“Some people …” She pauses, trying to put it into words. “Can’t sustain joy. Some people are so primed to be unhappy, they have to make it true. I tried, for a long time, not to see it. He tried too.”

“Did he know?”

“About the time travel? Ha! He wasn’t quite as open to things as I am …”

“When did you know I was Weese?”

“You were five or six when I began to see ‘him’ in you. Your dad didn’t notice anything unusual, but his eyes were on other things. By the time you were twelve or thirteen, I knew it wasn’t just a resemblance. It was unsettling, and I couldn’t deny it. Every time I looked in your eyes, I thought about Weese’s face as we lifted him—you—up over the edge of the cliff.”

Ah. “That’s why you’re so—” I stop.

“So what?”

“That’s why you don’t love me being this out. It’s why you don’t want me to go to prom with Cheng.”

“Who else would you go with?” Her voice is thick with surprise.

“You really don’t remember saying it wouldn’t be safe?”

“I worked extra double shifts to rent you a limo. You better go with Cheng!”

This is a Mom I never knew. Not the one so scarred by the past that she made it her job to tamp down my present. This Mom sees me as I am, and sees only the possibilities of a teen in his golden hour. In her new eyes, mine is a life to lift up, not rein in. I’m crying now, and she really doesn’t get why. How could she?

All my memories of her doubts and fears have been translated into only that: my memories. And I guess it makes sense—in this timeline, she only knows the life she has lived since I went back to the past when she was seventeen, and made her this person.

It’s a hard concept to swallow: No one but me knows both lives.

A new thought. If she’s like the “New & Improved!” model of herself, maybe Gordo is, too?

“Is Gordo cool with all this?”

Her grimace tells me I was aiming too high. “When I hear from Gordo, it’s just to complain that child support is expensive.”

“So, in this timeline … he still left us?” She nods. But a terrible new question arises. “How did you even end up together after he was kicked out—after what he did?”