Chapter 3

The DeLorean screamed out of 1955 in a blaze of temporal fire, and when the lightning strike finally deposited Marty McFly back into 1985, the world he returned to had curdled.

Hill Valley looked much the same at first glance—same cracked sidewalks, same clock tower still stubbornly broken—but the air tasted different. Thinner. Meaner. He drove the borrowed truck through streets that felt narrower than memory, until the familiar turn for Lyon Estates never came. Instead, a weathered sign pointed toward the Shady Pines Trailer Park, its letters faded and pocked with rust. Marty’s stomach dropped as the truck bumped down the pitted gravel lane between sagging mobile homes.

His house—home—was a faded beige single-wide at the end of the row, its skirting bent and streaked with mildew. The porch light buzzed like a dying insect.

He pushed open the door and stepped into a haze of cigarette smoke and something sweeter, cheaper. The television murmured in the corner. And on the threadbare couch lay his mother.

Lorraine Baines—for that was still her name—looked up at him without surprise. She was forty-seven but carried the years like extra weight she had long stopped fighting. Traces of the pretty girl from 1955 lingered in the high cheekbones and the piercing blue of her eyes, but time and hard living had softened and coarsened her in equal measure. Her house robe hung open. Beneath it she was naked, breasts heaver now and spilling sideways, pubic hair an untamed thatch. She had one leg hooked high over the back of the couch, and a stranger—mid-forties, balding, tattooed arms—was thrusting steadily up between her spread thighs, cock ramming into a cunt that had evidently seen a lot of use in the intervening years. The wet, rhythmic slap of flesh loud in the small room. The man didn’t even glance at Marty.

Lorraine’s gaze met her son’s for a brief second. She offered a small, hazy smile, as if he had simply come home from school a little late. Her body continued to rock with each thrust. “Hey, honey,” she murmured, voice breathy but casual. “There’s leftover pizza in the fridge.”

Marty’s throat closed. He fled down the narrow hallway, shoulders scraping both walls, and slammed the door of what he prayed was his room.

Inside, he leaned against the cheap paneling, breathing hard. The space was cramped, cluttered with posters of bands he didn’t recognize and clothes that smelled faintly of laundry detergent and despair. He began rifling through drawers and shelves with the frantic focus of a man trying to prove the nightmare unreal. Old photographs. A few yellowed newspaper clippings. A battered shoebox of postcards from nowhere special.

The picture that emerged was uglier than he had feared.

Lorraine appeared in nearly every image—sometimes smiling too widely, sometimes with a distant, glassy stare—always with different men. There were no family portraits with a father. Only Lorraine, growing heavier and wearier with each passing year, her children orbiting her like uncertain moons. Marty found a copy of his own birth certificate. Father: Unknown. The same for Linda and Dave.

Jesus Christ, he thought, sliding down the wall until he sat on the thin carpet. What did I do?

From the living room came the stranger’s low, guttural groan as he finished. A minute later the front door opened and closed. Feeling like a coward, Marty stayed hidden until the trailer fell quiet again.

Dinner was served on TV trays in the living room because the kitchen table had become a permanent dumping ground for unopened mail and empty bottles. Lorraine had changed into a loose T-shirt and nothing else; the hem rode high on her thighs when she sat. Dave and Linda picked at their food with the bored resentment of people who had long stopped expecting better. Marty poked at lukewarm spaghetti, his nerves raw.

He tried to sound casual. “So ... I was thinking about Dad lately. You know. Whoever he was.”

The room temperature seemed to drop ten degrees. Lorraine’s fork paused halfway to her mouth. “Why you gotta bring that up at dinner, Marty?” Her voice carried the defensive snap of an old wound reopened too many times. “You think I got some fairy-tale story saved up? I don’t.”

Dave snorted. “Yeah, well, join the club.”

Lorraine set her fork down, eyes suddenly bright with something between shame and defiance. “Look, I was young and stupid, alright? Real stupid. After Marty I got my tubes tied because I wasn’t about to keep playing Russian roulette with my life. You kids are it. And I love you, but I ain’t gonna sit here and lie about knowing who knocked me up. I got no clue. None.” She laughed, a brittle sound. “Hell, I’m just glad I remembered their names long enough to get their phone numbers sometimes.”

She didn’t mention the Enchantment Under the Sea dance. Not once. No trembling recollection of parking, or Biff Tannen, or the abandoned barn. To her, that night had been swallowed by years of harder nights, folded into the general blur of bad decisions and worse luck.

But Marty could do arithmetic.

Dave had been born in late 1956. Nine months after that night in the barn. Four men had finished inside her. Four possible fathers for his older brother. The thought made Marty’s skin crawl. And if Dave’s paternity was a lottery with only four tickets...

He looked down at his own hands, at the spaghetti slowly congealing on his plate, and felt a wave of nausea so sharp he had to swallow hard. How many men had his mother been with in those chaotic months after the dance? How many loads had she taken while the trauma and shame and desperate hunger for any kind of affection spun her life out of control?

He couldn’t bear to calculate the odds for himself.

Later that night, after the others had gone to their rooms, Marty lay on his narrow bed staring at water stains on the ceiling. Outside, a dog barked hoarsely and somewhere down the row a couple was fighting. He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes until colors burst behind the lids.

This was the future he had fought so hard to save. A mother hollowed out and opened to anyone who wanted her. A brother and sister who carried the anonymous DNA of strangers. A version of himself who had grown up in this tin can of quiet desperation. Maybe it would have better if he’d just never been born.