“No,” I say. “She’s coming in. She’s welcome here. We need to sit down and talk.”
Danny looks from Edwin to me and back again, hesitating.
Then Vera appears in the doorway. Her lips are pulled back over her teeth, her shoulders are drawn up under her ears. For a moment I’m concerned that she’s ill in some way, and I glance at Edwin, expecting him to rush to her aid, but he’s rooted to the spot. She stalks toward us, one stiff step at a time, a quivering finger pointed toward Laura’s chest.
“Get away from my house,” she says. Her voice has the chill of the sea in it; the hiss of sand against rocks. “Get away from my family.”
Laura presses her back against the closed car door.
“Gran—” Edwin says.
In Vera’s other hand is a slim metal pipe. She swings it upward until it points at Laura’s chest. The other end curves like a shepherd’s crook with a small cylinder attached, but it’s not until a flame bursts from the tip, hissing toward Laura, that it dawns on me that this is a weed burner. Ralph’s stolen propane torch.
For a long, breathless moment, the rest of us stand motionless. I can’t tear my eyes from the flame. Then Edwin reaches out a hand slowly.
“Put it down, Gran. Give it to me.”
Vera waves the jet of fire closer to Laura, and the blue flame reaches for the buttons on her cardigan. Laura flattens herself against the car, twisting her face away.
“How dare you?” Vera spits the words at Laura. “How dare you come anywhere near my family after all this time? We don’t want anything to do with you.”
Edwin eases in front of Laura, flinching at the heat, forcing Vera to take a step back. A rasping sound comes from my throat, and Danny grabs my arm as I sway toward Edwin.
“I’ll take her home now,” Edwin says. “Gran. We’ll go right now. She never needs to come back.”
But Vera shakes her head, glaring at him and Laura in turn.“She’ll try to tell you something in the car. Something not true. I’m not having it.”
Alex and Kiara appear in the doorway behind her, and the movement breaks my focus. But Alex pulls Kiara back indoors immediately, reaching into his pocket as he slams the front door shut.
“Gran, stop it,” I say, as Danny tugs on my elbow. “Let her go home.”
Vera blinks, and then slowly turns to me. The propane torch sinks, and the flame now points toward my shins.
“This is all your fault, Seraphine,” she says.
My throat constricts. “Don’t say that.”
“Everything was fine until you tracked this woman down.”
I shake my head. “No, it wasn’t. Dad died. It wasn’t fine.”
Vera lifts her chin. “We’re a happy family, aren’t we? We’re successful. Look at the three of you. You make me proud every day. But that isn’t enough foryou, is it? Everything I’ve done, I did it for you three. But you, Seraphine—you just can’t see that, can you?”
“But if the truth—” I say.
She gives a tight laugh. “I was the one who looked after you, remember, all those long nights after Ruth died. The truth never came into it—you were so young and helpless—why would it make any difference where you came from?”
A shiver runs down my spine. This is the first time my grandmother has acknowledged the possibility of something being amiss, of our identities not being certain. I try to embrace her meaning: that it doesn’t matter to her, that she loves us anyway. But it’s not enough. Her love for us doesn’t give her the right to hide the truth from us.
“You were ours,” she continues. “Our children. Oh, I know they said things in the village, I know that, but they missed thepoint. It doesn’t matter. We don’t need to know. I don’twantto know.”
The torch and its flame rise as she talks, but my resentment overrides my fear.
“You always thought it was me who didn’t belong, didn’t you?” I sway toward her, and she dips the torch away, startled. “All these years, you thought Danny was your real grandchild, and I wasn’t.”
She blinks. “No. It wasn’t like that.”
I stare at her. She has no idea about Kiara. But I want to understand where her suspicions about Danny and me came from, in case it gives a clue to our true origins.
