Free Legacy by Molly Cochran Page A

you may leave now or at any time, and we of course will never bother you again.”
    “But we wanted you to know that you’re not alone,” Mrs. Ainsworth said, stroking my hair.
    “I don’t want to leave,” I said. “Yet,” I added cautiously.
    Agnes’ lips curved into a slight smile. “At any rate, cowen believe that these special abilities—the sort of thing that you’ve begun to exhibit—are not gifts, but merely aberrations of normal behavior. Many of them don’t believe these abilities even exist at all. Everything to them is a trick, an illusion, a lie.”
    “Or crazy,” Mrs. Ainsworth added.
    Agnes didn’t say anything to that. The two of them just sat for a moment, absorbed in their own thoughts and, it seemed to me, inexpressibly sad.
    “Was she?” I asked. Both women looked at me, their heads turning in unison. “My mother. Was she crazy?”
    Neither spoke for a moment. Finally Mrs. Ainsworth said, “We don’t know, dear.” Her voice cracked. “She was the mostgifted witch in Whitfield. Perhaps too gifted. Her abilities may have been too great for her mind to bear. We know it was very hard for her to see some of the things she saw.”
    “The Darkness,” I said. “That’s what she called it, ‘The Darkness, with fire as its soul.’”
    The old woman’s face sagged. “We call it the Darkness because we cannot see it. All we see are the results of its power, the evil it spreads.” She dabbed at her eyes. “It was, however, well known to your mother. She had been in its presence at a young age.”
    She took a long, ragged breath. “You tell her, Agnes.”
    My aunt templed her fingers, thinking carefully before she spoke. “Your mother possessed a most rare and peculiar talent. She was what we call an oracle, one who can see the future. Like all great gifts, it was both a blessing and a curse.
    “But to tell you about my sister, I must first tell you about our parents. They were intense, passionate people, a very political couple during very political times. When Agatha and I were fourteen, they visited a remote community of expatriates in Africa. It was supposed to be some kind of people’s paradise, where everyone shared things equally, and there wouldn’t be any kind of government interference. No taxes, no wars.”
    “Unfortunately, that didn’t turn out to be the case,” Mrs. Ainsworth said. “Thank God you had the flu, Agnes.”
    My mother’s twin cleared her throat. “Yes, it was just the three of them, our parents and Agatha. The day after they arrived, gunfire broke out in the compound. Almost everyone was killed.”
    “My . . . grandparents?” I asked hoarsely.
    Agnes nodded. Mrs. Ainsworth covered her eyes with her handkerchief. Her wrinkled hand was trembling like a leaf in the wind. I put my arm around her. “Agatha made it back home, though,” she said. “She was never the same, but she came back.”
    “For the rest of her life, Agatha was obsessed with the Darkness.”
    “And so, Katy,” Mrs. Ainsworth said gently, “we can’t really say with any certainty that your mother wasn’t . . . mentally incapacitated by this event.” She wrung the handkerchief in her hands. “I think it may have been why she married a cowen. To get away from her visions.”
    “As if she could.”
    “Then again, the Ainsworth women always marry for love.” The old woman smiled. “Whatever demons she battled, dear, your mother did love your father. Very much.”
    If only he could have loved her back,
I thought.
    “I believe she planned to move away from Whitfield and raise you as cowen,” Agnes said. “Your father was already in the process of changing his name back to what it had been when . . . when the incident happened with the Shaw baby.”
    “Why did she do it?” Mrs. Ainsworth whispered. Clearly, she had asked herself the same agonizing question for the past ten years. “How could she even think of doing such a thing?”
    Agnes shook her head.
    “Your father