“What about Corinna?” Mallory asked.
“Corinna. We called her Aunt Nini,” Gwenny said. “She could see inside people, not houses. She could see what they were really thinking, no matter what awful thing was behind a big smile.”
“Now that would be the kind I’d like to have!” Meredith said. “I’d love to know who was talking about me. I’d love to know if someone was getting—”
“Laybite, Merry. For heaven’s sake,” Mallory said. She turned to her grandmother and persisted, “But you. And your sister.”
“Well, you know, I have never told you about my sister.”
“But we know she died when she was little,” Merry said.
“Not little. Only in size. Like you are. She was eleven. She drowned, my dears. And ever after, I never felt quite the same. Not even with Grandpa and the children, as dearly as I love all of you. I still grieve for her, sixty years later and more.” Gwenny sighed and said, “But she was . . . I would say that she was born sad. Vera.”
“Why?” asked Mallory, certain that she knew.
“I think because we . . . well, we were the first ones in the family to foresee the future. I saw the births, the weddings, the letters in the mailboxes that brought hope from far away, the happy beginnings. But Vera saw the endings. She foresaw death.”
Mallory let her hands drop into her lap. Broken beans scattered in the dirt.
“Vera saw the babies who would be born with something wrong, even while they were still inside their mothers and the girls were knitting little blankets and thanking God for answering their prayers. She told me, but, of course, she could never tell anyone else. She would have been seen to be crazy, or even worse—cursed or witched or something. What she saw couldn’t be changed, you understand. It wasn’t as though she’d been asked to intervene. And she knew it.”
Merry was about to interrupt when Gwenny said, “Let’s get these beans finished. We’re going to have to have supper and I want your brother to shuck the corn. I really should set the water boiling for that, too.”
“But Grandma, go on,” Meredith prompted her.
“I know I’m rambling, Merry. I don’t like to say it. It’s been years since I talked about my Vera. I think she was tormented because she didn’t have the gift you have, to step in front of fate. She foresaw our father’s death in the mines. She foresaw it, and begged him not to go that day. Of course, he didn’t listen. We were nine. Moira was fourteen and Jane was twelve. Thea was sixteen, already working in the city. The little boys, our brothers, were four and two. After the accident, Vera never told our mother. How could she have lived with knowing her own little girl might have saved her daddy? We moved to just this side of Deptford, at first, to a boardinghouse near the wider part of this river. My mother cleaned houses and took in fine sewing. She left the care of the little boys to us when she went out to work. The only schooling we had after that was what she taught us at home. But she tried hard to teach us well. She saved her money and bought us schoolbooks that the library was selling for a nickel or a dime.”
“You were too young,” said Merry.
“Not for those times,” Gwenny told her. Laughter and splashing sang up the path from the swimmers below. Grandma seemed to tense at the sound. “Yes, you should know that it’s water that is dangerous for us, for all of us, we Massenger women. That was why I knew the fire wouldn’t truly hurt you.”
“You . . . knew about the fire?” Mallory breathed softly.
“I didn’t really. Not as such. What I felt was that Vera knew about the fire. I felt something, from her. Not a message of death. But a message. At least, I seemed to. Sometimes, I think I hear her speak to me. But you see, I can’t get in the way of changing fate. Not as you can. There was nothing I could do. I didn’t know when it would happen or how.”
“Did . . . did our aunt Vera know she was going to die?”
“You never know about yourself,” Grandma Gwenny said.
“Why didn’t I see David coming for Merry?” asked Mallory. “Because she is just like myself? I saw at the last minute, when it was too late.”
“I don’t know why,” Grandma Gwenny said. “I don’t know everything.” Her eyes filled. “Just to tell you the last thing. Vera lost her footing.”
“She was on that bridge. . . .” Mallory said.
“Yes, and she saw our younger brother, your uncle Keenan, who was too little to know better, wade in after a shiny rock, and saw him slip. That is, before he slipped. She ran to help.”
“Did you see her drown?” Merry asked.
“No. But I saw her afterward,” Gwenny said. A hunger and an anger crossed her face as quickly as clouds and did not invite more questions. “I hoped she was happy then.”
“Why didn’t your names match?” Meredith asked, as much from curiosity as to distract her grandmother from the memory picture she could almost see—of her grandmother’s still, small sister, lying on a kitchen table with water pooling around her blue cotton dress, strands of water lily in her dark hair. “Not that they have to match. But people do that when they have twins.”
“Well, our names did match. Her name was Guinevere. We called her Vera. Now, I suppose it would be Jenny; that’s what we call your aunt. I named my youngest for her. In Welsh, it means ‘the shadow in front of the light.’ And my name, Gwendolyn, means ‘white hair.’ I thought of that when my hair went white so young, like my grandma’s did.”
“Why aren’t your daughters twins?” Mallory asked.
“Well, Karin was a twin,” Gwenny said slowly. “But her sister died before she was born. No one knew except for me. Not even Grandpa.”
“So you saw us?” Merry asked.
“Not only that. I know when a baby will be healthy. Not . . . as much as I did when Vera was here. Well, alive on earth. But I knew you two would be the ones who would see both the past and the future. The greatest gift.”
“And you were
jealous
of that?” Mallory asked, aghast.
“Oh, my goodness no! I was proud. But I felt such pity, too! My poor little granddaughters. The gift has two sides, Merry. The brilliant side and the misery. And I know that it must have been as hard on you as on Mallory. You would always know what had happened if you and Mallory didn’t act on what she saw coming up ahead. You would never be free to simply not know. Such an amazing gift.”
“No, a curse!” Meredith said. “But, Grandma, the dreams stopped. It all started just before the fire, and ended when we stopped . . . when David Jellico died,” Merry went on. “We don’t dream of the past and the future anymore. We dream of boys and . . . like, showing up for school in your underwear. Regular stuff.”
“But this is what I kept you back from swimming to tell you,” their grandmother said. “You will.”
“No,” Mallory said.
Gwenny nodded. After a long moment simply looking from one to the other, she said, “You’ll always know. Not every day or even every month. Not ever for yourselves, though perhaps for each other. But always for other people in need or trouble.”
“We don’t want it!” Mally said.
Gwenny put her arm around Mallory. She said, “You poor babies. None of us ever did. It’s given. I had to tell you. Even knowing what’s going on inside a house could be a torment. You might know that the mayor beat his children. You might know a widow’s son was packing to run off and join the army. Or who was lonely and wanted to die. It sounds like that might be fun, but Mama said it wasn’t.”
“But if you had to have one kind, I’d rather have that one,” Merry insisted. “It wouldn’t be scary and boring at the same time!”
Grandma seemed to ignore Merry in her haste to get the story told. The sun was setting. Soon, everyone would come back and dinner and campfire rituals would take over and the girls would have to wait. That would have been fine with Merry, who believed she had heard enough to last a lifetime. Mallory would break out in hives if she had to live another day without hearing the rest.
“You were the first ones born to one of the boys, not to a Massenger woman, the first twins born to a son,” Grandma said.
“Big deal,” Merry told her with a shrug.
“She doesn’t mean that to be rude. We just wonder why it matters. Because this is the worst thing that ever happened to us,” Mallory added. “To think of it happening once more is too horrible to imagine. To think of it happening over and over, it would be better if we’d never been born.”
“Mallory, I’m sure even our Lord felt that way, when he knew what his work was in the world. Think of the good you’ve already done! You’ve saved the children, already more good than most people do in their whole lives. In that sense, it truly is a gift.”
“We would have saved them anyhow, even if Mally hadn’t dreamed of a fire. It’s really, really not a gift at all, Grandma,” Merry said.
“Maybe not to you. I can’t pretend to say why this is given. Maybe to the world.”
“Well, the kids are safe now. And the way I feel is, the world can go to hell!” Merry objected.
“Hush! Merry,” their grandmother said. “Every time it happens, you’ll be confused, or even frightened, but then you’ll know you have to try to help. And you’ll know how, I think.”
“I don’t want to know,” Mally said. “I want to be happy!”
“You’ll be happy,” Gwenny said.
“Not if we know this is coming,” said Mallory. “Not if I know there’s something I’m going to see happen and she’s going to see it really did. That’s why I’m going to be a nun!”
“You’re not going to be a nun, Mallory,” said Grandma Gwenny. “And you couldn’t hide from this if you were. Think about it. Yes, it’s awful to think of it coming. But what if you can change things so that the bad doesn’t happen? Isn’t that like changing the world?”
“What if we can’t? What if we don’t know how?” Mallory asked.
“I don’t know,” said their grandmother. “You’re unique. I don’t know if you’ll always be able to make it right.”
“But even if we do, no one will ever know,” Merry said. “Even if we do good, if we told anyone about it, people would think we were nuts.”
“
You
will know,” said their grandmother.
“Why couldn’t we be like you? And just be able to predict the next baby who’ll be born down the street?” Merry asked.
“If I had to, I’d guess that because you’re the daughters of so many generations of wisdom that it isn’t enough for you to see, but for you to be able to save. To be like Saint Bridget, the brave, and comfort the helpless and protect the weak,” said Gwenny. “It must seem impossible. But here you are. So strong and bright.”
“I don’t want to be a saint! Only a nun! And then only because I could hide and not have to worry about clothes. How do you know this isn’t from some old time when things were dark and wicked? How do you know it’s a thing that comes from God and not demons?” Mallory asked. She was conscious of the hills around her, the dark mosses and teasing shadows, the chill of twilight and of the birds gone silent. “Who’ll protect us and comfort us?”
“You’ll comfort each other. No matter how many miles there are between you, you’ll never be farther apart than you are right now. And that will make the gift something you’ll share, and even learn to cherish. Not everything ancient is wicked, Mally-lah.”
“How do you know, Grandma?” Mally asked, as something in her sighed deeply and turned up its hands. There was no fighting it, she thought
. This is not why I dreamed that the fire would happen. This is the reason that we were born.
“It was what I saw,” Gwenny said. “What I saw on your parents’ wedding day. I saw you girls and Adam. And I thought . . . there would be another child. But I was wrong about that, I suppose.”
“You mean it’s not even always perfect? You don’t always see everything exactly as it is?” Mallory asked, aghast.
“Nothing is perfect,” Grandma said.
Meredith watched as first Campbell and Tim, then their aunts and uncles and cousins, and finally their brother straggled up the path, toweling off their hair and brushing at their sandy legs. It was with a certain sadness, as though she would never see them again in quite this way—which was, of course, true.
“All I wanted was to make varsity,” Merry said.
Fresh, lined paper and cucumber lotion and the smell of a boy’s newly cut hair, her father’s omelets, huge as sea creatures and dripping with butter and four kinds of cheese, a bowl of pinecones dipped in glitter on the kitchen table and the shrieking of the crowd under the lights and a Twizzler fossilized in the pocket of her winter coat—all these little simple things that made up her life before seemed to whirl together and blow out like a spent star.
“Grandma,” Mallory asked, “will you help us? If we don’t know where to turn? That was the worst part. We didn’t even know how much we could tell you. What if we don’t know what to do?”
“As long as I live. And I don’t plan on going anywhere soon. I’ll listen, but I might not know what to do,” Gwenny said. “I’m not so powerful as you are. And after I’m gone, I’ll listen, as well.”
“Don’t say that, Grandma!” Merry cried, and Mallory shook her head, too. It was enough to take all this in. It was too much to picture a world without Grandma Gwenny.
“So we won’t be alone,” Mallory said.
“Not ever,” said their grandmother. “The Massenger women, your ancestors, are always with you. They always will be. They’re all around you. They will guide you. You’re not invincible. But you have protection. And so will your daughters . . .”
“It stops here,” Merry said. “There won’t be any more twins.”
Their grandmother pressed her lips together before she told them gently, “No, that’s not true. Mallory will have twin daughters. And you, Merry, will have three sons.”
Merry looked down at the scar on her hand. It had healed to resemble a tree. The longest branch extended to the edge of her palm. One branch split into two, which in turn split into two. She nudged Mallory. For a long moment, she studied the scar and its portents.