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Andrea Reyes has always wanted what was best for her son. To see him happy, healthy, and content was her only priority in life.
It took a while for her to accept that the picture she had of this nebulous future full of love and laughter would look different for her son than the one she’d been envisioning since the doctor handed him to her, freshly in the world and already reaching for his mama, but she’d accepted it.
Truly, his happiness was everything to her, and she’d do anything she could to give it to him.
It was a shock and a blow, then, to watch her son scream and cry and grieve right there on the sidewalk in front of the Chicago National Bank and Trust, on a pleasantly warm day in September 1931.
The three of them had been to the market downtown that morning, picking up something or other for Sunday dinner–she couldn’t remember now what. It didn’t matter. The boys had ostensibly been accompanying her for safety, but she’d engineered the whole thing anyway.
Anything to give Carlos time to just enjoy the company of their “close family friend”, as they’d dubbed TK for appearances.
It all happened so fast.
TK had backed up as Carlos and Andrea moved forward, skipping over to help a woman who’d dropped her pen on the steps of the bank building while trying to fit it back into her purse. Andrea watched as he picked up the pen, handed it to the sweet-faced girl–whose blush was immediate, TK was always smiling so devilishly even when he was being innocent–and turned back to join them. Just then, the doors to the bank flew open, and bullets were flying.
TK, at the wrong place and wrong time, got caught in the crossfire. Andrea watched in horror as her own son’s hands became stained and gruesome, and she knew without a doubt that TK wasn’t coming home with them tonight.
She watched the life fade out of Carlos as well, on those steps. And it never came back.
It would strike her sometimes, throughout the lifetimes she led with her soulmate and her son, how in one instant a thousand lives could halt. She’d never been sure whether Carlos and TK had fully sealed their bond, but as one lifetime became two and then three, and the years passed without them ever seeing TK again, Andrea had to think not. And Carlos’ eyes never wandered to anyone else. It seemed he’d missed his chance for eternity with his soulmate.
It was crushing, living on, her and Gabriel knowing their son would never find happiness, even as the world changed through the years. Thinking of the fact that even in the depths of Austin in the 1970s, Carlos and TK could have been open as long as they were careful. And now, in 2020, they could be free to be together in whatever way they wanted. But it would never happen, because they’d missed their chance.
Andrea thought often of TK, especially when looking into her son’s passive face. It seemed like all the light had gone out of him that day in 1931, and it lasted past even death. Each new time she gave birth to her son, in a new life, she prayed that this would be the one where he was happy. And each time, the disappointing truth became evident before long. TK was lost to time, and Carlos was cursed to live a thousand lifetimes unaware of what exactly he was missing, but knowing somehow deep inside, he wasn’t truly whole.
This was all very maudlin thinking for a day spent at the market, but Andrea couldn’t help it. She longed for her son to know his heart. Each time she found Gabriel in a new life, it was like feeling the warmth of the sun glowing inside her. She wanted that desperately for her son.
She and Gabriel had left Carlos somewhere in the arts and crafts section when he’d gotten pulled in by a woman peddling handmade ashtrays--the fact that Carlos had never smoked didn’t preclude him from acting interested out of politeness, bless his heart–-and they were currently perusing through the sizzling bustle of the food stalls. Gabriel was saying something about trying a deep fried corn cob when Andrea spotted the ambulance.
They’d heard sirens earlier, but hadn’t thought anything of it when there wasn’t a panic. It was clear now that a cook at one of the stalls had sustained a pretty nasty burn, but a young woman was currently settling the last bits of a bandage across his arm and giving him a stern lecture about the importance of safely operating a fryer. Andrea watched detachedly as the man thanked the young paramedic, who then turned to hop back up in the back of the ambulance for a moment before stepping back down onto the pavement again, this time followed by who Andrea assumed was her partner. The man, also quite young, used the top of the ambulance to swing down onto the street backwards, much to the annoyance of his partner. She rolled her eyes at his antics but smiled fondly, and her face made Andrea’s heart warm. Clearly they were good friends.
But then the young man turned around. Andrea’s breath stopped.
His face was fuller, definitely more well fed than any of them were in the Depression. He was solid and lean and nimble. He was impish and playful.
He was smiling.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” she heard herself say. She gripped her husband’s wrist so tightly she knew it hurt. Gabriel turned to her, looking rightfully alarmed.
“What’s the matter? What’s happened?” he asked, frantic.
Just then, Carlos came around the side of a booth with a very heavy looking pottery ashtray in his hand. He was already holding it up to show them, but he followed their gaze by instinct, thinking there was a threat in the vicinity.
As soon as he found what they were looking at, he stopped. He stared, his face doing a thousand impressions of a million different emotions before landing on stunned disbelief.
The memories of past lifetimes did not come back to you until you met your soulmate again. Andrea supposed it was to save the heartbreak of knowing they were out there but far away from you, until they weren’t anymore.
She watched every memory of 1931 play out behind her son’s eyes in the span of a moment. How they met, when TK dropped by asking for work. How they grew close, Carlos stealing away to watch TK work on cars in Gabriel’s garage. How Andrea finally asked TK to sit down to dinner with them, and tried to subtly drop hints that she could see what they meant to each other and that it wasn’t just friendship. How Carlos looked at her when she said unsubtly that she loved him and wanted to see him happy, whatever that meant, even though she was afraid for him and that the two of them would have to hide who they were.
The day in September, watching TK be chivalrous and then watching him die, bleeding out on the marble steps of a building in downtown Chicago. They were ripped apart much too soon and they’d been kept from each other by time and chance ever since.
In the span of a moment.
TK had yet to spot them. This wasn’t the ideal place for this to happen-–public and loud and not the sweet intimate meeting they deserved, but Andrea couldn’t make herself let the moment pass by. She was about to shout over to the paramedics, but Carlos beat her to it.
She watched TK turn, watched him see Carlos making his way over determinedly, and watched his face play through the exact same emotions she’d seen in her son. It was bittersweet, watching the pain pass over his features, but it would be short lived, she knew.
She watched their eyes lock as Carlos came up in front of him. TK’s mouth formed Carlos’ name in awe and Andrea felt her heart swell as Carlos smiled and his lips formed the words, “I missed you” before pulling him into an embrace.
Andrea has always wanted what was best for her son, wanted him to be the happiest soul on earth. She smiled to herself and felt the tears well up in her eyes, and she relaxed.