Chapter Four

I was still sorting through the scattered photos when my mom stopped to make lunch. Since it was summer break, even my mom was taking her time settling into the new house. Mom and Dad had gotten all the major pieces of furniture set out in their new places, but every room was still covered in half put away boxes. Most of our sleek and modern furniture looked glaringly out of place in the antique cottage we now lived in, but my mom seemed to find it charming. I thought it looked ridiculous. I was certainly in no hurry to settle in myself, but learning about my aunt Katie had momentarily shifted my attention from pouting in my room to finding out more.

With the picture in my hand I was less concerned with being back in busy Manhattan and more interested in discovering more about the strange aunt that easily could have been my own twin. I tucked the picture under the cover of the novel I had been reading and took the lid off another box. Anxious to find more evidence of my aunt, I nevertheless felt a strange need to keep my interest from my mom.

She had told me easily enough about who Katie was, but I had gotten the distinct impression that she either knew more and was not about to discuss it, or had tried to find out more herself and did not want to repeat that experience again. The lingering feeling kept me from tearing into the mess of photos. I carefully slipped photos back into the plastic sleeves, searching for another glimpse of Katie. She may have disappeared from my family’s memories, but I knew there would be more than one lonely photo. At least I hoped there would be.

The jingling of keys in the already unlocked door barely even reached my hearing. My dad pushed his way into the mess laughing at himself for trying to unlock the door and I looked up with a smirk. We never left the door unlocked in Manhattan, even when we were home. I guess my mom was already feeling much safer being away from the city. My mom greeted my dad with a quick kiss and excused herself to start making lunch. With a quick wave and a mumbled “hi” to my dad, I waited until they left the room before digging into the boxes and getting back to my search. All the photos of Katie I could find went straight into my book.

I had only asked to keep the one picture, but each new snapshot I found added to Katie’s life and I found that I could not let go of any of them. The pictures were filled with life and activity. Katie’s smile and obvious energy were contagious. I found myself grinning every time I stopped to look at a photo for too long. I wondered if we would have been close friends had she lived long enough to know me. The happy photos were bittersweet, knowing that Katie had not lived past sixteen. Sixteen. That thought sent pins and needles up and down my spine. I was almost sixteen myself.

The small amount of pictures I found echoed Katie’s short life, but having to dig them out of the piles no one had looked at for years affected my even worse. Katie had died and then was nearly forgotten by those who had loved her in life. Knowing the pain of loss had, in a way overridden love, sent a quiet panic through my mind. It made me shudder to think about it, and I hoped this was not a normal reaction to death. Would everyone put away my things if I were gone? Would David’s children know my name?

Sounds of my mom making lunch filtered out of the kitchen, as I searched the rest of the box I was working on for photos of Katie. The connection I had to my aunt grew with each new picture. I felt a need to understand why Katie died. While wondering what it had been like for Katie to confront death, I stumbled across another picture that looked like it might be my aunt.

Studying the photo intently, I was not sure what I had found. It looked just like Katie except for the clothes and hair style. Katie had been a child of the seventies, wearing bell-bottom jeans and flowers in her wild black hair more often than not. This lookalike was wearing a full skirt and button down blouse with a perfectly styled, bobbed haircut.

I turned the picture over and saw Maera 1959 printed in scrawling handwriting on the back. Who was this new ghost, I wondered. Their faces were almost identical, especially the eyes. This new photo was also black and white, but her startling silvery eyes could not be hidden by the colorless world.

Suddenly brought out of my wonder when my mom called me to the table for lunch, I stuck the photo I had just found into my book with the pictures of Katie. Stopping by my bedroom on the way to the kitchen, I pulled the drawer out of my nightstand and held the pictures over it. I wanted to hide the pictures away because of my mom’s warning about how my dad might react, but changed my mind at the last minute and headed back towards the kitchen. I wanted to know more about the photos, especially the newest one I had found, the one that was not Katie. I barely made it to the table before my question about the second picture burst out.

“Mom, who is Maera?”

“Maera? Um, I’m not sure. Let me see,” she said as she took the picture I was holding out to her. She looked at the back. “1959, hmm. I can’t remember. I’m sorry. I just haven’t looked at any of this stuff in so long because of the move.” She turned the picture towards her husband. “Honey, who’s Maera?” she asked him.

My dad turned away from the picture with a frown and said, “She was your grandfather’s sister, your great aunt.” Why had he not just said that when I first asked the question?

“Was?” I asked.

“She drowned when she was a kid. I don’t know much about her,” he said quietly.

Drowned as a kid? I wondered if my dad was thinking about his own sister. I hoped he was. Maybe if he thought about her more often he would eventually talk about her.

“How old was she?” I asked.

“I don’t know. My dad didn’t talk about her much,” he said taking a bite of his tuna sandwich and pushing the picture back across the table towards me.

My dad’s words bothered me. Maera died young, too? The coincidence was definitely not lost on me. Maybe because my dad saw death and sickness every day at the hospital, a young girl drowning was simply a sad occurrence and not something to dwell on too much, but I could not put the pictures down. I shook my head and sighed. I hated the thought of people dying, and the strangeness of the two girls dying young made me sad and somewhat concerned. Something felt a little off when I thought about it. The feeling was wrapped up in the strange compulsion I felt to learn my about my dead aunt. Glancing over at my dad, I could see that he did not want to continue the conversation. I wanted to push him, but the firm set of his jaw made me hold back. Setting the pictures back on the table, I sat down for lunch.

As the pungent tuna filled my mouth I kept wondering why they died and if the same thing could ever happen to me. I shook my head at my runaway imagination and tried to think more rationally. Even if the deaths were only a strange coincidence, it did bother me that my dad would not talk about his sister. Putting aside the uneasiness settling in my mind and the hard look on my dad’s face, I asked my dad about Katie.

“Dad,” I said, waiting for him to look up before finishing, “why don’t you talk about Katie? I didn’t even know that you had a sister.” A quick look from my mom almost made me regret the bringing up the topic.

My dad had turned away from the photo of Maera when my mom tried to show it to him. I don’t think he had even noticed that there was another photo on the table. He saw the photo now, and despite his wince, picked it up.

“Wow,” he muttered, “I can’t believe how alike they look.” He looked up at me, and stared at me as if he had never really seen me before “Even you, you look so much like my sister Katie. I never knew Maera, but look,” he said, pausing, but not turning the pictures for anyone else to see. “Isn’t it amazing how much the three of you look alike? It’s uncanny.”

My mom smiled warmly at him. She patted his arm in support, but I had not gotten an answer to my question yet. I doubted I’d have another chance any time soon to bring it up, so I pushed a little harder.

“But, why didn’t you ever tell me about her?”

“If I hadn’t taken her out riding that day, you would have been able to get to know her yourself,” he snapped. The photos dropped back to the table as he stood up and turned away. His meal was only half finished, but I stared at his back as he stalked out of the kitchen.

“Arra,” my mom sighed, “I told you he didn’t like to talk about Katie. Why did you have to bring it up?” She quickly cleared the dishes and put them in the sink before moving to follow after her husband.

I felt awful for pushing my dad, but why should I? I was just trying to find out about my own family. My dad should not pretend that Katie never existed. It was a terrible thing to do to someone.

“But, mom,” I said. She stopped and turned back. “I get that it’s hard for him to talk about her, but how could he just forget she ever existed?”

“Arra, he hasn’t forgotten. That’s the problem. He thinks about her all the time and blames himself for getting her killed. Would you want to talk about something like that all the time?” she asked.

“What if it happened to me, mom? Would everybody just stop talking about me and put away all the pictures of me, just so it wouldn’t hurt as bad? Could you do that?” I asked. I felt like I was on the verge of tears. I didn’t understand why I was so upset about this, but when my mom hurried over to my side, I wrapped my arms around her and tried to hide my tears.

“Honey, please don’t judge your dad so harshly. Maybe one day he’ll be able to talk about Katie more, but you have to give him time. And don’t worry about anyone forgetting you. I would never let that happen,” my mom said with an extra tight squeeze of my shoulders. “But why are we even talking about that. Nothing is going to happen to you. Just put it out of your mind for now, okay?”

Put it out of my mind. That was exactly what I did not want to happen, for me or the girls in the photos. But what else could I say. “Okay, Mom. I’m sorry I brought it up.” With a satisfied nod my mom left the kitchen and headed towards her room where I knew my dad was waiting. I wanted to believe my mom when she said nothing was going to happen to me, but as I looked down at the pictures again, I couldn’t help but feel that she was very wrong.