Page 56 of The Spinster & the Sock

I dial the number I’ve known by heart since I was five and wait while it rings.

“Nate! Who do we know from Louisiana? Oh! Oh, I’ve already answered—yes, hi, hello?” The voice on the other end of the line has me immediately choking back a sob.

“Hi, Mom.”

Watching Jo walk around my farm arm in arm with my Pops is the craziest thing—and that’s coming from someone who portaled two-hundred years into the past and back. It’s nice to see she’s finally relaxing a little, though. After I got off the phone with my very, rightfully so, hysterical parents, we let Larry treat us to lunch at the diner because, “Gator wrastlin’ made you hungry. I know it.”

Jo got a steady dose of 2025 from there on out.

We stayed two nights at a hotel Mom reserved online for us while we waited for her and Pops to drive down to get us since Jo obviously didn’t have an ID for a plane ticket. A grocery delivery showed up an hour after we did with everything either of us could need for the road trip home—including a pair of pink giraffe socks that forced me to confess I had intentionally left my socks behind so that Jo would have something to remember me by.

Jo’s fascination with the T.V. was quickly overshadowed by her losing her mind over the box of condoms my mom slipped into the order.

“There are how many in one parcel? How does it stay up with no strings?”

“I’ll model one or three for you after we get you out of those wet clothes,” I’d promised. I always make good on my promises.

Jo had her first hot shower, and wasn’t even mad that she said it was almost better than the sex, because after six months without, I was inclined to agree with her.

It only took twenty minutes for her to go from mortified to fascinated, to embarrassed, and lastly to enamored after we finally got dressed to leave our room. She was in a matching mint green hoodie and sweatpants set, and wasn’t sure what was worse at first: the bare ankles or a being woman in trousers.

When we stepped out of the hotel lobby and saw my folks standing next to Pop’s Chevy, I ran, crushing my mom in a hug and sobbing like a baby, then laughing when Pops smacked me upside the head for the trauma I put them through. Jo surprised me by loving every second we spent on the road to Kearney, especially our little dinner-detour to Joe’s Crab Shack in Fort Worth. She owns all of their merch now.

As I predicted, my folks loved every second they spent with Jo. They both took one look at Jo and declared her a part of the family, “Regardless of whether you keep him around or not.”

It seems crazy that we’ve only been home for a few hours as I walk out of the kitchen into my childhood living room on Christmas morning and find Jo pouring tea for two, smiling up at Mom who is spinning to show off her asymmetrical tie-dye skirt. The Christmas tree casts a colorful halo behind them, and I truly understand how the Grinch must have felt when his heart grew three sizes.

I glance to my left and see my dad leaning against the banister.

“You know, I haven’t said it yet, but I told you you’d fall off that damn boat one day,” Pops says when I come to stand next to him.

“Yeah,” I agree with a laugh, “but thank God I did.”

My Own Grandfather, Horseshit, and Ace Hardware

Josephine

1 Year and 2 Months Later

(Because “time travel is real and the solstice isnt something to fuck with” - Mama Star)

I think it is a natural part of the human experience to wonder what our world will look like hundreds of years after we are gone. It is not a natural part of the human experience, however, to see it with our own eyes.

“This is surreal.” Blaze punctuates my own thoughts with an exhausted groan from the bed.

Savoring a slow sip of tea, my eyes trace the shapes of the room. The furniture is new. Some upkeep has kept the building standing. But the bones are the same, and I can picture the original house Blaze and I toured two-hundred and twelve years ago when we spoke of a life together in my time. “It feels like one of those dreams where you think you have fallen asleep in your own bed, but when you wake up, you realize you’re somewhere completely different.”

Blaze stretches and yawns, huffing some animalistic sound as he shakes the last of sleep from his face. “One night in this room costs what the agency dude quoted us for a purchase price!”

I giggle and unfurl my body from the end chair, which is positioned to overlook the avenue below. “That sounds about right,” I muse, watching unfamiliar faces trail up and down an oh so familiar street. Turns out the Mr. Lamb who had already placed an offer on the Clarendon Cottage was Charles Lamb, the writer. His offer was accepted, and a plaque hangs on the wall in his memory. Blaze insisted we stay at the historic home turned B&B, and I think the whole ordeal is rather comical.

Just down the street, the tea shop is a convenience store. The modiste is now a winery which boasts plexiglass-framed pieces of the original owner’s preserved works. A dress I made three years ago by my standards, and two-hundred and fifteen years ago by history’s standards is on display. I drank a glass of wine and thought of the delightful whir of the sewing machine Blaze bought me as a wedding gift, and how much time it saves compared to the gown the winery patrons ogled over.

Dashwood House is a novelty souvenir shop on the lower level, and a small self-guided tour is available for the upper levels. Blaze and I braved the spectacle last night before dinner, and I was astonished to see an incredibly inaccurate drawing of myself in Georgia’s room, of all places. The story of the missing Dashwood daughter was told like a tragedy that entirely ruined my family, down to the framed wanted poster.

“Lenard Hollows: Wanted on suspicion of murdering his wife, Josephine Dashwood-Hollows,” Blaze read. “What the fuck?”

I remind him that the last time the ton saw us was when we left the modiste—him and that blasted axe. His feathers were slightly less ruffled when he looked closer and saw what I knew to be Grandmother’s handwriting labeling the entire page as “horse shit!”