Neal slid her key into the lock and tried to open the front door quietly so her grandmother wouldn’t pounce on her. Sometimes Granny Q reminded her of a cat waiting for a mouse to stick its head out of a hole. For someone who had suffered a stroke, she had surprisingly good hearing, and even better instincts. Neal couldn’t often put anything over on her grandmother, but that didn’t stop her from trying.
She felt a finger poking into her back. “Hurry up, will you?”
Neal grimaced. T. J. Sweet might be her best friend, but sometimes she could be the densest, most frustrating person on the face of the earth.
She turned and frowned at T. J. “Shhhh!”
“Why are you whispering?” T. J. asked in a voice about ten decibels above normal.
“Because I don’t want to rouse the dragon,” Neal hissed.
“Your grandmother, you mean? That sweet old lady? What’s the big deal? You come home from school and bring your best friend with you. Not exactly a capital crime.”
“I’m just sick of everybody knowing my business all the time, all right? Now, if you’ll just be quiet, we might be able to sneak in and get upstairs before she knows we’re home.” Neal leaned on the door, and it gave a loud creak as it swung open. She groaned.
“That you, NeeGrace?” a garbled, wavering voice called from the kitchen.
T. J. grinned. “It’s us, Granny Q!” She dropped her book bag on the sofa and grabbed Neal by the arm. “Come on.”
Reluctantly, Neal followed her friend into the kitchen. Granny Q stood beside the stove with the oven door open. The acrid smell of something burning filled the air, and a thin haze of blue smoke hovered near the ceiling.
“T’resa? Little T’resa Joy Sweet!” Granny Q tried to smile, but her mouth was still paralyzed on the left side, so the expression came out more like a grimace. Her words slurred, and her left eye had the droopy, bloodshot look of a hound dog. “Come in, children. I made cookies—’cept I burned ’em jus’ a little.”
Neal dragged herself into the room and slouched into a chair at the kitchen table. She fixed her eyes on her hands, on the wooden tabletop—anywhere except her grandmother’s face.
“They look just fine, Granny Q,” T. J. was saying. “They’re not real burned. We can just scrape off the bottoms, and—”
“I don’t want any,” Neal interrupted. “Let’s go up to my room, T. J. We’ve got homework.”
“Nonsense,” her grandmother said, but the word came out as nunshens. “You girls need a snack after school. I baked ’em special.” She shuffled over to the refrigerator, bracing herself against the counter, and took two glasses out of the cabinet. Neal watched out of the corner of her eye as her grandmother tried to pour milk, sloshing it onto the floor. She looked away and gritted her teeth.
“Here, let me help,” T. J. said brightly. She took the half-gallon jug and finished pouring, then retrieved a paper towel from the roll and mopped up the mess.
Granny Q lurched over and sat down opposite Neal while T. J. set the milk and cookies on the table. “How was your day at school, NeeGrace?”
“Fine.”
“Don’t wan’ some milk and cookies?” She pushed the plate in Neal’s direction with a spotted, palsied hand.
“No.”
Neal ducked her head, trying to avoid meeting her grandmother’s gaze. But she couldn’t help seeing the tear that leaked out of Granny Q’s bad eye, matched by a string of saliva that crept from her sagging mouth. Anger boiled up in her—an acidic, unpredictable, unstoppable rage.
She didn’t want to see this. Didn’t want to be anywhere near her grandmother. Everything about the old woman disgusted her. The grotesque, twisted face. The way she sidled into a room, dragging her numb left side behind her like half a cadaver. The pale legs webbed like a road map with purple varicose veins. The flat, ugly feet sheathed in dirty chenille bedroom slippers.
And the smell. The smell was the worst of all. It wasn’t body odor, exactly, but a hot, stale, medicinal smell.
Neal vividly recalled the days when Granny Q smelled like lavender water and lilac powder, when she smiled without drooling and spoke complete sentences that could be understood without an interpreter. She remembered childhood Christmases in this house, with an enormous tree in the front foyer and lights everywhere, with Mom and Dad laughing, and Granny Q and Grandpa Sam handing out presents like Mr. and Mrs. Santa Claus. In those days the entire house filled up with delicious aromas—fresh pine and apple pies and turkey and homemade yeast rolls.
But that was before. Before Grandpa Sam’s heart attack. Before her own father’s death in a head-on collision with a drunk driver. Before the stroke that took Granny Q away and replaced her with this—this walking corpse.
Neal tried to push the memory of her father from her mind. She missed him so much that she didn’t dare think about him. The pain of losing him was like a bottomless pit, a vacuum at the center of her soul—if she got too close, it would suck everything inside her into the darkness. She could almost imagine herself being pulled inside out and then vanishing completely.
No. She couldn’t go there. Not now. Maybe not ever.
It was partly her fear of the vacuum that made her so eager to come and live at Quinn House with Granny Q. Here, at least, Daddy’s memory didn’t pervade all her senses. The sturdy old brick house, with its dark green roof and shaded porches, had been in the family since the early 1900s. Yellowed photographs of the Quinn ancestors lined the walls, and above the marble fireplace in the living room hung the family crest, emblazoned with the Quinn motto: Purity of Heart, Faithfulness of Soul.
By the time she was five, Neal had memorized the motto and knew all of her ancestors by name. She would walk slowly along the walls, pointing to the photographs and identifying each one. Kensington Quinn and his wife Gracie, the first of a long line her mother referred to as “the strong Quinn women.” Then their daughter, the original Abigail, whom Mom called “Nana,” with her husband, James Nelson. Photos of James and Nana’s three children were there, too—the sons who had died in the war and the surviving girl, Edith Quinn Nelson, a radiant bride on her wedding day.
Neal would never forget the first time her mind connected that dazzling young woman in the photograph with her beloved Granny Q. Her grandmother, all dressed in white, bright-eyed and shimmering, with a handsome, younger version of Grandpa Sam standing proudly at her side. She remembered climbing onto a small stepstool and putting her nose close to the glass, inspecting every detail of Granny Q’s face, tracing the eyes and nose and mouth with one finger. This was the grandmother she adored. And she had once been fresh and beautiful, with smooth, bright skin and eyes that didn’t crinkle at the corners.
All her life Neal had been awed by those photos and the heritage they represented. A legacy of character and love and family loyalty—five generations of it, counting Neal herself. Nearly a hundred years of Quinn history. She could close her eyes and see those faces. Sometimes at night when the house was quiet she imagined she could hear their voices, whispering to her on the breeze: Pure of heart . . . of heart . . . of heart . . .
In her younger days, before she knew better, the idea of that legacy brought her comfort, made her feel part of something special, something important. But after Daddy’s death and Granny Q’s stroke, everything changed.
No longer did Neal relish the idea of becoming “one of the strong Quinn women.” She had seen, firsthand, how quickly strength could turn to weakness. Every time she looked at her grandmother, a caustic and troubling thought rose to the forefront of her mind: If this was the reward for being pure and faithful, she wanted no part of it.
Laughter drew her back to the present, and Neal looked up to see T. J. smiling, holding her grandmother’s hand, talking animatedly, as if everything were perfectly normal. A weight pressed in upon her, and for a moment she couldn’t breathe.
At last she found her voice. “I . . . I’m not feeling so good, T. J. I’ve got a headache. Think I’ll go upstairs and lie down for a while. See you tomorrow.”
Before T. J. or Granny Q could protest, Neal jumped up from the kitchen table and fled the room.
She was halfway through the living room before she could catch her breath. Panic roared through her—the kind of blind terror that comes with total darkness, the fear of being buried alive, locked in a mausoleum with only the dead for company. These feelings had been coming on for months—years, maybe. Certainly since Granny Q’s stroke six months ago, perhaps even since Daddy’s death—or at least since moving into Quinn House. The sensation of being trapped, not able to breathe, not at home in her own skin.
Claustrophobia. Yes. That’s exactly what it felt like. The walls—these stout brick walls mortared together with Quinn family character and loyalty—were closing in on her.
Neal sank down on the sofa and stared with unfocused eyes at the family crest over the fireplace. Behind her, in the kitchen, she could hear the muffled voices of T. J. and her grandmother. Talking about her, probably. Wondering what had gotten into her.
She couldn’t help wondering the same thing.
All her life she had lived up to the expectations presented to her. She did well in school, never got into trouble, always made friends easily. Her mother trusted her, and the two of them got along pretty well. Why, then, did she feel so . . . so suffocated? Why did she want nothing but to get away, to be anywhere but here, where the heritage of her Quinn-ness pressed in upon her like stone walls of solitary confinement?
Even her name betrayed her: Neal Grace Quinn McDougall, after her great-great-grandmother, the matriarch of the clan. Every single woman in the family bore the Quinn name in one form or another. She could never get away from it, no matter how hard she tried.
A flash of light and movement caught her eye. A breeze had rustled the leaves outside the living room window, and shadows played across the bookcase next to the fireplace. Her eye was drawn to the old ginger jar that sat on the second shelf.
The Wishing Jar, Mom called it. Another piece of history, handed down through the generations. One more symbol of what it meant to be a Quinn.
Neal watched the interplay of light and shadow over the jar. It almost looked as if the phoenix were moving, ruffling its wings in preparation for flight.
She would fly away, too, if she could.
She leaned back against the sofa cushions and closed her eyes. “God,” she murmured, “I wish my life were different.”