Free The Memento by Christy Ann Conlin

them, sometimes the dead do not come back to forgive. She will ask you to do something and you must not. There are some secrets that best remain untold.
    It’s a quiet night as I sit writing this. I can hear your breathing up in the loft. Jake is restless. The moon is small and high as a night bird flies across the dark western sky. The night bloomers are strong this evening and the wisteria is almost growing through the open window. Live your life well among the living, Fancy Mosher, for that shapes the life you will have among the dead.
    Remember that I love you. Remember what I have taught you, for you have already learned so much if only you will remember.
    Grampie    
    A big fat fish jumped up into the air and the sun glimmered on its golden body. It fell with a splash and I stood up, startled, the letter falling down on the polished stones. I didn’t know what Grampie taught me except for gardening and the names of trees and flowers and making my bed tidy. How could I remember what I didn’t know? He taught me how to call the birds. How to keep the house. How to read and write. How to sing. How to be still. They’d all played a terrible trick on me. Ma bringing me into theworld to fix her mistake, and Grampie for not telling me none of this when he was alive. Loretta, for helping him keep the secret. But it wasn’t even that clear-cut, which made it all the worse. I had a gift, what my mother and grandfather referred to as a memento, like it was something collected on a horrible holiday a long time ago. Whatever happened to my first-born brother, which only my Grampie and Ma seemed to know, and concealed from me.
    The water in the Wishing Pool settled. Would Grampie appear in the water and tell me what to do? The Mosher eyes staring up at me were my own. I grabbed handfuls of the small gemstones and starting throwing them in, handful after handful bashing the water, getting more and more angry and yelling until my throat hurt and I lost my balance and fell right into the Wishing Pool. There I sat, quiet and wet, like some horrid little statue.

4.
The Tea House
    W HEN I came out of the garden Loretta had my birthday supper set on the verandah off the back of the house. She’d gone and made the table pretty with a lace cloth and a vase of flowers and a basket of fresh-baked rolls wrapped in white linen. She had china plates and what she called sassy lemonade, lemonade with strawberry syrup served up in pink Depression glass. My hate was skulking away, and trying to haul it back was wearing me out. Plus the idea of chucking questions at her when she didn’t want to talk made me feel ashamed. Loretta had told me more in one afternoon than in all the time I’d known her. If I pushed she might fall apart and that made me nervous, for she was all I had holding things together. She didn’t even ask me why I was wet. “Don’t drip on the floor, dear,” was all she said, and she went back to smashing berries and whipping cream for my cake. For now we could carry on like I’d never found out about my apparent kinship with the deceased, or, as it seemed, their affinity for me.
    I went up to my room and put the letter on my bed. In the bathroom I dried off and braided my hair. I came back downstairs in a smocked sundress. Loretta was waiting, relieved to see me tidied and proper. It was the time when day and night come together, when the light is soft and you can catch a glimpse of the young in the elderly. The evening glow blurred the revelations—the memento, and what I had read in the letter, none of it seemed real.
    We made what Grampie always called idle natter as we ate supper. It was best that way for Loretta now looked pained, as though the delicious ham was giving her cramps. She needed a good sleep, she said, we both did. Where we sat we could see the grey flagstone walk leading around the corner of the house to the Annex, the northwest part of the house, the part they closed up after Charlie died.