Chapter Nine
Shaken, I leave my grandpa’s home in a much worse state than I arrived. He really scared me with his revelations. I 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 am bewildered by the sudden change in direction my life has taken. It is hard to believe what he’s saying, but something in me can’t deny his words. Now, I am truly afraid for my life. I wish I’d never found Katie’s picture.
The icy truth of that thought sinks deep. That is exactly the kind of thing I criticized my dad for earlier. It is too hard to think about it, so just pretend the problem never existed in the first place. A quick tear slides past my lashes. I have to follow this through, no matter where it leads. The first step is to follow my grandpa’s advice and look for the others.
Still brooding about everything I’m feeling and thinking, I sulk into the house and head straight for my room. Unpacked or not, my room feels like the only place I can really focus. And I really need to focus for a few minutes, at least. I round the corner to my room and feel my plans of slipping into a hopefully peaceful sleep dispelled when my mom calls me to the kitchen.
What is she going to complain about now? I left the house for a few hours. That should make her happy. Doesn’t that earn me a least a little guilt free time alone in my room? My feet drag as I approach the kitchen.
“Where have you been, Arrabella? You didn’t even bother to leave me a note,” my mom demands. “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 say. In my family, calling my dad away from work is the absolute last resort. If my mom ever follows through, there had better be a life or death reason for it. If there isn’t, there probably will 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. I was worried about you.” My mom takes a firm stance I know all too well. If her questions are not satisfied, I know grounding will be quick to follow.
Considering my own reasons for disappearing that morning, and considering the fact that I left the house all on my own just the day before, I feel perfectly justified in taking off. Still, I know my mother won’t excuse me without an explanation.
Swallowing my irritation, I put on my sweetest smile, and say, “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 softens quite a bit.
“Because,” I say. Why isn’t she just happy I went to visit him? She was thrilled about the idea yesterday. My mom’s lips tighten. Because is 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 asks, a smile smoothing over the glare.
“A little,” I lie.
“I’m sorry for snapping at you, honey. I didn’t remember that you mentioned 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 says, “I’m glad you went to see Grandpa. He’s so excited to have us near him finally.”
“Sorry I worried you, Mom.” The hug tightens.
“Did you have any lunch yet?” my mom asks.
“Not unless you count hot chocolate as lunch,” I reply, 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 says, herding me to the kitchen table. The pleasure of having me back home safely brightens her face and I can almost see her checking off another notch for me moving toward well adjusted. My mom seems so pleased that she fails to notice when my sullen mood takes over again. She spreads 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 come out of my melancholy and the desperation for answers returns. “Sure, Mom, no problem. I wanted to look for some of the people grandpa was telling me about all morning anyway.”
My grandpa told me that there are more girls like Maera and Katie. I want to fight the idea, but I need to know who they are. I feel certain that if I can find enough information I can avoid whatever course has already been laid out for me by whoever my grandpa thinks is making the choices. I hurriedly eat the roast beef sandwich my mom sets in front of me and dive back into the piles of scattered photo album pages.
Leaving the stacks of pictures even less organized than when I began, I search 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 discusses the ins and outs of building a family history. I feel the slightest twinge of guilt at misleading her, but I push that away and chock it up to what has to be done. As long as I feign interest in my mom’s stories and advice, the growing mess I am creating seems to go unnoticed.
I have never before been so grateful for my mom’s obsession with genealogy. It has always just seemed like endless piles of papers and pictures and stacks of notebooks to me. Now, as I truly looked through them, I see so much more. In the piles of photos are many generations of relatives, most of whom I have never met or even heard of, but every one of them lived a life worth remembering. Wondering what the little man with the bowler had done for a living or what was in his wife’s wicker basket, I find another photo.
Not surprised when I find two more pictures with traits matching my own, my stomach still turns with each new discovery. The weight on me seems to deepen as I search. I have to keep reminding myself that I need to do this. Along with several more pictures of Katie and Maera, I find a few 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 sits in an old fashioned family portrait dated 1845.
I keep searching after finding the picture of Victoria, but I find no other pictures of the raven haired girls. Eventually, my mom excuses herself to make some tea, and I lay the pictures out and stared at them. Yes, I found more girls who looked like Katie, but do they share more than that? I am 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 hold out as long as I can. The need to discover what is happening to my family grows stronger every moment I sit staring at their faces. Giving in to the nagging feeling, I wander into the kitchen. Drinking a glass of iced tea, my mom looks up at me when I step into the room.
Casually, I ask, “Hey, Mom, would you mind if I looked through some of your genealogy binders.”
Laughing at the odd request, she is still more than happy to fuel my supposed newfound curiosity. “Sure, Arra. Why don’t you bring them over to the table?”
“Okay,” I say.
I quickly retrieve the notebooks from a box in the living room and bring them to the kitchen table. Continuing to organize the cupboards, my mom glances over at me every so often as I begin searching the pages for the two long dead girls. Every page I turn that does not hold their names sends both fear and relief down my spine. Although, it takes me so long to get through a single page that the mix of emotions can’t come very often.
“Do you need some help?” my mom asks.
“Uh, that’s okay,” I reply.
The last thing I want to do is explain to my mom what I am really looking for
. I can hardly think of a plausible lie to explain my interest in the forms. Quietly, I hope my mom will give up organizing the kitchen and return to the photo albums in the other room. After my “help” you can 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 explains. She takes the chair next to me, settling in for a detailed lesson.
What else can I do but accept her offer? Pushing her away will only provoke more questions. “Yeah, I guess they are a little confusing,” I say.
Nodding her head in agreement, my mom points to the top of the page and begins explaining. There is much more information on one page than I expected. My mom shows me where to find the names of the parents of the family the worksheet is about, then how to find the children’s names as well. There is also detailed information about where and when each person was born, married, died, and buried.
“Is there someone specific you were trying to find?” my mom asks.
I turn my face to look out the window, unable to trust my features not to betray my uneasiness. “No, I was just curious,” I say. I feel bad lying to my mom, but the truth will only make things worse. “Grandpa was telling me stories about our family, about some of our ancestors in South America. I was just curious to learn about some of the people he mentioned.” I smile, hoping my explanation will hold up.
Smiling even wider than before, my mom puts a hand on my shoulder. “You know, Grandpa was the one who inspired me to start researching our family history. When your father and I were dating, Alden was always telling me stories about one person or another. To be perfectly honest,” she says with a smile, “I thought he was making most of it up, but as I got to know more of the family I realized he was actually telling the truth. Someday I hope to have the family history all the way back to the time of the Aztecs.”
“Grandpa would love that,” I say. I remember how my grandpa praised my mom’s work, but his disappointment that she didn’t know any of the stories came with the praise. “Have you ever thought of writing down some of his stories?”
“I have,” she admits, “but I’m not very talented when it comes to writing narratives. Maybe this is a project you should consider taking on.” She pats my shoulder. “How was his doctor’s appointment? Did he say anything about it?”
“Just that his cholesterol is still too high,” I say, thankful for the change in topics. “He said he was fine, though.”
“He always says that,” my mom says. The frown on her face says she does not appreciate his optimism. “He really ought to take better care of himself. Maybe I’ll have your father speak to him about it tonight.”
I shrug and smile. I doubt it will do any good, but I don’t want to see my grandpa leave me any earlier than he has to.
“You should think about helping Grandpa write his family’s stories down. He won’t always be around to tell them,” she says.
“I’ll think about it, Mom. Thanks for the help with the forms,” I say as she moves back toward the living room, looking distracted.
“Sure, dear. I’ll be working on the photo albums for a while.”
“Okay, Mom.”
My search drags on for the rest of the afternoon, but the hours are definitely not wasted. After a considerable amount of time spent getting used to the way the full page forms are organized, I start flipping through them with ease. Finally, I come across an entry for Elizabeth Malo. Victoria’s entry is many pages deeper into the binder. I happen upon it just as my mom comes back into the kitchen and asks me to clean up for dinner. Quickly noting the death date, I flip the notebook closed.
Elizabeth Malo was born in nineteen hundred two and died in nineteen hundred eighteen. The picture I found of Victoria was dated 1845, but she was apparently only twelve in that picture, and sadly died four years later. I wish I could say I’m surprised to discover that both girls died on their sixteenth birthdays just like Katie and Maera. After my grandpa’s startling reaction to the topic, I knew what I would find. Actually finding the dates still sends fear crawling down my spine, though. Even with only four links, I know the chain will continue, even past my mom’s records.
When my mom asks me to clear the notebooks out of the room so the table can be set for dinner, I truly feel like giving up. I don’t want to find anything else. I am so disheartened and worried that I honestly consider putting everything I learned back into their boxes and simply waiting, waiting for whatever is going to find me. I am beyond simply pretending I never saw Katie’s picture. What I know can’t be taken back anymore. Do I really want to know what is going to happen anyway? Can it in any way make it better, especially if I can do nothing to escape my fate?
All through dinner I wrestle with whether I should continue my search. Grandpa gave me the choice. He promised to keep working whether I continue or not. And to be honest, he really didn’t sound like he thinks I can do anything that would really matter. Will it make that much of a difference?
My fear compels me to give up, but how can I know what is coming and simply sit and wait for death to swallow me. If there is something hunting the women of my family, then finding the reason, or the hunter, could stop everything. I have no illusions of becoming some kind of Hollywood heroine, saving the day in the nick of time, but perhaps I can still do something. I refuse to turn myself over to some unseen power, walking meekly to my last breath.
I watch my mom clear the table and prepare a plate for my dad as I try to decide what to do. My dad won’t get home until after ten o’clock, but he never misses my mom’s meals. My mom’s practiced movements unfortunately hold no divine inspiration for me. Dragging the books and pictures I have been searching into my bedroom, I drop it on my bed and know there really isn’t any choice to make. Finding the truth is the only way to go. Spreading everything I have acquired on my bedspread, I survey the collage. What is going on? Determined to find the answers, I settle onto the only bare spot on the bed.