I left Diane a note on the kitchen table in case she came home while I was gone.
Gone to Andy’s, back soon.
I grabbed the keys to the Honda Civic we shared. The car was parked on the street three blocks away, because that was just how parking worked in Jamaica Plain.
Andy’s Grab and Go was my favorite grocery store, a tiny market run by a Vietnamese family who’d immigrated in the late seventies and had been slowly expanding their inventory ever since. They carried ingredients you couldn’t find at the regular Stop & Shop, and Andy himself always threw in something extra at checkout, a piece of fruit or a sample of something new.
The problem was, I couldn’t remember where it was.
I knew it wasn’t the corner store, the one a block from our apartment that sold overpriced milk and stale bread. Andy’s was further, somewhere in Roslindale, maybe? Near that park with the gazebo? I’d driven there hundreds of times, but now, after so many years, the route had simply... vanished.
I pulled out of the parking spot and headed in what I thought was the right direction. Took a left on Centre Street. Looked for familiar landmarks.
Nothing.
Where the hell was my phone? I could just?—
Right. No phone. No GPS. No way to type “Andy’s Grab and Go” into a search bar and let technology solve my problems.
I drove in increasingly frustrated circles for twenty minutes, getting more lost with each turn. Streets that should have been familiar were strangers. The gazebo park was nowhere to befound. I made a U-turn in someone’s driveway and tried a different route, only to end up on a road I’d never seen in my life.
This was ridiculous. I’dlivedhere. I’d driven these streets hundreds of times. But my brain had overwritten the old maps with new ones, 2014 routes, 2014 landmarks, and now I was wandering Boston like a tourist.
Finally, more by luck than navigation, I spotted the familiar hand-painted sign: ANDY’S GRAB AND GO, with a little cartoon shopping bag that Andy’s teenage daughter had designed years ago.
I parked and sat for a moment, hands still gripping the steering wheel, feeling irrationally triumphant about finding the grocery store.
That’s when it occurred to me.Apple.
In 2014, I’d heard a hundred stories about people who’d bought Apple stock early and become millionaires. My coworker Dave had an uncle who’d invested ten thousand dollars and retired at forty-five. What if I could remember enough to?—
I tried. I really tried. When did Apple go public? 1980? 1982? What was the stock worth in 2014? Was this before or after Steve Jobs got fired?
Nothing. The information wasn’t fuzzy or uncertain, it simply wasn’t there. Like reaching for a word on the tip of your tongue, except there was no tongue and no word, just a blank space where knowledge should be.
You cannot use your knowledge for personal gain.
The voice had said that. And apparently it had meant it, because no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t access a single piece of financially useful information. The future was locked away, at least the parts that could have made me rich.
Fair enough, I supposed. I hadn’t come back for money, but it didn’t mean I wouldn’t try to remember who would win the Stanley Cup this year.
I grabbed my purse and headed inside.
Andy’s smelled exactlyas I remembered—fresh produce, dried spices, the sweetness of the Vietnamese pastries Mrs.Andy (I’d never learned her actual name) baked fresh every morning. I grabbed a basket and started wandering the aisles, marveling at products that wouldn’t exist in my own time and missing products that hadn’t been invented yet.
I was comparing two brands of fish sauce when I heard his voice.
“The one on the left. Trust me.”
I turned, and there he was. Of course Jack was here. Because apparently the universe had decided that I’d traveled through time to live my life differently, so I needed to run into him every twelve hours.
He looked different this morning, casual in jeans and a worn sweater, hair still damp from a shower. Softer somehow. More like the Jack I remembered from lazy Sunday mornings, before everything went wrong.
And beside him, pushing a small cart was his girlfriend.
“Oh,” I said, eloquently. “Hi.”
“Maggie.” He nodded, his expression carefully neutral. “This is Rebecca Walsh. Rebecca, Maggie Shaw.”
