Chapter 43
Sam grinned as he returned the phone to the cradle. Most people wouldn’t have felt this good to give away half their fortune, he thought.
He briefly made eye contact with Donna across the room, who was giving him a look of disappointment blended with understanding. He responded to the unspoken communication with a tilt of his head and a shrug.
Tom, sitting at the kitchen table, was not so subtle.
“You’re really going to give two million bucks away just like that?” he asked, mouth hanging open. “Are you completely out of your mind?”
Sam laced his fingers together sheepishly. “Sometimes, you have to take drastic measures to make sure a leap succeeds. And I didn’t know I even had that money ’til yesterday, so there’s no reason to miss it.”
Tom shook his head in disbelief. “Good Lord! The Sam I knew eight years ago may have been a generous guy, but I never would have pictured him doin’ something like this. And this is all to… to make sure a couple of girls can go to prom?”
“Well, I guess I’m not the Sam you knew, Tom,” Sam said quietly, sitting down across from his brother. “Leaping, it… changes a person, you know?” He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “I’ve led a charmed life—I mean, you were there, so you know that. I was so lucky to be born into the family I was, who could identify my gifts and nurture them until I went to university and got my doctorates; to be afforded every opportunity in the world. And I knew that I was fortunate to have that, but it never really sunk in just how deep the chasm is between my experience of life and that of so many other people. Not until I leaped, and I experienced it first-hand, one life at a time.”
Tom drank in his words in silence, looking intently down at his hands.
“So, if I can make the world that little bit better for people from this position of privilege,” Sam continued, “then shouldn’t I? And it’s not just two people this will benefit. It’ll help to advance the gay rights movement and embolden other schools to follow suit.”
He leaned forward excitedly, thinking of an analogy. “When black holes were discovered, it wasn’t that we looked into a telescope and saw them. We measured their effect across space and theorised the source of gravitational anomalies bending the light we could detect. Well, a good deed is like… a black hole…” He scratched his chin. Maybe this wasn’t the best example after all. “What I mean to say is, even if what we see is small, the effects can still be felt a long way down the line.”
“I… guess you have a point,” Tom conceded. He folded his arms. “Kinda like Addison, right? You had a booty call in the past, and now she’s here, a grandniece I never knew I had.”
Sam felt his cheeks flushing. “Uh, well…”
“And then she grew up to be a—what was it, a hologram for another leaper?”
“Y-yeah.”
“Meanwhile, I… survived the war, got married, had a kid who wouldn’t have otherwise existed, right?”
Sam nodded.
“Man, that’s some heavy stuff,” Tom mused. “But I think I get it.” He leaned back, lips pursed. “So you really had a big impact on things, huh? Even yourself.”
The colour had returned to Tom’s cheeks, to Sam’s relief.
“Looks that way,” Sam said, once again meeting Donna’s eye. He lingered his gaze there a moment, before flicking it back to Tom, his mind moving to thoughts of his brother’s daughter. “How is Maggie, anyway?”
* * *
With a call from Principal Curtis confirming that Janis would be allowed to go to prom, Al was satisfied that his work was done. And all it took was two million smackeroos courtesy of the Beckett Foundation.
He dropped Addison off at Sammy Jo’s place, and Ben joined him in the front for the trip back home.
“So, uh…” he said, gesturing at the image of Janis beside him. “Any chance of getting Jan back sometime soon? Leap’s over, right? She’ll be furious if you’re the one who gets to attend prom instead of her.”
Ben looked back helplessly. “Doesn’t look like I’m going anywhere, does it? I don’t know why.”
“I do,” came a grim voice from behind them.
Al almost swerved his car from surprise as he turned his head and caught a glimpse of a mature-faced Janis in the back seat.
“Heya, Dad,” she said, giving him a fond smile.
“Janis!” Al pulled the car to the side of the road, screeching to a halt. “Holy cow, I can see you?”
“Ziggy still had your neurological data on file,” Janis explained. “Thought it might be… nice for you to see me all grown up, huh? Since teenage me is out to lunch and all.” She turned to Ben. “And I’m gonna be riding out the rest of the leap with you. If I have to miss prom for a second time, I at least wanna see what I’m missing. But there’s more, Ben.”
“The reason I haven’t leapt, I’m guessing.”
“Precisely.” Janis took a deep breath. “See, unfortunately, you guys have changed history for the worse.”
“By letting you and Kat go to prom…?”
“Yeah. See, after prom, Kat went missing and…” Janis’s lip quivered as she looked down at the handlink. “She turned up dead, Ben. Police report says she went night swimming in the Rio Grande with alcohol in her system, hit her head on a rock, and drowned, but… that sounds fishy as hell to me.” Her voice wavered, and she covered her mouth, tears filling her eyes.
“Oh my God,” Ben gasped.
“Well, that’s an easy fix!” Al said, attempting to salvage the mood. “All you gotta do is stay with her, and I’ll come pick the both of you up. Bingo bango bongo, nobody dies, everyone’s safe.”
Janis nodded, though she was still too close to tears to speak.
“Right,” Ben agreed. “If this is why I haven’t leapt, then that’s what I’m here to make sure of.”
“Thanks,” Janis choked, smiling through her distress. She reached a hand to Al, but stopped herself when she realised that she was a hologram. “Oh Dad… why do I feel like a kid again in front of you…?”
Al offered her a fatherly smile. “Grown up or not, you’re still my little girl, Jan. Nothin’ wrong with acting like it once in a while.”
“I love you, Dad,” she said with a sniffle. “And I’m sorry for the attitude I gave you at this age. I was an idiot.”
“You were a teenager,” Al said with a shrug. “I had three of ’em before you and they were all little snots in their adolescence. Comes with the territory. You don’t even wanna know what I was like at your age.” He winked. “Oh, and uh—I love you too, pumpkin.”
With that, he began driving again, allowing Ben and Janis to plan their next move.
“Okay, so I can keep eyes on her in the auditorium,” Ben said. “But I may not be able to see her at all times. Gotta use the bathroom sometime, right? And what if she slips out when I’m distracted?”
“We may need our exits covered,” Janis mused, tapping at the handlink. “We have the main entrance, and three fire exits around the perimeter.”
“Okay. Well, maybe we can enlist some help to cover the exits.”
“What, like Sam, and Dad?”
“And Addison?” Ben offered.
Janis smirked. “You’ve got a real soft spot for baby Addison, haven’t you?”
“Well, I do happen to be engaged to her older form…”
Al raised an eyebrow. “Engaged? Really…” He grinned. “You know, I’ve noticed the way she’s been looking at you. She’s got herself a big ol’ case of puppy love.”
“Dad…” Janis griped. “When she looks at him she sees me!”
Ben, however, was blushing. “Uh, well, you could be… sort of right. She hasn’t exactly been subtle. I’ve drawn the line on that, though.” He shivered. “Now if only I could do that with Kat.”
“I’ll do what I can to help you navigate that,” Janis said. “Now, I guess I’ll go enlist our allies, shall I?” She tapped on the handlink, and dematerialised from the car.
Al felt himself swelling with pride. “She’s got a knack for this hologram thing, don’t she?”
Ben grinned. “She told me she learned from the best.”