––––––––
The date was June 21st, and the weather was as hot as could be. Cooper emerged onto the porch that overlooked the orchard of his grandmother’s country house and peered through the trees, toward the lake. Its water glistened through the leafy crowns, where apples finally reached the size of marbles, and hopefully would keep growing as the summer wore on. If it rained enough, they would grow big and juicy and fragrant.
But apples weren’t the reason he was here.
“I think we should head out, Grandma,” he said. “I think maybe we should go camping for a little while.” He slid his eyes toward her diminutive figure. She stood there on the porch, leaning against the banister dressed in loose linen slacks and a sleeveless blouse. Her long silver hair flowed down her back like white water rapids.
She smiled. “Forget it.” she said. “I have the gift of foresight and I know what you’re up to.”
Cooper almost purred under the benevolent caress of her eyes. They were as clear as the water of northern lakes far away, and their gaze turned from grandmotherly affection to an investigative probe, as though she could peer right through him and search the very depths of his soul.
“Cooper,” she said, and raised her old and wrinkled hand up to his cheek. She stroked his stubbly jaw gently. “Is there anything you want to tell me?”
Cooper shifted his weight from one foot to the other. There were so many things he’d have loved to address, but the most pressing one got him tongue-tied. His need was so embarrassing.
He always hated to ask for money.
All those years of school, when he had been in college and doing a little too well for his good, and got falsely accused of cheating, had taken their toll on him. Having to hide the fact that he got kicked out of one of the most prestigious architectural programs in the country from his family had hurt like nothing else.
Of course they had found out, mostly because he didn’t want to talk to them when he was in trouble. Back then he hadn’t called home, either. He got a job. And another job. He had worked his ass off just so he could move out of town, enroll in a school that didn’t think he was the scum of the earth, and finish his degree.
That’s how he ended up in Pittsburgh, the place where he now lived. Except his grandmother wasn’t asking him to rehash old business. She was onto him over something new.
The silence stretched like salt water taffy. Wind stirred, warm, laden with moisture, and oppressive. It carried the notes of mud, which was drying by the banks of the lake, and Cooper hoped the rain would come soon. A rain, which the parched region so badly needed.
“Cooper. You need to talk to me.” Olga Sorensen drew herself to her full height, and even though she was 8 inches short of Cooper’s eye level, he still felt like a little boy who had done something wrong.
“I’ve been just hoping.” Cooper said only that, and stilled again, as though his hope was that his grandma would just walk away and let it be, even though he knew full well that she wouldn’t. She was patient, not breaking the silence of the late afternoon. Finally, Cooper spoke again. “I’ve been hoping that I could use my earth sense and Ash could use his water sense. And maybe he could go up north, to the property line.” He held her gaze, and saw a glimmer of understanding in her old eyes.
“But Cooper, this is not as simple as it might seem.”
Cooper had such high hopes that they could find diamonds, at least a few, and sell them for good money. That would help Ash’s project so much, and if Ash benefited from their effort, Cooper could build him the dream house he wanted. The one by the river. A tidy home where they both could live, and where they could both work together and keep an eye both on the river and on the rocks beneath the bank.
That money was the life blood that would keep Ash’s environmental clean-up effort alive. It was crucial, yet Cooper couldn’t ask for anything outright. Finding it, however, that would be different. Somehow, Cooper felt it was a more honest way to finance Ash’s venture. Sweating on the mosquito-infested northern border was certainly preferable to having to walk up to his family and admit to the fact that his architecture firm was in its fledgling stages, barely a blip on the local building market radar. Even though he had finished the project of rebuilding the six row houses that Ash had bought on the contaminated property by the river, the fact remained that Ash was his only major client. This being the case, Cooper had no way to help, and nothing to invest aside from his expertise.
“I hate asking for things.” Cooper stuffed his fists into the pockets of his worn jeans. “I... I really want to help him.”
His grandmother gave him a kind smile. “What you do not realize, Cooper,” she said in an English that was still tinged with her Scandinavian heritage, “is that if you start looking for those diamonds by the northern border, and if you do it with Ash, it won’t go well. Uncle Owen was here.”
“Oh.” Cooper felt his blood drain from his face. Uncle Owen was the only member of the family who knew of his and Ash’s unexpected interaction, of the way their powers melded together and amplified each other, and he was the only one aware of the fact that he and Ash had somehow managed to cause a small flood and earthquake.
Wailing emergency vehicles were not the best way to mark their first sexual encounter.
“What you don’t realize, Cooper, is that there is a ley line under those kimberlites. And that ley line is old. We try not to touch it very much.” Grandma sighed. “Why can’t you just ask for help? Don’t you realize that your parents, or your uncles and aunts, or your cousins would be perfectly happy to look out for you? We’re a family. When one of us needs extra help, others come and give it.” She narrowed her eyes and inhaled, letting her shoulders drop as she stood there, facing him.
Cooper saw the way her breath stilled, the way she almost rocked back and forth with each beat of her heart. He hated seeing the evidence of her vibrant life. Such a visible manifestation of life was also a reminder of her mortality.
But she always did that when she was meditating, he recalled from all those summers he’d spent up here as a boy. Those summers when she and Grandpa had explained to him that having a zero power signature didn’t make him a lesser person.
That it was okay not to have “special talents.” That his keen three-dimensional sense was enough, and that he alone was worthy of love and success.
These lessons were easy to forget as he grew into his turbulent teens. How ironic that now, after having adjusted to what some called a “normal life,” Cooper was the bearer of the rare earth sense, a gift that ran so strong in him, he could hardly control it.
Being half-trained meant bleeding power, and bleeding power caused complications.
“If you go up there with Ash,” she said, “the whole area is likely to experience an earthquake between 3 to 4 degrees of magnitude. That particular earthquake is likely to shift the water table, because you’ll be searching deep. I won’t forbid it, because the diamonds are a family property resource, but I’ll certainly advise against it.”
I won’t forbid it.
Oh, she knew him well! The words were a revelation. The decision and the responsibility rested on Cooper now, on his conscience and on his good judgment. The surrounding farms’ fresh water supply might well depend on whether he and Ash decided to go up north and look for diamonds using their powers, or whether they tightened their belts and weathered the financial shortfall like ordinary people.
Cooper was amazed that his grandmother would use her foresight on his behalf.
“Grandma, I thought you didn’t look into the future anymore.”
“Only when it’s important.” She walked over to her rocking chair, reached for a glass of lemonade, and settled down. “You’re important to me, Cooper.” She sipped a little and nodded toward the pitcher on the little, round table that had been there ever since Cooper could remember. “Why don’t you have some?”
“You mind if I add sugar?” Cooper tried not to grin.
“You grow and grow, but some things never change.” He watched her brows draw together. Something was on her mind, but he knew better than to pry. She worried all the time, courtesy of a gift that was sometimes a curse. He had heard that her mind tended to wander into the dark and distant past, a time which she had never experienced herself. And at other times, the things that bothered her or weighed heavily upon her, those events had not even occurred, or they were an alternate reality that might come to pass if someone took a wrong turn at a critical juncture – but they were sure to involve the family.
“Where is Ash?” she asked suddenly.
Her question came as a surprise. Cooper always assumed that grandma Olga would know where everybody was. Her gift was, after all, the one of foresight. Sometimes the most trivial things occurred to her, such as knowing that no matter how hard she would try, she would end up burning dinner. And at other times, she saw things far ahead and was able to warn her neighbor of a flood half a year ahead. Those visions came spontaneously, and it always seemed as though she was aware of everybody’s location, everybody’s movement, and everybody’s intent.
“You don’t know where he is?” Cooper cocked his eyebrow and allowed for a small grin. “I thought you always knew these things!”
She shook her head. “He isn’t family,” she said. “It’s always easier to keep track of family than strangers.” He stiffened, and she halted. “Not that you aren’t aware of him, dear, but I don’t know him personally, so he isn’t on my radar, so to speak. Not yet, anyway. But I know what you kids are usually up to. I don’t have to have an obscure ability to figure out that you’ll be stuck up in a tree somewhere, trying to eat the apples before they’re ripe!” She laughed, and Cooper joined her.
“Grandma,” Cooper said, “is it true that when I was a little boy, nobody could feel my power signature?”
She nodded. “It’s still hard, especially when you’re by yourself. When you’re with Ash, I can feel both of you, which is equally strange. Uncle Owen says you resonate together. You feed into each other somehow and amplify each other’s gift. The only reason I know where you are is because I know what to look for. Plus, you have gotten better at shielding. Few weeks back I could feel you all the way up from Pittsburgh!”
Cooper blushed. That must’ve been the earthquake incident. The one time when he and Ash got carried away. A hug became a kiss, and a kiss became something a lot more than that. The tension between them had turned into a natural disaster neither one of them could have predicted. He never realized that being with the man he loved would result in a massive city-wide emergency response, complete with flashing lights and blaring sirens. He still couldn’t believe the Armstrong tunnel had to be closed due to a collapsed ceiling.
As though she could read his mind, his grandma put her hand onto his bicep, and squeezed gently. “Nobody got hurt, at least not this time.”
Cooper groaned. “This is just so horribly embarrassing,” he admitted. “We’ve gotten better. Can you really tell every time we, you know...?”
He could tell his grandmother was biting back a smile. He must’ve been glowing like the sunset with his embarrassment just then, and the heat in his face surely wasn’t just the heat of the day. If it turned out that his own grandmother, who lived hundreds of miles away, knew of every single time he had an Ash-induced orgasm, he’d join a monastery. He would become celibate, and the only sword he would ever wield would be the Japanese one that Ash was teaching him how to use.
“Don’t worry about it, dear. Your father has the same problem. Just work on that shielding, and you’ll get more privacy in everything you do.”
Cooper thought he would die.