Lightning

for me to walk the streets of Los Angeles for the first time. If I had traveled one thousand years into the future instead of forty, it couldn't have seemed more wondrous. The cars! Cars everywhere —and so many of them German, which seemed to indicate a certain forgiveness for the war, acceptance of the new Germany, and I was moved by that."
    "We have a Mercedes," Chris said. "It's neat, but I like the Jeep better."
    "The cars," Stefan said, "the styles, the amazing advancements everywhere: digital watches, home computers, videotape recorders for watching movies in your own living room! Even after five days of my visit had passed, I was in a state of pleasant shock, and looked forward each morning to new wonders. On the sixth day, as I passed a bookstore in Westwood, I saw a line of people waiting to have copies of a novel signed by the author. I went inside to browse and to see what kind of book was so popular, to help me a bit in understanding American society. And there you were, Laura, at a table piled with copies of your third novel and your first major success,
Ledges
."
    Laura leaned forward, as if puzzlement were a force drawing her to the edge of her chair. "
Ledges
? But I've never written a book with that title."
    Again, Chris understood. "That was a book you wrote in the life you would've lived if Mr. Krieger hadn't meddled in it."
    "You were twenty-nine years old when I saw you for the first time at that book-signing party in Westwood," Stefan said. "You were in a wheelchair because your legs were twisted, useless. Your left arm was partly paralyzed, as well."
    "Crippled?" Chris said. "Mom was crippled?"
    Laura was literally on the edge of her chair now, for though what her guardian said seemed too fantastic to be believed, she sensed that it was true. On a deep level even more primitive than instinct, she perceived a
rightness
to the image of herself in a wheelchair, her legs useless and wasted; perhaps what she apprehended was the faint echo of destiny thwarted.
    "You'd been that way since birth," Stefan said.
    "Why?"
    "I only learned that much later, after conducting much research into your life. The doctor who had delivered you in Denver, Colorado, in 1955—Markwell was his name—had been an alcoholic. Yours was a difficult birth anyway—"
    "My mother died delivering me."
    "Yes, in
that
reality she died too. But in that reality Markwell botched the delivery, and you received a spinal injury that crippled you for life."
    A shudder passed through her. As if to prove to herself that she had indeed escaped the life that fate had originally planned for her, she got up and walked to the window, using her legs, her undamaged and blessedly useful legs.
    To Chris, Stefan said, "That day I saw her in the wheelchair, your mother was so beautiful. Oh, so very beautiful. Her face, of course, was the same as it is now. But it wasn't the face alone that made her beautiful. There was such an aura of
courage
about her, and she was in such good humor in spite of her handicaps. Each person who came to her with
Ledges
was sent away not only with a signature but with a laugh. In spite of being condemned to a life in a wheelchair, your mother was so amusing, lighthearted. I watched from a distance and was charmed and profoundly moved, as I'd never been before."
    "She's great," Chris said. "Nothing scares my mom."
    "Everything scares your mom," Laura said. "This whole crazy conversation is scaring your mom half to death."
    "You never run from anything or hide," Chris said, turning to look at her. He blushed; a boy his age was supposed to be cool, at a stage where he was beginning to wonder if he was not infinitely wiser than his mother. In an ordinary relationship, such expressions of admiration for one's mother seldom were expressed so directly short of the child's fortieth birthday or the mother's death, whichever came first. "Maybe you're afraid, but you never
act
afraid."
    She had learned young that those who showed fear were seen as easy targets.
    "I bought a copy
of Ledges
that day," Stefan said, "and took it back to the hotel where I was staying. I read it overnight, and it was so beautiful that in places I wept… and so amusing that in other places I laughed out loud. The next day I got your other two books,
Silverlock
and
Fields of Night
, which were as fine, as moving, as the book that made you famous,
Ledges
."
    It was strange to listen to favorable reviews of books that in this life she had never written.