A Time Traveler's Theory of Relativity

by Nicole Valentine

  “No thanks, I’d better ride back to Gran’s.”

  “Finn, I’m really sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault.”

  “You shouldn’t let what those idiots think bother you.”

  She sounded like Mom. Once while grocery shopping, when he was only seven or eight, he’d told Mom how some ladies were talking about her in the next aisle. He wanted her to be as angry as he was. Instead she’d said, “People are who they are. All you can control is how you treat them.”

  “You going to be okay?” Gabi asked.

  Finn could only give her a nod and an affirmative grunt.

  He rode away as she stood there in her front yard watching him. He didn’t know how long she stayed there, because he didn’t turn around.

  I can tell you how long Gabi stayed there. I was watching. She waited, with her brows knitted in worry, till he was around the bend and completely out of sight. She walked slowly up to the house, her head and shoulders bowed with an invisible weight. Her small frame disappeared behind the door only to reappear in the picture window. She pulled out her phone and began to dial.

  Chapter 3

  The wind began to whip up as Finn sped down the road. It was that hot kind of wind that felt like the breath of a coming thunderstorm. Sure enough, clouds were starting to gather. Nighttime was arriving earlier and earlier now, but this was different. The sun should have still been high in the sky.

  Finn could see the strip of clouds visible between the trees on either side of the road. Dark billows were blowing in fast, rolling over one another like gray mares in a race to see who could blot out the sun first. He’d seen something like it before, but it was in a movie, sped up on film.

  Soon the thunder would be bouncing off the mountains and echoing through the town. Finn usually loved that, but today he just wanted to get inside and hide from everything.

  One fat raindrop fell squarely on his head like an insult. He muttered curses he wasn’t allowed to use. He fantasized that lightning would fry Sebastian and all of his crew in the quarry as they swam and then immediately felt guilty at the thought. He was angry at Dad and angry at Gran, too. None of this would have happened if Gran hadn’t sent him away.

  He dumped his bike behind Gran’s garage and then sprinted up the driveway. She was framed in the doorway, waiting for him with a worried look on her face.

  “Gabi called.”

  “Great. Just great.” Finn pushed past her as she moved aside. “Don’t worry. I won’t be in your way.”

  He said it with too much anger and he knew it. Unable to face the pained look in her eyes, he raced up the stairs and down the hallway to the room that had always been his. He dumped his backpack on the floor and collapsed facedown on the bed.

  There was a soft knock at the door.

  “Finn, can we talk?”

  Gran peeked in, and when he didn’t protest she came and sat on the edge of the bed.

  “Gabi told me what happened and I’m sorry. I know it’s been hard for you. A lot harder than I realized.”

  Finn said nothing. He knew she meant well, but at the moment all he wanted to do was try to forget today had ever happened.

  She lightly patted the small of his back. “Will’s not coming by tonight, it’s just us. How about I make you something to eat?”

  Finn wanted to scoff that food wasn’t the answer to all life’s problems, but since he hadn’t had anything to eat or drink for hours, his stomach betrayed him with a growl.

  “I’ll call you when it’s ready.” She smiled and left the room, closing the door quietly behind her. Her kindness in the face of his disrespect only made him feel worse.

  He sat up, reached for his bag, and pulled out his tablet. The articles he’d downloaded ought to take his mind out of this world and into the grander universe. The great thing about spending time pondering space is that it’s so big, it makes everything else feel small. It was probably why the other kids in school had no interest in it. There was nothing in their life they needed to make smaller.

  He was wrong of course. You know that, don’t you? Everyone has something they need to make smaller, more manageable. Everyone is wounded in some way.

  It is what makes us human.

  Chapter 4

  The first glimpse of lightning flickered through the window, and Finn counted several seconds till he heard the far-off rumble of thunder.

  He headed into the kitchen before Gran came to get him. That would be all she needed by way of an apology, but he intended on saying it anyway.

  “I have some hot soup on. I’ve been waiting for this warm weather to end so I could enjoy a decent soup.” She pulled out one of the wooden chairs for him and then moved back to the stove.

  Finn sat and watched her as she ladled the thick soup into two bowls. It was his favorite, potato with big slabs of bacon.

  “Here. Don’t forget the bread.” Gran handed him a dish that cradled a small homemade loaf. It was still hot. He ripped off the end and dipped it. The first bite felt warm all the way down as he swallowed.

  “It’s good?”

  “It’s always good, Gran. I’m sorry about before.”

  “Forget that. Eat.”

  As much as Finn hated to admit it, Dad had been right. This was what he needed. Gran’s kitchen was still his safe place in this world. One smile from her could make everything seem better. She had a way of smiling that went right up to her eyes. He remembered how one Easter, right after Faith died, it was Gran who insisted that things should still happen normally for Finn. She led him by the hand around her big yard, helping him find the colorful plastic eggs that were barely hidden to begin with. His mother sat still, pale and quiet on the porch, Dad tending to her cautiously like she might break. Gran helped him count the eggs in his basket, laughing when he insisted he had eleventy. Finn reached up then, touched her cheeks, and said something about Gran’s “crinkly eyes.” Dad’s head had spun toward him. “Finn! That’s not nice.” Gran had scoffed and told him to hush up, said Finn could point out her “crinkles” as much as he wanted. Finn loved them; they were the beautiful lines that only appeared for him. Back then, smiles were hard-won in his family.

  Come to think of it, it wasn’t much different now.

  He left the spoon in the bowl and took a deep breath, steadying himself. “Gran, I need to know why Mom left.”

  If she was surprised to get the question, her face didn’t show it. Searching her gray eyes, he pressed on. “Does she have a boyfriend? Is she leaving Dad?” And me. The more he thought about what was going on, the more he landed on divorce as the most obvious answer. Occam’s Razor: simpler theories are always the best ones. He had heard them arguing for weeks, after all. Mom was probably out building a new life somewhere.

  “Oh no, it’s nothing like that!” Gran’s face hardened the way it did when she became fed up with someone in town. “Who told you that?”

  “Gran, no one has told me anything!”

  She took off her apron, tossing it on the opposite chair, and sat down next to him. “Haven’t you asked your father about this?”

  “Yes, but he just keeps saying she’ll be back soon.” He parroted his father’s detached professorial speech: “She just needs some time.”

  “Oh, I see.” For a moment, she seemed unguarded. Finn could tell she was thinking hard. “Well, in large part, I believe that to be true.”

  “Gran, does she call you? Has she said anything—about me?”

  She looked pained. “No. She has not. And it wouldn’t be fair to your father for me to conjecture and feed you ideas.”

  Finn’s imagination began to move into dark places. Mom’s constant migraines. How they’d kept her in bed during so many events: his kindergarten graduation, the endless school pageants, even the science fair. They all had something in common. They were rites of passage, rites that Faith should have been doing along with him.

  “You know something and you won’t tell me.”

 
“That’s not what I said.”

  “Gran!”

  She stared at the blank wall as if it were suddenly a picture window only she could see out. “Your father has to be the one to explain this to you, Finn. I can’t, I’m sorry.”

  Finn sighed and dropped the heel of the bread into his soup bowl. His father was miles away, yet he somehow managed to also be here, roadblocking him again.

  “Have some more soup. I’m going to tell you a story about our family.”

  “I don’t want to hear any ancient stories, Gran. I want to hear about now.”

  She studied him for a moment, her eyes narrowed. “Everything is now, dear boy. And make no mistake, things that happened before you were born have everything to do with who you are and what you do. So much of our lives are built on what happened before we even arrived. The past is never dead. It’s not even past. Faulkner said that.”

  She paused, looking for some sort of reaction from Finn. He nodded with a mouthful of soup. It all sounded like one of Dad’s pretentious lectures about why history was as important as science. He resigned himself to hearing her out. Maybe she’d loop back around to talking about Mom when she was ready.

  “You know, I’ve never gotten along with my sisters.”

  Finn rolled his eyes in frustration. He had no interest in listening to her complain about Aunt Ev and Aunt Billie.

  “Trust me. This is as good a place to start as any.” The rain was thudding against the skylight now like it was knocking and asking to be let in.

  “Ev and Billie have been thorns in my side for years.” Gran laughed a little at this like it was a joke, but it was a sad sort of laugh. “Sisters should be close. I wish we were closer.”

  “I always thought you got along okay with Aunt Ev.” He reached for the bread loaf once more. This conversation was no longer his as far as he was concerned; he might as well dig in and eat.

  “Oh, we coexist. So little in common though. She’s impulsive and that makes it hard for us to work together. You see, we’ve had . . . long-standing family responsibilities.” She looked again at that invisible picture window, then focused back on him. “Still, Ev’s always been much easier to manage than Billie.”

  There was a sudden crash out on the deck and Finn instinctively jumped up in front of Gran. She stood up and brushed by him to look out the window. “It’s all right. Only the storm taking down a rotted branch. It’s hit the deck, but there’s no damage.”

  “I can take care of it for you tomorrow. Cut it up for kindling.”

  Gran smiled. “You’re a big help to me. You know that, right?”

  Finn looked away. He shouldn’t have complained about spending the weekend. “I could help more,” he said.

  She sat down again, but this time in the chair closest to the big cast iron oven. “You do enough. Now, anyway, I was telling you about the three of us. We were the Sykes sisters. Our neighbors lumped us together whether we liked it or not. It’s a small town now—it was even smaller then. Everyone knew everyone else’s business.”

  “They still do.”

  “Even more so then, if you can believe it. It was a different time for young women of course. We didn’t have the opportunities that are available now. Our parents hoped we’d stay on the farm till it was time to marry. Ideally, they’d have final approval of each groom and we’d all live in town and produce many grandchildren for Dad to bounce on his knee.”

  Finn wasn’t sure if her tone was one of mocking or remorse. Gran was the only sister to have married and she only had one daughter, his mother. And right now Mom was who he cared about. This little story was Gran’s way of evading his questions.

  “Gran—”

  “It may not surprise you,” she went on, talking over him, “to know that I didn’t much like that plan and neither did Evelyn. I did not intend on wasting the brain God had given me. I was going off to school as soon as possible. Ev intended on getting a train out of Dorset even if it meant jumping a boxcar.”

  Now that caught his attention. “You’re kidding, right?” He tried to picture short, stout Aunt Ev trying to hop onto a moving train. He couldn’t imagine any of them ever being young, as hard as he tried.

  “Nope. She would’ve done it, too. As for Billie, well, she was just fine with staying in Dorset. Her plan was to marry the most eligible bachelor in town. The problem was, the bachelor was the type of spoiled rich boy who didn’t believe in planning for anything. He knew he was going to inherit his father’s land and didn’t need to study or work hard. And he was handsome on top of all that, the kind of boy who’d make girls stand a little taller as soon as he entered the room. Naturally, I had no patience for him.”

  The guy with everything. Finn hated him already.

  “None of his outward charms worked on me, not his pale gray eyes, square jaw,” she reached over and with her thumb and forefinger pinched a section of Finn’s unruly hair and then let it go, “shiny auburn hair.”

  Finn’s hand held the last spoonful of his soup in mid-air.

  She sat back and smiled at him. “That’s right. Your grandfather, my Jack. You do look just like him, Finn. It’s uncanny. I stayed in Dorset after all.”

  It wasn’t the first time Finn heard that he was the spitting image of Grandpa Jack. Only it was the first time he had heard Grandpa Jack described as handsome. The Grandpa Jack he remembered was frail and hunched over. If girls loved him, he certainly had something that Finn didn’t. All the girls except—

  “Wait! You didn’t like him! You said—”

  “Well, Dorset suffered three straight years of drought. His family’s farm fared badly. The stress of it all took Jack’s father, most likely a heart attack. Your grandfather ended up running the farm. Adversity brings out the true character in people. Remember that, Finn. Jack grew into someone I admired, someone I came to love very much.”

  “And Aunt Billie never forgave you?”

  “I suppose not. Aunt Ev was quite furious with me, too.”

  “But why?”

  “Because I didn’t want to leave Dorset after all. We had always talked about doing grand things together and suddenly all I wanted was right here.”

  “But Aunt Ev didn’t move away!”

  “Oh, she did. She just came back. We all come back.”

  He was about to ask why, but she didn’t give him a chance.

  “Billie became increasingly bitter. She grew quiet and no longer went out with friends. She spent most of her free time writing in mysterious notebooks that she wouldn’t let any of us see. One Sunday morning I pretended to be ill, and when the others left for church I sneaked into her room, found the loose floorboard that functioned as her hiding spot, and read them.”

  Finn thought that was a pretty nasty thing for Gran to do to her sister, but realized he was now on the edge of his seat. “What did they say?”

  “They were notes, incredibly detailed notes about my life. About Jack and me, where we met, how we met, the first time we were alone together. Or at least, I thought we were alone together.”

  “So she was stalking you guys? That’s creepy.”

  “You can say that. She appeared to be taking notes in an effort to figure out where she went wrong. As if there were a way she could go back and fix it. She was looking for a path to a world in which she and Jack were together.”

  “Huh.” Finn didn’t much care for tales of lovelorn teenagers, but this part intrigued him—and reminded him of an article he’d been reading earlier. “Sounds like she was looking for a parallel universe. There’s a new quantum theory in physics about them, you know. It’s based on the Many Worlds principle, but surprisingly different.”

  Gran was looking at him the way Gabi did before she would tell him to stop, back up, and define the three terms in the last sentence. Finn knew when to submit. “Okay, so you know about the Many Worlds theory?”

  “Yes,” she said cautiously. “I think so.”

  Finn was used to people pretending to underst
and him when he talked science; he would make this simple. “The idea is that we exist in a multiverse. That there are other universes pushed up right next to us, almost identical to ours but with small changes.”

  “A whole universe, next to ours?”

  “Yeah, it’s a weird thing to wrap your head around.” He swallowed another spoonful of soup. “They would be worlds similar to our own, with minor changes. It’s like Chaos Theory in a way. You’ve heard of the Butterfly Effect?”

  “Yes. I think so. It’s about small changes being able to effect things a world away?”

  “Right! Something as simple as the beat of a butterfly wing in Mexico”—he held his now empty spoon up in the air like it was flying—“can make a hurricane happen in China, or in this case, make Grandpa Jack marry someone else.” Finn laughed, expecting Gran to laugh with him. She just stared and waited, so he kept going. “Anyway, all those little butterfly wing beats create new universes! Amazing, right?”

  She didn’t look amazed; she looked scared. “So this is the new theory?”

  “No, that’s the old one. The new part is something really cool. It’s nowhere near mathematically proven, but it’s also no longer out of the realm of possibility. It’s called MIW—the Many Interacting Worlds Theory. It’s where universes that exist next to each other actually interact on the quantum level.” Finn reached for another slice of warm bread from the bowl in the center of the table. Gran grabbed his wrist and held it tight, stopping him.

  “Wait! How would they interact?”

  “Oh, this is all theory, Gran. But a lot of weird stuff happens in quantum mechanics, things that shouldn’t, like light behaving both as a particle and a wave. These scientists who did the study say that this may be the reason for all the quantum weirdness, parallel universes interacting,” he clapped his hands together loudly, “smashing into each other. Neat, huh?”

  “How? How do they smash into each other? Can someone hop to another universe?” Her eyes grew wide and Finn thought she looked a little panicked.