It was a Saturday in March, the chill of winter still desperately clinging to the outside air. Not that the chilliness mattered much to a guy who’d hardly stepped foot outside his apartment in the past month. Since I was ahead in my schoolwork, I had no real obligations. The night of sleep I got was one of the better ones I’d had in a while. There had been no nightmares and I felt like I was in a good headspace when I woke up. The energy and desire to do stuff was there. My metaphorical underground sun was shining a little bit brighter. I just had to figure out what I wanted to do.
When I went into the kitchen, Shelly left me a note saying that she was out, still doing her super-secret stuff that she had been putting makeup and fancy clothes on for. I hadn’t gotten any new info on that. For all I knew, she was manufacturing or selling drugs. Shelly was a good multitasker, so maybe it was both. It was keeping her busy, and hopefully kept her mind off me for a bit. I was happy she had something to keep her occupied. She always left me notes saying what food was around and when she thought she’d be back. I felt bad, because she always made me food in case I didn’t have it in me to cook that day. Well, the guilt made me eat the food she made. She had plenty of things to worry about, but me eating was not one of them.
I remembered back to when I’d first met Lori and she had to watch her friend die on TV. When she was upset, I made her some hash browns. I thought it was a good comfort food. After all, you can only be so upset with some form of potato in front of you. Surprising myself, I pulled out a bunch of ingredients to whip up a full breakfast. I wasn’t just stopping at hash browns. I could always eat what Shelly made later, or she could have it when she got back. I was concerned that she wasn’t getting enough food herself with how much she was in and out of the house.
For a few seconds, I wondered if I’d forgotten how to cook. I stared blankly at all the kitchen equipment and raw ingredients, wondering what went where. My stomach growled to help give my brain a bit of a jump. Soon enough, the entire kitchen and living room smelled like a breakfast buffet. The cooking felt good, and I rhythmically bobbed my head to a song I couldn’t get out of my mind. I saw the little robot vacuum by the couch cleaning something up and I implored him to bob his head with me, but he was in no such mood. I was so absorbed that I almost didn’t hear the knocks on my door.
After making sure my food wasn’t in a spot to burn the entire complex down, I put a lid on the skillet. Not trusting that a fire wouldn’t start the moment I turned my back, I watched it as a few more knocks echoed through the living room. We rarely had guests, especially after I got back, so I was surprised that anyone was there at all. Did they do door-to-door delivery and did Shelly order something? I knew that all my friends were spoken for that day. I thought it’d just be Shelly coming back from her...whatever it was early, or just a package. Shelly wouldn’t have needed to knock though.
Instead, to my surprise, it was Rebecca. At least I thought it was her. She had a phone in her right hand, a notebook in her left, and a confused look on her face. She looked really nice. It was almost hard to recognize her when she wasn’t dressed like the woman from the nineteenth century that she was. Her long-sleeved white top was tighter than the top she had been wearing in the Tomb, flattering her shoulders and lean muscles. My assessment of her appearance hadn’t changed in the month I hadn’t really seen her. She was still solid, though not big. Her shoulder-length red hair had definitely been touched up by Lizzy. Her eyes widened slightly behind thick-framed black glasses. She looked to be above average height for a woman, so she must’ve been a giant back in her time. Even so, her eyes only came up to around my neck.
It occurred to me that we hadn’t spoken since the day we got her out of the Tomb. There hadn’t been much conversation in general. That went double for the lady who was over a century old. She had been pulled in a billion different directions from the moment she stepped foot at Luna. It was a little uncomfortable, since she did try to make me feel better after our time in the Tomb. I realized that I should have checked in on her when we got back. Just another line to add to the list of things that I should have done. The immediate guilt I felt nearly made me slam the door in her face and crawl back into bed. I had to force myself to not be a rude asshole.
We stood there awkwardly looking at each other, neither one saying anything. Rebecca pressed her lips together expectantly. Finally, I moved out of the way and invited her in with a sweeping hand gesture. “Come on in.”
“Thank you,” she said, looking around. Her voice sounded different than what I remembered. Under the light of the living room, her red hair shined and looked like it was set ablaze. “It’s...cozy here. Are you cooking?”
“Making some breakfast. You want some?” I went to check on everything, coming away satisfied that I wasn’t about to start a massive fire. I didn’t want to share my food, but I would. Especially since she did help drag me out of that collapsing cave. That was enough to get me to spare some eggs for her.
“Sure,” she replied, trying to look over my shoulder. She rested a hand against my bicep while peering around me. Like in the Tomb, I wasn’t bothered at all by it. Before I could ask her if she had some kind of Anomaly that nullified the discomfort I usually felt when being touched, she sat at the bar that my sister commonly worked at with her laptop. “It smells better than the breakfasts I’m used to. Much nicer kitchens today.”
“Right, the time thing.” It hit me that there had to be lots of foods Rebecca hadn’t been able to try. There had to be foods that she did have in her time that could be prepared in better ways too. “How’re you adjusting? Everything coming along naturally?”
“It’s been a challenge,” she admitted, once again showing me her phone. “Most of the stuff you have now are just more efficient things I had back then. If I were to take a horse-drawn carriage somewhere then, I’d just take a car now. That stuff makes sense to me. Cellphones? Not so much.”
“You know, you don’t sound like someone from the Civil War era,” I pointed out, immediately feeling rude for saying something like that. I winced down at the eggs I was scrambling.
“What should I sound like then?” she countered. I glanced back to apologize, seeing a corner of her mouth turned upward, so she probably didn’t take my accidental jab to heart. Suddenly, it was my own voice that was talking back to me. “I can change what I sound like and how my speech pattern works. So, you tell me, what should I sound like?”
“Anyone but me, please.” I shivered. Hearing my own voice from someone else was something fresh added to the list of things I hated. I took the lid off my skillet to see that my hash browns were golden-brown on the bottom, so I flipped them and left the lid off so they could finish cooking. “What about your normal voice?”
“I’ve changed voices so many times now that I can’t even remember which one’s mine anymore.” Rebecca went back to the voice she had when I opened the door. She looked at my wall, her thoughts likely going back over a century. Her fiery hair cast a small shadow over her green eyes. “I’ve tried to piece it back together. Sometimes I think I can remember what it was like before I discovered this power. It’s just not right, and I can tell. You know, there are times I worry someone else has taken over my body and is projecting their voice out.”
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“I’m...sorry to hear that,” I said. That really did make me sad to hear. I couldn’t imagine not remembering what my own voice sounded like. It’d be like forgetting my hair color or how my body was built.
“Just one of those things I had to leave behind in that time, right?” The bitterness in her voice hit me, even though I didn’t think they were directed at me.
“How’re you, uh, feeling? With the whole, you know...” I did a finger gun motion, finding it easier to play some charades than to ask her a question like an adult.
She couldn’t meet my eyes. “I’m...getting better. The moment I thought about it, I regretted it. I took that man’s word for what was going on, and I was so overwhelmed with grief in that moment, I didn’t think life was worth living. But what if my daughter was alive or he’d been lying? I would have never lived to know. They trust me enough to let me live alone.”
“Let’s shift this in a more positive direction. I have to know, what’s been the hardest thing to get used to?”
“Computers and phones took the longest for me to get used to, but honestly? Clothes.” She tugged at the collar of her shirt and grimaced. “This thing feels like I’m wearing nothing with how thin it is. I will give it a perfect ten in the comfort department, even if it is flimsy.”
“Really, the clothes? That’s a surprise.”
“Lizzy took me shopping and tried to ‘help’ me get clothes. She’s a sweetheart, but she’s so loud.” Rebecca groaned and shook her head “She kept holding up these tight shirts that didn’t fit right because my shoulders and back are wide for a woman, and every time, without fail, she’d make sure everyone knew how about it.”
“That sounds like her,” I agreed. “She didn’t leave until you had a full set of clothes though, did she?”
“No, but it was awful when we got to underwear. She handed me a tiny piece of fabric smaller than a handkerchief, and I asked where the rest of it was. Then she pointed out that was considered a modest cut. Then she went on about all the different kinds, people started looking, and I thought I was cursed to some unknown circle of Hell. At least we found some things I felt comfortable wearing.”
I held back a laugh as best I could. “I’ve mixed up some laundry with my sister before. Women’s clothes really are manufactured thin and small.”
“And pants are so tight! I felt like I was going to explode out of everything. These jeans are about the best I could get. At least they have pockets.” She patted her upper thigh with pride. “She showed me leggings too. No pockets, but they were comfy. I don’t think they’re for me. Lizzy insisted I get a few pairs ‘just to be safe’. They weren’t right for my pocketbook either.”
“I’m happy you’re adjusting so well.” I flipped over the bacon and sausage I had on the stove, trying to decide how I wanted to approach her visit. “I can’t imagine you visiting just to complain about women’s clothes to a guy you barely know. Why are you actually here?” I asked. The hash browns were finished, so I put a healthy portion on two plates. Carefully, I set one down next to the redhead who was shifting uncomfortably at the bar. “Do you just need help with the phone?”
“Well, yes, I do.” She hesitated for a moment. She looked down at the food warily and poked at it with a cautious finger. I certainly hoped my cooking wasn’t so bad that she felt the need to nudge it like a dangerous animal. “I’m not sure why I really came to you, if I’m being perfectly honest. Lori, Alex, and the rest of them are nice, but they’re so busy that I feel like I’m intruding on what they’re doing. You’re the only one I haven’t talked to yet. You saved me, you know, and I still don’t know much about the guy who saved me.”
I started to eat my own food, waiting for her to continue. Instead of saying anything, she just watched me eat. With her piercing green eyes hitting me, I felt like I wanted to break out in a sweat. Never before had swallowing some hash browns been harder for me. Just like in the Tomb, it felt like she could see right through me, even if her eyes showed me nothing but curiosity. People said curiosity killed the cat, and for some reason, I felt like the cat.
She looked at her food one more time before her hunger won out. She grabbed a fork and dug in. Rebecca looked surprised when she took that first bite. Her curious glances became impressed while she wolfed down her food like she’d never eaten before. Before I even got halfway through my portion, she had completely cleaned the plate off. I’d never had anyone say my cooking was bad before. Granted, one of the only people I had fed was my sister, so she wasn’t going to say anything that would hurt my feelings. Rebecca looked like I’d reintroduced her to the concept of food.
“Was it good?” I asked, sliding her the rest of mine. She looked too happy eating my cooking for me to deny her more. What kind of man would I have been if I committed such a dastardly act against a guest?
“Best thing I’ve ever had,” she said around a mouthful of eggs and bacon, not wasting any time digging into my share. She killed off the rest of the food and sighed dreamily. “It was delicious. Thank you.”
I took both plates to the sink and started to wash them off. While scrubbing the dishes, I looked around the rest of the apartment and decided I’d try to get some cleaning done with the energy boost I had. Shelly and I were good housekeepers anyway, so it didn’t really need it, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt. I couldn’t just leave all the hard and dirty work to Reginald. Even he needed a weekend off every now and again.
“Do you want to talk about what happened?” Rebecca suddenly asked, startling me out of my weekend planning. I nearly forgot about her presence.
“What do you mean?” I asked, already having an idea of what she was referring to. I wasn’t exactly looking forward to her explanation.
“Look, I’m bad at lying when I’m around good people,” she said, getting to her feet. “Lori said that since I’m in an unfamiliar time and you had to do something completely out of the norm, we could maybe help each other out.”
“So, you were sent to be my therapist?” It came out sharper than I wanted it to. I’d been having some issues controlling my tone of voice. Even when I genuinely didn’t mean for something to sound nasty, it’d come out that way sometimes. It was frustrating me to no end. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to sound like a jerk.”
“No, that’s why I’m not here at all, promise.” Rebecca bit her bottom lip and picked up her phone. “There are things I’m having trouble coming to grips with myself.”
“Have you killed someone?” I asked. That time, I made sure it didn’t sound cutting, because I didn’t want it to be. If she had taken someone’s life in a way like I had, maybe there was some common ground we could find to talk about our issues. It felt disgusting to want that kind of common ground, but I was far from perfect. Killing Eric made me feel alone, even among my friends.
“I...” she began, but her voice cracked and stopped her. Her bottom lip quivered, and her green eyes grew moist. Rebecca set her glasses down, wiped her eyes, and sniffled. She gently pushed her phone toward me. “Would you help me look someone up? Lori said we can do that easier on these now. This thing can do so much, it’s a little overwhelming for me. The whole...touchscreen thing is not something I’m great with either.”
“I don’t mind, but are you going to be okay?” I put the dishes down in the sink and walked over to her. She was doing her best to not cry.
“I hope so.” I took the phone from in front of her while she tried to compose herself. I really wanted to give her a hug. I felt like I could do it without it messing with me. I decided against it, unsure if that’s what she would have wanted. “Can you look up the name ‘Rose Briars’ for me?”
The name partially rang a bell. I was pretty sure a briar was another name for a rose. She didn’t make any additional comments on the name, so I punched it into the search engine. A bunch of results popped up and I handed the device back to her. She gingerly scrolled through with her finger where she would hit some links she didn’t mean to, letting out a frustrated huff each time it happened. She at least had the very basics of a smartphone done while needing some improvement. Really, it wasn’t too shabby for someone over one hundred fifty.
Rebecca scrolled through plenty of biographies, recipe blogs, photography sites. You name it, she found it. Nearly all of it was completely irrelevant information for us. None of them were what she was looking for, but she kept looking. She started to sniffle again after a few minutes of searching and I felt terrible for her.
“Who are you trying to look up?” I asked, as gently as I could manage. It was obviously important to her.
“My...my daughter,” she said. “I have to know what happened to her. Please, will you help me?”