This story is by Matt Banes and was part of our 2024 Fall Writing Contest. You can find all the writing contest stories here.
Noah Lawson opened his eyes at the shrill sound of his alarm clock. He flipped the covers back, rolled out of bed, and without hesitation launched into his morning routine.
As he shaved, his eyes settled on the small scar on the right side of his chin, a memento from a childhood baseball game with the neighborhood kids. He had stepped in to say something to the batter, not realizing a practice swing had already begun and the batter had not registered his presence until it was too late. He could still hear the sound as the metal bat made jarring contact with his chin.
There had been no concussion, but stitches were required to hold the wound together until it healed. In earlier years he wore it as a badge of honor. Now, at 35, he viewed it with indifference.
As he tied his shoes, he heard his phone ping, indicating a new voicemail. He grabbed his phone and played the message while heading for the door. He heard his father’s voice confirming their plans to meet for lunch today (the 18th anniversary of the death of Noah’s mother).
His father went on to say he would be bringing something to him of his mother’s that had been forgotten in the attic.
Once seated at the table, Noah watched his father walk through the door carrying a small cardboard box.
Noah managed pleasantries before blurting out his questions about the contents within.
According to his father, after years of unsuccessful attempts at having children, his mother bought a journal during the third trimester with Noah to record their journey into parenthood.
The habit stuck and he now had in his possession her journals. One for each of his 17 years before her death.
That night, as he went to bed, he selected a journal at random, opened it, and began reading. He remembered the day in vivid detail and drifted off to sleep as he read.
He dreamed of a bat swinging in slow motion toward him. Realization dawned and instinctively he ducked, nearly avoiding it before it made contact with his cheek. The impact jolted him awake. “Just a dream,” he thought, and gave in to sleep once more.
The next morning his reflection in the bathroom mirror stopped him cold. The familiar scar on his chin had vanished. He felt a knot in his stomach as he remembered his dream. Leaning closer to the mirror he realized it wasn’t gone but had migrated to his cheek. The knot gave way to a pit that threatened to swallow him whole.
Racing out of the bathroom, he grabbed his phone and messaged his father asking about his scar. A brief reply conveyed his father’s recollection of the scar…on his cheek.
Noah flipped through the pages of the journal in a frenzy, found the entry, and read aloud “…poor cheek…” in disbelief. That wasn’t right. Last night it said, “Poor chin”. He was positive. Frustrated, he tossed the journal onto the bed.
He sent a text to his boss stating he would be out sick today and received the expected well wishes in reply.
He needed to know more. Looking through the box he found a specific journal and entry.
A quick text exchange affirmed his father’s memory of the day Noah took his grandmother’s porcelain cat-shaped Christmas ornament to school for show and tell where it had been subsequently broken by a clumsy, apologetic classmate.
He picked up the journal and read the full account of the day. Though he wasn’t tired when he started, the next thing he knew, he nodded off into a dream.
He found himself holding his backpack in one hand and the ornament in the other. This was it. The day he had hoped to find himself reliving.
Remembering his plan, he put his backpack down, carried the ornament into his closet, opened the small door in the wall, and carefully set the ornament in the tiny, unused crawl space.
As he stood, he bumped his head on a closet shelf which jarred him, in an instant, back to reality. He sat up, grabbed his phone, and read the last message from his father.
Before, it corroborated his memory of his grandmother’s ornament. This time, however, the message mentioned him losing the ornament before he arrived at school.
He replied once more, pretending to have remembered something, and asked his father to check the crawl space in his old closet. Sure enough, his father found the ornament right where he’d placed it during his dream.
Noah had been so focused on how all of this could be possible that he hadn’t stopped to consider why it was happening.
Now the answer gleamed in his mind, as if it had been there all along. He grabbed the box of journals and found the last one.
The final entry described the night before his mother’s death. Early the following morning, while running errands, a drunk driver had claimed her life. He winced at the description of their fight and the last words he chose to speak to her. If only he had known she would be gone before he awoke.
Without realizing he had fallen asleep, he found himself in his childhood room; 17 again. The clock on his wall read 11:54 PM, shortly after the argument.
Unsure of how much time he had or how much he could change, he acted on the first idea that came to mind. He crept to the garage and let the air out of one of his mother’s tires; hoping the delay would be enough to change her fate. A rush of adrenaline at the possibility of saving her jolted him out of the dream.
Hope spurred him to the closet where he pulled a news article about her accident from an old box. The article described his father’s truck instead. Of course, she had used it because of the flat. He had failed.
Over the next few hours, he tried everything he could think of to change the past. He let the air out in all the tires on both vehicles, a friend picked her up. He hid the car keys – they had a spare set he didn’t know about. No matter what he tried, the past corrected itself. It seemed not even time itself had the power to bring back the dead.
Noah sat grappling with the hopelessness of the whole situation. What sort of cruel cosmic joke would let him rescue a worthless Christmas ornament but still demand his mother’s life?
As he sat in silence, no longer bothering to wipe the tears that trickled down his face, something occurred to him. Maybe he had misunderstood. Maybe a second chance at keeping his mother here with him could never be on the table. Perhaps instead he had been given a second chance at something longed for by so many who have lost loved ones: a second chance at goodbye.
While her death was something he had come to accept many years ago, no amount of counseling or therapy helped him to fully accept his harshness in what he would later know to be his last moments with her.
He picked the journal up, flipped a page, and began reading about the start of the same day he’d been visiting over and over.
“Hi, Mom.” A 17-year-old Noah said as he entered the kitchen where she stood sipping coffee and looking over a list scribbled on a notepad.
“Good morning.” She responded with a hint of suspicion in her voice. “You’re up awful early for spring break. Not here to try and wear me down on that curfew extension, are you?”
“No!” He said with more force than intended. “No. Actually, I wanted to tell you I think you’re right. I’ve decided to skip the party tonight altogether.”
Her eyebrows raised in what appeared to be a hopeful expression. “Oh?”
“Yeah, spring break is almost over, and I thought instead we could spend the day together. All three of us.” He walked closer, reached out, wrapped his mother in a tight hug, and continued. “I’m so sorry I’ve been difficult lately. I love you more than I can express and I’m grateful every day to have you as my mom. I couldn’t have asked for more.”
She returned his hug. “I love you too, Noah. And nothing will ever change that.”
He awoke with his arms empty, but a smile spread across his face while a weight he didn’t realize he held lifted off his shoulders. Looking down at the journal, its tear-stained final pages told a much different story now.
In the years since, Noah has read every page of every journal. He sometimes still dreams about the things he reads, but the dreams are just dreams. He assumes they will be going forward, now that he has discovered and accepted the true gift they gave him.
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