I'm Not Normal

Rosalind hadn't gotten a very good look at her mother as she exited the Book Nook so, since they needed to leave the store anyway, she figured they may as well follow from a distance. It was strange seeing her alive again but in the best possible way.

"You want to see Mom too, huh?" Edison asked knowingly.

She was tempted to poke him. He was far too perceptive for an eight-year-old that didn't have a genius level IQ like she did.

"So what if I do?"

He held his hands up in a gesture of innocence. "No need to get defensive, Roz. There's nothing wrong with wanting to see her. You're allowed to miss her like the rest of us, you know."

Rosalind didn't think she was though. At least not outwardly. Their father had fallen apart without Izzy and, as the second oldest person in the house, she had to keep it together for everyone else.

"I don't need to miss her since we'll be getting her back," she said crisply.

Edison didn't buy it. "Sure. Whatever."

"We're gonna see Mommy?" Nora asked wide-eyed. "I wanna see her now! Right now, Roz, right now!"

"That's what we're doing."

Sometimes it was very difficult to be patient with Nora, no matter how cute she was. She certainly cared about her siblings but she was nowhere near as warm and nurturing as her mother or even Edison. He put up with their little sister's nonsense very well.

They followed Izzy at a distance until she made it to the parking lot. That was when they crept closer to greedily drink in the sight of her. She was humming cheerfully to herself as she dug around in her purse for her car keys and it made Rosalind's heart clench. She had nearly forgotten how often her mother did that.

A man in a hood approached her from the side and she looked up at him somewhat cautiously. "Can I help you?"

He didn't reply but pulled a gun out of his jacket and shot her before anyone had time to react. Rosalind was horrified and tried covering Nora's eyes but it was too late.

"Sorry, lady, but orders are orders," he clucked as he took her purse.

Nora and Edison both tried screaming and running toward her prone figure but Rosalind held them back by clapping hands over both of their mouths. "Shh! Do you want him to get rid of us as witnesses?!" she hissed.

Orders are orders…she hadn't been killed by a random mugger at all. She had been targeted specifically from the beginning! But whose orders? Who would want to kill Isabel Shea?

She forced them to hide behind a nearby toll booth for the parking lot with her and kept her hands clamped firmly over their mouths as the man passed. He was talking to someone on a cell phone now, presumably letting them know the job was done.

"I did it, Mr. Shea. She's definitely dead; I checked her pulse myself."

Rosalind barely managed to stop herself from gasping. Did he say Shea?! The only Sheas she knew of were directly related to her father.

He couldn't have possibly done this; no one could fake that level of grief. Before he became a workaholic obsessed with building a time machine, he spent an entire month hiding in his room cradling one of his wife's favorite sweatshirts against his chest like it was his lifeline. She walked by the door and saw him doing that and bawling his eyes out one day before quietly going back the way she came without letting him know she saw.

There was no doubt in her mind that Julian loved Izzy to the point of insanity after losing her. He hadn't been anything like his usual self when they fought over the time machine.

So if he wasn't the Mr. Shea that hitman was talking about…who was? She had never met any of her father's relatives but knew one of them had taken over the company after he shut himself up in his lab.

Edison finally ripped her hand off of him and was fuming. "That was NOT an accident! You don't think—"

"I know you aren't that brainless," Rosalind scoffed. She was barely holding it together after seeing her mother be shot to death but she had to act like normal for her siblings' sakes. "It has to be a relative. Someone who wanted to hurt him by taking away the person he loved most."

Nora was sobbing "Mommy" over and over so her sister took compassion on her and pulled her into her lap, hugging her tightly. What a horrible thing for a child her age to see! It was horrible for all of them but especially for someone that was still practically a baby…

The reset. She had to believe the reset was possible to undo this fresh trauma at the very least but how? She didn't know how to program the coordinates on this thing! Julian had done it the first time before she wrestled it away.

"Who would do that?! Why?" Edison demanded furiously.

"I don't know who but I have an idea about why," Rosalind said grimly. "Some other member of the Shea family took over the company after Mom…you know. If they wanted to take over the company when Grandpa died but Dad got it instead, they might hold a grudge."

"What sort of monster would do that? Mom didn't do anything! Dad didn't do anything either until he went crazy! What sort of stupid motive is that?!"

"I don't know! It seems like a pathetic motive to me too but I can't think of anything else. You know Dad's family situation wasn't great. That's why he never talks about any of them. I don't think the larger Shea clan is normal at all. Why else wouldn't we have ever met anyone?"

"I suppose you have a point," Edison admitted reluctantly as tears spilled down his cheeks. "But what do we do now? Losing her once was bad enough but actually seeing it…"

Rosalind sighed. "I know. I wish I could unsee it too. But if we could take the time machine back to Dad, he might be able to fix it. He has the schematics and everything and he obviously knows who took over the company so we could figure that out and then come back and find a way to stop him."

"You mean our Dad not this year's Dad, don't you? The one that went nuts?"

"Well, this one doesn't know how to build a time machine! It took him more than two years to be able to pull it off. I don't see you coming up with any better ideas."

"Because I don't have any. I can hardly think straight after seeing THAT. Do you even know how to set the time and date coordinates?" he asked doubtfully as he continued to try and stem the flow of his tears. "Ugh, I'm so pathetic! I can't stop crying. Crying is for babies."

"Ed, you just saw your mother get shot right in front of you. Crying is a perfectly normal reaction," Rosalind said as she began frantically tapping at the smartwatch.

"Then why aren't you?"

"I'm not normal."

It was the simplest explanation she could give. If she talked about this anymore, she was going to break down into a hysterical, sobbing mess too and then none of them would be going anywhere.

"That's true," he replied with a hiccup that may have also been a watery laugh. "You've never been normal, Miss I-Do-Calculus-For-Fun."

"No, I haven't. Stop talking though; I need to concentrate on trying to set these coordinates," Rosalind ordered.

Edison did as she said but dissolved into further tears. She couldn't deal with two weepy siblings at once so she pawned Nora off on him and let them hug and cry together while she tried to fix this.

Fixing this was the only thing keeping her from becoming like them at the moment. She had to believe that this was nothing more than a bad dream that could be made to go away. It would require depending on someone who may or may not have completely lost his mind but there was nothing she could do about that. She didn't know anything about building a time machine. Even if she had the schematic for it, there was no guarantee she could fix it on her own.