Escaping Fate

by Gladden, DelSheree

  “Of course,” the girl said. Her laugh said she was not surprised by my reaction. “It’s not that small of a town. My name’s Dani, by the way.”

  “I’m Arra.” I watched Dani put the last of my groceries in a plastic bag. Her friendly smile made me feel a little less alone. I was suddenly looking for a reason to stay at the counter a little longer. “So there’s a bonfire at the beach this weekend?”

  Dani nodded. “You’re more than welcome to come if you want.”

  Back in Manhattan I spent most weekends out with friends, but I was strangely nervous to accept her invitation. I did not want to care what anyone in Grainer thought of me, but it seemed unnatural not to care at least a little. “I don’t think I even remember how to get to the beach,” I said. “It’s been a few years.”

  “Just head east out of town. You’ll eventually run into it. There’s pretty much nothing between here and the coast,” Dani said. “If you think you’ll get lost, you can always just stop back by the store and I can show you how to get there.”

  The frown I had been trying so hard to hold onto softened into a smile. At least that was one good thing about Grainer. The beach was close and usually pretty empty. “Thanks Dani. I’ll definitely think about it.” I walked out of the store, my steps less sluggish than before.

  Chapter Three

  When I finally got back to the house, ignoring an irritated glare from my mom, I could feel my bitterness starting to slip away. As much as I wanted to, I knew I was not going to be able to despise my new home forever. Day by day it would grow on me until I felt at home in the quiet little town. Day by day. I laughed. It was already beginning to feel more normal.

  Sitting down at the kitchen table, I took the strawberries out of the grocery bag and began slicing them. Their sweet smell filled the kitchen. I could not help popping one into my mouth. Sugary bliss swam over my taste buds. It was possibly the best strawberry I had ever tasted. My mom had always complained about store bought produce. She missed the homegrown fruits and vegetables she had grown up on. I used to think she was just complaining because she didn’t like the city. Now I had to admit she was right.

  I sat listening to my mom hum as she turned pancake after pancake. I smiled as the pancake stack grew higher and higher. The fluffy tower made me think of my brother David. He was only one person, but the family’s food consumption had dropped significantly when he moved into his own apartment just before we left Manhattan. My mom still had not gotten used to the change. She even had to put back the extra plate when she began setting the table and serving the food. Thoughts of David not being here dulled whatever small bit of contentment I had found earlier.

  Despite the allure of the special meal, I just stared at the strawberry covered pancakes, absently mashing them with my fork. My mom kept glancing over at me with an anxious look, but my funk had settled in again. Strawberries and pancakes were my favorite breakfast food, but I hardly touched the meal. Knowing my mom had made the meal especially to cheer me up, plus the staring, eventually won out. I took a bite with a faint smile.

  “Well, I know that you wanted to work on your own room again today, but I could really use your help sorting photos. Those movers did an awful job of packing. The album pages have all fallen out and the photos are just in piles at the bottom of the boxes. It will take me forever by myself,” my mom said with a smile after seeing me spoon the food into my mouth.

  “Yeah, sure, Mom, I can help,” I said. My enthusiasm was miles short of genuine, but my mom ignored it. I knew that my mom could sort the photos much more quickly by herself, but she probably just didn’t want me spending another sulky day alone in my room. I had been “arranging” it since we got here. And so far nothing had actually moved. My mom’s obvious plan to speed my progression towards well-adjusted and happy annoyed me considerably, but the sigh of relief and pleased smile mellowed my irritation.

  Taking another forced bite before pushing the plate away, I said, “I’ll go get started,” and left the table. I saw my mom’s smile twitched a little as I got up, but I kept moving. She sighed disappointedly as I left the kitchen.

  ***

  The two of us quietly, but slowly, organized the dismantled photo albums. Every so often my mom would pick up a photo of one of us kids, usually me, and tell the story about the day it was taken. I smiled at each of the stories, but wished she would just let me work in silence. Or better yet, let me go back to my room.

  Pulling another box over to me I wished it were the last one. When I opened the box that had once contained carefully scrapbooked pages of me and David on summer vacations, an overwhelming loneliness settled over me. Me and David were very close, or had been before my parents left him behind to prepare for college. I still had not quite forgiven him for abandoning me, but at the same time I was excited for him to be on his own.

  To my fifteen year old mind, college was a dreamlike escape, a wonderful life silently waiting for me. It was only a painful three years away. When David called earlier in the week, I begged him for every detail of what adult life was like. Going to work, living on his own, going out on the weekends. I was so jealous. I longed for college life. David, of course, had teased me to no end about being stuck in Grainer, but his excitement quickly bubbled to the surface as he poured out practically every hour of his week to me. He was so lucky.

  I looked back down at the picture I was holding and was pulled out of my college dreams by a tiny face looking back at me from the photo in my hand. The photo was black and white, slightly yellowed, but the features were still in perfect detail. Raven black hair, beautiful tinted skin, and glittering silvery eyes, just like my eyes, stared up at me.

  The girl was about seven years old. She was cute and perky, just like every picture I had ever seen of myself, but I wrinkled my face in confusion when I realized that the little girl was riding a horse. I was absolutely sure this was me. The face was identical to the one my mom had already hung on the wall, but I was terrified of horses. I had never ridden one in my life, and if I had, I certainly would not have been smiling about it.

  “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 a
bout 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?”