Chapter 8: It's Not Much

Izzy would need to look into the man more when these kids weren't looking. In the meantime, she needed to get them fed and cleaned up. She didn't have any clothes for them though and hers would be way too big since she was a foot taller than the older two.

She resigned herself to spending money today and headed to a thrift store to get them a few sets of clothes and some pajamas. She asked them their sizes once they arrived and they very politely told her while looking rather touched.

Nora hugged her legs tightly. "Thanks, Mommy!"

"I'm not your mom but you're welcome," Izzy told her as she patted her on the head.

Once that was taken care of, she finally took them home. The past couple of hours had been crazy and she was tired but they needed her so she persevered.

"It's not much," she said apologetically as she unlocked the front door. "I'm afraid someone is going to have to sleep on the ground later but I have plenty of blankets and a sleeping bag somewhere."

"It's fine," Roz was quick to reassure her.

Izzy handed over the pajamas and underwear she had bought for her and told her to go shower and get changed while she put the lasagna in the oven. That left her alone with the other two who were staring at her. Their gazes made her uneasy.

Nora seemed to think she was their mother…did she look that much like her? Or could their tall tale be true?

She couldn't imagine ever getting married or becoming a parent because hers were such a mess. She never even met her dad and her mom bounced from one terrible boyfriend to the next the whole time she lived with her.

If they were on the level, she went on to marry a hotshot and have three kids. That was a lot for someone who never thought they would have any! It was hard to process.

"…do you guys want to watch TV or something?" Izzy asked as she squirmed under their scrutiny.

Nora clapped her hands together excitedly. "Do you have Totally Spies?"

She had loved that show as a kid but didn't think there was anyone today who still watched it. It would be even weirder if someone from the future did. How far into the future were these guys supposedly from, anyway? They never said.

"Yeah. I used to really like that show. Hang on a minute."

Izzy turned the TV on and found one season of it on her sole streaming service. She wasn't a big TV person but it was impossible not to have at least one in this day and age. She occasionally watched movies though she preferred books.

Nora happily hunkered down on the couch as Roz came out of the bathroom looking squeaky clean but with several of her bandages missing. They must have fallen off in the shower.

"You're up, Ed," she announced as she sat down next to her sister.

He nodded and took his pajamas from the pile of clothes on the table before disappearing into the bathroom. Izzy hoped that all of the hot water didn't get used up before she got a turn later tonight. She was going to have to give the youngest a bath too, wasn't she? That would really spike her water bill.

She internally sighed but had to keep on a smile for the sake of the kids that suddenly came under her care. "Roz, do you need any new bandages?"

"That would be nice. I think the hot water made a few of my cuts open up again."

Izzy went to find her Band-Aid box, which she also kept the antibiotic cream in. She gently applied it to all of the still-bleeding wounds before covering them up. "How did you get this many cuts anyway?"

"Wrestling on a floor full of broke glass will do that to you," Roz replied dryly.

"Uh…why would you do that?"

"I didn't have much choice."

Her body language declared the subject was closed so Izzy didn't press it. Instead, she went back into the kitchen under the guise of looking for something but actually she wanted to look up Julian Shea and see if these kids were completely off their rocker or not.

He didn't have social media aside from a LinkedIn profile but there were several articles about him and a Wikipedia page because of who his family was and his own achievements to boot. He had graduated from the University of Chicago with a double degree in computational and applied mathematics and molecular engineering before he was eighteen and already had doctorates in physics and mechanical engineering on top of that.

This man was insanely smart and had publications in several prominent scientific journals already. He looked cold as ice though. The few pictures featured of him showed a stony expression that did nothing for his handsome features. He had brown hair, dull blue eyes that were mostly hidden by a pair of silver-rimmed glasses, and a thin face.

These kids had to be crazy. Why would someone like that end up with her?

Izzy couldn't deny that Ed looked a lot like him though aside from the eyes. A peek over at Roz indicated her expression was almost identical to the man in the picture as well. This was getting eerier.

While looking over there, she also noticed that the girl was wearing what appeared to be some sort of smartwatch but it was cracked. Wouldn't it make more sense to take off a watch when wearing your pajamas so you could be comfortable? Why would a kid her age even need a smartwatch?

She didn't get the chance to ask because Ed came out of the shower. She went to go run Nora a bath as he sat down with everyone else.

Geez, these guys were a solemn bunch. And he had resumed his earlier staring so she was more than a little freaked out. She couldn't actually be wavering, could she? Their story was too much!

Izzy tried snapping herself out of it but when Nora was in the bath and she was scrubbing her scalp carefully to avoid getting shampoo in her eyes, the little girl sighed contentedly and said something that really got to her. "It's been a long time since you gave me a bath."

She believed Izzy was her mother…but why would it be a long time since something so mundane happened between a mother and her child? She sounded wistful about it somehow.

"Why?"

Nora looked at her sadly. "Maureen says you went to heaven so I couldn't see you anymore."

Who was Maureen? Oh, that didn't matter! This girl was saying her mother was dead! If their story was to be believed, that meant Izzy was going to die before her time at some point. What kind of conspiracy was this?!

She tried putting all of the pieces together from what she had heard so far. Ed claimed they got sent back too far because of a broken time machine their father invented while they were trying to fix something.

The way the two younger kids had been staring at her was almost hungrily. Like they couldn't get enough of the sight of her face. That could be explained by losing their mother if they thought she was her.

Say she did believe that time travel could exist…would the thing they were trying to fix involve preventing their mother's death? Was that why their father built the time machine in the first place?

Izzy needed answers because this was all making her head hurt. She wasn't likely to get them out of Nora since she was this little and seemed happy to supposedly have her mother back. The other two were more likely to talk though there was no guarantee they wouldn't lie to her.

Her phone timer began to ring and she yelled out of the bathroom asking someone to come there for a second so she could take the lasagna out. Ed appeared in the doorway and said he would watch her and she thanked him as she rushed into the kitchen.

Once that was out and the oven was off, she went back and finished rinsing Nora off before helping her get into her pajamas. Everyone ate hungrily once the lasagna had cooled slightly and she figured she could question them after they were done eating.

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