The Probable Future

Luckily, Stella had no such fears. She ran to Elinor and hugged her. “I can’t believe I’m finally here.”

“Well, you are.” Elinor appraised her granddaughter: here was a forthright girl who wasn’t afraid to speak her mind. Here was a girl who wouldn’t slink around resenting a person until it was too late to make amends.

The woman in the raincoat approached more cautiously. She was wearing expensive leather boots and a splash of color on her lips, but in some ways she looked the same, just as worried and fretful an individual as she’d always been.

“The train was late,” Elinor Sparrow said to Jenny. The first words she’d said to her daughter in nearly twenty-five years and they had formed as a complaint. She sounded far more put out than she’d intended.

“Are you implying it’s somehow my fault?” Jenny was just as cold as ever, and now her hackles were raised. “I suppose I’m responsible for the train keeping to its timetable. Is that it?”

Stella stepped between them, anxious to terminate this particular argument before it got started.

“All she said was that the train was late. Mere statement of fact.”

Frankly, Stella sounded far more adult than either her mother or her grandmother. Silenced, Elinor and Jenny stared at each other. It was difficult to say who was more shocked by the other’s appearance. The well-cut dark hair, the fine lines around the eyes and the mouth. The white hair twisted into a knot, the cane, the withered spine. Twenty-five years, after all. A quarter of a century. It took a toll.

“Stella is right,” Jenny agreed. “You’re doing me a favor. I’m not going to fight with you.” She began to walk toward the parking lot. Just being in Unity gave her the chills, and Jenny buttoned her raincoat; she wished she’d worn a scarf. “I presume the dilapidated Jeep is yours?” she called over her shoulder.

“Was she always this nasty to you?” Stella asked as she and Elinor followed Jenny through the lot. She wanted her grandmother to slow down. She wanted all the time she could get with her. Stella had that fizzy feeling in her head and she was a bit breathless in the damp air. At the moment she’d spied her grandmother on the platform, she had seen how it would end, with snow and silence on a brilliant afternoon. She had seen they only had until the winter, and that wasn’t nearly enough.

“Not until I disappointed her.” Elinor was furious at herself for being so slow. It took ages for her to traverse the parking lot. Jenny was already getting into the front seat, and they weren’t even halfway there.

“That’s no excuse for her behavior.” Stella liked her grandmother, and she liked their secret history, the phone calls Jenny never knew about, the times she had turned to her grandmother for support and advice. “Everybody gets disappointed.”

When Elinor got into the Jeep, she found Jenny had rolled down the windows. “It smells like an old dog in here. I’m allergic. Not that you’d remember,” she said to her mother.

Stella was still out back, tossing her backpack and duffel bag over the rear gate of the Jeep.

“How was her birthday gift?” Elinor said to Jenny.

“Her gift,” Jenny said in a clipped tone, “is to be a normal thirteen-year-old girl who has no family nonsense to ruin her future.”

“I meant the model of Cake House I sent.”

“And that’s another thing, you may have sent it, but that house was mine. It wasn’t yours to give.”

“Well, if she did get anything else, some family trait, I hope it was something better than knowing other people’s dreams. That didn’t work out too well for you.”

Elinor could tell right away, the remark had stung. Jenny glared at her with those same dark eyes Elinor remembered so well, always reproaching her for one thing or another. Well, she might as well give Jenny something to be angry about, hadn’t she? She might as well tell the truth.

“Like knowing who’s a liar and judging them for the rest of their lives based on one or two mistakes? Would you say that’s a preferable talent, Mother?”

Stella pulled open the back door and climbed into the backseat.

“Fighting?”

Immediately, Elinor and Jenny fell silent. One was the lion, one the lamb, but which was which, it was impossible to tell.

“I’ve got a great idea,” Stella announced. “Let’s all go out to lunch together.”

“We can’t,” Jenny was quick to respond. “I want to get you settled and get back here to catch the three o’clock train to Boston.”