Unhappenings (38 page)

did not return home, primarily because I still had no idea where that was. Helen still had another half hour to go before her work day ended, and I was closer than that by foot to the library.

“Oh my God,” she said when she saw me. I could only imagine what the kilometers and the cold had done to me by then. “Nigel, what happened?”

“How long have we known each other?” I asked.

“Oh… Stingrays. Come in. Sit. Tell me what’s going on.”

I crashed in one of her comfy chairs.

“When was the last time you saw me?”

Unlike Andrea, there was no hesitation or confusion in Helen’s voice. “A few hours ago.”

“What did we talk about?”

“That I broke it off with Carlton.” Much to her credit, she answered this question evenly and calmly.

“How much do you know about my situation?” I asked. “Please be specific.”

She came around her desk, pulled up another chair, and held my hand. The warmth of her fingers against my chapped skin was delicious.

“You are a time traveler from the year 2092. Your life keeps unhappening, although you believe I am somehow immune to whatever causes that. You work for a future version of yourself, on a time travel project whose goal he won’t tell you. You are friends with another time traveler from the future named Athena, and I am going to meet her very soon. And I love you.”

I took in a very deep breath, held it for five seconds, and slowly released it.

“Thank you,” I whispered.

“What unhappened?” she asked softly.

“Everything but you,” I said. “My apartment is gone. I don’t work at the lab anymore.”

“You don’t live in an apartment,” she said. “You live in a house. And that’s where your lab is. You took me there to show me your work. We sent my tablet a minute into the future.”

“Can you take me there?” I pleaded.

“Of course,” she said, and kissed my forehead. As she stood to get her coat, she suddenly froze. “Did I do this?” she asked. “Is this because I kissed you?”

That clinched it. She really did know everything. I had shared with her my theory that the new unhappenings were being caused as a series of failed attempts to remove her from my life.

“I don’t think so,” I said.

She grabbed her coat, helped me up and took me home. It turned out I had a very nice house. Helen made me something to eat, then put me to bed and stayed the night in my guest room. As I drifted off, I grappled with the lie I had told her in her office, when she asked me if she had caused my unhappenings with her kiss. My last waking thought was a realization it wasn’t a lie after all. The timing was all wrong. She hadn’t caused it with the kiss. She had caused it by leaving Carlton.

he next three days gave me an opportunity to get to know my new surroundings. If the universe was trying to punish me, it was going about it all wrong. The private home was a major upgrade from my one bedroom apartment. My basement workroom was both more spacious and better equipped than what I was used to at the lab. Apart from the day of misery I spent not knowing where I belonged, my life had greatly improved.

On the fourth day, Helen and I had our appointment with Athena. Helen stayed over the night before to be sure she wouldn’t miss Athena’s arrival, since all we knew was the date. Once again, she had slept in my spare bedroom, a luxury I greatly appreciated now, and never had in the apartment. The state of our relationship was still in flux at that point, especially in light of the recent spate of upheavals in my life.

We had breakfast and made small talk. Helen was visibly nervous, despite my assurances that this would go smoothly. We settled in to wait. Helen had brought work with her, and spread it out on my dining room table, the most notable effect of which was highlighting for me the fact that I now had a dining room. The morning passed. We had lunch. Helen returned to her project.

At just after three in the afternoon, there was a dull flash of light from my living room. I walked in to find Athena, exactly the same as I had left her a week ago.

“Hi there,” I said. We embraced. Helen poked her head around the door. The look of awe on her face was as usual quite priceless, but today carried an extra edge I couldn’t quite identify.

“Helen,” I said formally, “this is Athena.” The introduction was one-way. I knew Athena had already met a future version of Helen.

Helen crept slowly into the room, her eyes locked on Athena. The glee I was so used to seeing at a new discovery was curiously lacking from her demeanor. Athena began to shuffle nervously, and I suddenly wondered if she hadn’t been right to suggest this meeting not happen. Helen walked right up to her and stared her in the eyes, moving her head to stay with them as Athena tried awkwardly to look away. This was spinning into a situation I could not define, other than to know it was not ideal.

I was about to suggest that we all sit down when Helen asked, “What is your real name?”

I had never told Helen that Athena was just the latest in a string of aliases, so this caught me off guard. Athena’s extremely hesitant response, more so.

“Athena,” she said quietly.

Helen took Athena’s hand. Very softly, she asked, “What’s your full name, honey?”

Despite Helen’s non-threatening tone, I had never seen Athena quite so intimidated. For a moment, I thought she might cry.

Finally, she said, “Athena Walden.”

Helen turned to me. “We have a daughter.”

And then, looking at them side by side, like an optical illusion that suddenly rights itself, I saw it. Athena did not look like Helen, at least not in a way that anyone who knew them both would mistake one for the other, but there were clear similarities. And in every way that she did not look like Helen, she looked like me.

“We have a daughter,” repeated Helen, “and you never told me.” I was utterly dumbstruck. The thought that this woman—my friend, ally and mentor—was my own offspring was beyond my ability to integrate into my world. So many questions. And worst of all the feeling of complete incompetence in my perception, that I would miss something for years that Helen was able to detect in moments.

“Mom,” said Athena. Hearing that word come out of her mouth wrapped a blanket around my heart.

“We were done with secrets,” said Helen, walking right up to my face. There was no anger in her voice, but the pain was palpable. “Remember? Everything on the table? How long did you keep this from me?”

“Mom!” said Athena. Helen whirled at the sharp tone. “He didn’t know.”

Helen snapped out of the hurt shock she was sinking into and walked back to Athena. She held her fingers up to Athena’s face, gently stroking her cheeks, then threw her arms around her. Athena hugged back, burying her face in her mother’s shoulder. When they finally broke away from each other, Helen’s face was covered in tears.

“Oh my God,” she whispered. “Look at you. You are so beautiful.” Athena smiled, moved in a way I had never seen in her eyes before.

Helen wiped her eyes with the heels of her palms, and said to me with a grin, “We have a daughter!” Then she ran to me and held me tightly. “We have a daughter,” she whispered in my ear.

“I see that,” I whispered back. What else could I say?

Helen kissed me on the cheek, and let go. She took Athena’s hand, and sat her down on the couch.

“What can you tell me?” she asked.

“Not much,” said Athena.

Helen shook her head. “Keep your future secrets. I want to know about you.”

As I made the adjustment in my heart from Athena my friend to Athena my daughter, I watched her mother try to get to know all the things I had learned about this girl over seven years of my life and thirty-five years of hers. As joyous as this was for all three of us, it meant something that Athena surely knew, and Helen would realize soon enough. Athena and I were both assailed with unhappenings on a fairly regular basis. And she was my daughter. I was never going to return home, and Helen was going to become mother to a family in which she was the only person with an apparently constant life. Which meant she would spend every day wondering if it would be the last day she would ever see us.

If I didn’t find a way to stabilize the unhappening effect, the woman I loved was already doomed to a life of the very worst kind of terror.