Chapter 2

The morning sun had barely crested the horizon when Jim Patton laced up his sneakers and stepped out onto the porch, breathing in the crisp dawn air. For the first time in years, his knees didn’t creak. His back didn’t protest. He felt… light.

He stretched, rolling his shoulders, and took off down the sidewalk at a pace that would’ve left the old Jim wheezing after half a block. Now, he barely broke a sweat.
Martha Whitmore, their nosy neighbor, nearly dropped her watering can as he jogged past.

“Jim? Is that you?” she called, squinting through her bifocals.

Jim slowed just enough to flash her a grin. “Mornin’, Martha! Beautiful day, isn’t it?”
She gaped. He hadn’t called it a beautiful day since… well, ever.

Inside the Patton house, Linda hummed softly as she knitted. The needles clicked in rhythm, the yarn, soft pastel blue, coiling into something small, something for a child. She wasn’t sure why she’d picked that color. It just felt… right.

She’d spent the last week deep-cleaning the house, rearranging furniture, even buying new throw pillows. Jim had joked that she was nesting, and she’d laughed—but then she’d caught herself standing in the baby aisle at Target, staring at stuffed animals for no reason.

A knock at the door startled her. “Linda? You in there?” Martha’s voice carried through the screen.

Linda set down her knitting. “Come on in, Martha!”

Martha pushed inside, her sharp eyes scanning the living room—the freshly vacuumed carpet, the organized shelves, the half-finished tiny sweater on the coffee table.
“You’ve been busy,” Martha said, raising an eyebrow. Their house hadn’t changed in years.

Linda smiled. “Just feeling inspired.”

Martha’s gaze lingered on the knitting. “That’s awfully small for Jim.”

Linda’s fingers stilled. “Oh, it’s just… practice. I’ll donate it or give it to the Henderson’s for their little boy,”

Martha wasn’t buying it. She set the sweater down and crossed her arms. “Linda Patton, I’ve known you for years. You haven’t knitted since… well I’ve never seen you knit. And Jim? Jim is out there running like he’s training for a marathon. What in the world is going on with you two?”

Linda hesitated. She hadn’t even realized how strange it must look, Jim, who used to groan getting out of his recliner, now bounding around like a man half his age. And her, suddenly obsessed with tidiness, with soft things, with,
No. That’s ridiculous

She forced a laugh. “We’ve just been… feeling good, I guess. Maybe it’s the weather.”
Martha’s lips pursed. “The weather doesn’t un-stiffen joints or make women suddenly reorganize the house.”

Linda’s cheeks warmed. “Well, whatever it is, we’re not complaining.”
Martha’s eyes narrowed. “You taking some kind of miracle drug?”

Linda stiffened. “Of course not!”

“Vitamins? Experimental treatment?”

"Martha, we're just feeling refreshed," Linda said, forcing a smile as she carefully folded the tiny sweater. The yarn between her fingers felt instinctively comforting, like she'd done this a thousand times before. "Jim started walking more, I've been gardening, it's amazing what a little movement can do."

Martha's penciled eyebrows climbed toward her hairline. She leaned in, lowering her voice like they were sharing secrets at church. "Linda Patton, a week ago Jim struggled to walk to the park, now he’s out jogging.” Her eyes flicked to Linda's smooth hands. "And since when do your arthritis knobs not look like walnuts?"

Linda instinctively tucked her hands under the knitting basket. The joints had been painless for days now. "Maybe we caught a second wind," she said lightly. Too lightly.

"Hmph." Martha's gaze landed on the end table where a parenting magazine lay half-hidden under a crossword book. Linda didn't remember buying it. Had it come in the mail? The cover showed a beaming mother cradling an infant, the headline screaming "Your Best Nursing Bras!"

A flush crept up Linda's neck as Martha's fingernails, frosted pink and filed sharp, tapped the coffee table. "You know," Martha said slowly, "the Wilsons down the street got one of those illegal youth hormone cocktails from Cuba. Woke up in the hospital missing a kidney."

"For heaven's sake!" Linda's laugh came out shriller than intended. "We're not,"
The teakettle whistled from the kitchen, saving her. Linda practically leapt up, knocking her knitting to the floor. The ball of blue yarn unraveled across the carpet like a retreating tide.

Martha stooped to help gather it, her rhinestone glasses glinting. "This looks just like the layette set my niece knitted for her baby shower," she murmured. When Linda didn't respond, Martha added, "Funny how life works. All those years teaching other people's children... never got to have your own, did you?"

Linda’s eye’s narrowed at her friend's biting comment, “No… and by the way how is your daughter doing, she still on the other side of the country in Seattle?” Linda asked.

Linda's fingers paused on the knitting needles as Martha leaned forward, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "Linda Patton, tell me the truth now." Her knobby fingers gripped the armrest. "Have you found some... fountain of youth out there?

The laugh that bubbled up from Linda's chest felt lighter than it had in years. "Oh Martha, if I'd found the secret to youth, I'd have bottled it and sold it at the church bazaar by now." She set aside the tiny blue sleeve she'd been working on. "We're just feeling good, is all. Sleeping better, eating right,"

The front door burst open before she could finish. Jim stood in the doorway, cheeks flushed pink, his white hair damp with sweat but his eyes bright. In his hand, a perfect yellow daffodil trembled with his excited breathing. "Thought you might like this, Lin," he said, presenting it with a boyish flourish that made Linda's heart skip.

Martha's eyes narrowed at the flower. "That's from my garden bed by the mailbox, Jim Patton!"
Jim blinked, then grinned unrepentantly. "Well Martha, beauty ought to be shared, don't you think?" He winked as he handed it to Linda, his fingers surprisingly steady for a man who'd needed both hands to lift his coffee mug just weeks ago. Linda brought the bloom to her nose, inhaling the sweet scent. When she looked up, Martha was studying them both with new intensity.

"You're different," Martha murmured, more to herself than to them. "Not just healthier. You move like... like..."

"Like we've got springs in our shoes?" Jim laughed, bouncing on the balls of his feet as if to demonstrate. "Tell you what, Martha, come by tomorrow morning. I'll show you the stretch routine I've been doing. Might put some pep in your step too." Martha opened her mouth, then closed it again. Her gaze drifted from Jim's energetic stance to Linda's radiant complexion, then to the half-knitted baby garment on the coffee table.

She was well into to dealing with the indignities of old age, they were getting younger, whatever they were doing she had to find out. "Well," she said at last, pushing herself up from the chair with considerably more effort than either Patton required these days, "I suppose some people just age better than others." The words held no malice, only wonder. "You two enjoy your... whatever this is. Oh and stay out of my daffodils Jim!” Martha said as she shut the door behind her.

“She’s definitely on to something, do you think she’ll mind her own business?” Jim asked with a chuckle.

Linda twirled the daffodil between her fingers, watching the petals catch the light. "Not for a second," she said, and found she didn't much care. Jim mopped his forehead with his sleeve. Then his smile faltered. "Lin... how many miles do you think I just ran?"

Linda set the flower carefully on the coffee table next to her knitting. "However many it was, you weren't doing it three weeks ago." She reached for his hand, turning it over in hers. The age spots that had dotted his knuckles for a decade were fading. "Jim, what's happening to us?"

Jim flexed his fingers, watching the smooth movement of tendons beneath unexpectedly firm skin. "Remember the day the guy we helped in the park bought us lunch.”

"Clark," Linda nodded automatically, then blinked. She hadn't thought about him since that day, yet his name came to her lips without hesitation.
"Yeah, well..." Jim rubbed the back of his neck where a very bad mosquito bite had nearly driven him crazy last week. "Then we were both bit by those giant mosquitoes, the next day, my neck was all swollen up and sore, but my back didn’t hurt.”

Linda's knitting needles clattered to the floor as the realization hit. Her gaze dropped to the tiny blue sweater sleeve. "Yeah, it was a really bad bite, but the next morning my arthritis was better than it had been in years."

Jim cleared his throat. "You don't think... I mean, it's not possible that we were infected with something?"

"I don't know what's possible anymore. But I know I woke up yesterday wanting oatmeal with brown sugar for the first time since I was 30."

Jim's laugh started deep in his chest, richer than it had been in years. "I ate peanut butter straight from the jar last night. Like a damn college kid."

Their eyes met, and in that moment, an unspoken agreement passed between them. Whatever was happening, whether miracle or madness, they wouldn't question it. Not yet.

Later that night the Pattons sat on the couch, Linda thumbed through her parenting magazine, trying to remember when she bought it. Jim flicked through TV channels, and settled on old cartoons that he’d watched as a child, but they seemed so new and he found himself engaged. During a commercial he glanced over and watched Linda reading, the article was top 5 things to do when preparing for a new baby. Then his eyes caught an ad for Pampers. He felt himself growing aroused and started staring at Linda’s breasts, they seemed far more supple and... Without thinking he reached over and lifted her nightgown.

“Jim, what are…” Linda started but grew silent when Jim latched on to her nipple and began sucking, something he had enjoyed doing back in their youth when sex was far more frequent. She dropped the magazine and instinctively began rubbing his head, and in a few minutes they made their way to the bedroom for something they hadn’t enjoyed in a very long time.