Lightning

But she was less concerned about learning the storylines of those novels than hearing the answer to a chilling question that had just occurred to her: "In this life I was meant to live, in this other 1984… was I married?"
    "No."
    "But I'd met Danny and—"
    "No. You had never met Danny. You had never married."
    "I'd never been born!" Chris said.
    Stefan said, "All of those things happened because I went back to Denver, Colorado, in 1955, and prevented Dr. Markwell from delivering you. The doctor who took Markwell's place couldn't save your mother, but he brought you into the world whole and sound. And everything in your life changed from that point on. It was your past that I was changing, yes, but it was
my
future, therefore flexible. And thank God for that peculiarity of time travel, for otherwise I wouldn't have been able to save you from a life as a paraplegic."
    The wind gusted, and another barrage of rain rattled against the window at which Laura stood.
    She was plagued again by the feeling that the room in which she stood, the earth on which it was built, and the universe in which it turned were as insubstantial as smoke, subject to sudden change.
    "I monitored your life thereafter," Stefan said. "Between mid-January of '44 and mid-March, I made over thirty secret jaunts to see how you were getting along. On the fourth of those trips, when I went to 1964, I discovered you had been dead for one year, you and your father, killed by that junkie who had held up the grocery store. So I journeyed to 1963 and killed him before he could kill you."
    "Junkie?" Chris said, baffled.
    "I'll tell you about it later, honey."
    Stefan said, "And until that night that Kokoschka showed up on that mountain road, I was pretty successful, I think, at making your life easier and better. Yet my interference did not deprive you of your art or result in books that were any less beautiful than the ones that you'd written in that other life. Different books but not lesser ones, books in the same voice, in fact, that you write in now."
    Feeling weak-kneed, Laura returned to her chair. "But
why
? Why did you go to such great lengths to improve my life?"
    Stefan Krieger looked at Chris, then at her, then closed his eyes when he finally spoke. "After seeing you in that wheelchair, signing copies
of Ledges
, and after reading your books, I fell in love with you… deeply in love with you."
    Chris squirmed in his chair, obviously embarrassed to hear such feelings expressed when the object of affection was his own mother.
    "Your mind was even more beautiful than your face," Stefan said softly. His eyes were still closed. "I fell in love with your great courage, perhaps because real courage was something I'd seen none of in my own world of strutting, uniformed fanatics. They committed atrocities in the name of the people and called that courage. They were willing to die for a twisted totalitarian ideal, and they called
that
courage when it was really stupidity, insanity. And I fell in love with your dignity, for I had none of my own, no self-respect like that I saw shining in you. I fell in love with your compassion, which was so rich a part of your books, for in my world I had seen little compassion. I fell in love, Laura, and realized that I could do for you what all men would do for those they loved if they had the power of gods: I did my best to spare you the worst that fate had planned for you."
    He opened his eyes at last.
    They were a beautiful blue. And tortured.
    She was immeasurably grateful to him. She did not love him in return, for she hardly knew him. But in stating the depth of his love, a passion that had caused him to transform her destiny and that had driven him to sail across vast tides of time to be with her, he had to some degree restored the magical aura in which she had once viewed him. Again he seemed larger than life, a demigod if not a god, elevated from mere mortal status by the degree of his selfless commitment to her.

    That night Chris shared the creaky-springed bed with Stefan Krieger. Laura tried to sleep in one chair with her feet propped on the other.
    Rain fell in ceaseless, lulling rhythms that soon put Chris to sleep. Laura could hear him snoring softly.
    After she sat for perhaps an hour in darkness, she said quietly, "Are you asleep?"
    "No," Stefan said at once.
    "Danny," she said. "My Danny…"
    "Yes?"
    "Why didn't you…"
    "Make a second trip to that night in 1988 and kill Kokoschka before he could kill