On the day Henry returns from the future, she walks with him in the rain. Yellow and red leaves slip beneath her shoes. It’s autumnal. The word vibrates under her breath, but she doesn’t speak it aloud, not wanting to break his concentration as they reach the curb, cars flying around the corner. She’s missed him. She won’t say that either.
His eyes are wide as they cross, as if he’s forgotten the laws of traffic.
“Is it good to be back?” She’s asking for professional reasons. She’s the statistician on the project, her largest ever with government funding. If her key researcher says he needs to get outside, of course she’ll walk with him down the narrow streets of this residential neighborhood in DC, even in a soft, hesitant rain, mostly caught by the brilliant leaves above them, a few fat drops clinging in her hair.
“Everything was different,” Henry begins.
She waits but he’s stuck on something. “Like what?”
“The sunlight.”
They turn a corner, just to keep walking. “The light was different?”
“It fell on me differently.”
This makes no sense to her, but she nods, because he clearly needs to say these words to someone who won’t argue.
“And the milk,” says Henry. “How it slid down my throat after I paid for it. How it tasted like farms, like a particular cow.” He slides a hand into a pocket. “I drank it right there in the store.”
The future sounds strange. She needs to establish something. “It was our future?”
Henry laughs, a bitter sound. “That president—you know the one, he was never elected. Public sentiment wouldn’t allow it. His very candidacy a joke!”
It’s starting to make more sense, in a creeping, thrilling way, their speculations confirmed and she—the first to know of it. “An alternate timeline.”
“Yes. A different future.” His dark eyes meet her dark eyes. “I want to go back.”
“Why?”
He looks at her like she’s disappointed him. There was a reason he chose her for this walk. Not because she’s a good listener, not that. He sighs. “It was another America.”
She shakes her head. The rain’s stopped, and a breeze scatters water from the trees. “I can’t imagine.”
“No, of course not. But there I was, the Virginia countryside.” His voice loosens. “No one even noticed me.”
She tries to picture it: Henry stands and tips the rough paper carton of milk to his mouth. It’s late summer, maybe, and farmers filter in and out, their necks and ears burned red from the harvest. Henry’s new there, a Black man, a stranger. He lets his eyes close in pleasure as the cold milk enters him. Becomes him.
“The light was different,” she says, starting to understand. Their light, the very sunlight filtering now through branches, isn’t innocent. None of it, innocent. Prisming through water, it makes his face glow.
“I need something to tell the project managers, Davis and the rest,” says Henry. “Some reason I have to return, only this time, I’ll stay.”
She feels a horrible churning in her stomach. “You can’t go back.” It’s hard to do this. She’d rather Davis do it, anyone but her.
“Why?” Henry’s voice is deep, shaky. They come to a curb and he’s about to step off into the empty street but she flings out a hand.
There, she thinks, I saved your life. But that’s grandiose. He just wasn’t looking. The roads must be different in the future. “Funding,” she says. “The administration’s cut us off. Only enough money left to process you and we’re done.”
Henry stops in the street. It’s the middle of the day and a blue sedan grinds to a halt before them. She takes Henry’s hand and tugs him safely to the other side.
“Funding,” echoes Henry. He releases her hand. They’re reaching a busier block. Drugstore, laundry, pizza. A gas station where an old woman fills her tank and stares.
“How much?” Henry asks.
She knows numbers. That’s part of what she’s privy to. “Five million, at least, for another run.” To send him or anyone off again.
“Shit,” says Henry. He’s so mannerly, she’s never heard him curse before.
They turn another block, walking faster now. She wants to stop and she doesn’t want to stop.
“Maybe we can raise the money.”
Henry looks at her. He doesn’t know her that well, really. He doesn’t know her idealistic side. She gets it from her mother. “We spread the word and you’re a celebrity,” she says. “We’ll crowdsource it. Kickstart it!”
Henry stares in the window of a drycleaner’s. “You’re going to raise five million dollars to send a Black man into the future? A future none of us, not even our children, will ever see?”
She deflates. She’s seen her mother do it, a glorious, impractical idea floating up, up til it bursts. He’s right, it’s not likely. She wonders if he wants children. She wonders what their children would look like, and then is horrified at herself, being so selfish, wanting him now, when he’s in pain.
“Or maybe,” she says, “we can change this future, for our children.”
Henry considers her. “You want children?”
“I do.”
He turns his face from her. “I can still taste the cold milk,” he says.
