July 6, 2002 |31|

James grabbed a Chicago Cubs t-shirt and a pair of camouflage boxer shorts then added them to the basket of cotton/sturdy blues and greens. His mind was desperate for more details from his past futures, but in the present, there was laundry. A hero's job is never done...

He closed the hamper with his left hand and hugged the basket on his right hip as he left his bedroom. Down the hallway, he passed various framed photographs of a younger Serafina, the three of them together, or Martha and him from before. He continued on through an empty living room and kitchen until finally reaching the garage. There, tucked in the corner, the washer and dryer sat, obscured by the various creative and intellectual stations he and Martha had built for their daughter, once upon a lifetime.

The lego table, ballet bar, and painting easels were vacant, but on one of the beanbag chairs within the reading nook, James spied a tiny Serafina, curled up and sketching on a notepad. He set the laundry next to the machine, then sat next to his daughter. "Whatcha working on, Ser-Bear?"

"Just a memory," they said.

He took a closer look. The pencil sketch was a manga of a boy and girl seated next to one another at a table. As James had come to expect, the artistry was flawless. The characters' features were disproportionate and their emotions, exaggerated - Kishimoto with a dash of Fujiwara, I'd say...

The girl's eyes were comically wide and her smile, wider as she looked up at the boy. The subtlest shading across her cheeks was enough to communicate how utterly smitten she was.

While her hair was tangled and chaotic, his was a suave, Luke Perry pompadour. His shoulders and chest were broad but his expression was fearful as he looked down at what he held in his outstretched hand. It was a pipette with a clear droplet hanging precariously over a test tube partially filled with a darker liquid. Positioned in the dead center of the drawing, his free hand held one of the girl's in anxious solidarity.

Then James knew.

"It's us," he said. "I mean, me and your mom. Chemistry class... That's amazing." Memories flooded. November 11th, 1994... Grape juice and ammonia... Seventeen days after she arrives... The day I ask her to the football game...

Over the many lifetimes and many Marthas, James had developed a routine - a streamlined method to quickly earn her trust before dropping the bomb of who he was. Per the routine, that was also the night he would meet Steven, who, despite his frayed relationship with Martha, was the preeminent influence in her life at the time. Making the right impression on him made a significant impression on her.

It was strange, though. James had been desperate to escape the maddening cycle for so long. Looking at the sketch now, however, he couldn't help but feel nostalgia for it. He heard the front door open and close. "Honey? That you?" he called.

"Yeah!" Martha answered from the next room.

"Come in the garage. You gotta see this!"

"Just a sec!" James heard a pair of running shoes tumble off Martha's feet and then she appeared through the door wearing her high school gym shirt and track shorts. She wiped a towel across her face and neck and then tossed it into James' basket. "What's up?"

"Look at this," he said, motioning to the sketchpad. "Look at what Sera drew."

Martha sat in the open beanbag chair on the other side of Serafina then gasped. "Oh my god..." Her eyes darted across the sketch. She smiled then laughed then frowned then smiled again, cycling through emotions as she went on her own journey back.

She looked at James and he saw every inch of that journey in her eyes. "I haven't thought about that in a long time. It's... It's magnificent, sweetie," she said, then kissed Serafina on the top of their head.

"Thanks. It's one of my favorites. From before you knew..."

"Yeah," Martha said. "To call that a different time is an understatement."

"Also an understatement," James agreed then returned to the sketch and to the day.

November 11th, 1994...

Per the routine, he'd have to hold back the euphoria of being with her, unable to tell her for another eighteen days, and even then, not all of him at once, but piece by piece.

He turned back to Martha in the present and reached out to gently caress her shoulder. She smiled and leaned across Serafina to give him a peck on the lips and he felt like the luckiest man in any version of this world. As she leaned back onto her beanbag, Martha sniffled and a tear dropped onto the sketch, landing on the pipette and leaving a hideous blotch on Serafina's masterpiece. "Oh no!" she said. "Oh no, sweetie. I'm sorry. Oh no, I ruined it."

"Are you kidding?" Serafina exclaimed. "A fallen tear from the subject of, brought on by an emotional response to, and thereby altering my art... It's circular serendipity. It's brilliant!"

"Oh, yeah... Totally what I meant to do," Martha said, wiping her cheeks.

Serafina continued to sketch, now adding stress lines to James' forehead, curving up from his especially large nose. "That's quite a schnoz you've given me."

"Oh Dad, it's a caricature," Serafina said without pausing.

"Gimme a break," Martha objected. "You look like a Greek God next to my hot mess. Seriously. Look at me. Could I be any more thirsty for you? Which was..." She looked at James, sighed, then smiled. "Pretty accurate actually."

"Thank you," Serafina said as they continued to shade the background. "Mom was still fighting off her suspicions that Dad was too good for her or that he was playing some kind of prank and Dad was debating whether or not he should tell Mom his secret or allow her to remain blissfully ignorant."

"My ignorance was anything but blissful. Thank you for telling me."

"Any time," James said. Nevertheless, he reconsidered. What if he had skipped telling her that life? He could have befriended Martha long enough for her to acclimate to her new school, then withdraw and allow her to live a normal life, perhaps watching from afar. Of course, he wouldn't last for more than one life. To exist without her knowing him was torturous. And so, the cycle would have resumed in the following life. But was there something essential about that specific lifetime - or this specific Martha? Would the events of the following life have led to her immortality and eventually Serafina? Would they ever?

Serafina put down their pencil. "So... There's something I have to tell you..."

"Oh great," James joked. "What now?" Serafina stared blankly at the sketch in silence. "I'm sorry sweetie," he said. "Just being silly. You can tell us whatever you want."
"Yes, please," Martha agreed. "Good, bad, universe altering... By now, you really can tell us anything."

"Thanks," they said, eyes still fixed on the sketch. "You asked me a question a couple of days ago, Dad... You asked me if... If I've ever fallen in love with someone in the way you fell for Mom. And... I have."

"That's wonderful," James said, though he knew the compliment was misplaced as soon as it left his lips. Clearly, this was not the happy story their first wedding was. This is something very different...

They sat in silence for a few moments before Serafina said, "So... I started having my doubts in my eighth life."

"Your doubts?" Martha asked. Serafina looked up at her and the sadness and regret in their eyes gave their answer. "Oh. Right. Doubts."

"By then, I'd heard the stories of your own struggles. Of Robbie... Of Nan... And to keep from following in your footsteps, I decided to be proactive. So in my ninth life, I devoted myself to humanitarian service. A hospital in Columbia... water treatment in Ghana... refugees in Yemen... But the doubts wouldn't stop and so I couldn't either. You two kept checking up on me, afraid I was flailing, and... you were right. I was.

"I ended up back in LA, tutoring homeless children. One evening - god, I remember it so clearly - I was washing dishes at the shelter, scrubbing stubborn burnt spaghetti sauce off the bottom of a pan, and reflecting on the day. I'd been helping a young boy with his reading. We'd been making significant progress, but on that day, I'd pushed him too hard. Nothing major, but he'd shut down and I knew his trust in me or anyone offering help had been damaged. In hindsight, I should have been more patient. In hindsight, I'd made a mistake. Then, still scrubbing the sauce, I imagined twin paths of twin universes - one in which I'd made a better choice and the one in which I was living. However slight, how much easier would the boy's life be in the other? How much less would he suffer?"

Martha sighed at the evident similarity. They certainly are their mother's daughter...

Serafina continued. "I began to notice other mistakes or shortcomings - missed opportunities to help or inspire. Sometimes I would head home for the evening only partially exhausted. I still had energy. Certainly, there were other shelters with night shifts that could use an extra hand and if their staff were less overwhelmed that night or the next day because of my help, they'd be able to do more and there'd be less suffering in their world than there was in ours and that discrepancy was my fault. Then I spiraled - more mistakes, more shortcomings, more universes, more suffering, everywhere, all the time, all my fault... And I snapped.

"I ended that life and then... just gave up. The following life, I was catatonic." They looked up at Martha and then James, their beautiful hazel eyes welling. "It was very hard on you both. But I didn't care about your feelings. I didn't care about anything." Their chubby cheeks crumpled and their chin clenched. "But the life after that... life eleven... I cared... and because I blamed the two of you for it... I was... vicious."

Martha and James acted in unison, holding Serafina close and speaking their forgiveness. "Oh, sweetie. It's okay."

"We understand..."

"No," Serafina said and sat up, free from their parents' hold, their face pink from tears. "No, you really don't. You have to imagine. All of this - all of the shock and the confusion and the loss... Imagine it all with a daughter intent on punishing you... A daughter who knows your worst secrets and deepest fears... A daughter with two dozen graduate degrees and an unnatural capability to inflict pain and crush your will..."

Martha and James pulled them back without hesitation. James recalled his own period of malevolent nihilism and the victims with no memory of his crimes, forever unable to forgive him. "We forgive you, sweetie," he said.

"That sounds horrible," Martha added.

Serafina let out a deep breath. "I know you do. Thank you. And it was, but it's important that you know."

"We get it," James added. Serafina, twenty lifetimes past their eleventh, must have made this confession to Martha and him a number of times. Of all the people James had hurt all the hundreds of lifetimes ago, none were able to receive his confession. Perhaps Serafina found consolation and catharsis in the ability to confront their victims. "We're sorry it happened."

"Me too," Serafina said as they wiped their cheeks dry with their shirtsleeve. "Anyway, eleven was the worst. Twelve was slightly better. By thirteen, I was done punishing you, but the darkness remained. I sleepwalked through a couple of lifetimes before finding myself in Urbana-Champaign in my sixteenth."

"University of Illinois?" James asked.

"Yeah. Where you went to school in your first life, before any of this nonsense had begun. I enrolled on a whim with all the enthusiasm of a shoulder shrug. I didn't plan on finding anything or anyone in The Middle of Nowhere, USA. But fate, if such a thing could exist, finds what we plan to be hilarious."

Author's note:

So, in case you couldn't tell, the sketch at the top of this chapter is not the sketch Serafina is creating. That is because my talents - if you could call them that - lie with words, not pictures and this was the closest I could find.

If any reader happens to have the talent and the free time, I would happily swap out what I have. Or James and Martha can just stay on the random bench with their ramen and flowers.

Also, does anyone not remember their early days in chemistry class from the first book? Conversely, did anyone figure it out before James?

Thank you so much for reading!