After waiting inside the lobby for a few minutes, which had non-working air conditioning and little more than a water cooler with styrofoam cups and a television showing a golf tournament with poor reception, Jace saw his uncle come back in, Lucy’s shoe in hand. He tossed it down to him and slid his hands into his pockets.

“Yep. Alternator. They have it, but it’ll take a few hours to install.”

“Then I guess the quest to give my mom her shoe back failed. Maybe it just wasn’t meant to be, and, like, time is telling us to back off and stop messing with it.”

“Brilliant theory, Jace, but, nah—now I’m even more determined to see this through. Her house is probably about a thirty-minute walk from here.”

“B-but… Come on. Man…”

“You could use some exercise anyway after wasting away watching television.”

“And who was behind that genius idea?”

Jace soon found himself walking down Kettle’s cracked old sidewalk under the hot summer sun, the evaporating rain puddles making everything quite humid. After a few blocks, they turned onto Moson Street, which would lead them straight to Desert Tree, eventually. Moson turned into a residential area of small apartments a little further in, and the busy and loud traffic from Kettle soon fell into the distant background.

Being the first to break an uncomfortable silence for once, Jace looked at his still unusually sullen uncle and tried his hand at an astute remark. “So, you have dad issues. It’s okay—I know a lot of kids with dad issues. You gotta work past them.”

“Are you trying to give me advice again? Bud, you have no idea. You don’t even know the extent of your daddy issues. You’re not old enough yet, you lack context.”

“Whatever. When did your parents split up, anyway?”

“I hate saying this, and I rarely ever do about anything, but I’m not comfortable talking about that. ‘Not comfortable.’ Ugh, God that’s sickeningly affable.”

“It must really upset you, I guess. Mom says I ‘volunteer information’ too easily. But it always feels rude to me when anyone asks me something, to just say no.”

“Well, it shouldn’t be. You don’t owe others anything. You tell them what you want them to know. Sometimes they’re just looking for something to use against you.”

“Yeah… maybe. Your dad never talked about time travel or anything, right?”

“What? No. We watched Back to the Future together, but that’s about it. Why?”

“I dunno, just looking for some kind of reason why we’re here in the first place.”

“It’s a random, strange thing that happened in a random, strange world. Look, since you’re growing up and family… I’ll tell you a little. But I don’t have daddy issues,” he reiterated. “I’m way past any I might have had. They divorced when I was one year old, man. So, no memories; I didn’t grow up knowing what it’s like having married parents.”

“Oh. I guess mine were married until I was six, so… I have some memories.”

“Yeah, and the thing is, as much of a jerk as your dad can be, mine was a real… well, he was a bastard. At one point, at least. Then he spent the following years trying to make up for it. You’re an only child, but try to imagine being young, and knowing you have a sister about your age… But it happens that she lives in another, nicer house, and you only get to see her a few times a month, and you’re not sure why she doesn’t live with you. Lucy mostly had a whole different life than I did. And that was weird to me.

“When I was eight, Mom sat me down and explained—in her serious way that I didn’t see very often—that while I was an oven bun, Dad had… a ‘lady friend’ that he liked more, and that when she found out that they were also having a baby, well, that was the moment she knew it was irreconcilable. She actually used that big word with me. It pops up a lot in divorce cases. What I’ll never understand is that, the way I reason it at least, Dad freaked out when he realized my mom was having a kid, but was okay with his mistress having one; he saw the three of them as a compatible family, but not us. Who knows why. Of course, as you saw… Lucy was not a happy child.”

“So… does that mean… You think you had a better childhood than she did?”

“Sorry to bum you out or just confuse you with all these ugly adult problems. But, yes, our early years were a stark contrast. I don’t know if mine would have been worse if Dad had stayed, or if it was all Lucy’s mom’s fault, but whenever I visited, I could always tell that something in their parenting of her was… off.”

“How so?” Jace asked tepidly but curiously.

“Eh. I’m not going to get into it. I don’t really know enough anyway, and I don’t want to gossip about your own mom. What matters is how she’s taken care of you.”

“One of my friends called me a mama’s boy once…”

“Ha, is that old insult still around? Just be glad you got a good one.”

“She really did change a lot over the years… Or at some point.”

“College opened her up socially. She wasn’t surrounded by ‘imbeciles,’ as she’d call most of her high school peers. Instead, she made friends with people she liked and lived independently. We went to Royal U. and stayed local, sure, but we had dorms.”

“Did you guys hang out in college?”

“More often than we did before, sure. We had a few mutual friends.”

“Did you do drugs?”

“Jace—w-what? Why would you ask something like that?”

“Jamie told me that everyone in college does drugs. I mean, some are legal now.”

“Come on. He’s, at most, half right,” Wes said and read Jace’s face, to see that he thought he was being serious. “Joking. I already told you, I’ve always been clean, and your mom has definitely also never touched the stuff. Sheesh… does everyone your age take narcotic use so casually? When I was ten, it was drilled into us how serious they were. I mean, if you did them, you were probably a ‘hardcore bad guy’, or just a loser.”

“I dunno,” Jace shrugged, “we just kinda joked about it all the time.”

“Kids really are growing up too fast these days… Uh, our days…”

After another block of travel but no dialogue, Jace looked around at the deeper segment of the neighborhood, far from both his own and Wes’ childhood homes. This part of Desert Tree was one that he had rarely seen. It may as well have been in another city altogether. But while none of the houses looked familiar, the trees still did.

“The trees aren’t as big… or old, I guess. Not like I’m used to.”

“They can grow a lot in twenty-five years. The Desert Tree you’re used to is… aged, grown up. Your mom is kind of an exception to most of the local kids I knew. She stayed. Or rather, came back. It’s still a young neighborhood in our time, but any kids you see out and about here—they most likely moved away by the time you were born.”

The muffled sound of someone pounding away at a drum set carried through the air and into their ears. Wes stopped and turned to look at the house across the street. It was one of the few single-story residences in the area but was still relatively upscale. The local musician was evidently playing from within its double-length garage.

“Someone you know in there, playing the drums?” Jace asked.

“Hm? Not sure… That rhythm just… sparked a distant, foggy memory. Come on, let’s keep going. Lucy’s house isn’t much further. Don’t lose that shoe!”

“What do you think it’s gonna do, fly out of my hand?”

“This place…” Wes sighed, absorbing the suburban surroundings. “You’re lucky you grew up here—not specifically here, but in a classic American neighborhood. With trees, yards, and quiet streets. I wouldn’t have wanted to be a kid in some big city condo. There’s nothing like running around all the houses after you’re bored of TV and games.”

“Um, okay. Sure.”

“Memories are made in places like this. Warm, happy memories to recall on some cold, rainy night in a hotel when you’re far away, like on a business trip or something.”

“Okay. I mean, I spend most of my time indoors now…”

“Ah, buddy, you gotta get out more and explore! The world’s a big place, sure, but so is any neighborhood. You look at a map of this country, and you see all of these little dots that mark towns, and there are tens of thousands of them… And they all have people, and many of them grew up in neighborhoods of their own. So… you should take in the place where you spent your childhood, remember what’s special about it.”

“But it’s just a bunch of wooden buildings.”

“No, Jace! It’s much more! Try not to be so unfeeling. I know you haven’t really embedded too many precious memories in your head yet. You’re still a kid. But you will.

“You come into this world tied to a box. That’s where you spend your time at first—a crib. Then you become aware of your nursery. Then all of a sudden you can walk, and the entire house becomes your playground. And unless you live in a nomadic family, your neighborhood’s the next level up, a mini-world that belongs to you in a way no other place will. Yeah, there’s a city, but it’s just an extension, gives you destinations.

“And then there are the far reaches of your neighborhood, like right here… It’s unfamiliar to you, yet still connected. Kind of mysterious. Only place I ever visited in this corner was Lucy’s house. But on this one Halloween—this one, epic night of trick-or-treating, me and my crew walked all the way here. We saw really cool decorations and got our pillowcases stuffed with candy. We weren’t supposed to walk this far, but we did anyway, and that’s when I learned that taking risks can net big rewards. I think… Yeah, I think that happened this year, too. I did three or four more runs afterwards, none as epic, and never again with… with my whole gang. Well, that’s the past for you.”

Jace watched as his uncle almost collapsed as he sat on a yard’s stone retainer, and for some reason, took on the most desolate expression he had ever seen him wear.

“Jace…” Wes sighed and slumped over. “Do me a favor and try to get back to enjoying your childhood, while you have one. It doesn’t last long, and you don’t want it to be full of regrets. It’s painful enough looking back even when you had a good one.”

“Eh… Um, Uncle Wesley, are you okay? Are you, like, having a breakdown?”

“It’s nothing that bad, I just… Sometimes I have these nostalgia attacks. It’s like some almost forgotten sight, or sound, or smell triggers… a small memory I had almost lost to explode, you know? Doesn’t matter if it’s good or bad. I get this sudden longing to go back. This really strong, I’d say paralyzing longing. Nostalgia can be bitter.”

“But we are back, so why are you being crazy?”

“No, being back isn’t the same as going back. It’s great getting a chance to time travel and everything, but I’m still stuck being in this old, ugly, adult body. Oh… God, Jace, being an adult really sucks!” Wes said and dropped his face into his hands.

After looking around to make sure no one was around, Jace grimaced and asked Wes, “Are you for real? You’re not just joking around with this freak out, right?”

He breathed deeply a few times, calmed himself, and showed his face again. He hadn’t completely embarrassed himself—he hadn’t shed a tear—but his expression was one of desolation, and his eyes had turned into a void of hopelessness.

“Buddy… Buddy, listen to me. You have to relish your youth. It’s the best part of life. Do you even know what I do for a living? I work in IT. I spend all day in an office, fixing people’s computer problems. It’s mind numbing. Everything I accomplished as a kid has no value in the world of opening and closing tickets. And I can’t even count how many times I’ve asked someone if they’ve tried restarting their computer yet.”

“Maybe you’re just doing a bad job at being an adult,” Jace said with a shrug. “It’s nothing to go crazy over. Learn how to do fun adult stuff. At least you can do whatever you want, and no one tells you what to do, right?”

“Uh, no. You still got bosses and the police. And taxes, politics, and car care… Ah, hell. I don’t want you seeing me like this. Let’s forget this happened.”

Wes recomposed himself as much as possible, got up, and began walking quickly, with Jace following behind a little cautiously—in case the guy was about to snap. Never before had he seen him get so emotional about the past. Then again, this was already by far the longest he had been with Wes, so the depths of his sanity or lack thereof was still unknown to him. At least the current adventure looked like it was almost over.