But rarely both together. How bitterly unfair. Oona jerked her head side to side, tried to shake out some tears, but her eyes remained dry.
As if sensing her troubling thoughts, Madeleine added, “All three of us have had some marvelous years together, too. Last year in particular—” Her racking cough provided the perfect dramatic pause. Taking a hasty drink of water, she continued. “Why, it was nothing short of glorious. We saw and experienced more in a matter of months than many do in a lifetime.” She held up a finger as a spasm of pain coursed through her.
“Do you need more morphine?” Oona’s face echoed a different pain.
“Not right now.” After a moment, her body relaxed. “Last year, you must’ve known about my impending diagnosis, because you insisted we not waste a single moment. And we didn’t. No spoilers, but…” A mischievous gleam still shone through her fading eyes. “Let’s just say, the only thing left on my bucket list is the figurative bucket.” Her wink made Oona want to fall to her knees.
“Please don’t go crossing that off yet, Mom. There are some things I still need to say.” She’d had days to string together a tribute, and though it would never do her mother justice, there wasn’t much time left to vocalize it. Imperfect was better than unspoken.
“You know how Dad always called you a force of nature? Well, I saw you more as a force of chaos. Growing up, you did these little disruptive things that drove me crazy—like how I’d comb my hair until it was perfect, and you’d come and tousle it. Or how you bought me orange tennis shoes after I asked for plain white ones. And after Dad died, when the last thing I needed was more chaos, you still brought it. Making me cut class, ride roller coasters, go to concerts … But I get it now. You weren’t adding chaos to my life. You were adding color.” What would a world without Madeleine possibly look like? Oona could conjure only a gray canvas. A wave of cold exhaustion swept over her, but she continued.
“That’s the amazing thing about you, how sneaky your wisdom is. And how quiet your sacrifices. You’ve done so much to put me first. I’m sorry I took that for granted. And I’m sorry for the times I pushed you away or acted like there was nothing I could learn from you. I actually learned a lot. You taught me to be brave and curious, to make mistakes, to be my boldest and truest self, to find a path through this tangled-up life of mine and … Thank you. For everything.” Oona had to stop. Her words, though heartfelt, were beginning to resemble a eulogy, which she’d have to write soon enough—such grim, unavoidable homework awaiting her.
When Madeleine fell asleep, Oona checked to make sure she was still breathing (faintly, but she was), then asked Kenzie to join her in the study.
“Could we sit?” She motioned to the plum-colored armchairs across from the fireplace. “I swear, every year, the chairs in here are different.”
“Yeah, you do swap them out a lot. You say you can’t seem to get them right.”
“If only it was just the chairs.” A dark chuckle. “But I do like these.” She settled into the plush cushioning. “So listen…”
“Uh-oh. You have your ‘we need to talk about Kenzie’ face.” Elbows on knees, he leaned forward.
“More like, we need to talk about my shitty mom skills. My last leap was 1999.”
“Did you party like Prince told you to? Laugh at all the Y2K— Oh, 1999.” His smirk evaporated. “Yeah, that was rough.”
“I didn’t know I had a kid before that leap.” She clasped her hands as if in prayer. “What happened in Boston … it was such a crazy thing to do, but I wanted to see you so badly. I couldn’t think of a better way to do it without causing more disruption.”
“And you would’ve gotten away with it, too, if it wasn’t for that pesky gazpacho,” he said in a cartoony old man voice.
Her earnestness interrupted, she sat back. “You’ve heard all this from me before.”
“Yeah, and we’re cool.” A breezy wave of his hand.
“I’m not cool. I’m so sorry for lying to you, for damaging your relationship with Shivani and Faye.”
“It took a hit, but we moved past it. You and I did, too, eventually. Though, you have to admit, what you did—that Undercover Boss bullshit—was pretty messed up. But we’ve reached a point where we can even laugh about it now.”
Oona couldn’t imagine laughing about that (or much of anything) right then.
“You’re not a shitty mom,” he said. “When that whole showdown happened … it took a while for it to sink in. I thought there was no way this goth chick with the cool music taste actually gave birth to me.”
“And yet…”
“And yet.”
How peculiar, to see her smirk reflected in a young man she hadn’t even become pregnant with in her timeline. A man older than her externally than she was internally. “You must’ve thought I was a deadbeat or mentally ill.”
“Kinda, and that’s before I found out about the time travel. Which—spoiler alert—Madeleine filled me in on.”
Her brow puckered, then smoothed out. “Was that in 2003?”
“Yeah.” Kenzie’s face grew somber.
“I’ve always wondered about the night of that Suzanne Vega show. Chronologically, I thought you were meeting me for the first time, so that’s why I pretended not to know you. But if you already knew who I was, why go along with my act?” Her hands orbited each other, urging him to fill in the blanks.
A hissing sigh preceded his response. “I was out of my head when my mo— when Faye and Shivani died. Madeleine stayed with me for a while, helped me get their affairs in order, then convinced me to return to Brooklyn with her.” Silence as he shifted in his seat, crossed one leg over a knee, then the other. “She tried to get me to see you, tried to explain your leaps, but I wasn’t ready to deal with that, not on top of everything else. So she tried a different tactic, suggested I take her concert ticket, pretend I didn’t know you. Said I could feel out the situation and leave if I wasn’t comfortable.”
“Wow.” The fog thinned and another obscured corner of her life became visible. “So that was the first time you’d seen me since the Boston incident. No wonder you could barely look at me.” Shock flashed across her face. “I just realized something.”
“Uh-oh?”
“The first time I met you”—she counted off on her fingers—“in 2015, you pretended you weren’t my son. The second time, in 2003, we both pretended not to know each other. The third time, I pretended I wasn’t your mother. This is the first leap where neither of us are pretending.”
They shook their heads in sync, a web of perplexity and tenderness strung between them.
The following morning, Madeleine passed away. Kenzie found her in bed. He didn’t want Oona to see the body, but she insisted. “Mom made me look at Dad’s body again before he was buried. She said I needed to do it for closure, so my brain truly registered that he was gone. In a weird way, it helped.”
When she saw her mother, Oona didn’t outwardly react. Madeleine was gaunt and waxy, but her closed eyes looked as if they could still open and glint with traces of life. Seeing her this way resolved nothing, helped nothing. Oona remained in a catatonic state of agony, like a surgery patient whose anesthesia had worn off mid-operation, paralyzed, cut open.