The green phone in the inn manager's office rang insistently that evening. The voice on the other end asked for a J. Birmingham. The manager walked the quiet hall to room number twenty-three and knocked softly on the wood door, "There's a phone call for you, kid. A Miles Birmingham; says he's your brother."
Jesse followed the short elderly man to the office and thanked him as the man left him to the plastic receiver, "Hello?"
"Havin' a nice time, Jesse?"
"As nice as it could be, Miles," Jesse cupped his hand over the receiver and turned from the cracked open door, "She didn't drink it."
Miles' gruff voice was silent on the other end, and finally sighed in what seemed relief, "Good girl."
Jesse rapped his knuckles on the wooden desktop, "She has a daughter."
"Oh, good Lord, Jess!"
"No, no, no!" Jesse checked his volume, "She's not an old busybody. She's like us Miles!"
"You mean... how?"
"I know. It's complicated, but she's the real thing. Just like us. Can you believe it?!"
Thousands of miles away a man of his early twenties was slumped against an aging wall of the local bar. His coat was wet with the night rain, and his eyes as sorrowful as those of a wounded animal, "Small world, ain't it?"
"Perpetually seventeen, huh? Doesn't seem like a horrible trade."
"How old are you?"
"Perpetually eighteen."
Jesse walked beside Michelle down the paved sidewalk of the downtown of Tree Gap. She was slurping up the remains of a drink through a plastic straw with her free hand stuck in her jean pocket. In three days her "cousin" Claire would be getting married.
"I went to the library this morning, for a weekly check, and I noticed someone had been looking at the news reels. The nineteen-seventy reel, to be specific," she glanced up at Jesse, "Like what you see?"
Bright pink painted his cheeks when she addressed him, "It was interesting. I never would have thought you were a radical. Why did you disappear?"
"The government started noticing how I always seemed to come out of attempted assassinations unscathed. Had to pull a Hoffa, respectively."
"So what's it like to have someone aside from your family and Winnie knowing about the spring?" Michelle asked.
"Well, how do you do it?"
" A lot of the older population know about me. The younger ones aren't interested unless it involves their personal lives. It's still a small town Jesse, but not the hub it used to be. Not many here are looking to fame and fortune. It's plenty safe."
Michelle took Jesse's arm in her own two and leant her head in his shoulder. She didn't seem inhibited in any way with the way she acted with Jesse, and the thirty year old nude pictures. Jesse had no doubt she had been rather loved in the Adult community. He didn't ever think she was embarrassed. She was always on the ledge, ready to jump at anything. Jesse took a breath and let it out slowly, "I'm leaving tonight. Goin' back home for a little bit."
She lifted her head at his words, "You'll come back, right? Winnie would like that."
"Of course. As long as I can." Did she not expect him to see her?
Michelle laughed in a short huff, "I was hoping you'd be able to come to the wedding, but you do what you need to do. I can't stop a Tuck."
Jesse smiled and loosened his arm from her grip, only to embrace her tightly. She was very much like Winnie Foster. Like mother, like daughter, "You are an amazing girl, Michelle Foster."
Miles Tuck was waiting in the small lobby of the Tree Gap Inn, wringing his hands. Hours before he had conversed with his brother, yet not with his mother or father. He stared intently at the curlicues in the red and gold carpet, tracing patterns of elephants and deer. At the sound of an opening door, he jerked his head in the same direction to see his younger brother step through in a daze. Miles stood quickly, clenching and unclenching his hands. Jesse closed the door behind himself at the sight of his brother.
"Hey Miles. When d'you get in?"
