“I’m guessing to give me some motherly talk about college. You know my biological mother has already given me that, right?”

“Oh, trust me, I know my place with Jennifer. I wouldn’t dare cross her.”

“You and my mom are on a first-name basis, huh?”

“You’re dating my son. And my son is dating hers. What, do you think we’d be enemies?”

I debate telling her how much my mom hated her and Blake when we first started dating, but when Claire turns with a leather-bound book in her hand, any thought about telling her that is replaced with curiosity.

Claire stays quiet, looking at the book. She runs her smooth hands over the cover, slowly walking over and sitting back next to me. The lightness in the room is gone, and the silence is so deafening that the sounds outside of children and music cease to exist.

Finally, after two false starts, she speaks.

“I’m not a person who gives people I care about traditional gifts, Andre. Never have been. And you are no exception,” she whispers, passing the book to me. “I hope you can find beauty in the complexity of this gift.”

The book feels heavier than I thought it would be. The edges are lined with plastic and have a yellowed tinge to them. The cover is intricately designed in a pattern I’ve never seen before.

“I don’t know how to explain it, but it’s like whatever’s inside of here is old. But it looks new? Like you could buy this book at Target or something,” I whisper.

She smiles, crossing one leg over the other. “We call that ‘the sense,’” she explains. “Time travelers can tell the age of things just by touching them. There’s much that we don’t understand about time travel, Andre. You’re living proof of that, and so are the half a dozen or so people throughout time who weren’t born in a time-traveling family but gained the ability. It’s all fascinating, really.”

“Is there a place to study it?” I ask, still mesmerized by the book. “A school or something?”

“Would you be interested, if there is? I suppose I could pull some strings for you. Again.”

I smirk and finally open the book.

Instantly, the first picture jumps out at me. It’s an image of a man with blond hair, smiling into the camera, standing in front of Stanford University.

That hair.

That smile.

That…

“Michael,” I whisper. I barely feel Claire touching my shoulder, rubbing it softly.

I flip through the dozens of pages. Photos of him labeled with years and locations fill the book. His and his boyfriend’s first apartment in London. The adoption of their kid. Even photos of him back in between my jumps, like him at Stonewall or at some party with his friends on New Year’s Eve party in 1969. There must be at least a hundred photos.