Download as an ebook: https://dl.bookfunnel.com/kjx94g8syg
Ketera lay her cheek on her crossed arms and watched Papa’s shoulders as his arms glided across the hull of the canoe.
Back and forth. Back and forth. The soft rasp of the plane as it glided over the dark wood matched rhythm with her breathing in and out. In and out
Papa’s voice rumbled low in his chest as he hummed Moonlight Sonata. He always hummed that while he worked.
In the back of the workshop, a large tarp covered the real project. That one wasn’t a wooden boat. It was what had started Papa’s love for boat-making, he told her. But that wasn’t just any ship. It had taken every bit of his engineering expertise and more. Men and women who drifted in and out with clipboards, blueprints, and low voices were always there to fill in the holes.
The Wells was their project, but it was Papa’s baby.
His voice swelled again as he shifted his weight and moved towards the bow of the little canoe. This was just for him, he said. To take his boys and his little girl out on the lake.
Ketera knew better. Everything was about preparation. Everything.
Papa knew how to make it fun. Hunting. Fishing. Races in the lake and long talks while they ran in the snow. He never made her go alone.
“What do you think?” Papa pulled back from the canoe and sent her a smile. His white teeth flashed as his dark skin wrinkled more than usual.
“A little more off the starboard side.” Ketera pointed. “There.”
“Hmmmm. Good eye.”
Papa’s job was to build. To build and to teach her to run and swim and climb.
Mama had taken over from Grandma on everything else. Star charts. Math problems. The endless stack of science books. It was harder for Mama to make things fun, but she tried.
Grandma couldn’t teach her anymore. Not since her mind had started going.
Papa finished the last few strokes on the side of the canoe.
“You ready to go home?”
Ketera sighed. “I have science homework at home.”
“For school or…”
“Both.” Ketera unfolded from the stool and stuffed her feet back into her boots. “But I guess that means we should probably go now, instead of waiting until midnight.”
“When did you get to be so responsible?”
Ketera slung her arm around Papa’s shoulders. Only, it didn’t quite reach and she ended up just sort of hovering her hand half way up. “I’m growing up, Papa. You can’t keep me little forever.”
That didn’t have to be said. Mama and Papa never had the luxury of giving her a childhood. At least, that is what Mama always cried about to Papa when she thought Ketera wasn’t listening. Maybe that was why Mama babied Lamar so much.
But maybe Mama and Papa wanted to keep her little, because their time was running short.
Thinking about that made Ketera’s chest hurt, so she tried not to.
Papa shivered as he stepped out into the night. “Starting to get cool.” He said. “Almost that time of year.”
“Almost.” Ketera repeated. She stuffed her hands into her jeans and scuffed her shoes on the asphalt.
The holidays were a mixed bag for her. Her friends always got so excited. As far back as she could remember, while her friends wrote letters to Santa and checked the presents under the tree, she was marking off the calendar for another reason.
Ten more Thanksgivings. Ten more Christmases. Ten more times celebrating James’s birthday and the New Year at the same time.
And then she would pack up the Wells and leave. According to a technology she didn’t understand, Ketera was the only person capable of traveling across the known universe to the trappist system where Earth had planted a colony a generation ago. A colony that would, supposedly, wage war on earth in a distant future.
Thanks to some sort of trans-time communication, Grandma had been the first to get the message, and she would be the one who would go.
The grass, coated with a layer of frost, crunched a bit underfoot. Ketera paused to look out over the pale blue lake, glittering through dark trees.
The porch light was still on. Mama never turned it off until all her family was back home. Would she turn it off when Ketera left for good?
Papa pulled the screen door open and stepped aside so Ketera could go in first. A burst of warm air hit her in the face. Mama had a fire going and Coyote was laid out by it, her large ears flopped back and her long, yellow fur ruffled slightly by the air vent blowing out heat with a soft rattle. She opened her eyes and her tail thumped the floor twice, but she was too comfortable to be bothered to move.
Loud thumps and a yelp sounded from upstairs.
“Boys,” Dad hollered, in his deepest voice.
Ketera snickered and slipped into the kitchen. A spoon sat in a puddle of melted ice cream beside an otherwise clean sink.
It wasn’t fair. Lamar and James had the rest of their lives to eat ice cream and sweets. Once she departed for the Trappist system, she would be living off paste. At least until she found the lost colony.
But Lamar and James got to have ice cream whenever they wanted. The real stuff, not the alternative crap that tasted like frozen glue.
She only got to have real sugar once or twice a month. A twelve year old should be able to enjoy life a bit more. They shouldn’t have to worry about staying in perfect health.
Tucking the slight bitterness away she opened the cupboard and took out a bag of popcorn.
“Mama, how is Grandma doing?” she asked, finding her way into the living room.
Mama had a notebook in her hand and was sifting through mounds of equations piled up on the page like snowdrifts. She tapped the end of her red pen on the edge of the spiral, calling her mind back from wherever it went when she was working.
Mama always said that she was bad at math. She didn’t want to be a scientist. She’d once confided in Ketera that her hope when she was a little girl was to be a pilot in the air force. It was too bad she didn’t do that. She would have been good at it. But she’d known since she was young, much like Ketera had, that her daughter would one day have to jettison through space to another solar system, so she had opted for science and NASA instead. A career choice which had probably cost her a lot more than Ketera had ever been able to fully understand.
After she’d finally retrieved her thoughts, Mama turned to look at Ketera with sad eyes. “She’s doing okay, honey. But I don’t think it will be long now.”
Ketera slumped in the chair and glanced down the hall to the room where Grandma lay in her hospice bed. It was kinda scary in there. Not because Ketera was afraid of death or anything. Mostly it was because she always knew Grandma as strong and independent. Seeing her now, hooked up to hoses and beeping machines, was frightening.
Grandma was supposed to be the one to get her through this. When Mama and Papa and all the teams of scientists were left behind, Grandma was supposed to be there.
It was more than that, though. It was a sobering reminder that she, like Grandma, was a fragile human being. Even with all the skills she was learning, and with the Wells’ loving design, and the technology that would be packed into every square inch of him… she was still just a person. And she could fail.
If she did…
“Did you want to go in? She’s probably still awake.”
Ketera shook her head and dug her hand into the popcorn as quickly as she could. “No, it’s okay. I have some homework to get done.”
Mama cast one of “those” looks at Papa, probably thinking that Ketera hadn’t seen.
Ketera pulled her latest book out of the built-in “magazine” pocket in their ancient side table and retrieved her highlighter. This one was a book detailing the months and years leading up to the day the colonizers embarked to the Trappist system.
Grandma could have told her all this. She was there. But Ketera wasn’t going to complain too much. Compared to some of the other books on her reading list, this was easy.
A loud beep rang out from Mama’s phone. She didn’t even glance at it before climbing to her feet and pulling the book out of Ketera’s hands.
“Mama!” Ketera reached for the tome.
“Your grandma needs help. Why don’t you come with me?” It wasn’t Mama’s ‘asking’ voice. For whatever reason, she thought this was really important. She never pushed the boys into seeing Grandma. At least, not the way she did with Ketera.
“But I have homework.” Usually that excuse worked.
“For once, we are going to put family before homework.” Mama had that piercing look that told Ketera that she wouldn’t be allowed any more arguments. Instead of trying to push her luck, she dropped her highlighter back into the pen holder and climbed to her feet.
The smell and warmth of the fire fell away as they traveled down the short hall to the room where Grandma lay. The bitter scent of antiseptics and medicines filled Ketera’s nostrils as they approached the door.
It was a blessing that the hospice could come there, and Grandma could stay in their home. Ketera knew that, she believed it. But even if it would be harder on Grandma to have her in the hospice facility, Ketera couldn’t help but wish that it had happened that way.
She didn’t want to feel like that. She loved Grandma. But it would be easier if she wasn’t here, reminding Ketera of the one goodbye that was coming too soon.
It was selfish to be thinking about what was easier. Losing someone you loved wasn’t supposed to be easy. And it wasn’t supposed to be something you just pushed aside and forgot about. Maybe Ketera just wasn’t as brave as everyone hoped she was.
“Hey, Mama.” Mama pushed open the door and stepped inside. The lights were off, but the TV was always on these days and it cast a strange, blue haze over everything in the room.
Grandma was propped up on multiple pillows in a nest of blankets. She barely even looked like the woman Ketera had known. Her grandma was running marathons well into her seventies and early eighties. Her grandma was more muscular at eighty-five than Ketera was even now.
This shadow of Grandma was nothing like that. She was wrinkled and wraith-like, like her skin had deflated when she breathed out too hard.
Her hair was thinning, and matted, even as much as Mama tried to help her keep it in place. She smiled, a gentle sort of smile that said she was already mostly gone from this world.
“Lauryn, honey.” Grandma pointed across the room to the counter. “I’ve got a leather notebook over there, in the top drawer. Would you mind bringing it to me?”
“Of course.” Mama crossed the room in a few broad steps and pulled out the first of three top drawers.
Grandma’s eyes fixed onto Ketera. “It’s good to see you, hon. Come sit by your Grandma.” She indicated the chair beside her.
Ketera tried not to stare at how much Grandma’s hands shook as she sat on the edge of the chair.
She clasped her own hands together and stared down at her entwined fingers. They looked like the tightly knit pieces of a zipper.
“Here you go.” Mama handed Grandma a thick, leather-bound book. On the front the letter V, cast from metal, was riveted in place, and a long leather string wrapped around it. The book was well-used. The durable leather was floppy and soft, and the string was the only thing keeping it closed on yellowed, thick-cut paper.
“Do you need anything else?” Mama asked. She paused and grabbed a cup, long straw attached, and held it up for Grandma. “You should drink something.”
Grandma obediently accepted the straw, but her dark eyes stayed on Ketera.
Now was her chance. She could just slip out with Mama and get back to the predictable bore of the biographies, histories, and science books.
“Ketera, hon, stay here a while.” Grandma’s words caught Ketera like a chain. She almost pretended she hadn’t heard her, but there was a line between emotions, which someone couldn’t help, and being downright cruel. She settled back in the chair and tried to tuck her fear back where it belonged.
Mama drifted out, closing the door softly behind her.
“I think my time is coming.” Grandma started to shift in her bed, but gave up quickly. “I just can’t get comfortable.”
“Do you need help?” Ketera’s voice was barely above a squeak. She cleared her throat and tucked her folded hands between her knees. How could she help?
“That’s kind, but I’m okay.” She lay her arms over the quilt and kept staring at Ketera.
“I’m sorry.” What else were you supposed to say to someone standing on the edge of that cliff called death? Now Ketera finally could say she understood people’s awkwardness around her. The ones who knew of course. Not everything made for casual conversation.
“No need to be. It’s the natural course of life. There is a beginning and there has to be an end.” Grandma nodded knowingly. “The hard part is to accept that and not allow yourself to feel cheated.”
“But I am.” Ketera spoke up. She wasn’t just cheated by losing Grandma, she was losing everything. Others would get full and happy lives, and die surrounded by friends and family. Thanksgiving, Christmases, New Years, Birthdays. All celebrated surrounded with love.
She was getting shot across the universe on the word of a hallucination claiming to be from the future.
Ketera used to wish that Grandma was just crazy, and her visions from the future were signs of her insanity.
That was horrible too. Why was she such a horrible person?
“I can see how you feel that way. Especially since your life-span will look very different from what people would want to call ‘natural’.” Grandma’s eyes grew sad. “But it hasn’t been the first time we’ve faced something that seems unfair. And it won’t be the last.”
Ketera averted her eyes. “I know.”
“In the book of Ecclesiastes, in the Bible, it says ‘to everything there is a season’. It is not wrong for you to mourn, in season, Ketera. Whether you are mourning me, or mourning your family, your life on earth. There is a time for it.” Grandma’s voice was getting softer. As if she were using up her last reserves of strength. “Those feelings you have, they are not evil, and they are not wrong. But they cannot last forever. Their time will pass, and then you need to be able to fight for the next season.”
Ketera’s eyes burnt and she pinched her lips together as her head throbbed with bottled up tears. “What if I’m not strong enough to fight?”
“You aren’t.” Grandma’s voice was barely a whisper now. “But you have never had to fight alone. You will have our love behind you, and you will have me beside you.”
“It’s not you. Not really.” The hot tears spilled over and ran down Ketera’s cheeks leaving trails of ashes in their place. “You’re leaving me. I don’t want a replacement. I don’t want her. I want my grandma.”
The room was silent except for the low volume of Little Women playing on the television.
“We have sacrificed a lot. This family,” Grandma said, her voice barely audible above Jo March. “Your Mama, Papa, brothers and I have done that for you. But that won’t give you strength forever. “
“I thought you said you were behind me?”
“We are,” Grandma rasped. Her breath rattled in her chest. Her grip became loose. “But if you are going to make it, you have to have something more than training and technology. You have to have a desire to succeed. If you are able to turn this into your battle, nothing can stop you.”
Her words faded into a slow, shallow pattern of breathing. Ketera placed her hand back on the mattress and watched her carefully for a while.
When she was certain that she was still alive, Ketera slipped off the chair and headed toward the door. Grandma needed rest. And Ketera had a lot more work to do. The minutes were slipping away.
“I’ll be seeing you soon.” Ketera nearly missed the words. At first she thought she had imagined them.
But Grandma didn’t seem to have anything else to say. She lay completely still on the bed, illuminated by the occasional, colorful display from the television.
Maybe it was good that she had stayed here. It was still scary to see her that way, but maybe there was a time for that, just like Grandma said.
A soft sigh as Ketera left the room ushered in a stillness and peace. Maybe the time for fear had passed.
>><<
Ketera folded back the covers on her bed to find the velvety surface of her favorite blanket. Sixteen-year-old girls weren’t supposed to have comfort items anymore. Especially not sixteen-year-old girls on whom the fate of the world, at least some of it, hung. But Mama had never changed that blanket, even when it got too short for the bed.
She ran her fingers along the fabric and let the tears slip down her face and into her hair, wetting her pillow and neck. Was anyone else awake tonight? Everyone? No one?
It was four years ago tomorrow that Grandma had passed. Grandma’s funeral had been full of people. Most were coworkers from the space center. Grandma didn’t have a lot of family left and Mama was an only child. Grandpa had passed years ago, and Grandma’s sisters were gone.
There seemed to be eyes on Ketera through the entire service. Not because it was her family they were mourning, but because Ketera was losing something else.
She was losing her mentor. But unlike everyone else, Ketera wasn’t losing her for good.
Mama told her she was lucky. She would get to see Grandma again. And she would get to see her young, strong, and happy.
Mama said she would never be able to erase the image of Grandma in the hospital bed, and all she wanted was to remember her the way she’d once been.
Ketera glanced at the clock. It should be today. Sometime within the next twenty-four hours.
Beside the clock sat Grandma’s journal. The leather gave off a gentle, familiar scent if she got just close enough. She had combed through those pages looking for some sort of hint of what lay ahead.
When she was younger, she used to ask Grandma about her mission to the new colony. Would she make it? Would she be able to convince the colonists not to launch their attack on Earth? Maybe war was inevitable. Maybe there was such a thing as destiny and she wouldn’t make it no matter how hard she tried.
Maybe the war ship that formed Plan B was the only thing that could save the future, and she was leaving her family for nothing.
Grandma had been there…. In some sense.
But the journal seemed to indicate that what Grandma had always told Ketera was not a lie. She really didn’t remember what happened. She had hypothesized a few different reasons why that might be. In the end she had decided that it all hinged on what Ketera did or didn’t do. The future wasn’t set in stone. So even if she had experienced it herself, it hadn’t really happened.
You couldn’t have memories of the future.
“I don’t think it’s working,” a voice said.
Ketera jerked upright. The room was empty. Just the shadows of her curtains, occasionally fluttering as the heat jogged them.
“Maybe we should stop. At least for today. I mean, did you guys ever stop to think that everyone was right and I really am crazy?” The sound drifted through the room again.
“Hello?” Ketera pulled her feet out of the warmth of the bed and squinted. A shape was beginning to form in the center of the room. A girl, the same age as her. She was willowy, with wild hair framing a clean, wide eyed face.
Ketera clicked on the lamp. The face was one she would know anywhere even without the burden of age. Grandma was here.
“Hello,” the girl said. “My name is Virginia.”
