by means beyond reality.
I need a drink.
I wrangle Sarah into our integration room, which doubles as our break room. I needed help from Jed, leg irons, and a transit restraint belt to do it. The girl’s name is Kyala. She rode to the station with Jed in his black Dodge Ram. Sarah rode in the back of the Sheriff’s car with me.
The Mr. Coffee bubbles and spits, filling the room with its aroma. Sarah’s sitting across from me, the stainless-steel table between us. She’s got her head down and my heart in two because she’s silently crying. I guess she tired herself quiet in the Cessna. I’m exhausted, too, not knowing up from left. If people got gas tanks, our arrows point to empty.
“Give me something to work with?” I say, my tears welling.
“It wasn’t supposed to happen like that.” Sarah stares at me, her brown eyes wet. “I had one job, one purpose. God, I’m stupid, but the probability, I mean, for us to be right there at that precise moment…” She shakes her head. “I should have done more.”
“More what?” I can’t think past her trying to kill us. I stand and kick my chair. Misjudging, I knock it over with my shin. “You horse-punched a three-year-old! You grabbed the throttle of a plane with the intent of murder-suicide.” I pace the room with a limp, my shin smarting.
“She’s not any toddler?”
“You’ve mentioned.” I grab the chair and straddle its back.
Sarah leans toward me and says in a quiet voice, “She’s a mass murderer.”
“She’s three years old!”
Sarah sighs, closes her eyes, and pinches the bridge of her nose. “Not now. When she grows up.” She opens her eyes. “She’s gonna murder millions, gonna gas them, vaporize them, conduct the worst genocide the world has seen.”
“How the hell do you know that?”
“Put two and two together, George.”
“Oh, now I get it.”
Sarah exhales, puffing out her cheeks. “I thought you would.”
“I get you’re laying the foundation for an insanity defense, brick by crazy brick.”
Sarah shakes her head. “Listen up.”
“This ought to be good.”
“The fall victim from this morning, she’s Kyala’s number two.”
I want to believe her, really do, and I know they’re connected. But I can’t jump feet-first into the straight jacket she offers. “Sarah, that woman was twenty or thirty years older than Kyala.”
“When she died, yes, but they were born in the same generation. Kyala Meladrova in the year 2322. Natasha Birmingham, the woman from this morning, was born in 2318.”
“Was? Last I checked we’re in the twenty-first century.”
“Your snark isn’t needed, George.” Sarah sighs and looks at her lap. “Hear me out. Please?”
“No. I see where this crazy train’s heading, and I want off.”
“I’m undercover from the future, George.”
I jolt to my feet. “And I’m out.”
I open the door and slam it, yet out in the hallway, I can hear Sarah through the speakers. She knows this and continues her evidentiary groundwork toward spending life in a cozy hospital.
“The resistance sent them to this time, this location, at an altitude that’ll kill them. My job is to confirm the job’s done. It’ll prevent World War IV, prevent their criminal atrocities. Thank God, Natasha Birmingham’s dead! Kyala must also die! Go to my condo. You know where I keep the spare key. You’ll get your proof in my office safe. Password’s my birthday.”
I go straight to my office where Jed and Kyala wait. When I open the door, Kyala stares and smiles, and continues playing with a model police car. She’s making it fly.
Jed clinks ice into another glass of bourbon.
“Pour me one.” Once the words come out, I’m settled on getting drunk tonight. It’ll be my first time since Laura and Billy went missing. May the buzz dull my shame.
Jed tops off his glass and slides it my way. I lift the whiskey to my nose and sniff. When the smell hits me, my skin tingles and gets all goose-fleshed, an electric shock of invigoration. Colorful fireworks—red ones, blue ones, gorgeous ones—they’re blasting in my head.
One sip away from escape, I open my eyes and stare at Kyala, lovely and innocent. She’s wearing a dress of silver, white ruffles around the neck, her skin the color of milk. Blue veins, ever so faint, traverse her temple. Her blue eyes are bloodshot from crying. A large bump on her head is getting redder by the minute. Right now, I’m all she’s got.
I place the whiskey glass back on the table.
Kyala hovers the police cruiser over the ground, asks for permission to land, and slowly touches four little wheels to the floor. She looks up at me with those big, blue eyes. “I’m hungry.” Her voice is high and as sweet as ice tea with an accent I can’t place.
“Do you like burgers and fries?”
Kyala shrugs.
After McDonald’s, I take Kyala to Sarah’s condo. It’s the best option of many bad ones. Jed’s halfway to blitz by now. Any other sitter will ask questions I don’t want to answer.
I find the spare key underneath a pot of sunflowers on Sarah’s back patio. It’s bizarre creeping into her condo without her around. Then again, nothing about today comes a country mile near normal.
Kyala scarfs down her Happy Meal at the glass dining-room table and laughs when she finds an Elsa figure at the bottom of the smiling, red and yellow box. She stares at me with a blank expression when I sing the chorus to “Let It Go.”
“From Frozen?”
Kyala shows no recognition.
“This simply won’t do.” I turn on Sarah’s television and open the Disney Plus app, so Frozen can babysit Kyala while I search Sarah’s office. The instrumental to “When You Wish Upon a Star” plays, and fireworks explode over the Disney castle, and Kyala potters into the living room, her eyes mesmerized. TV hypnotized, Laura and I used to call it whenever Billy’s eyes glazed to glass.
I swallow the lump and wipe my eyes, remembering that day with Billy. That day, our last day together, he, snot-nosed and fever, stayed home from daycare. Daddy’s got this, I told Laura, and I cuddled with Billy and his ragged teddy bear on the couch, watching Frozen on DVD. Remember those? And I drank, and Laura came home and found the empties and said something about it being the last straw and something about having a broken heart and something about waiting in Missoula until I put down the bottle. A twelve-pack in, I don’t remember her exact words. I’m not sure whether I hugged Billy goodbye. That kills me.
I am crying now, standing there for I-don’t-know-how-long, and Kyala hugs my leg, the hypnotic spell of Frozen broken for pathetic ol’ me.
I pick her up and say, “You’re a sweet thing.” I carry her to the couch and set her down and grab the softest blanket I can find from the linen closet. I hum along to the song “For the First Time in Forever,” and I tuck her in, and her eyes squint, and her eyes close. She falls asleep.
And for the first time in forever, I hear the soft rasps of a child sleeping. And for the first time in forever, the suffocating pain doesn’t feel as heavy, and I smile. It’s faint, that smile, but true and involuntary, not painted on for social conventions.
I head for the office, down a hallway, past a photograph of a black wild horse standing in a purple field of lupines, past a glass display of arrowheads found on Sarah’s ranch, and past a diffuser puffing wisps of eucalyptus oil.
I push open the door to Sarah’s office and go straight to her home safe. It’s stashed under a large wooden desk. Crouching, I turn its combination lock guided by Sarah’s birthday, my heart rate increasing with each rotation. 11. 27. 92. The door of the safe swings open, revealing two objects inside—a translucent, fist-sized cube and a silver rifle, unknown make and model. I know firearms. It must be a toy.
When I touch the cube, it illuminates from within. The light, a cool white, pulses, humming and vibrating. I place it on the desk and step back. The pulses quicken in pace until the cube becomes one solid light and hum. This is Sarah’s proof? A night light and a toy gun?
I pick the cube up to examine it and am bombarded by a flurry of mental images, articles, and videos of a future war, suffering the world over. I grasp my temple and fall to my knees. I’m overwhelmed by what’s downloading in my brain, so fast, so hard, it’s incomprehensible in any narrative form. But the feeling? The feeling I know too well—dread at its darkest core.
I drop the cube and the mental bombardment stops, but I retain it all, know Kyala’s life, from cradle to grave. Orphaned as a newborn, Kyala’s a product of the cold state. Never hugged, never loved, she’s neglected by adults and beaten and bullied by her peers. They mold her. They harden her. She becomes the bully.
I gaze at the cube, nestled by thick carpet. It’s from the future. Where else could such a technological wonder come from? I wish I never touched it, wish I didn’t know the evil Kyala becomes.
I’m sweating and nauseous and can’t shake the images that’ll haunt me until my end: whole cities vaporized, whole countries toppled within days. Crowds shouting and spitting and cursing in unison, whipped into a hateful fever by an adult Kyala at a podium, large flags of green and yellow stars behind her. “More blood!” they shout. “More death!” they crave. Kyala provides until all the world is hers, dissent squashed, resistance trampled. She’s neglected no more.
And now I sympathize with Sarah, know that at whatever cost this future must not come to fruition. If Kyala lives, my hands will drip with the blood of millions.
But she’s three years old, yet to commit any crime. Three! That’s how old Billy was that day Laura and he ran off.
I punch the carpet bloody, screaming, crying, caught in a familiar mental loop. Where is my boy? I love him, miss him! And Laura? I don’t blame her. She knows they’re more than I deserve and doesn’t want to be found. That’s my best hope. The alternative: They’re dead. That likelihood pummels my conscience because I chased my family away, the first domino of many that ended in their last breath. I hope they died painlessly. I hope they didn’t see it coming. The possibilities otherwise cause my sleepless, screamed-filled nights.
With my left hand, I touch my bloodied knuckle, the flesh tender and rug-burned, and take deep breaths to set my ruminations free. I must learn more, so I pick the cube up, the information ricocheting inside my brain. I drop the cube when I can take no more, and I hyperventilate on all fours, dizzy, seeing ephemeral specks dance in my vision. Sweat trickles down my face. It burns my eyes.
And now I know how Sarah, Kyala, and her number two traveled to the present day—the silver rifle. It’s no toy, but a time machine, the user manual downloaded into my brain. While the technical ingenuity of this marvel is far beyond me, it’s user-friendly, as easy as counting one, two, three. One, calibrate the rifle to your desired destination—there’s a dial of numbers for time and location. Two, point the rifle at your desired time traveler, yourself or another. Three, pull the trigger. Yippee!
I hear a car pull into Sarah’s driveway. The engine shuts off. Two doors slam shut. “Inside!” It’s Sarah’s voice. I’m puzzled about how she broke free. I’m certain why she has come—her unfinished business. I’m all that’s stopping her. I’m torn about my next move.
I peek out the window. Sarah and a fit man, wearing urban fatigues and a don’t-mess-with-me expression, sprint toward the front porch. He’s carrying what looks like a pistol. So he is how Sarah escaped. Betchya, he came from the future.
I got seconds before they barge into the living room. The fate of millions or one sweet girl hinges on my decision.
I know what I must do.
I grab the rifle, sprint into the living room, and calibrate the rifle to Missoula, fifteen years ago. I double-check I got the altitude right.
Sarah and the man burst through the door at the same time I point the rifle at Kyala.
“George, don’t!” Sarah says, and the man aims his pistol.
Kyala, woken by our commotion, bolts upright and screams.
I pull the trigger. So does the man.
I’m a half-a-breath quicker than he, the blue beam from my rifle hitting Kyala. She disappears. A barrage of bullets smatters the cushion where she sat, fluff everywhere. My God, all from a pistol!
“George, what have you—“
I shoot myself into the past before Sarah finishes.
I’m pushing Kyala in a swing in a pocket park across from the address Laura gave me when she left. It’s a cute house with yellow siding and blue trim. Mount Sentinel looms overhead, its grass the vivid green that early June brings. White caps Lolo Peak to the south, an accentuating beauty underneath the blue sky.
Laura and Billy aren’t home, probably a good thing, so I can compose myself.
When I first had arrived, I had pounded on the door, holding Kyala’s hand while she wailed, the rifle in the other hand. An elderly woman next door had pulled the blinds up and peeked with a busy-body expression pouting her face. I thank my lucky stars she didn’t call the cops. That’d have been quite the conversation.
More collected, I’m rehearsing what I’m going to say to Laura. I half-don’t believe it myself. What rational person would?
“Higher!” Kyala giggles. “Higher!”
My heart flutters, and I gasp when Sarah’s faded-red Nissan Maxima turns onto the neighborhood street. Billy sits in his car seat in the back, his sticky hands smudging the glass. He waves at me! I stick up my hand back. I can’t hold back the tears.
Laura pulls into the driveway and idles.
She might drive off.
I pick up Kyala, tell her I got two friends for her to meet, and carrying her in one arm, I jog across the street.
Laura opens the door and steps out. Slumped shoulders, a heavy sigh, her body language shows the score.
“George, you look awful,” she says.
I smirk. I can’t help it because of her understatement. Gray-speckled hair, ten pounds heavier, I haven’t treated my body as a temple since she left, to her only a day ago.
She stops mid-reach of the rear door and tilts her head. “Who’s the girl?”
I place Kyala, feet first, on the driveway. “I gotta lot to tell you, and we don’t have much time, but first can I hold you and Billy?”
Laura opens the rear door.
“Daddy!” Billy reaches toward me, his blue eyes sparkling.
All the pain built up inside escapes my mouth as a warbling cry. My knees buckle. I lean on the car to keep from falling. “I never thought I’d hear him say that again.”
“I’m mad as hell at you, George.”
“I know, baby. I know.”
She unlatches Billy from the car seat. He grabs for me, smiling, his teeth and lips blue from an earlier treat.
“Can I?”
“Of course, hun.”
She called me hun!
I clutch Billy, and he clings on tight, and Laura hugs me, and it is as if we three are puzzle pieces that fit together. We found the fourth.
“This is Kyala.” I pick her up, and she joins our embrace, and I ask the question that burns in my throat: “Will you take me back?”
Laura puts Billy down and takes a step back, scanning me from head to toe. “Are you sober?”
“Yes, and I’ll never drink again.”
“Then, you needn’t have asked. Didn’t I tell you we’d be waiting here for you?”
I place Kyala back down, and Billy runs to a toy lawnmower in the front yard and pushes it, plastic balls of assorted colors popping in its transparent bubble.
Kyala giggles after. She falls, lets out a cute yelp, and cries. Laura and I sprint over.
Laura lifts her up, shushes her, and rubs her back. “Don’t cry, darling.”
Kyala buries her head into Laura’s shoulder.
Billy raises his arms for me to pick him up. When I do, he nuzzles his head into my shoulder. Heaven.
Sarah’s going about it wrong. Kids will be kids; their innocence transcends the centuries. Give them all of yourself, and they’ll love the world back. Kyala needs parents. She needs us.
“Wanna visit Paris?” I ask.
Laura smiles, her eyes wet.
How I miss that gleam.
“Not sure how we can afford the trip, but sure. I’ll bite. I adore Paris.”
“Which decade?”
“That I love best?”
“That you want to visit.”
She swats my shoulder, smirking. “Sure you’re not drunk?”
“Only on happiness,” I say, tears trickling down my face.
To think—fifteen years of toiling in criminal databases, fifteen years of yelling at God to help—I should have looked in the mirror. My suspect would have stared right back.
Maybe, we’ll go to Paris. Perhaps, Morocco. The destination matters little. What matters most is my family—Laura, Billy, and now, Kyala. They will get all of me wherever, whenever we go. Loving a child to prevent a world war? That’s easy. Loving my reflection? That’s harder, but a must.
John Eric (“J. E.”) Schleicher is an award-winning author who writes stories that leave behind a fantastical aftertaste long after reading. His short fiction has appeared in Creepy Podcast and will appear in the forthcoming anthologies, Writers of the Future, Volume 40 and Black Hare Press’s Year Six. His short story “Squiddy” was a winner of the Writers of the Future contest and is currently being novelized. When not reading or writing, he enjoys wandering wonderstruck (on two legs or knobby wheels) the mountains near his home in Missoula, Montana. Visit his website at jeschleicher.com or connect with him on Threads & Instagram @JESchleicher.