Without another word, Steve and Kayla started running through the loft looking for their baby that should have been asleep in the next room. They both started shouting his name as if the 10-month-old might wave, “over here!”
The first place Kayla went was the small kitchen directly behind her, which took one glance to see that her baby was not there. She saw Steve run into the guest room, which was the logical place any baby of theirs would have been. Hearing no signs of success, she bounded up the spiral staircase to the bedroom she once shared with Steve. Kayla’s tears flowed freely, unable to control the terror of not knowing where her child was. Stopping abruptly at the top step, she set eyes upon her room for the first time in 20 years and was immediately assailed with the memories that came flooding back to her. As she took in the impossible sight, she was fascinated with the feelings the details of the room evoked in her. It was comforting and nostalgic, and she was positively terrified.
Strong as those feelings were, they were still taking a back seat to the missing nature of Joe. Normally she would have turned down the bed covers and opened the closet, but she was afraid to touch anything, unsure of what she’d find. “Joe!” she yelled as she stepped down into the room. “Baby boy?!” She ran to the other side of the bed, dared to open her closet, and even looked in the shower and behind the toilet in the bathroom. Of course, no reply met her desperate pleas.
Just as Kayla turned to go out the way she’d come, she caught her visage in the bathroom mirror and did a double take. She’d seen Steve, but the look of her own youthful face looking back at her was an even bigger shock. Her blue eyes wide with wonder, Kayla reached up and touched her cheeks. She felt the sensation of her own touch and was mesmerized by the feeling. Everything inside her said she was in her 40s in 2009 with the fine wrinkles and current hairstyle to show for it. But the woman looking back at her was in her early 20’s with nary a line on her face and hair that did not mesh with what her brain knew to be true. She ran her hand through her hair and splayed her fingers across her breasts. Applying a tentative squeeze, they were much smaller than the nursing breasts she’d gone to bed with and lacked the sensitive engorgement that should have been there for her son to take his morning feeding. She then slowly pulled her collar out and looked down to her chest to see that her surgery incision was missing, as well. “What is going on?” she asked to woman in the mirror.
From his position near the couch, Steve had turned on his heel and run into the guest room, stumbling on the step he’d forgotten was there. The memories were strong, but he pushed by them like choices on a buffet; he saw them but chose not to reach for them. Whereas Kayla was unable to push aside that this place was completely absurd during their mad search, Steve was finely focused. He wasn’t quite convinced he was of sound mind, but Kayla had grounded him a bit, and he was sure now that whatever this was, it wasn’t a dream. It was clear to Steve that he went to bed with his wife in his arms and his baby in the next room, then woke up with wife was still in his arms but his baby no longer there. So as Steve’s eye scoured every inch of every corner of the tiny guest room, his only focus was on finding Joe. He tore the pillows from under the comforter, dropped to his belly to check under the bed, and then closed the door to look behind it. Finding no sign of his son, he covered the short distance to the bathroom and nearly tore the shower curtain from its rod. He tossed the entire room, his desperation increasing with every corner that Joe wasn’t found in.
Both giving up, they each headed to the fireplace area hoping to see some sign of him, which there wasn’t. When their eyes next met, they experienced the shock of each other’s younger faces again, new waves of confusion rippling through each of them.
Kayla spoke first. “He’s not up there.”
“I looked everywhere, I can’t find him, either.”
“Steve … is this really the loft?”
“Looks like it. Everything looks exactly the same.”
“Are you sure we checked everywhere? I mean, where could he be?”
Then Steve had a terrible thought. “Did you look on the roof?”
After a beat, they both ran back up the narrow stairs, and Kayla headed directly for the second small stairwell that led from the bedroom to the roof. Steve, however, was now taking his turn to be engulfed in the memories flooding to him as he looked upon the expanse of their bedroom. “God, Kayla,” he whispered as his green eye went wide with newfound shock. He was briefly reminded of the day his memories came flooding back to him, though this was a different kind of feeling. Then they were of happiness, now they were profound confusion. But like the rest of the buffet, he passed it by and followed the woman who looked like a version of his wife up to the roof. There they covered every square inch, including the fire escape where Steve had once watched his brother fall to the ground. They did not find their son.
Steve was dejected as he found his way to the skylight that looked down upon their living room and settled down onto his knees. Kayla looked on, her suspicion of him, not to mention herself, now abated. She walked over to him, ran her hand through his hair, and breathed in the scent of her husband. He covered her hand with his own and felt how chilled it was in this cold, dry December air.
“This is where we first made love, Sweetness. Right in this very spot.”
“It is, isn’t it,” she said as she got down on her knees, too, meeting his gaze. “It was a little hotter on that day.”
He gave her a sad smile. “You look beautiful, Kayla,” he said. “You look just as I remember you from back then. It’s just amazing.”
“You do, too.” She reached out to touch his young face, and Steve grabbed her hand. He looked at it, truly inspecting it, and felt it with his thumbs. Then pulled it to his lips and kissed it, sending a comforting warmth and love through Kayla. Steve held her palm to his cheek and felt comfort of his own as they looked at each other and silently agreed that Joe was not here.
Steve and Kayla went back inside to take stock and figure out what was happening to them. Kayla caught sight of the gradient gray comforter lying neatly across their bed and thought of a time she and Steve made love in that bed all day.
“Baby, we’ve gotta figure this out,” Steve said. “Something’s happening to us, here, and it’s definitely not a dream.”
“Well, if this loft is a fake, then someone went to a lot of trouble to make it pretty perfect. Did you see that crack in the countertop?”
“Too perfect, baby, this can’t be a set or something, this is our place.”
“But how is this possible? We look –“
“—Like something out of science fiction, baby. We went to bed normal and woke up in the past or somethin’.”
That hadn’t occurred to Kayla. She thought maybe something was done to them and that maybe they were taken back to their old apartment and … and what? Somehow magically all their old stuff appeared there right where it all used to be, oh and also, the season had changed? No, that was ludicrous. Then again, so was waking up 20 years younger.
Their stuff.
Steve saw the gears working in Kayla’s head. “What are you thinking, Sweetness?”
“This stuff. Here in our apartment.”
Steve looked around the bedroom. “I remember it. I remember that brush sitting over there, and your robe laying across the bed, here.”
“That’s just it, Steve, that’s my brush. That robe is mine.” Her fear having ebbed to curiosity, she opened the closet again and took in the array of clothing and shoes, much of which she remembered. She went to her dresser and opened every drawer, then went to the nightstand on Steve’s side of the bed. “This stuff isn’t ours, Steve. It’s mine.” In that instant, Steve knew she was right. Everything in the loft was hers. Even the guest room was absent of anything belonging to her onetime roommates, Diana, or Steve’s sister, Adrienne. The only person who appeared to live here was Kayla. “Where are we,” she asked out loud. “I know where we are, this is the loft, Sweetness, no doubt about it,” Steve said. “The question isn’t ‘where’ we are, Kayla. It’s when.”