Escaping Fate (7 page)

I found I was speechless. I had come
here secretly hoping that my grandpa would simply pat my head and
tell me everything was fine. I wanted to hear something that would
finally send the incessant nagging feeling away, but now the
feeling seemed to increase, begging me to continue. Balanced on the
edge of truth and blissful ignorance I knew which way I would
fall.

My grandpa looked up at me with the
most serious look I had ever seen on his normally cheery face. “Now
Arra, what happened to Maera and Katie can’t be undone. There is
nothing you can do to help them now. Take my word on that, please.
You just have to worry about yourself now. Just trust me, okay?” he
asked.

“Grandpa, what are you talking about?
It can’t just be coincidence that Katie and Maera both died so
strangely, and on their sixteenth birthdays, no less,” I protested.
“I can’t just leave it alone. There is something wrong. Can’t you
feel it?”

My grandpa sighed and looked at the hot
chocolate he had spilled on the table, "Of course there’s something
wrong, Arra, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. But trust me,
there’s nothing we can do about what’s already happened. You need
to start looking ahead, looking to your own future.” Pausing to
wipe up the spill with a neatly folded paper towel, he looked as if
he were wrestling with a decision.

I struggled to understand his strange
words. I had not expected to resurrect the lost girls, only to find
out why they had died under such strange circumstances. Maybe
unraveling the mysteries of their deaths would free them from their
forgotten prison. Maybe my dad would be able to let it go. Why did
he keep telling me to look forward, to take care of myself? What
did I have to do with anything? I wanted to know about Katie and
Maera. A strange feeling suddenly settled over the room. His words
were a warning. He was trying to tell me something, something very
difficult. I let my other questions float away and turned back to
my grandpa.

Finally he shook his head, and said,
“Listen, Arra. Katie and Maera, their deaths weren’t just
coincidence. After Maera died, I suspected Katie was next, but I
couldn’t do anything to stop it. No, I didn’t do enough to stop it.
I didn’t believe. We cannot escape our fate, that’s what everyone
told me, but I don’t believe that."

The desperation in my grandfather’s
voice began to scare me. He suddenly looked so much more tired and
drawn. I had never seen him like this before. The abrupt change
brought tears to my eyes and fear to my heart.

Not wanting to upset him any more than
I already had, I said, “Look grandpa, I’m just making a big deal
about nothing. It must be just a coincidence. You couldn’t know
that Katie would die just because Maera died, right? That doesn’t
sound reasonable. I’m sure you’re right, there’s nothing
mysterious, just a terrible coincidence.”

“I knew Katie would die, Arrabella.
Don’t you doubt that,” he said gravely. His intensity increased
dramatically, scaring me even more. I reached up and put my arm on
his shoulder to comfort him, but he wouldn’t calm down. “Arra, you
don’t have to keep going with this if you don’t want to. I will do
everything I can to stop it from happening again. But if you’re
intent on finding out the truth, go home and find the other
pictures. Look in your mother’s genealogy records. If it were only
Katie and Maera, then maybe I could believe it was just a
coincidence, but it wasn’t.

“There are more Arra, there are a lot
more. There is something very wrong with our family. And it is not
a coincidence that they’ve all died on their sixteenth birthdays. I
don’t know for sure how to stop this, I’ve been trying for so long
to figure it out, but I promise you I will not give up.” My grandpa
started to stand up, but the panic on my face must have stopped
him. He paused and looked down at me sadly.

Suddenly his words started to sink in.
The warning to look after myself, to look ahead, a promise to stop
it from happening again, dying at sixteen, it all finally came
together. He was honestly trying to tell me that whatever had
killed Katie and Maera was not finished. It was coming back, for
me.

“Grandpa, you can’t mean,” I whispered,
unable to finish the thought. “No it can’t be. But…I’m turning
sixteen in three days.”

As his eyes started to tear, he set
down the empty mug and wrapped me in his shaking arms. “I know you
are Arra, but I won’t let them take you. I promise you that. I
won’t lose you, too.”

Chapter Nine

Shaken, I left my grandpa’s home in a
much worse state than I had arrived. He had really scared me with
his revelations. I had believed before going to his house that
there was something odd about the two girl’s deaths, but I never
really expected those feelings to be validated. I certainly never
expected to have a death sentence pronounced upon me by my aging
grandfather.

Expecting that my grandpa would simply
allay my fears with a hug and some cookies and send me home a happy
teenage girl, I was bewildered by the sudden change in direction my
life had taken. It was hard to believe what he was saying, but
something in me could not deny his words. Now, I was truly afraid
for my life. I wished I had never found Katie’s picture.

The icy truth of that thought sunk
deep. That was exactly the kind of thing I had criticized my father
for earlier. It was too hard to think about it, so just pretend the
problem never existed in the first place. A quick tear slid past my
lashes. I had to follow this through, no matter where it led. The
first step was to follow my grandpa’s advice and look for the
others.

Still brooding about everything I was
feeling and thinking, I sulked into the house and headed straight
for my room. Unpacked or not, my room felt like the only place I
could really focus. And I really needed to focus for a few minutes,
at least. I rounded the corner to my room and felt my plans of
slipping into a hopefully peaceful sleep were dispelled when my mom
called me to the kitchen.

What was she going to complain about
now? I left the house for a few hours. That should have made her
happy. Didn’t that earn me a least a little guilt free time alone
in my room? My feet drug as I approached the kitchen.

“Where have you been, Arrabella? You
didn’t even bother to leave me a note,” my mom demanded. “When you
didn’t come home for lunch I was ready to call your
father.”

“Calling Dad, really, Mom? I think
you’re overreacting,” I said. In my family, calling my dad away
from work was the absolute last resort. If my mom ever followed
through, there had better be a life or death reason for it. If
there wasn’t, there probably would be afterward.

“Do not try to tell me whether or not I
am overreacting, Arra. I woke up and you were gone. You, who has
barely left the house in the last week without me threatening you
to do it. I was worried about you.” My mom took a firm stance I
knew all too well. If her questions were not satisfied, I knew
grounding would be quick to follow.

Considering my own reasons for
disappearing that morning, and considering the fact that I had left
the house all on my own just the day before, I felt perfectly
justified in taking off. Still, I knew my mother would not excuse
me without an explanation. Swallowing my irritation, I put on my
sweetest smile, and said, “I’m sorry, Mom. I went to Grandpa’s
house. I mentioned it yesterday and thought you’d remember. I guess
I just didn’t think about leaving a note this morning. This town’s
as big as a shoebox. I can’t even get lost if I wanted
to.”

“You went to your grandfather’s? Why?”
Her hard parental front softened quite a bit.

“Because,” I said. Why wasn’t she just
happy I had gone to visit him? She been thrilled about the idea
yesterday. My mom’s lips tightened. Because was not an answer.
“Because, I was feeling down and I thought he could cheer me up
with some of his stories.”

“Did it work?” my mom asked, a smile
smoothing over the glare.

“A little,” I lied.

“I’m sorry for snapping at you, honey.
I didn’t remember that you mention seeing grandpa yesterday. You
should have left a note regardless, though. Please don’t do that
again. You know how I worry.” Pulling me into a hug, she said, “I’m
glad you went to see Grandpa. He’s so excited to have us near him
again.”

“Sorry I worried you, Mom.” The hug
tightened.

“Did you have any lunch yet?” my mom
asked.

“Not unless you count hot chocolate as
lunch,” I replied, bringing a grimace to my mom’s face.

“That man and his hot chocolate. It’s
summer for crying out loud. I’ll have to speak with him about his
eating habits. Come on I’ll get you a sandwich,” she said, herding
me to the kitchen table. The pleasure of having me back home safely
brightened her face and I could almost see her checking off another
notch for me moving toward well adjusted. My mom seemed so pleased
that she failed to notice when my sullen mood took over again. She
spread mayonnaise on two pieces of bread, before saying, “Maybe
after lunch you can help me with the photo albums
again.”

At the mention of the photo albums I
came out of my melancholy and the desperation for answers returned.
“Sure, Mom, no problem. I wanted to look for some of the people
grandpa was telling me about all morning anyway.”

My grandpa had told me that there were
more girls like Maera and Katie. I wanted to fight the idea, but I
needed to know who they were. I felt sure that if I could find
enough information I could avoid whatever course had already been
laid out for me by whoever my grandpa thought was making the
choices. I hurriedly ate the roast beef sandwich my mom had set in
front of me and dove back into the piles of scattered photo album
pages.

Leaving the stacks of pictures even
less organized than when I began, I searched for the silver-eyed
girls of my father’s family. Glowing with pride in her daughter’s
sudden fascination with her hobby, my mom happily discussed the ins
and outs of building a family history. I felt the slightest twinge
of guilt at misleading her, but I pushed that away and chocked it
up to what had to be done. As long as I feigned interest in my
mom’s stories and advice, the growing mess I was creating seemed to
go unnoticed.

I had never before been so grateful for
my mom’s obsession with genealogy. It had always just seemed like
endless piles of papers and pictures and stacks of notebooks to me.
Now as I truly looked through them I saw so much more. In the piles
of photos were many generations of relatives, most of whom I had
never met or even heard of, but every one of them had lived a life
worth remembering. Wondering what the little man with the bowler
had done for a living or what was if his wife’s wicker basket, I
found another photo.

Not surprised when I found two more
pictures with traits matching my own, my stomach still turned with
each new discovery. The weight on me seemed to deepened as I
searched. I had to keep reminding myself that I needed to do this.
Along with several more pictures of Katie and Maera, I found
several photographs of a young woman named Elizabeth Malo, who
lived during the early nineteen hundreds, and only one picture of a
young girl named Victoria. She sat in an old fashioned family
portrait dated 1845.

I kept searching after finding the
picture of Victoria, but I found no other pictures of the raven
haired girls. Eventually my mom excused herself to make some tea,
and I laid the pictures out and stared at them. Yes, I had found
more girls who looked like Katie, but did they share more than
that? I was afraid to find out.

Trying to beat back the desire to look
up the names of the two new girls in my mom’s genealogy books, I
held out as long as I could. The need to discover what was
happening to my family grew stronger every moment I sat staring at
their faces. Giving in to the nagging feeling, I wandered into the
kitchen. Drinking a glass of iced tea, my mom looked up at me when
I stepped into the room.

Casually, I asked, “Hey, Mom, would you
mind if I looked through some of your genealogy
binders.”

Laughing at the odd request, she was
still more than happy to fuel my supposed new found curiosity.
“Sure, Arra. Why don’t you bring them over to the
table?”

“Okay,” I said.

I quickly retrieved the notebooks from
a box in the living room and brought them to the kitchen table.
Continuing to organize the cupboards, my mom glanced over at me
every so often as I began searching the pages for the two long dead
girls. Every page I turned that did not hold their names sent both
fear and relief down my spine. Although it took me so long to get
through a single page that the mix of emotions could not come very
often.

“Do you need some help?” my mom
asked.

“Uh, that’s okay,” I replied. The last
thing I wanted to do was explain to my mom what I was really
looking for. I could hardly think of a plausible lie to explain my
interest in the forms. Quietly I hoped mom would give up organizing
the kitchen and return to the photo albums in the other room. After
my “help” you could barely walk across the floor because of the
mess.

“Those forms can be a little confusing
the first time you try to read them,” my mom explained. She took
the chair next to me, settling in for a detailed lesson.