Chapter Eight
Walking to my grandfather’s house early the next morning, I wonder again if I am making too big of a deal about the photos. Based on my parents’ reactions, I am sure they would say that I am if I actually tried to explain my fears and theories, but they don’t know about my dreams. Without the dreams, I would probably agree.
Maybe it will all turn out to be nothing, stress from moving or something like that. But if I don’t at least try to answer the nagging call I feel when I looked at the pictures of Katie and Maera or think about the dreams, I will never be rid of the suspicions that have enveloped me.
I take a deep breath and knock on my grandpa’s door. I really hope I’m not about to make a fool of myself as I watch the door knob turn. Grandpa Alden opens the door, and seeing who is calling on him, lights up with joy. He ushers me into his cozy home with hugs and promises of treats regardless of the fact that I just finished breakfast.
“Arrabella,” he cries, “how are you, darling? I’m so glad you’ve come to visit me. I get lonely around this old house.” Even when talking about his loneliness, my grandpa has a sweet and excited smile on his wizened face. I feel sorry that I haven’t made the effort to come see him before now.
Explaining that he was in the process of making himself some hot chocolate when I arrived, he hurries back into the kitchen. He is always in the process of making hot chocolate. I can’t pull up a single memory of my grandfather’s house when I have not been offered hot chocolate and cookies.
“How did your doctor’s appointment go, Grandpa?” I ask from the living room.
“Oh it was fine. The old heart is still pumping away, even if my cholesterol is still too high.”
I hear the tinkling of coffee mugs being taken out of the cupboard. “Grandpa, you have to take care of yourself,” I chide, filling in for my mom. Every memory of hot chocolate at my grandpa’s house is always followed by the memory of my mom’s troubled frown. It isn’t just her children she worries about.
“Don’t you worry about me, honey. I’m just fine.”
He returns from the kitchen with two mugs brimming with hot chocolate and little white marshmallows. I smile at the colorful mugs as I take one and remember the story he told about buying them at the end of a long hike in the mountains of Chile. Everything in his house has a story behind it.
My grandpa sits down across from me with his mug and a smile that matches my own. Even now, in the middle of a hot summer, he warms his hands against his mug of hot chocolate. If this is how you get to be seventy something years old and still active and happy, everyone should drink hot chocolate every day.
"So what brought you to my house? Do you want to hear a story?" he asks hopefully.
"Actually, I do," I say, but pause before making my request. Will he really tell me about Katie and Maera, I wonder? Foolish or not, there is no turning back for me. I need to know. "I wanted to hear about Katie…and Maera," I say. My grandpa's face saddens and he lowers his eyes to his cup of hot chocolate.
"I didn't even know that you knew about either of them. Did your dad tell you?" he asks.
"Not really. I was helping Mom sort photos and I came across some pictures of them. Dad did tell me that they both died, but not much else. What happened to Maera?" I ask as I carefully lay the photos out on the coffee table.
"Your mother has so many pictures. She's quite the genealogist, actually. She has all the names of our family written down for generations,” he says. A deep sigh escapes his lips before saying, “But she doesn't know the stories.” He looks back into his mug of dark liquid. "Maera, my beautiful twin sister, I still miss her, even after so long."
"Maera was your twin? Dad didn't tell me that," I say. The grief that still shows in his face makes me wonder if I made a mistake in assuming my grandpa will tell me what I want to know. My mom may have made a mistake in assuming my dad will overcome his grief one day, too.
"Yes, we were best friends.” My grandpa looks up and regains some of the jovial attitude he had earlier. "You want to know how she died, don't you?" he says, managing a meager smile. I nod guiltily. "Well, for her sixteenth birthday, I mean our sixteenth birthday, our whole family went on a trip to the beach. Maera loved the beach. She spent every spare minute she had there.” He pauses again, stirring his hot chocolate and looking at the photos I brought with me. He picks one up and says, “This is a picture of her that very day.”
His eyes become teary and he puts the photo back down when his hand starts to shake. I pick it up immediately. It is one of the pictures I found early this morning before coming to see him. A beautiful girl with midnight black pig tails and a boyishly old fashioned bathing suit smiles and waves at the camera. I am stunned to know I am holding a photo of Maera taken on the very day she died. The young woman’s smile haunts me, and I too set it back down on the table.
“Maera and I decided to race each other to a buoy that was a dozen or so yards from the shore. I'm not sure how far it really was, but she was way ahead of me, laughing while she swam.” He smiles as he remembers the day.
“I was swimming hard, trying to catch up to her. I slowed a little and glanced at her to see if I was gaining any ground. But when I looked up, I saw her splashing around and yelling for me to help her. I still remember how scared she looked. I tried to get to her, but I couldn't swim fast enough. I was almost there, when she suddenly went under, pulled under, it seemed.” He shakes his head, as if he just said something ridiculous. “When I finally pulled her back to the surface she wasn’t breathing."
The memories I’m forcing him to recall drain him of his usual cheer and warmth. He blinks his eyes furiously to keep the tears back. Looking into my mug, I regret the pain I’m causing him. I want to crawl home and slip back into the comfort of my bed, but something pushes me on, telling me that I need to know what really happened to these girls.
The fact that both Katie and Maera died on their sixteenth birthdays could merely be coincidence, but because of the dreams and the strange urgency I feel, I sense something more serious is happening. My own sixteenth birthday is only days away and its approach is rapidly losing its normal appeal.
Neither I nor my grandfather speaks for several minutes. I can’t tear my mind away from the lost girls, and the glazed look in my grandpa’s eyes says he is having the same problem. Neither girl’s death seems particularly extraordinary. A drowning and a horse riding accident, those could happen to anyone. Only the day holds some clue. I consider that I have made a huge mistake in my assumptions, but I know I am missing something very important.
"Why did Maera drown?" I wonder. “It sounds like she was a strong swimmer.”
"Nobody could be sure. To me, it’s strange, but it almost looked like someone was pulling her under,” he says quietly. “Some said it must have been some kind of riptide, but the waters were very calm that day. And why would it catch Maera and not me? I wasn’t that far away from her.” He sighs deeply. “I just couldn’t understand it. It was a very strange incident, just like Katie.”
"Just like Katie? What do you mean? I thought Katie was thrown from her horse. That’s horrible, but it could happen at any time."
"Oh, the fact that she was thrown from her horse wasn’t strange. It was the why that was strange,” he says knowingly. “There was nothing around that would have spooked that lazy old nag of a horse. And the fall shouldn't have killed her," he says matter-of-factly.
I cock my head to the side. It is the hint I wanted, but am I just fishing for something to confirm my fears? My grandpa sounds a little too much like he’s looking for a connection. I begin to wonder whether I’m doing the same thing.
"After the accident, your father told me something that set me on edge,” he says, leaning toward me seriously. “He said that they had been running the horses and he was ahead, but he heard her scream and looked back. He could see that she was galloping her horse way too hard, as if she was running from something. He said that both she and the hor
se looked terrified.
“The police looked around for something that might have scared them, but they couldn’t find anything. As Katie’s horse neared your father, the animal reared, throwing Katie right into the tree. When the medical examiner spoke to us about the cause of her death, he didn’t really have an answer. Her skull had been cracked, but as the doctor said, it was a relatively mild injury. In the end, he said she must have died of shock.” My grandpa shakes his head, his tired hands clenched tightly into weathered fists. “It devastated your father. He won't talk about it now."
I find I am speechless. I came 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 seems to increase, begging me to continue. Balanced on the edge of truth and blissful ignorance, I know which way I will fall.
My grandpa looks up at me with the most serious look I have 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 have to worry about yourself now. Just trust me, alright?” he asks.
“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 protest. “I can’t just leave it alone. There is something wrong. Can’t you feel it?”
My grandpa sighs and looks at the hot chocolate he spilled on the table a moment ago, "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 looks as if he is wrestling with a decision.
I struggle to understand his strange words. I didn’t expect to resurrect the lost girls, only to find out why they had died under such strange circumstances. Maybe unraveling the mysteries of their deaths will free them from their forgotten prison. Maybe my dad will be able to let it go. Why does he keep telling me to look forward, to take care of myself? What do I have to do with anything? I want to know about Katie and Maera. A strange feeling suddenly settles over the room. His words are a warning. He is trying to tell me something, something very difficult. I let my other questions float away and turn back to my grandpa.
Finally, he shakes his head and says, “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 begins to scare me. He suddenly looks so much more tired and drawn. I have never seen him like this before. The abrupt change brings tears to my eyes and fear to my heart.
Not wanting to upset him any more than I already have, I say, “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 says gravely.
His intensity increases dramatically, scaring me even more. I reach up and put my arm on his shoulder to comfort him, but he won’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 starts to stand up, but the panic on my face must stop him. He pauses and looks down at me sadly.
Suddenly his words start 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 comes together. He is honestly trying to tell me that whatever killed Katie and Maera is not finished. It is coming back, for me.
“Grandpa, you can’t mean,” I whisper, unable to finish the thought. “No, it can’t be. But…I’m turning sixteen in three days.”
As his eyes start to tear, he sets down the empty mug and wraps 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.”