"Dad," I said, "At the time I started the relationship with her I was thirty-two. Who else should I be sleeping with? And don't blame Anita for anything. I found her weakness and exploited it in order to seduce her. Remember, in my first life she never tried anything with me. Only when I pushed her buttons in the right way did she act."
"And she fell in love with you." He said. "So much in love that she didn't meet and marry her intended husband."
"Like I said Dad," I told him. "I've learned a lot since I came back. One of the things I learned was that I was not quite as mature as I thought I was. And that I didn't know nearly as much about love as I thought. But I'm learning."
"And Anita?" He asked. "What of her?"
"Hopefully," I said, "My little commando raid on her car did the trick. If not, I'll just have to come up with something else. Like I said, fate WANTS Anita and Jack to be together so my little nudge probably worked."
He nodded, looking at me. "And you told Tracy all of this?" He asked.
"Yes." I nodded.
"Do you think that was wise?" He asked me cautiously. "Tracy is only eighteen. Are you sure she fully understands the consequences of not keeping her mouth shut about this?"
"I think so." I told him. "Tracy is pretty smart in case you haven't noticed."
"Oh I have." He nodded.
"And like she pointed out, she had a right to the information. My most important goal from the very start was Tracy's survival. That remains my most important goal. I thought that she would probably heed my warnings a little better if she knew exactly what she was dealing with. That meant telling her. I still shudder when I think of her almost getting into a car with her boyfriend that night. She almost did that because she didn't know the source of the information I was giving her. I couldn't take the chance that would happen again. She needed to be told for her own protection."
Dad nodded soberly. "I guess you're right." He said, rubbing his temples again. "This is all pretty "mind-blowing", as you promised. It's hard to imagine that in some alternate time-line I've lost my daughter and I'm a victim's rights advocate. And what about that Bill?" He suddenly asked. "Is anybody going to suffer because I'm not doing that? Is any good that I did in the other life going to be left undone?"
I looked at him, knowing what he was going through. It was the same thing I went through when I first got back to 1982. Your mind tried to deal with all of the possible ramifications for your actions. Sometimes you had to make unpleasant decisions or conclusions. The loss of my daughter Becky was one such thing.
"I don't really know Dad." I answered. "After Tracy died and after the asshole that killed her was given a suspended sentence so he could play football, you and Mom turned your grief and anger into a full scale assault.
The group you joined helped increase the penalty for first time drunk driving, it helped raise the drinking age to twenty-one nationwide, and it helped pass mandatory sentencing laws in cases of vehicular manslaughter. Will all of that still get done without you?" I shrugged. "Probably. Like I told you, fate seems to try to keep things in line based on whatever pattern has been determined."
"But what if doesn't Bill?" He asked. "What if somewhere down the line someone dies because I haven't been a part of something that I was supposed to be part of? What if those laws don't get passed or they don't get passed at the same time and some drunk driver who otherwise would have chosen a different path or would have been in jail goes out and kills someone?"
"That might happen Dad." I told him. "And if it does there is absolutely nothing that you can do about it. Nor should you blame yourself or me for it. If it's any comfort to you, you will probably never even know if such a thing does happen."
"But maybe I should join this group anyway." He said. "Maybe since I'm meant to do that I should go ahead and do it."
"Maybe." I agreed. "But it won't be the same. Being an advocate was a frustrating, agonizing process for you and Mom. Trying to get anything done was like trying to erode a rock by spitting on it. The only thing that kept you going year after year was your grief and anger over Tracy's death. Tracy is not dead Dad, and hopefully she won't be dead anytime soon. I doubt you can duplicate the drive you had without that factor thrown in."
"But…"
"Dad." I said. "I've learned that you can't change the world with this gift. All you can do is try to change a few things around you and even that is difficult and sometimes impossible. Our destiny has been altered because of my interference and we have Tracy when she should be dead. Fate will hopefully accept the consequences of that and adjust itself accordingly. I'm confident that that will happen, okay? If there are some minor changes from this interference there's nothing that you or I could do about them. I couldn't very well have let Tracy die just because there was a possibility that someone else down the road would get hurt or killed.
"I told Tracy not too long ago that I was not the type of person to carelessly hurt someone in my own self-interest just because I didn't know the person getting hurt. I stand by that statement but, unfortunately you sometimes have to take that risk anyway. It's the lesser of two evils, do you understand?"
"Yeah." He nodded. "I think so."
"Look at it this way." I told him. "Remember the story I told you about the kid that was choking on the hot dog?"
He nodded. "The one that Nina wrote you up for saving."
"Right." I said. "I saved that kid's life in that timeline. He hasn't even been born yet but I'm scheduled to save his life. What is going to happen when that kid chokes on that hot dog and Bill, paramedic extradonaire, is not there to save him because Bill never became a paramedic in the first place?"
"I suppose some other paramedic will show up at the call." He said.
"Right." I nodded. "Now modesty aside, I was a pretty damn good paramedic. There were others at the company that were not as good at it. There were some that were damn incompetent in fact. Suppose one of them shows up. Suppose they do not clue in to the fact that the kid is choking and don't clear his airway in time?"
"Then he'll die." Dad answered.
"Maybe." I nodded. "But you see, I'm inclined to believe that this kid will live. No matter how incompetent the medic that shows up is, he or she will attempt to put in a breathing tube. When someone is not breathing, that is what you do. So even if the rest of the clues don't inform him or her that they are dealing with an airway obstruction they will still put a laryngoscope into the kid's mouth at some point and try to put a tube down. At that point they will not be able to help but see that there is a large piece of hot dog in his trachea and they will remove it.
"Now it is possible that the extra minute or so that this might take will mean the difference between life and death for the kid, but I doubt it. This kid is meant to live and he probably will. Those drunk driving laws were meant to get passed and they probably will. And if either of those things don't work out this way, all I can say is that I was acting as I thought was best. And that's what you should say too."
We sat quietly for a few minutes while Dad digested all of this. Finally he looked up at me.
"You were right about my opinion of you changing." He told me. "I'll be forced to think of you as an adult now. An adult with opinions and ethics based on years of learning. I'm not sure how to feel about that. I'm going to have to stop thinking of you as a son and start thinking of you as an equal. I don't have anything else to teach you."
"Dad," I said, "I still am your son. Everything that I am, everything that I was is based on the way you raised me. My moral code, my ethics, all of that is from you and Mom. Sure, some of it took place in an alternate time-line but it was still you and Mom and the part that really counted was the part I learned long before I was even a teenager. You're still my Dad and you always will be."