“You’re awfully accommodating all of a sudden,” she says.

“That’s what happens when you travel ten years into the future and meet your dying daughter.” I swallow hard. “I…don’t want to fight anymore. I just want to save her. That’s it. So tell me what to do, and I’ll do it.”

“You weren’t supposed to meet her.” Genuine distress fractures her voice. “My goal is to save myself from pain, not cause it. But if it gets you up that tree so we can have a private conversation, then I’m not complaining.”

Sighing, I plan the spots to put my hands and feet. And then, I leap up and grab hold of the branch. The wood bites into my palms, and my feet scrabble against the bark. It’s been ages since I climbed a tree, but as muscle memory takes over, I slowly but surely pull myself up, my feet walking along the trunk. I’ve only done this a hundred times. Maybe even a thousand. I was taught by the best, after all.

“Alice is climbing trees again,” Archie had tattled to Mom when I was eight and he was nine. “She’s going to fall and break her neck, and then you’ll be left with one child instead of two.”

Instead of lecturing me, Mom just smiled. “Let’s make sure you do it properly, then.”

Every afternoon for the next week, she spent hours with me, observing my technique and offering suggestions. I memorized her every critique, my heart swelling with each word of praise.

She wasn’t like other mothers in the neighborhood. She didn’t cook or do laundry. Reading bedtime stories wasn’t her thing. Forget baking cookies. Once in a while, however, something we did would catch her attention. Tree climbing was one of them.

By the time I hoist myself up several branches and the budding coverage of leaves shields me from the passersby below, my eyes are dry but my soul is drenched. With the memory of my mother. With the tears I didn’t shed every night as I went to sleep.

This, too, is intentional, I realize with sudden and complete clarity. My older self doesn’t just want privacy. She wants me to remember Mom. To be thinking of her during this conversation. Why?

Older Alice might say she cares about me. I even believe her. And yet her motivations are a mystery. Her agenda her own. I have to remember that.

“Why did you make me screw up my best friend’s life?” I plant my feet on a thick branch. An occasional person walks by underneath, but no one looks up. From this vantage point, the tops of their heads look remarkably similar.

“Doesn’t matter because it didn’t work.” Her words bump into each other. “We’ve tried everything. And nothing’s worked.”