by Teri Terry
Too late I saw my mistake. Piper seized on the hospital saying Gran could go home. She said that we should bring her home, and gently, slowly, let her know we’re together here.
Last night, Piper convinced me that everything would be fine, that Gran was just a sick old woman who should be brought home and looked after by us—her family.
Now Zak and I are going to the hospital, without Piper, to collect her.
But without Piper by my side, reason and fear are returning. No matter how I wanted to, I could never leave when Gran was here. I could never stand up to her. What if it is just the same now?
As if she is next to me, Piper whispers in my mind: Everything will be OK. Things will be different with me here. And I hold on to that, inside.
“Quinn, isn’t it? I’m so happy to see you. But I know someone who will be even happier.” The nurse is very pleased to see me, but something lurks behind her smile. She glances at Zak. “Who’s this?”
“My friend Zak. He’s driven me here today. How is my grandmother?”
“Much better. She’s still struggling with her speech, and walking is difficult for her, but she is very keen to go home. We’ve been trying to reach you, you know.” A disapproving look. “The only number we had was at some hotel where you work, and they didn’t know where you were. Come along, now; I’ll take you to her.”
She starts down the hall.
“Do you want to go on your own?” Zak asks.
I shake my head no and, without thought, take his hand. Then I realize what I’ve done and try to let go, but he holds on firmly. “It’s OK,” he says.
The nurse pauses at a door, gestures to us, and bustles away. It was in her eyes; she didn’t want to go in. Is Gran keen to go home, or are they keen for her to leave?
I open the door. Gran is sitting bolt upright in bed, pillows behind her. Her white hair is twisted into a braid, and she is wearing her own shawl over a hospital gown. She turns her head, looks at me, then Zak, at our hands held together. Her eyes widen. She reaches out her own hand. Is it shaking?
I let go of Zak and force myself to walk across the room to her.
“H-h-hands,” she says. Irritation crosses her face at the effort.
“Hands?” I say, and hold mine out. She grips my right hand, tight, and stares at Isobel’s bracelet. Was she staring at that, and not at Zak and me holding hands? Are there tears in her eyes? No. There couldn’t be. Could there?
“Is it all right that I’ve got Isobel’s bracelet?” I ask her, suddenly afraid she’ll ask me to take it off—that she’ll want it for herself, to remind her of her daughter.
But she nods her head and folds my left hand over the right one with the bracelet. “Keep,” she says clearly. “A-a—” She frowns. “Always.” She smiles. Her eyes are glistening bright. And something stirs the fear inside me, some other emotion, and now my eyes are stinging. I blink, hard. She wants me to keep it?
She turns her head, fixes Zak with a stare, and gestures him forward with her hand.
He walks over, and she points at the chair next to her on the other side of her bed. He sits down.
“Gran, this is my friend Zak.”
She holds out her hand again, and he gives her his—a normal, natural gesture, but she is not a normal, natural woman. She holds it a moment, then turns it and stares intently at the palm. Zak looks to me, puzzlement in his eyes, but he doesn’t pull away.
Gran releases his hand, reaches out and touches him on the left side of his chest, where his heart beats.
She smiles, and one of the knots inside me loosens—she likes him. I wasn’t sure what we’d do if she decided he couldn’t come back to the house with us.
“Zaki,” she says. “Pure.” She taps his chest near his heart. This time her words are clear.
The smile on Zak’s face falls away, and his eyes fill with pain and wonder. He shakes his head. “How did you know?”
Gran smiles again, but says nothing more.
Soon the nurse returns with paperwork—apparently it was ready and waiting—for Gran to be released. It’s hard to believe they’d release her to me the way she is, but it’s what Gran wants. Gran’s wishes make all things possible. A doctor is found to sign the papers, and while he is having a word with Gran, Zak draws me aside.
“How did she know my name is Zaki?”
“Your name is Zaki, not Zak?”
He nods. “Only my mother ever called me that.” He’s shaken. “It means ‘pure of heart’ in Arabic. Does your gran know Arabic?”
I shake my head.
“She must do, and guessed that’s my background, so Zak is Zaki.” Zak is looking for the logical reason for the illogical, and I’m tempted to let him grasp for it. But no. He should know.
“Think about it. She’s lived in an isolated house on Dartmoor her whole life. How would she have learned this language?”
“How do you explain it, then?”
“She knows things about people. They come to her to learn about themselves, about what has happened, what will happen; to make wishes to change these things.”
“Are you saying she’s some sort of psychic?”
“She’s a wise woman, a healer, a seer.”
Before he can ask if that means what his eyes say he thinks it means, the nurse is back.
“Now, Quinn, your grandmother can only walk very short distances, so I’ve arranged a special loan of a hospital wheelchair. Don’t tell anyone.” She winks, nervous and anxious for us to go, and go now. We thank her. Gran is helped into the chair by an orderly, and we wheel her down the hall and out a door, then down a ramp. We’ll have to go the long way to the house with her in that chair, and even then it will be difficult. I hope the weather holds.
Zak helps Gran into the passenger seat of his car, then the orderly shows us how to collapse the chair. It just fits into the boot.
“How are we going to get her to the house?” Zak says softly, obviously thinking along the same lines as me. “Should we maybe head for the hotel?”
Gran’s ears are sharp. “No,” she says. This time her voice is strong and clear.
“That’s one word she’s worked out perfectly,” the orderly mutters as he walks off. Gran turns in her seat, gives him a dark look, and he stumbles. He hits his head on the railing and staggers through the door.
“We’ll get there,” I say. “The long way.”
Piper
I’m watching from Gran’s bedroom. I’d searched the house again, sure I wouldn’t find anything, but restless and needing to fill the time. I’d left her bedroom for last. When I was done, I’d pushed the heavy wall hanging out of the way, and pulled myself up to sit on the window ledge and watch. I tried to entice Cat to come with me for company, but he wasn’t having it, and disappeared downstairs. Even Ness won’t come into this room, and is curled up mournfully in the hall outside the open door.
It’s late afternoon, the sun low in the October sky. Is something wrong, is there some reason why Gran couldn’t come home? Did Quinn change her mind and refuse to bring her?
Ness barks. I hear her light paws scamper down the stairs to the front door. Does her Zak early warning system work here, too?
Again I scan the hill where we walked to this place; nothing. But then, away to the right, light glints off something in the distance, against the sun. I squint, trying to see.
It’s a tall figure, pushing something? Moments pass, and they are farther down, nearer, and I can see it is Zak; there is a hunched, slight figure in a wheelchair. Quinn walks alongside, carrying some bags. Ah, of course: our gran is in a wheelchair, so they must have come what Quinn called the long way.
I watch a little longer, then pull myself off the window ledge. It wouldn’t do to be spotted. I slip down the stairs and out the back through the kitchen as agreed.
A smile plays on my lips. I’ve slept so little since we got here that I should be exhausted, but instead I feel wired. Giddy, I laugh and almost skip aro
und the dead vegetable garden under the watchful eye of a bemused Cat, sitting high above me on the roof of the house.
Everything is working just the way I want, like I always knew it would.
Quinn
Zak pushes the wheelchair as far as the gate. There’s no way it’ll get across the uneven ground that skirts the ruins at the front of the house. It will be hard for Gran on foot even with help.
“Ma’am, I could carry you?” Zak asks.
“No,” she says, voice sharp. We have learned on the way that the hospital guy was right; no is her best word.
Zak holds the chair while I help her pull herself to her feet, as she’s had to on difficult parts of the path along the way. Her face is drawn, exhausted, but her eyes are bright.
She takes my arm, leans on me heavily as we step into her domain. Zak follows behind, carrying her chair. She surveys the ruins of the burning place, as if afraid it has somehow changed. Every crumbled stone receives its own look or touch on the slow way around our ancestors’ ruined house; her face is drawn with every contact she makes. What does she feel? The place is forbidden to me, like so many others. Since the fever and the dreaming all those years ago, this place is one I’m glad to avoid.
There’s excited barking through the door.
“That’s Ness,” I say. “Zak’s puppy that we told you about. Zak?”
He puts the chair down and goes ahead to open the door, catching Ness by her collar before she can jump all over us. Gran gives Ness a careful look, then ignores her existence.
I’m nervous as we step through the door. Will Piper have done as she said she would—watched for us, then hidden away? My eyes dart about, but there is no sign of her. This is Piper’s plan, after all; there’s no reason for her to change it.
Gran’s sharp eyes want to see everything—she has me help her into every room downstairs, one at a time. Her eyes linger on the door to her locked reading room, but she walks past it, and we start up the stairs to her bedroom. Can she see Piper’s footprints, feel that someone else has been breathing the air in her house?
I help her into bed, settle her pillows behind her.
She catches my hand in hers, so I sit next to her bed. She tries to say something—she must be full of questions about where I’ve been, how I got Isobel’s bracelet, Zak.
She swallows, and tries again.
“S-s-ry.” She shakes her head, so distressed when I don’t understand that I’m compelled to say something.
“It’s all right. Have some sleep. I bet you’ll wake up feeling much better tomorrow, and the words will come.”
Her eyes are warm. She touches a hand to my cheek and tries again. This time I can make out her word: sorry. She taps her chest. “Wrong. Sorry,” she says again.
I’m confused, and a little scared. Gran has never apologized for anything, or seemed to even consider she could be wrong. I want to ask her what she means, but her eyes are closing.
Soon her breathing is even, and her hand on mine slackens. I ease my fingers away.
I watch her sleep. She is small, frail. This is the woman I’ve been scared of my whole life? Something has changed and shifted between us, and it isn’t just in her. It is in me, too.
Is this Piper’s influence, or is it just from me having been away from Gran for a while? The weight of eyes watching me that I felt here for so long is gone. The inbuilt compulsion to do what Gran wants is mysteriously absent, and it gives me a sense of lightness inside, a freedom, as if I could even leave if I wanted to.
But she said she was wrong. I want to shake her awake and demand to know about what, and why. Keeping me isolated here? Keeping me hidden away from my sister, my parents? Most of all, I want to demand to know why. Why Gran and Isobel never told us about each other. How could they do that to us? But that is a question I can’t ask; at least, not yet—not until Piper has tried her plan of masquerading as me to Gran. Until that fails—and it will, I have no doubt about that—I can’t admit I know about my twin.
I watch Gran sleep. But only because that is what I choose to do.
Piper
I grip the tray in my hands and climb the stairs, full of a mix of nervous energy, excitement, and something else—something I don’t like to name or acknowledge. Fear. It’s Quinn’s fault, infecting me with her fear, with her unspoken but obvious belief that Gran won’t be fooled by this masquerade.
At the top of the stairs, I awkwardly shift the tray against my hip, careful not to spill the porridge. I raise one hand and knock lightly.
Turn the knob.
Open the door.
Step through.
She’s lying back, eyes closed. I study her. She’s small, slight, barely a shape under the quilt. It is pulled up high so I can’t see her neck, can’t see if the key to the locked room is around it. Her hair is white, her skin so pale I watch closely to make sure that she’s still breathing.
Quinn said to leave the tray on the dressing table beside Gran if she was asleep. But Quinn’s not here.
I will myself to look and move like Quinn. I’ve been studying her. She smiles less than I do, rarely makes eye contact. When she does, it is to make a point or to challenge—there is always a reason. She walks a little differently too: doesn’t swing her arms as much as I do, moves with less bounce. She’s more compact and connected to the earth—less wasted energy, as if energy is something she needs to hoard.
“Good morning, Gran. I’ve brought you some breakfast,” I say, and walk toward her.
She stirs; her eyes open a little, then wide all at once. She stares. Her eyes are a startling, piercing, deep blue. I look down, walk to put the tray next to her, moving as much like Quinn as I can.
Tray on the table, I straighten, raise my eyes. She’s sitting bolt upright, still staring.
“Shall I?” I gesture at her pillows and, hearing no reply, lean toward her, pull the pillows up behind her. As I move away, she grabs one of my hands in hers. Her grip is strong, surprisingly so. She turns my hand, studies my palm, then lets go.
“Why are you here?” she says. And I’m surprised after what Zak told me that her speech is so clear.
I gesture at the tray. “To bring you your breakfast.”
She raises an eyebrow. “Why are you here, Piper?”
I look back at her, considering. Is she guessing, or does she know? But the plan to win her confidence and the key to her reading room as Quinn is only plan A. There will be other ways.
“How did you know?” I say, finally.
“Knowing is what I do. And the business of lies is my own; I see through them. Again: why are you here?”
I kneel beside her bed. “I wanted to meet you, to know you. To know the family my mother spoke about.”
“I’m surprised she spoke of such things to you. What did she say?”
Can she really see through lies? I consider my answer. “She said she chose to leave you and her heritage behind. She took me with her, but this was not my choice.”
“And you, Piper. What do you know of this heritage? Do you mean this house?” She gestures at the room around us. “You don’t want to stay here,” she adds, saying the words slowly, drawing them out.
And I don’t. Suddenly, I’d rather be anywhere else in the world. A compulsion to stand, to leave this room and this house fills me, and I’m on my feet, poised to run.
I shake my head and risk a lie. “I want to stay.” And as I say the words, the compulsion leaves me.
She raises an eyebrow. “I see you know both more and less than you think you do about your heritage. But do you know what coming here has cost you? What you have done to find this place?” Her voice is cold. “What you seek would cost far more.”
“You must tell me.” I put all the honey and persuasion I can into my words. “You’re my grandmother; you have to help me.”
She smiles, but it is thin and mocking. “Yet I have two granddaughters. Poor Isobel: cursed once, cursed twice. Therein li
es the problem. Quinn!” she says, voice raised. “Quinn! Come here now.”
Light footsteps run up the stairs, so instantly she must have been waiting for this call.
Quinn
“Come here, Quinn,” Gran says. “Stand next to your twin.” Her face is unreadable, and dread twists in my stomach. Is she angry that Piper is here, that I let her pretend to be me?
I walk across the room and stand next to Piper by the side of Gran’s bed.
I glance at Piper. The way she is standing, the tilt of her head—I can read her now, I realize. She’s annoyed about something, but trying to keep it hidden. Not a skill she has practiced often.
Gran studies us; the moment stretches. She finally shakes her head. “So alike, but are you different inside? At birth I read you clear. Your paths were obvious, and tied together. Action was taken to sever this tie, but that obviously didn’t work. Now I cannot see.”
“Gran!” I say, surprised. “You’re talking so much better this morning, just like I said you would.”
“Just so. I thank you, Quinn, even as I worry about what it means. Like the two of you: it is half good, half bad.” She smiles sadly and shakes her head. I stiffen, shocked that she just straight-out told Piper the truth: that one of us was good, and one bad. And it isn’t hard to work out who is which. I was the one hidden away, too dangerous to be let out—just like Isobel always told me.
But Piper doesn’t focus on that.
“What do you mean about paths?” Piper asks. “What action was taken? Do you mean us being separated?”
“And what action will be taken by each of you now?” Gran says, and shakes her head again. “Time will show us. On this I will say no more.” She fixes her eyes on Piper. “But you should never have come here. How did you find this place?”