Escaping Fate (3 page)

“Mom, when was this picture taken? I’ve
never ridden a horse. I can’t stand them. But isn’t this me?” I
asked. I felt silly asking whether or not I was holding a picture
of myself, but I was too confused to care.

My mom took the picture. She turned it
over. In delicate handwriting was printed, Katie Malo, age
7.

“Who is Katie?” I asked.

“Why this is your Aunt Katie, your
dad’s sister. You two do look amazingly similar. The same silvery
eyes even. You remember…, no I guess you wouldn’t. She died before
you were born and your father never mentions her. I actually never
even met her either. I only know who she was from doing genealogy.
I asked your father about her once,” my mom said sadly.

“How did she die?” I asked. I was
astounded that I had never even heard of this beloved aunt. How
could my dad not talk about having a sister? How did that never
once come up?

“It’s very sad. Your father doesn’t
talk about her much. He blames himself for her death,” she said.
She shuffled through some pictures as if trying to decide what to
say.

My mom sighed and continued. “When your
father was nineteen, he came back home for the summer after his
first year in college to see Katie. She was turning sixteen. Katie
loved riding horses, so for her sixteenth birthday she and Robert
went out riding. Katie’s horse got spooked and it threw her. The
fall broke her neck. I’m sure you can understand why your father
doesn’t like to talk about it.”

Neither of us said anything for a
while. I just stared at what looked like a ghost now. The aunt I
had never known stared back at me from decades past, giving me a
glimpse of her life, but leaving me wondering about her death. Only
sixteen, I thought as I wondered what plans Katie must have had for
her life. What did Katie want to be when she grew up? Did she have
a crush on some boy from school?

I had so many plans for my future
already, especially college in New York, and I deeply regretted the
fact that I never got the chance to kiss Ezra Lathrup before
leaving. It startled me to think that all my planning and dreaming
could come to nothing just like it did for Katie. What would that
feel like? I shuddered and hoped I never knew.

I looked back at the photo and suddenly
wanted to know everything about my dead aunt. I didn’t know why,
but I wanted to hear her story. The picture seemed important. It
was my only link to her besides our similar appearances. We could
have been twins. It seemed so odd to me that I should even have an
aunt, and I did not want to forget her like everyone else
apparently had.

“Mom, can I keep this picture?” I asked
without really knowing why I wanted it.

“Sure. I doubt your father will miss
it. He hasn’t looked at these photos in years,” she
said.

Soon my mom was back to her normal
jovial self, sorting through the hundreds of pictures still
scattered around the room. I kept sorting along with my mother, but
I wasn’t really looking at the pictures anymore. I could only think
about Katie, dead at sixteen. A shiver ran through me, and I
suddenly felt the desire to keep digging. I felt as if I had been
touched by something from the past, something that did not want to
stay in the past.

Chapter Four

I was still sorting through the
scattered photos when my mom stopped to make lunch. Since it was
summer break, even my mom was taking her time settling into the new
house. Mom and Dad had gotten all the major pieces of furniture set
out in their new places, but every room was still covered in half
put away boxes. Most of our sleek and modern furniture looked
glaringly out of place in the antique cottage we now lived in, but
my mom seemed to find it charming. I thought it looked ridiculous.
I was certainly in no hurry to settle in myself, but learning about
my aunt Katie had momentarily shifted my attention from pouting in
my room to finding out more.

With the picture in my hand I was less
concerned with being back in busy Manhattan and more interested in
discovering more about the strange aunt that easily could have been
my own twin. I tucked the picture under the cover of the novel I
had been reading and took the lid off another box. Anxious to find
more evidence of my aunt, I nevertheless felt a strange need to
keep my interest from my mom.

She had told me easily enough about who
Katie was, but I had gotten the distinct impression that she either
knew more and was not about to discuss it, or had tried to find out
more herself and did not want to repeat that experience again. The
lingering feeling kept me from tearing into the mess of photos. I
carefully slipped photos back into the plastic sleeves, searching
for another glimpse of Katie. She may have disappeared from my
family’s memories, but I knew there would be more than one lonely
photo. At least I hoped there would be.

The jingling of keys in the already
unlocked door barely even reached my hearing. My dad pushed his way
into the mess laughing at himself for trying to unlock the door and
I looked up with a smirk. We never left the door unlocked in
Manhattan, even when we were home. I guess my mom was already
feeling much safer being away from the city. My mom greeted my dad
with a quick kiss and excused herself to start making lunch. With a
quick wave and a mumbled “hi” to my dad, I waited until they left
the room before digging into the boxes and getting back to my
search. All the photos of Katie I could find went straight into my
book.

I had only asked to keep the one
picture, but each new snapshot I found added to Katie’s life and I
found that I could not let go of any of them. The pictures were
filled with life and activity. Katie’s smile and obvious energy
were contagious. I found myself grinning every time I stopped to
look at a photo for too long. I wondered if we would have been
close friends had she lived long enough to know me. The happy
photos were bittersweet, knowing that Katie had not lived past
sixteen. Sixteen. That thought sent pins and needles up and down my
spine. I was almost sixteen myself.

The small amount of pictures I found
echoed Katie’s short life, but having to dig them out of the piles
no one had looked at for years affected my even worse. Katie had
died and then was nearly forgotten by those who had loved her in
life. Knowing the pain of loss had, in a way overridden love, sent
a quiet panic through my mind. It made me shudder to think about
it, and I hoped this was not a normal reaction to death. Would
everyone put away my things if I were gone? Would David’s children
know my name?

Sounds of my mom making lunch filtered
out of the kitchen, as I searched the rest of the box I was working
on for photos of Katie. The connection I had to my aunt grew with
each new picture. I felt a need to understand why Katie died. While
wondering what it had been like for Katie to confront death, I
stumbled across another picture that looked like it might be my
aunt.

Studying the photo intently, I was not
sure what I had found. It looked just like Katie except for the
clothes and hair style. Katie had been a child of the seventies,
wearing bell-bottom jeans and flowers in her wild black hair more
often than not. This lookalike was wearing a full skirt and button
down blouse with a perfectly styled, bobbed haircut.

I turned the picture over and saw Maera
1959 printed in scrawling handwriting on the back. Who was this new
ghost, I wondered. Their faces were almost identical, especially
the eyes. This new photo was also black and white, but her
startling silvery eyes could not be hidden by the colorless
world.

Suddenly brought out of my wonder when
my mom called me to the table for lunch, I stuck the photo I had
just found into my book with the pictures of Katie. Stopping by my
bedroom on the way to the kitchen, I pulled the drawer out of my
nightstand and held the pictures over it. I wanted to hide the
pictures away because of my mom’s warning about how my dad might
react, but changed my mind at the last minute and headed back
towards the kitchen. I wanted to know more about the photos,
especially the newest one I had found, the one that was not Katie.
I barely made it to the table before my question about the second
picture burst out.

“Mom, who is Maera?”

“Maera? Um, I’m not sure. Let me see,”
she said as she took the picture I was holding out to her. She
looked at the back. “1959, hmm. I can’t remember. I’m sorry. I just
haven’t looked at any of this stuff in so long because of the
move.” She turned the picture towards her husband. “Honey, who’s
Maera?” she asked him.

My dad turned away from the picture
with a frown and said, “She was your grandfather’s sister, your
great aunt.” Why had he not just said that when I first asked the
question?

“Was?” I asked.

“She drowned when she was a kid. I
don’t know much about her,” he said quietly.

Drowned as a kid? I wondered if my dad
was thinking about his own sister. I hoped he was. Maybe if he
thought about her more often he would eventually talk about
her.

“How old was she?” I asked.

“I don’t know. My dad didn’t talk about
her much,” he said taking a bite of his tuna sandwich and pushing
the picture back across the table towards me.

My dad’s words bothered me. Maera died
young, too? The coincidence was definitely not lost on me. Maybe
because my dad saw death and sickness every day at the hospital, a
young girl drowning was simply a sad occurrence and not something
to dwell on too much, but I could not put the pictures down. I
shook my head and sighed. I hated the thought of people dying, and
the strangeness of the two girls dying young made me sad and
somewhat concerned. Something felt a little off when I thought
about it. The feeling was wrapped up in the strange compulsion I
felt to learn my about my dead aunt. Glancing over at my dad, I
could see that he did not want to continue the conversation. I
wanted to push him, but the firm set of his jaw made me hold back.
Setting the pictures back on the table, I sat down for
lunch.

As the pungent tuna filled my mouth I
kept wondering why they died and if the same thing could ever
happen to me. I shook my head at my runaway imagination and tried
to think more rationally. Even if the deaths were only a strange
coincidence, it did bother me that my dad would not talk about his
sister. Putting aside the uneasiness settling in my mind and the
hard look on my dad’s face, I asked my dad about Katie.

“Dad,” I said, waiting for him to look
up before finishing, “why don’t you talk about Katie? I didn’t even
know that you had a sister.” A quick look from my mom almost made
me regret the bringing up the topic.

My dad had turned away from the photo
of Maera when my mom tried to show it to him. I don’t think he had
even noticed that there was another photo on the table. He saw the
photo now, and despite his wince, picked it up.

“Wow,” he muttered, “I can’t believe
how alike they look.” He looked up at me, and stared at me as if he
had never really seen me before “Even you, you look so much like my
sister Katie. I never knew Maera, but look,” he said, pausing, but
not turning the pictures for anyone else to see. “Isn’t it amazing
how much the three of you look alike? It’s uncanny.”

My mom smiled warmly at him. She patted
his arm in support, but I had not gotten an answer to my question
yet. I doubted I’d have another chance any time soon to bring it
up, so I pushed a little harder.

“But, why didn’t you ever tell me about
her?”

“If I hadn’t taken her out riding that
day, you would have been able to get to know her yourself,” he
snapped. The photos dropped back to the table as he stood up and
turned away. His meal was only half finished, but I stared at his
back as he stalked out of the kitchen.

“Arra,” my mom sighed, “I told you he
didn’t like to talk about Katie. Why did you have to bring it up?”
She quickly cleared the dishes and put them in the sink before
moving to follow after her husband.

I felt awful for pushing my dad, but
why should I? I was just trying to find out about my own family. My
dad should not pretend that Katie never existed. It was a terrible
thing to do to someone.

“But, mom,” I said. She stopped and
turned back. “I get that it’s hard for him to talk about her, but
how could he just forget she ever existed?”

“Arra, he hasn’t forgotten. That’s the
problem. He thinks about her all the time and blames himself for
getting her killed. Would you want to talk about something like
that all the time?” she asked.

“What if it happened to me, mom? Would
everybody just stop talking about me and put away all the pictures
of me, just so it wouldn’t hurt as bad? Could you do that?” I
asked. I felt like I was on the verge of tears. I didn’t understand
why I was so upset about this, but when my mom hurried over to my
side, I wrapped my arms around her and tried to hide my
tears.

“Honey, please don’t judge your dad so
harshly. Maybe one day he’ll be able to talk about Katie more, but
you have to give him time. And don’t worry about anyone forgetting
you. I would never let that happen,” my mom said with an extra
tight squeeze of my shoulders. “But why are we even talking about
that. Nothing is going to happen to you. Just put it out of your
mind for now, okay?”