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He never told her why he stumbled over the name of the ravine. He never told her what should have happened the day the carriage crashed, and he'd kicked Marty a few times for forgetting.
"So a friend of mine was down at Clayton, sorry, Eastwood Ravine-"
And in her defense, Clara wasn't stupid. All the lying and poor attempts at protecting her did nothing to stop her from figuring out where she was supposed to be.
"I should have died there, Emmett," she'd said once, after a particularly harrowing adventure in the next century. "I should have died in the ravine that day, and you know it."
He almost hadn't responded. What would he tell her? 'Yes, my dear, it should have been you'? Of course not. Ridiculous. The very notion was almost too dumb to entertain-
-but he found himself nodding, ever so slightly, anyway.
"Is this future very different, then? Has it wildly altered the natural course of time?"
She knew as well as he did that any course of time is a natural course of time, that the only reason any others seemed strange to them was their own innate sense of not belonging, like the universe's way of telling them to go back to the timeline they came from.
"I suppose there isn't much of a difference. There were more children educated by your method than there would have been-"
"Should have been," Clara corrected without a hint of bitterness. "I educated more children than I should have."
"Would have been," Emmett insisted anyway. "But other than that and the name of a ravine, no, everything is basically the same."
Everything was not the same, in ways she wasn't asking about. The universe may have shifted imperceptibly, but Emmett's life had changed in ways he had never thought imaginable, most accurately summarised in the words Clara uttered next-
"I should get the boys to bed."
She left him in the lab, her socked feet hardly scuffling across the concrete before silence fell in the immediate area. There was still the sound of Einstien whining at Verne's feet, and Verne whining at Clara's, and Jules' general presence, but they were elsewhere in the small house they'd constructed on the John F. Kennedy drive property.
He had been alone but rarely ever lonely when it was only Einstein and Marty to keep him company, but now he couldn't help but wonder if that was only because they were what he was used to. Not that Marty and Einstein weren't enough, of course not that, but it was nice to have a family of his own.
Clara returned not long after this enlightening introspective episode, but long enough that the noise of the house had largely settled around him into the near familiar quiet it had always held.
"Verne is so spirited it's ridiculous," she sighed, settling in beside her husband. "I don't know where he gets it."
Emmett snorted. "You, mostly. Jules and I are much more introverted." He paused for a minute before continuing, his voice softer than it had been before. "You know, they wouldn't even exist if you'd fallen off the cliff."
Clara considered this for a moment. "I can't imagine a world without them," she said.
"I can't imagine a world without any of you."
"You don't have to worry about me, Emmett," Clara sighed, "but thank you. It's actually.... Rather comforting to know the lack of impact I have. It takes a lot of existential weight off my shoulders."
She was trying to be humble, and maybe she meant it, but the sheer ridiculousness of the idea that she meant nothing to the universe was almost too much-
"Clara, listen," Emmett began, "Even if you in particular don't do something on a fantastically large scale, who's to say Jules or Vernie won't? You don't have to make history to matter."
"Why, Emmett, you're so unexpectedly poetic."
"You aren't the first to tell me that."