Free Unthinkable by Nancy Werlin Page B

held a tall,
fragile glass of orange liquid aloft in one hand.
The other hand clutched Lucy’s arm as if she could not
bear to let go.
“Miranda,” Fenella said aloud, softly.
“That picture was taken the day Miranda came back to
us.” Lucy moved to Fenella’s side. “The doorbell rang, and
there was Miranda, on the front porch.” Lucy paused. “Not
too different from you this morning, Fenella.”
“You don’t call her Mother.” Fenella kept looking at the
photograph. Zach’s arms were confident and possessive
around Lucy and his attention was wholly on her and the
baby, while Lucy watched her mother with soft eyes. For
her part, Miranda looked straight out of the picture as if she
could see Fenella looking in at her, sometime in the future.
“No, I don’t,” Lucy said. “Soledad is my mom. Miranda
doesn’t mind. She picked Soledad and Leo for me.”
Soledad said, “We’re both of us your mothers.” She added
to Fenella, “There’s no such thing as too many mothers, especially when there’s a baby to take care of.”
Lucy laughed. “There’s no such thing as too many grandmothers, either. Dawn has four! Miranda and Soledad, and
then Zach’s mom—she lives in Arizona. And there’s Dawn’s
biological grandmother too. Her name is Brenda Spencer.
She takes care of Dawn at least two days a week.”
“Dawn has five grandmothers, with Fenella here.”
Fenella stiffened.
Soledad was shaking her head in bemusement. “Not that
anybody would ever believe it, to look at Fenella.”
“It makes me feel like Dawn is really safe,” said Lucy.
“So many people to take care of her and love her.”
The word safe had had the impact of a rock pitched at the
side of Fenella’s head. She felt the cat insinuate himself, rubbing against her ankles.
She put the photograph down and picked up a small one of
Zach and Lucy standing in the living room, facing each other,
holding hands. They were wearing formal clothes—Lucy in
white—and they looked both terrified and transcendent. The
dog Pierre stood beside them, with a ribbon around his neck.
He was snarling toward someone. That person was not in the
picture, but Fenella knew it must be Padraig.
She put the photograph back down. “Your wedding took
place here in this house?”
“Yes.” A smile curved Lucy’s mouth. “We crammed in
more people than I could ever have imagined. I thought
Mom and Dad had lost it.” She pointed at a different photo.
“Here I am with my friend Sarah. She was my maid of
honor. In the background, you can see how crowded it was.”
Fenella looked carefully at the crowd, but Padraig wasn’t
in this photograph either. She wondered whether Lucy fully
appreciated what a narrow escape she had had, or if the
safety and ordinariness of her current life had blotted away
the reality of the past.
“We can show you the complete set of wedding pictures,
if you want,” Soledad offered. “There’s video too.”
Fenella reached for more photos and listened as they
were explained. A solemn young Soledad and Leo standing on the front porch of the house, after they had bought
it. A three-year-old Lucy in a high chair with applesauce
smeared all over her mouth, looking startlingly like her
daughter. Leo with Lucy, aged six, mounted on his shoulders. Soledad crushing a teenaged Lucy in her arms. A
twelve-year-old Zach spraying the ten-year-old Lucy with
water from a garden hose. A close-up of Leo playing guitar
and singing, on Lucy’s wedding day. Dawn and Miranda on
the floor of the living room, building a decidedly unstable
structure out of wooden blocks.
The cat had butted his head insistently against her ankles.
Pick me up. She’d stooped for him, and he had craned his
neck and looked at the pictures too.
What did it mean to destroy safety? How should Fenella
know? She had not felt safe in four hundred years.
The night ticked inexorably away. Fenella watched the cat
sleep.
She was still thinking about