Chapter Nine

Shaken, I left my grandpa’s home in a much worse state than I had arrived. He had really scared me with his revelations. I had 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 was bewildered by the sudden change in direction my life had taken. It was hard to believe what he was saying, but something in me could not deny his words. Now, I was truly afraid for my life. I wished I had never found Katie’s picture.

The icy truth of that thought sunk deep. That was exactly the kind of thing I had criticized my father for earlier. It was too hard to think about it, so just pretend the problem never existed in the first place. A quick tear slid past my lashes. I had to follow this through, no matter where it led. The first step was to follow my grandpa’s advice and look for the others.

Still brooding about everything I was feeling and thinking, I sulked into the house and headed straight for my room. Unpacked or not, my room felt like the only place I could really focus. And I really needed to focus for a few minutes, at least. I rounded the corner to my room and felt my plans of slipping into a hopefully peaceful sleep were dispelled when my mom called me to the kitchen.

What was she going to complain about now? I left the house for a few hours. That should have made her happy. Didn’t that earn me a least a little guilt free time alone in my room? My feet drug as I approached the kitchen.

“Where have you been, Arrabella? You didn’t even bother to leave me a note,” my mom demanded. “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 said. In my family, calling my dad away from work was the absolute last resort. If my mom ever followed through, there had better be a life or death reason for it. If there wasn’t, there probably would 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 to do it. I was worried about you.” My mom took a firm stance I knew all too well. If her questions were not satisfied, I knew grounding would be quick to follow.

Considering my own reasons for disappearing that morning, and considering the fact that I had left the house all on my own just the day before, I felt perfectly justified in taking off. Still, I knew my mother would not excuse me without an explanation. Swallowing my irritation, I put on my sweetest smile, and said, “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 softened quite a bit.

“Because,” I said. Why wasn’t she just happy I had gone to visit him? She been thrilled about the idea yesterday. My mom’s lips tightened. Because was 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 asked, a smile smoothing over the glare.

“A little,” I lied.

“I’m sorry for snapping at you, honey. I didn’t remember that you mention 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 said, “I’m glad you went to see Grandpa. He’s so excited to have us near him again.”

“Sorry I worried you, Mom.” The hug tightened.

“Did you have any lunch yet?” my mom asked.

“Not unless you count hot chocolate as lunch,” I replied, 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 said, herding me to the kitchen table. The pleasure of having me back home safely brightened her face and I could almost see her checking off another notch for me moving toward well adjusted. My mom seemed so pleased that she failed to notice when my sullen mood took over again. She spread 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 came out of my melancholy and the desperation for answers returned. “Sure, Mom, no problem. I wanted to look for some of the people grandpa was telling me about all morning anyway.”

My grandpa had told me that there were more girls like Maera and Katie. I wanted to fight the idea, but I needed to know who they were. I felt sure that if I could find enough information I could avoid whatever course had already been laid out for me by whoever my grandpa thought was making the choices. I hurriedly ate the roast beef sandwich my mom had set in front of me and dove back into the piles of scattered photo album pages.

Leaving the stacks of pictures even less organized than when I began, I searched 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 discussed the ins and outs of building a family history. I felt the slightest twinge of guilt at misleading her, but I pushed that away and chocked it up to what had to be done. As long as I feigned interest in my mom’s stories and advice, the growing mess I was creating seemed to go unnoticed.

I had never before been so grateful for my mom’s obsession with genealogy. It had always just seemed like endless piles of papers and pictures and stacks of notebooks to me. Now as I truly looked through them I saw so much more. In the piles of photos were many generations of relatives, most of whom I had never met or even heard of, but every one of them had lived a life worth remembering. Wondering what the little man with the bowler had done for a living or what was if his wife’s wicker basket, I found another photo.

Not surprised when I found two more pictures with traits matching my own, my stomach still turned with each new discovery. The weight on me seemed to deepened as I searched. I had to keep reminding myself that I needed to do this. Along with several more pictures of Katie and Maera, I found several 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 sat in an old fashioned family portrait dated 1845.

I kept searching after finding the picture of Victoria, but I found no other pictures of the raven haired girls. Eventually my mom excused herself to make some tea, and I laid the pictures out and stared at them. Yes, I had found more girls who looked like Katie, but did they share more than that? I was 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 held out as long as I could. The need to discover what was happening to my family grew stronger every moment I sat staring at their faces. Giving in to the nagging feeling, I wandered into the kitchen. Drinking a glass of iced tea, my mom looked up at me when I stepped into the room.

Casually, I asked, “Hey, Mom, would you mind if I looked through some of your genealogy binders.”

Laughing at the odd request, she was still more than happy to fuel my supposed new found curiosity. “Sure, Arra. Why don’t you bring them over to the table?”

“Okay,” I said.

I quickly retrieved the notebooks from a box in the living room and brought them to the kitchen table. Continuing to organize the cupboards, my mom glanced over at me every so often as I began searching the pages for the two long dead girls. Every page I turned that did not hold their names sent both fear and relief down my spine. Although it took me so long to get through a single page that the mix of emotions could not come very often.

“Do you need some help?” my mom asked.

“Uh, that’s okay,” I replied. The last thing I wanted to do was explain to my mom what I was really looking for. I could hardly think of a plausible lie to explain my interest in the forms. Quietly I hoped mom would give up organizing the kitchen and return to the photo albums in the other room. After my “help” you could 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 explained. She took the chair next to me, settling in for a detailed lesson.

What else could I do but accept her offer? Pushing her away would only provoke more questions. “Yeah, I guess they are a little confusing,” I said.

Nodding her head in agreement, my mom pointed to the top of the page and began explaining. There was much more information on one page than I had expected. My mom showed me where to find the names of the parents of the family the worksheet was about, then how to find the children’s names as well. There was 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 asked.

I turned my face to look out the window, unable to trust my features not to betray my uneasiness. “No, I was just curious,” I said. I felt bad lying to my mom, but the truth would 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 smiled hoping my explanation would hold up.

Smiling even wider than before, my mom put a hand on my shoulder. “You know, Grandpa was the one who inspired me to start researching our family history too. When your father and I were dating, Alden was always telling me stories about one person or another. To be perfectly honest,” she said 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 said. I remembered how my grandpa had praised my mom’s work, but his disappointment that she did not know any of the stories had come with the praise. “Have you ever thought of writing down some of his stories?”

“I have,” she admitted, “but I’m not very talented when it comes to writing narratives. Maybe this is a project you should consider taking on.” She patted my shoulder. “How was his doctor’s appointment? Did he say anything about it?”

“Just that his cholesterol is still too high,” I said, thankful for the change in topics. “He said he was fine, though.”

“He always says that,” my mom said. The frown on her face said she did 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 shrugged and smiled. I doubted it would do any good, but I didn’t want to see my grandpa leave me any earlier than he had to.

“You should think about helping Grandpa write his family’s stories down. He won’t always be around to tell them,” she said.

“I’ll think about it, Mom. Thanks for the help with the forms,” I said as she moved back toward the living room, looking distracted.

“Sure, dear. I’ll be working on the photo albums for a while.”

“Okay, Mom.”

My search drug on for the rest of the afternoon, but the time was definitely not wasted. After a considerable amount of time spent getting used to the way the full page forms were organized, I started flipping through the pages with ease. Finally, I came across an entry for Elizabeth Malo. Victoria’s entry was many pages deeper into the binder. I happened upon it just as my mom came back into the kitchen and asked me to clean up for dinner. Quickly noting the death date I flipped the notebook closed.

Elizabeth Malo was born in nineteen hundred two and died in nineteen hundred eighteen. The picture I’d found of Victoria had been dated 1845, but she was apparently only twelve in that picture, and sadly died four years later. I wished I could say I was 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 sent fear crawling down my spine, though. Even with only four links, I knew the chain would continue, even past my mom’s records.

When my mom asked me to clear the notebooks out of the room so the table could be set for dinner, I truly felt like giving up. I did not want to find anything else. I was so disheartened and worried that I honestly considered putting everything I had learned back into their boxes and simply waiting, waiting for whatever was going to find me. It was beyond simply pretending I had never seen Katie’s picture. What I knew could not be taken back any more. Did I really want to know what was going to happen anyway? Could it in any way make it better, especially if I could do nothing to escape my fate?

All through dinner I wrestled with whether I would continue my search. Grandpa had given me the choice. He promised to keep working whether I continued or not. And to be honest, he really didn’t sound like he thought I could do anything that would really matter. Would it make that much of a difference?

My fear compelled me to give up, but how could I know what was coming and simply sit and wait for death to swallow me. If there was something hunting the women of my family, then finding the reason, or the hunter, could stop everything. I had no illusions of becoming some kind of Hollywood heroine, saving the day in the nick of time, but perhaps I could still do something. I refused to turn myself over to some unseen power, walking meekly to my last breath.

I watched my mom clear the table and prepare a plate for my dad as I tried to decide what to do. My dad would not get home until after ten o’clock, but he never missed my mom’s meals. My mom’s practiced movements unfortunately held no divine inspiration for me. Dragging the books and pictures I had been searching into my bedroom, I dropped it on my bed and knew there really wasn’t any choice to make anyway. Finding the truth was the only real way to go. Spreading everything I had acquired on my bedspread, I surveyed the collage. What was going on? Determined to find the answers, I settled onto the only bare spot on the bed.