For some reason, as the breeze blows across the lawns, my attention turns to the horizon, where I know a lonely mausoleum sits by itself, forgotten by the people within Whitley.
“How did my grandfather die?” I ask her bluntly, changing the subject as I think of the lonely crypt. Sabine doesn’t flinch.
“He had a car accident in the rain.”
“And my uncle?”
She stares at me, her dark gaze unwavering. “He also had a car accident.”
“In the rain?”
“Isn’t it always raining here?” Sabine answers a question with a question. I sigh.
“That’s quite a coincidence. Father and son both killed in car accidents.”
Sabine shrugs again, unconcerned with it.
“The universe has a funny way of working, Miss Price.”
“What do you mean by that?”
The old lady stares into the horizon, seeing things that I can’t.
“The universe takes care of iniquities, of people who have been wronged, of injustices that the world can’t right. That’s all I meant.”
I exhale, my breath slightly shaky. “That’s all? That’s quite a belief. It seems like you’re saying that people can be cursed by the universe.”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” she acknowledges. “It’s true. I’m sorry if you’re scared by that.”
“I’m not scared,” I admit. “I just don’t think I subscribe to that particular belief system.”
Sabine smiles now, and the only thing that I’m scared of is her grotesque smile. It’s not pleasant.
“Surely you’ve noticed unfair things,” she points out. “Growing up the way you did. I’m sure you’ve seen deaths that weren’t fair. Stillborns, children, young mothers, young fathers… didn’t you wonder what happened to make them occur?”
I stare at her dumbfounded. “Life isn’t fair, Sabine,” I tell her firmly. “That’s all there is to it. People don’t always deserve what happens to them. Not by a long shot.”
I think about my brother, and the demons that chase him. “Not by a long shot.”
Sabine is unfazed. “There are times we pay for sins that are not our own,” she maintains. “It is the way the universe has always been.”
I reflect on that for a minute, of my gentle father and my kind mother. There is no way either of them could’ve ever committed a sin bad enough for Finn to have paid for it. I shake my head finally, to signal my disbelief. Sabine smiles slightly.
“Take Adair for example,” she instructs me. “That boy has never done anything wrong. Yet his parents were all killed. His father died from cancer, then his mother re-married Dickie Savage. Dickie wasn’t a good man, and Dare’s childhood wasn’t either. Dickie died, then Olivia, and Dare was left all alone. Do you think he deserved any of that?”
I shake my head slowly. “I don’t know. I don’t know what he deserves.”
“Use your intuition, Calla,” Sabine instructs, and I can’t help but remember the vulnerability on Dare’s face the night I found him playing the piano in the moonlight. I can’t help but picture the face that I love.
“No,” I admit. “I don’t think he deserved those things.” How could anyone deserve those things?
“Sometimes the son must pay for the father’s sins. Or the mother’s,” Sabine adds.
That thought gives me pause, the injustice of it. “That hardly seems fair,” I tell her, picking a flower from the bed beside me.
“Life isn’t fair,” Sabine answers. “That’s the first hard lesson.” She crushes the flower she’s holding in her gnarled hand, then drops the tangled petals on the ground at my feet. “Don’t forget it.”
She walks away as Finn approaches me, interest in his imaginary eyes.
“What was she saying to you?” he asks as he takes her vacated seat. I shake my head.
“Nothing important,” I lie. “She’s a strange one, Finn. I don’t know what to think about her.”
“Me either,” he answers. “She kind of scares me a little.”
This, coming from the boy who sees demons.
“Mom trusted her,” he offers. “Maybe you should, too.”
I nod silently. Maybe.