As expected, Ma Beckett’s dinner was an exquisite feast of roast beef and vegetables with all the fixin’s. Sam had a smile on his face as he took his first bite, and allowed the nostalgic flavours to melt into his tongue. It had been too long.
“Gosh, I missed this…” he murmured. Catching the look Katie was giving him, he added: “A nice home-cooked family meal, I mean.”
“You haven’t been with family in a while, then?” asked Thelma, as she mopped up some gravy with a dinner roll. “Are you far from home?”
“Oh yeah,” Sam said with a smirk. “Haven’t seen home in a long, long time.”
He gazed down at his plate, his fork struggling to pick up peas.
“How did you meet Sam, anyway?” his mother continued. Sam pursed his lips as he struggled to come up with an answer.
“You met him at college, right?” Katie said, as he felt her foot tapping against his shin. “Med school or something.”
“Uh, yeah. Sure. Med school.”
“Ah, that explains a few things,” said Thelma. “Tell me, honey: how was my boy doing? With all those degrees going at once, I was always terribly worried about his health.”
“He was doing just fine,” Sam said with a quick shrug. Sam couldn’t, however, actually remember how he’d been doing at this time of his life, beyond the grief and guilt after his father’s death. He knew he’d buried himself in his studies in the aftermath of the death, but everything else was pretty patchy. “Of course, having a workload like that would be stressful to anybody.”
Thelma nodded. “Well I’m glad he found time enough for a little fun,” she said, gesturing towards Sam. Sam felt heat rising in his cheeks at this.
He realised that he’d been failing to get peas onto his fork all this time, and gave up on them, moving on to the meat, which seemed to fare a little better.
“He told me a lot about you,” he said to his mother. “And his Dad, and the farm. I almost feel like I know you already.”
“Sam always was a Momma’s boy,” Thelma said, before taking a bite of potato. Sam avoided the mocking grin Katie directed towards him at this comment, and chose instead to concentrate on the clumsy motions of his knife and fork.
* * *
Three hours later, an exhausted Thelma had finally crashed in Yolanda’s double bed, leaving Sam and Katie seated in the living room.
“I saw how much trouble you were having with the peas,” Katie said, grasping his hand.
“Yeah.”
“And it’ll be worse tomorrow, won’t it?”
“Probably.”
“Then let’s keep trying, Sam. Call Zach.”
Sam sighed. “Alright.” He squeezed her hand in gratitude. “I don’t know what I would have done without you here, Katie.”
“You’re welcome,” she said with a wink, and stood. She grabbed Yolanda’s bag and pulled out the notebook. “I’ll write down whatever you need, since you probably can’t, right?”
She crossed to the wall phone, and waved Sam over. “Come on, already. Vamoose!”
Katie was already dialling the number as Sam reached the phone, and the two of them leaned into the handset, listening together as the phone connected.
“Hello?”
“H-hey Zach!” Sam said as his anxiety came barrelling back. “It’s… uh…”
Sam realised with some alarm that the name of the woman he’d leaped into had slipped out of his memory. Katie mouthed the name to him.
“…Yo-Yolanda.”
Sam mouthed back: ‘thank you.’
“Oh, hi!” said Zach brightly, “I was starting to think maybe I missed my shot with you.”
“Uhh, not at all. I’d love to meet up with you again. When are you free?”
“I’m free on Wednesday. We could get dinner downtown.”
“Sure, perfect. What time and where?”
“How about we meet up at Statler Park, at seven o’clock?”
“It’s a date.”
Katie wrote out the details, grinning, as Sam ended the call. She tore out the page, and hurried into the kitchen, where she stuck the page onto the fridge with a magnet.
“There. Now you can leap, right?”
“Sure hope so.” Sam’s gaze rose to the ceiling, and he held out his arms.
“Any time now,” he called out to the aether. “Please?”
As the seconds ticked by, Sam’s shoulders dropped, followed by his head.
“Well, thanks for trying,” he said to his sister, eyes flooding with tears. “Guess I’m stuck here for good, huh?”
Katie responded only by hugging him as he stood there, trying to control his breathing.
* * *
“Are you sure you’ll be alright on the couch?” Katie asked as she hovered in front of the bedroom door.
“Yes, I’ll call out if I need you. Go join Mom.” Sam swept his hands forward, ushering her into the room.
“Okay. Good night, Sam.”
“Good night, Katie.” Sam closed the door, and turned back toward the couch. But he’d only made it half way there when he noticed movement in a window.
There, on the apartment building fire escape, peeking in at him, was Blitzen.
Here we go again, he thought, approaching the window, being careful not to look away this time.
“What do you want?” he asked the cat, which blinked at him, before turning around. Sam pulled open the window, and reached out at the cat, trying to touch it and see if it was real.
“I like it when the night sky is this clear,” said a voice. “Makes me wish I’d had the chance to study astronomy.”
Sam’s gaze followed Blitzen to a shadowed figure sitting facing away from him. He was looking up at the sky, legs dangling off the metal platform. An arm reached out, giving the cat a scratch behind the ears.
Sam climbed out of the window, onto the platform, trying to get a look at the man’s face.
“Is this your cat?”
“I suppose he is now.” The man turned his head to look at Sam.
“Oh boy— this is… you’re not real.” Sam shook his head, trying to pretend he hadn’t just seen the face of his younger self.
The nineteen-year-old Sam shrugged. “I dunno, you could be right. I’m not looking a gift horse in the mouth, though. Care for a chat?”