The Bronx welcomed me home with its familiar symphony of street sounds – different from 2024, yet eternally the same. I asked the driver to stop a few blocks from our apartment, needing to walk through the neighborhood that had shaped both versions of my life. The evening air carried the scent of Mrs. Rodriguez's arroz con gandules from two buildings down, a Tuesday tradition that had survived in my memories across decades.
My phone weighed heavy in my pocket, those three messages from Beyoncé creating their own gravitational pull. But it was another message that lit up the screen as I walked:
*Mijo, dinner's getting cold. Brought home that rotisserie chicken you used to love when you were little. -Mami*
Used to love. Still loved. Would love again. Tenses became complicated when you'd lived the same life twice. I typed back quickly: *On my way. Big news.*
As I rounded the corner onto our street, I let a new melody surface, something that bridged the gap between the son I had been and the man I remembered becoming:
*Mother's wisdom, timeless grace*
*Anchors me in time and space*
*Through the years that loop and bend*
*Her love remains where paths transcend*
*Every choice leads back to here*
*To moments cherished, held so dear*
*In the echo of her calls*
*Future rises, present falls*
The security door buzzed me in, its familiar broken spring squeaking in B-flat – a sound I'd sampled in another lifetime for a track that went platinum in 2018. Maybe I'd use it differently this time. Every sound carried the potential for reinvention.
Maria Johnson stood in our apartment doorway, still in her hospital administrative scrubs, hair touched by less gray than I remembered from 2024. Her eyes – the ones I'd inherited along with her stubborn determination – searched my face with that particular maternal radar that could detect shifts in the universe.
"Something's different," she said, not a question but a statement of fact. "You went into that meeting a boy with big dreams. But your eyes now..." She trailed off, studying me with an intensity that made me wonder, not for the first time, if mothers possessed their own form of time travel.
I followed her into our modest kitchen, where the chicken sat waiting alongside platanos maduros and arroz con habichuelas. Comfort food from a timeline that remained blessedly constant.
"The label," I began, taking my usual seat at our small table, "they want to sign me. But it's bigger than that, Mami. They want to invest in the future I see."
"The future you see," she repeated softly, setting a plate before me. "Lately, Marcus, it's like you see things none of us can. Like you're remembering things that haven't happened yet."
If she only knew how precisely she'd captured it. I took a bite of chicken, letting the familiar flavors ground me in this moment, this timeline.
"There's more," I said carefully. "You remember that benefit concert I mentioned? The one next month?"
She nodded, serving herself.
"Beyoncé's team reached out. They want me to produce."
The fork paused halfway to her mouth. In my original timeline, my mother had met Beyoncé years later, when success had already softened her edges about the music industry. Now, I watched anxiety and pride wage war across her features.
"Marcus," she said finally, "promise me something."
"Anything, Mami."
"Whatever future you're seeing behind those eyes of yours – don't let it make you forget to live in the present. Success is sweet, but family is sweeter."
I reached across the table and took her hand, feeling the years of hard work written in its calluses. "Some things," I said, "are constant across all possible futures."
As if on cue, my phone buzzed again. But for now, it could wait. In any timeline, some moments deserved to remain unchanged, unmarked except by the quiet tick of the kitchen clock and the taste of home-cooked memories.
Outside, the Bronx night was building its eternal symphony – car horns and distant salsa, laughter and life. I closed my eyes and let it wash over me, a percussion track underlying the melody of this second chance at tomorrow.