“Why is she doing this? I don’t understand.”
Gram looked away. “There’s nothin’ to understand. Penny’s just mad, doin’ what mad people do.”
“This goes way past mad! Gram, please! Don’t send me to the cotillion without eye shadow! You have got to tell me why she is so riled!”
She was quiet for a time. “All right, Gen. I expect if I don’t tell you, someone else will.”
My heart did a double thump. Now that I’d asked for the truth, I wasn’t at all sure I wanted to hear it.
I cowgirled up. “I’m listening.”
She looked at me, still standing there holding the wish lists under my arm. “Sit, honey. You’re making me nervous.”
I sat down, facing her, with my back against one of our termite-chewed porch beams.
“So, what happened is,” Gram began, “some trouble came up. With some people. And there was some hurt feelings and some folks got mad. Then there was a sad to-do, but time passed and now, for the most part, it’s done with.” She gave me a fuzzy little half-smile. “You see?”
“I . . . think I’m gonna need a few more details,” I said.
“Right. Course you will.” She smoothed her skirt. And started picking lint off it. Then she took off her glasses and started cleaning them on her shirt.
“Gram!”
“All right!” She swatted the tops of her legs. “What I said about your ma, her fetching anonymous wishes through a newspaper ad, that was all true. Cristabel kept things real quiet. But that didn’t stop people in Sass from putting two and two together. My ma was a fetcher, I was a fetcher, so, of course—”
“Everyone in town figured Ma was a wish fetcher, too,” I ventured.
“Exactly,” Gram agreed. “And folks started coming to her for wishes. But she always turned them away, telling ’em I was the Sass wish fetcher, and if they wanted something, I was the MacIntyre to see.
“Except this one time.
“See, Cristabel and Penny Walton used to run together, real good friends, and Penny’s big sister, Loreen, had taken ill.” Gram’s eyes darted away. “It was bad. Lot of pain. And what with Cristabel spending so much of her time with Penny, she saw the very worst of it, up-close. So, one day, when Penny broke into tears, wishing for all the world that Loreen would get better, your ma said, ‘Let’s see what we can do.’”
It was hard to imagine a time when Penny Walton had anything but ire for my kin and our wishes. “And Penny let her?”
“Let her? Begged her, is more like,” Gram said. “So, Cristabel went into Loreen’s room, all alone, and spoke with her for a time. And . . . something happened.”
“What?” I asked.
Gram shook her head. “Cristabel would never tell me. Nor anyone else, far as I know.
“I don’t know if she tried to fetch the wish and failed, or if she didn’t have the heart to try, but when Cristabel left that room, Penny’s sister was as sick as ever. She died a few days later.”
I peered over Gram’s shoulder, through the open door, to the wall where Ma’s picture hung. She was so goodly and beautiful. You could tell she was the sort of person who’d give a neighbor her last egg.
“Things weren’t ever easy in the Walton house,” Gram added. “But after Loreen passed . . . I imagine Penny’s life seemed unbearable. Seemingly, all because her good friend Cristabel—who fetched wishes for complete strangers—somehow let Loreen die. Betrayed, is how Penny must have felt. So, you might see why she’s so angry. Course that don’t make it right, her interferin’ with that job for Dale.”
I could only nod.
“You got to understand,” she said. “I kept this from you for your own good. There weren’t nothing you could do about it, for good or for ill, as a child.”
But the truth was, I didn’t really understand why she’d kept it from me. It was a sad story, but nothing I couldn’t bear.
“Do you see now?” Gram called me back from my thoughts. “Do you see why we got to keep things quiet? With the problems we got, the last thing we want is more trouble. More folks . . . needing things we might not be able to give.”
She set her head in her hands and let out a lone sob.
Something still wasn’t adding up. Why was Gram so upset? Why had she been so secretive about a dying girl and a sorrowing family? I wanted to ask, but Gram’s pain called me to her. I went to set an arm around her shoulder.
“It’s all right, Gram.” I soothed her as best I could.
I can’t say I was glad she’d kept things from me for so long, but the truth was, even if I had known about all this business beforehand, I wouldn’t have acted any different. I couldn’t regret helping folks. To turn aside from another person’s suffering—that was downright unneighborly!
But I had heard Gram’s sorrow, too. From now on, I’d be more careful. Stir the pot more gentle-like. I’d lay the lemons on the table and show Sass I knew how to make lemonade. Maybe, someday, I’d even nudge my way toward Penny Walton’s good side.
“What’s in your head, Gen Sweet? I can see the wheels a-turning.” Her voice was thick with woe.
“Don’t worry, Gram,” I told her. “All shall be well.”
And I believed it. I really did. With all of my heart.
If only I knew why Ma hadn’t been able to save Loreen Walton.
13
A Wish Fetcher’s Burden
TWO DAYS LATER, THE PRESS ARRIVED.
It began before dawn with a knock on the door. Half dreaming and figuring it was Missus Fuller come to have tea with Gram, I went to the door in a hand-me-down robe that hung open to reveal my pink Prom Queen–themed pajamas. My hair was unbrushed, as were my teeth. I’m sure I had a heap of sleep in the corners of my eyes.
“Genuine Sweet?” asked the voice of a woman far too alert, given the time of day. She also pronounced my name wrong.
I couldn’t actually see the woman. The pre-dawn dark, combined with a mess of blinding TV lights, prevented that.