Free Rivulet by Jamie Magee Page A

shocking; she had always had her opinions but thought it rude to display them openly.
    “Working on it,” I said so quietly that I barely heard myself. I just couldn’t believe this, that she was okay, that she looked so good, the way I always remembered her to be.
    “Your uncle is trapped by her, and if you are not careful you will be, too.”
    “What do you mean ‘trapped’? He’s sick with grief, not trapped but that will be over now that he knows you’re okay.”
    Gran moved her head from side to side slowly. “He was trapped long ago. Genevieve, I need you to fight her, get her out of our home, set my son free so I can have peace, set them all free.”
    ‘All?’ What did she mean by that? “Let me go get him. I’ll call Ben, too, see what we can do to speed things up.”
    “I believe you have won your battle with the law, but she is not going to leave so easily,” Gran said, gripping my arm, telling me to listen to her.
    “Ben told you I won? Why didn’t he tell me?”
    “He didn’t have the chance.”
    “OK, well, then I’ll order her out, get a court order or something.”
    Gran smiled, but it was a painful smile. “Genevieve, dear, what lesson did your parents strive to teach all of you?”
    The agony in my heart caused my eyes to glass over and the ice around us to thicken. “To face our demons.”
    “Why have you not done that?”
    I looked away, not wanting to answer the real question she was asking me. “I’ve been trying to face her. Ben has been handling the case because he knows what he’s doing.”
    “Rasure is not your demon; she is the one you see, the one you focus all your energy on, and you do that so you will not have to discover who you are.”
    She wanted to talk about the ice, why I was the way I was, but I wasn’t ready to go down that road just yet. I fought to forget or overcome this curse every minute of every day, the last thing I wanted to do was understand what I did to deserve this.
    “Which demon shall I face first, then? The ice, the lack of normal dreams, the visions, my addiction to the memories in the North Wing—which one? What order?” I asked desperately. I wasn’t asking her to tell me what to do, I was trying to tell her that by facing Rasure I was facing the one thing I could change, the one thing I had the power to make go away.
    “Your past does not emphatically state who you are, but it is a part of you, it is something you can choose to embrace or break away from. This old lady has a feeling that you will not want to so easily discard the past that is woven into your soul.”
    “If the past I saw in the North Wing is truly mine, then I know life cannot get better. That is a fantasy, and in real life I’m battling Rasure, this odd curse, and my fear of commitment.”
    She laughed. “You fear no such thing.”
    God, you’d have thought this conversation was happening ten years ago, when she was vibrant, full of life—not today, not right after she left death’s door.
    My night terror raced through my mind as I stared into her eyes. “The camera,” I said, taking in a deep breath. “In my dream, I went back for that camera. I nearly died trying to reach it. Are you telling me to develop that film, understand that past?”
    She didn’t bother to tell me yes or no. She had figured me out years ago. If you wanted me to do something, really wanted me to, then you had to make it seem like it was my idea.
    “I think I could have ruined that film years ago. The first time I touched it, I froze it. Over the years, I’ve bound to have washed it out. I would rather think there are images there than know that there aren’t.” That wasn’t completely a lie.
    “I see,” was all she said.
    “Why do I feel like you know something that you are not saying? Why does this feel like a dream or something? I was watching you die days ago.”
    Gran gave me one more painful smile. “I took you to that North Wing long ago so you would understand your