Page 59 of Erase Me
As expected, Xander and Nadine had so many questions about me and my parents and what brought about this jump in time.Their curiosity was measured, of course.They understood time travel and expected with justifiable concern that someone from the future might appear one day.
It was a difficult conversation to get my head around.Only late last year, it was my grandmother—the older version of this very woman—who had blown my mind when she told me for the first time that an alternate world existed in which my mother and I didn’t exist.When she’d traveled and decided to stay with the man she loved, the established ‘past’ had transformed.Family history had been rewritten, and my mother and I came to be.
Xander understood the mind-blowing aspect of time travel.He leaned forward and turned down the gas in the fire pit.
“I was truly skeptical, but then I found myself chasing after Nadine to a time and place I could barely conceive of.I still find it hard to believe at times.”He shook his head.“But what’s even more unbelievable is how bad Regency England smelled.”
Nadine punched him in the arm lightly and they both laughed.“For this past year, I’ve had to patiently explain over and over again the concept.”
“Well, sort of patiently,” he teased, giving me a wink.“But seriously, it still blows me away.And seeing you standing in our driveway almost knocked me off my feet.”
He was trying to keep the mood light, but I could hear the emotion in his voice.
I smiled at him.“You recognized me.You trusted me.”
“How could I not?Look at the two of you.”
Nadine reached out and took my hand.Her mouth pursed as it always did when she was very concerned about something.
“Tell me, Avalie.Are you sick?Do you have what I have?”Her eyes darted toward the screen door.“Does Layla have it?”
I immediately understood.Between this time and my own, science would find the cure for many types of cancer, but not the one Nadine suffered from.
She didn’t wait for me to answer.“If you don’t know, I have a rare type of lymphoma that wouldn’t respond to treatments.”
“I know.My mother doesn’t have it.”I reassured her.“You told me that she underwent testing and remained under the close eye of a specialist for years.But she never showed any of the symptoms.
Nadine and Xander exchanged a look of relief.
“She’s fifty-six years old now, in good health, active, and has no real medical problems at all.”
She squeezed my hand.“I’m so glad.”
“Andyouno longer are fighting this disease in the future, either,” I told her.
“I’m not?”She exchanged a look with Xander.
This was news I didn’t realize I’d be sharing.Her life...theirlife...would be different from now on.“No.You believed—or rather, youwillcome to believe—that traveling back in time somehow reset the clock, stopping the advance of the disease completely.”
Nadine had been raised in a youth home since both her parents died tragically in a highway accident when she was twelve, making her a ward of the state.She received her first diagnosis of cancer at the age of twenty-two after years of having her symptoms overlooked.Unfortunately, the disease carried a grim prognosis.It was a death sentence.
Memories of the long conversations we’d had about it flooded my mind.She’d never disclosed to Layla, my mother, about either the lymphoma or time travel.Nadine only confided in me when I was diagnosed with an early stage of the same disease.
She recounted that in her future life, they’d been on the brink of relocating her to hospice when an administrator came in to talk to her, explaining that there was a new trial that might help her.Nadine jumped at the opportunity.She admitted she hadn’t actually been hopeful, but she had no other option.She remembered thinking, at the very least, she could replace one of the animal subjects they used for medical research.A couple of days later, a woman wearing a badge visited her and recruited her to the Quantum Commute program.
“When I got into the program,” Nadine said now, “they told me they could never cure me.The motivation for joining, though, was that my cancer could go into remission when I jumped in time.They’d found that cell development could be arrested during the molecular dispersal and regeneration.”
“That’s right.You shared all of this with me in the future,” I recalled.“You said they started slowly at first, jumping you backward only a few minutes at a time...then forward again to your present.For a month, they did this every day.And then another month.You started getting stronger, and they kept it up, month after month.Tests and scans showed it was working.”
Nadine nodded.“The reset was permanent.”
“You thought that the repeated time travel you underwent in your twenties and thirties was the cure.By the time I was born, you showed no symptoms.”
“And Layla didn’t get the genetic mutation.”
“No.”
Nadine looked again at her daughter, asleep in her crib.“Is she happy?”
