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“Are you okay?” My mom releases me from the hug, but she keeps a hand on my arm. “Do you want to talk to someone, or talk to me more, or…?”
“I—I’m not okay.” Once I finally say it out loud, it feels like I can breathe easier. This whole time, I haven’t been okay, and what I’m learning is that it’s okay not to be. “And I might want to do something like that.”
My mom must be able to sense that I’m done with it for now, because she asks if I want to grab sandwiches before she goes back to the shop. We talk about my classes, about her work, about Jocelyn—who she says is coming over to the house this afternoon to cook something special, but wouldn’t tell her what it is. I try my best to act nonchalant.
Sometime soon, I’ll see her get married. Our tiny family expanding.
“Going back to campus soon?” my mom asks as we finish eating, switching her sign back to OPEN.
“I should, yeah. Can’t let freshman year happen without me.” Except that going back means contending with Miles.
Miles, who has no earthly idea who I am, even after I told him I loved him only hours ago.
“Before you go, then—I have something to show you. I was going to wait, but… this seems like the right time.”
“I like presents,” I say, hoping it’s enough to distract from what’s waiting for me on campus.
She disappears into the shop’s storage room and returns with a single cream greeting card. “I’ve been working on it for a while with a designer,” she says, suddenly sounding nervous.
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways… is written on the front in a swooping brush script. And right above it is a bouquet.
“It’s for you,” she says, pointing to the words and then to the flowers. “Barrett. Bloom.”
My heart swells, and for a moment I’m speechless. Even though she couldn’t have known, it feels like a subtle reclaiming of my name. A victory.
“I love it.” I run my fingers over the bouquet, roses and lilies and dahlias. “Can I take one? For my dorm?” The place could use a little sprucing up.
“Please, take ten.” She grabs a compostable paper bag and starts packing them up for me. “I know this makes me a sap,” she says. “And you don’t have to come back every week, or even every other week, but every once in a while, okay?”
“Of course.” The words are scratchy, thick with emotion. “You know I won’t be able to stay away.”
During the bus ride back to Seattle, I consider how I’ve spent my whole life thinking it was my mom and me against the world. What I’m realizing is that she can’t protect me from everything. As much as she’s a part of me, she isn’t all of me. It’s possible I’ve relied too much on her at times, locking myself in our own world when there was so much more out there. I didn’t think I needed other people, and I was so, so wrong.
Maybe the truth is that we’re each fighting our own battles, and even if she’s on my side, she can’t always be with me on the front lines.
I have to learn to do battle on my own.
And right now, that battle starts with me at my desk in Olmsted 908, opening up a blank Word document.
LOST IN TIME: THE FORGOTTEN PROFESSOR by Barrett Bloom
If you ask Dr. Eloise Devereux if time travel is possible, she’ll fix you with a lingering stare, one eyebrow quirked.
“For years, I told hundreds of students that yes, theoretically, it is,” she says from her home in Astoria, Oregon, a place bursting with memories and color and objects collected from numerous antique shows over the years. “And that was exactly what led me to retire early from teaching.”
Dr. Devereux grew up just outside of Bristol, England, later graduating with her PhD in physics from Oxford. She taught at the University of Washington for nearly two decades, and her course, Time Travel for Beginners, boasted a wait list longer than any other class in UW’s history. She was even granted one of Elsewhere’s prestigious Luminary Awards, given to experts charting exciting new territory in their fields.
And then, eleven years ago, she just… vanished.
“She was one of a kind,” says a colleague of hers, Dr. Armando Rivera. “An absolute dynamite instructor. We were all stunned when she left.”
Dr. Devereux hired a data-cleaning company to scrub as many mentions of her online as they could. It was a tremendous undertaking, but she says the anonymity was worth it. At the time.
“Too many people called me a fraud and even petitioned for the university to fire me,” she says. Her black cat, a troublemaker named Schrödinger, hops onto her lap. “Your heart can only take so much of that criticism before you start questioning it yourself.”
The time and space away from UW have given her perspective, she says. Now she might be ready to return to the public eye, and maybe even to teaching.
“We’ll see what the future holds,” she says, “but for the first time in quite a while, I’m feeling optimistic.”
