The Wishing Jar Read online

  Jay-Jay threw his bear on the floor and twisted his face into a grimace. “A girl? A sister? Don’t want a sister. Can we send it back and get a brother?”

  James laughed. “No, Son, we can’t send her back. But you’ll like her. She’s pretty small right now, but she’ll grow up and be lots of fun.”

  “Can I touch her?”

  “Yes, but very gently.” James lifted the lad and settled him on the bed next to his mother.

  The boy extended one finger, gingerly touched the baby’s hand, then pulled back as if he’d been burned.

  “It’s all right,” his dad assured him.

  He reached out again. This time, the infant grabbed his finger, just as she had done with James a few minutes before. “Whoa!” Jay-Jay breathed, awe-struck. “She’s real!”

  “Yes, honey,” said Abigail, stroking his hair with her free hand. “She’s very real.”

  “OK.” He scrambled off the bed and retrieved his bear. “I guess we can keep her. If I go back to bed now, will she be big enough to play with when I wake up?”

  “Not quite,” his dad said. “But soon. Before you know it, she’ll be nearly as big as you.”

  Jay-Jay, ambling to the doorway, turned back and cast his father a look of utter disdain. “No girl will ever be as big as me,” he said. Then he shuffled off down the hall, yawning as he went.

  When Jay-Jay was safely tucked in again, Gracie returned to the master bedroom and stood admiring her granddaughter. Edith had seen that look before, that expression of love—had seen it every time her grandmother looked at her, right up until the day she died. Her grandfather, Kenzie, leaner than before, his hair now peppered with gray, stood beside Gracie with an arm around her waist. On the other side of the bed, James sat next to his wife, embracing both her and the baby. He couldn’t take his eyes off the infant’s face.

  “We need to let Abigail and the baby rest,” Gracie said. “But before we go, let me hold my granddaughter for a moment.”

  Abigail nodded and handed the baby over to her mother. Gracie cuddled the sleeping child to her breast and looked down into her face. Silence enveloped the room, a silence so profound and deep that Edith could almost hear the infant’s heart beating in time with her own.

  “Darling Edith, you are one of God’s good gifts,” Gracie said quietly. “Live fully and love freely. May you grow into a wise and compassionate woman, and develop a pure heart and a faithful soul. And when life becomes difficult and her way dark—” She glanced over at her daughter, who was smiling through her tears.

  “May you look for the love, and not for the answers,” Abigail finished.

  Gracie nodded. “Be strong in the grace of God, secure in God’s love, and in the love of this family. Amen.”

  Gracie returned Edith to her mothers arms, then she and Kenzie drifted off to sleep in another room. James stretched out in the chaise lounge beside the bed and pulled an afghan over his legs. “I love you, darling,” he said. “Both of you.”

  “We love you, too,” Abigail responded sleepily.

  Then he turned out the light.

  In the darkness Edith groped her way out into the hall and sat down with her back against the door. But she did not sleep. She had too much to think about, and a watch to keep.

  A vigil for her own infant self, who slumbered peacefully in her mother’s arms.

  15

  Connections

  Edith had never experienced anything quite so strange. She felt oddly as if she had become her own mother. And, as mothers often complain when their offspring’s childhood seems too short, time was speeding up.

  But for Edith the acceleration was real, not imagined. The child Edith spent as much time at Quinn House as she did in her own home, and every time Edith turned a corner she saw herself, growing up at a phenomenal rate. She saw her red and wrinkled infant self morph into a round-faced cherub, watched herself take her first faltering steps and fall face-first on the living room rug, heard herself utter her first word.

  The rapid movement of time tended to be unsettling for Edith. One moment she stood in the kitchen, watching as her toddler alter ego got her first taste of strained spinach—and finally recognized the source of that familiar stain that would never come out of the woodwork. But a few minutes later, she followed Grandma Gracie upstairs to put little Edith down for a nap, and when she entered the room, a child of five or six was sitting on the floor, playing with the big Victorian dollhouse that had belonged to Abigail when she was a girl.

  Gracie was nowhere in sight.

  The child turned. “Hello,” she said.

  Edith’s knees buckled under her, and she sank down onto the floor next to the bed.

  “Are you all right?” the child asked. “You look kind of pale.”

  “I’m . . . I’m fine,” Edith managed. “You can see me, hear me?”

  The little girl shot her a curious look. “Of course I can see you.” Abandoning the doll furniture, she went over to where Edith sat, offered a little curtsy, and held out her hand. “My name is Edith Quinn Nelson,” she said politely. “Are you a friend of my grandmother’s?”

  Edith shook her hand. The experience was much like touching Gracie that one time—a feeling of grasping something not quite alive, not quite of this world. She pulled back and suppressed a shiver. “My name is Edith as well,” she said. “What makes you think I’m a friend of Gracie’s?”

  “Because you’re old.” The child plopped down in front of the dollhouse again. “I like old people. They don’t mind playing.” She looked over her shoulder and smiled. “Would you like to play dolls with me?”

  Edith scooted closer. “This is a very nice dollhouse.”

  “It belonged to my mother, a long time ago when she was little. Grandma Gracie keeps it here for me to play with when I come to visit. This was my mother’s room, you know.”

  Edith smiled. “Yes, I know.”

  “I suppose you would,” the child said, tilting her head. “You’ve been here a very long time, haven’t you? I remember seeing you when I was just a baby.” She handed Edith a tiny dresser and a matching spindle bed. “Those go in the bedroom, here.” She pointed. “Since our names are the same, I’ll be Little Edith and you’ll be Big Edith, all right?”

  “I suppose that would work.” Her mind reeling, Edith placed the furniture in the wrong room and had to do it over again. Some long-buried memory scratched away at her subconscious. “You’ve seen me around here often?” she asked cautiously.

  “Oh, yes.”

  “But no one else seems to know I’m here.”

  “I’ve told them about you,” the little girl said. “But they don’t believe me. They call you my imaginary friend.” She frowned. “It’s very annoying not to be believed.”

  The memory burst through. Edith’s imaginary friend. Her parents and grandparents had shrugged it off, humored her. She had heard them whispering about it behind her back. It was because she was the middle child, they said, the only girl—

  A lumbering sound, like a herd of stampeding buffalo, interrupted Edith’s thoughts.

  “Here comes trouble,” Little Edith warned. “It’s Jay-Jay and Kenny.”

  The bedroom door slammed back on its hinges, and a blond tornado roared into the room, followed by a smaller funnel that looked to be its miniature. Jay, about eight or nine, and Ken, not more than three. Edith stared open-mouthed at the two boys as they flung themselves down on the rug and began wreaking havoc on the dollhouse.

  “Leave us alone!” Little Edith demanded. “You’re ruining everything!”

  “Us?” Jay sneered at her. “What? You’ve got your invisible friend here?” He got up and began tramping around the room, raising his knees as high as they would go. “I’ll smash her! I’ll stomp her!”

  “Jay-Jay, quit it, or I’ll tell Grandma Gracie!”

  “Jay-Jay, quit it!” he aped in a singsong voice.

  “Quit it! Quit it!” Kenny echoed, squealing with glee.
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br />   “Where is she? Under the bed? I’ll get her!” Jay-Jay crawled on his stomach, reaching under the bed with both hands, but all he came up with was a handful of dust bunnies. “Here she is!” he exclaimed, sifting the dust down on top of the dollhouse.

  Little Edith began to sob.

  “Crybaby!” her big brother mocked. “You’re just an old crybaby girl.”

  “What’s going on in here?”

  Edith looked up, as did the children, and saw Gracie framed in the doorway with her hands planted on her hips. She was thinner, and her hair was mostly gray now, but she still made for a formidable adversary. The noise in the room ceased instantly.

  “Grandma, he messed up our house,” Little Edith accused.

  “Is that true, Jay-Jay?”

  “Yes’m.” Jay ducked his head. “We didn’t mean anything. We was just having some fun.”

  “We were just having some fun,” Gracie corrected tersely. “Now, is that any way to treat your little sister?”

  “No, ma’am. But she—”

  “No buts, young man. Apologize to her this instant.”

  “Do I hafta?”

  “Yes, you have to. Immediately.”

  Jay narrowed his eyes to slits and glared at Little Edith. “I’m sorry.”

  Edith suppressed a smile. He didn’t sound sorry. Not a bit.

  “Like you mean it,” Gracie prompted.

  “OK, OK. I’m sorry, Edith. I shouldn’t have come in here and messed up your house.”

  Gracie raised an eyebrow. “That’s better. Edith, do you accept his apology?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Fine. Now, you two boys go outside and play, and—”

  “But, Grandma,” Jay interrupted, “Kenny’s too little. He just follows me around, and he can’t do anything right.”

  “Can so!” Kenny protested.

  Edith saw the look of amusement that flitted through her grandmother’s eyes, but Gracie managed not to laugh. “Fine. You can stay here and play dolls with your sister.”

  Little Edith’s countenance took on an expression of shock and outrage, but before she could get a word out, Jay-Jay yelled, “Will not!”

  “Then you boys can come down to the kitchen and help me fix lunch. But from now on, James Nelson Junior, I expect you to behave like a gentleman. Understood?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Jay got to his feet, took his little brother’s hand, and followed Grandma Gracie out into the hall and down the stairs.

  Little Edith rolled her eyes. “Boys!” she muttered.

  “They’ll get better,” Edith assured her.

  “I doubt it.”

  “Trust me. They’ll grow up, and you’ll like them someday. You’ll be glad to have brothers. And you’ll miss them terribly when they’re gone.”

  The girl shook her head and put her nose in the air. “I can’t for the life of me imagine.”

  Edith nearly laughed out loud. It was Grandma Gracie’s phrase, with precisely the same intonation.

  Little Edith stared at her. “What’s so funny?”

  “Nothing. It’s just that for a moment there, you sounded like your grandmother.”

  “Daddy says I’m the spitting image of Grandma,” she said, puckering up her brow in concentration as she replaced the doll furniture in the house. “But I don’t know what that means. What does spitting have to do with anything?”

  “It’s not about spitting,” the elder Edith said gently. “It means ‘spirit and image,’ I think. To be the spitting image of your grandmother means you are just like her, inside and out.”

  Little Edith pondered this concept. “I like that idea. When I grow up, I want to be exactly like Grandma Gracie.”

  You could do worse, Edith thought, than becoming the spirit and image of Gracie Quinn.

  Edith sat on the porch in the wicker chaise, alone, staring at the empty space where Sam’s homemade swing would eventually hang. Through the trees she could see a bit of downtown and the mountains rising up in the distance beyond. The Blue Ridge— timeless and eternal, at once ageless and new. Caught, like Edith herself, in the nether world between life and afterlife, old as creation but fresh and young with each passing season.

  It was the first time in her seventy-five years, Edith realized, that she had ever understood—truly known—the eternal nature of the human soul. This might be a dream, but it was real to her. These people were alive, as surely as when they had walked the halls of Quinn House clothed in bodies of flesh and blood. In real time, her time, they might be long dead, their earthly frames returned to dust. But their souls lived on—in her dreams, in memory, in the spirit that had been passed down as her legacy. Somewhere behind the curtain, they lived.

  And if they lived—if the spirit truly did prevail after the body had died—then nothing on earth was more valuable than the human soul.

  Grandma Gracie had tried to teach her that truth—not so much in words, but by the way she lived. Gracie valued people. She met them where they were and treated them with grace and compassion. She loved them, with all their faults and failings. She understood them. She motivated them to live with purity of heart and faithfulness of soul.

  And she had passed on that legacy to her daughter, Abigail. Both Grandma Gracie and Edith’s own mother had modeled the ways of faith. She had seen their trust in action countless times, had watched as they weathered all sorts of storms without faltering. When her brothers had been killed, Jay in 1944 and Ken six years later, Mother had been the rock of the family, and Grandma Gracie the foundation under the rock.

  Edith’s own child-self had said it: “I want to be just like Grandma Gracie.” And she had tried with all her might to imitate Gracie’s trust. She had adored and respected her grandmother, had set out to emulate her, but she always seemed to fall short. She had said the right words, gone through the motions. Still, when difficult times came—like Sam’s death, John Mac’s accident, the stroke—she had never been able to muster the faith to believe in God’s continuing presence. She had always asked “Why?” and been angry when no response came. She had looked for the answers instead of looking for the love.

  A dawning awareness crept into Edith’s mind as she recalled that conversation with her six-year-old alter ego. All her life she had wanted to mirror the spirit and image of Grandma Gracie. But Grandma Gracie had longed to reflect the spirit and image of God.

  Edith hadn’t failed to live up to her grandmother’s image because she had set her sights too high, but because she had aimed too low. She hadn’t gone to the source. And as a result, she had developed nothing more than a faded imitation of a secondhand faith.

  She was still pondering this revelation when the porch boards creaked and a shadow fell over her.

  She looked up to see a small girl, silhouetted against the afternoon sunlight. Little Edith, coming to find her, wanting her to play, no doubt. She smiled and opened her mouth to speak.

  But before she could get a word out, another figure stepped onto the porch. A man, who came to stand behind the child, putting his hands on her shoulders. His torso blocked out the sun, and she saw.

  Edith’s heart nearly stopped beating, and she gasped for breath. The little girl wasn’t her child-self. It was Abby. Her own daughter.

  And the man behind her was Sam.

  16

  Passing the Torch

  His attitude somber, his brow knitted into an expression of concern, Sam approached Edith and held out a hand. She didn’t move, didn’t dare breathe for fear he would vanish like the early mist on the mountains.

  Instead, she simply gazed at him, drinking in the sight of him. So young and handsome, with smooth, clear skin and those irresistible brown eyes. She could feel her heart melting as she looked into his face. The only man she had ever loved.

  “Mama, are you all right?” the little girl asked, and in her words Edith heard an echo of the adult Abby asking her the very same question. “What are you doing sitting out here all alone?”
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br />   She blinked. Shut her eyes and opened them again. Sam was still there. And he was frowning at her.

  He squeezed little Abby’s shoulder. “Your mama needed some time alone, honey. Go on back in the house. We’ll be there in a minute.”

  The child obeyed, and Sam came to sit near Edith on the foot of the chaise lounge. So close. She caught a whiff of him, the lingering scent of Old Spice and cherry pipe tobacco. His nearness set her adrift, made every nerve in her body vibrate with anticipation.

  Perhaps her wish had finally come true. Perhaps she had died, and Sam had come to her at last.

  But what about Abby? If Edith were dead and this was heaven, Abby shouldn’t be here. No. Abby was very much alive. Unless—

  “Sweetheart?”

  His voice, low and entreating, interrupted her thoughts. As if in slow motion, she saw him lean toward her, reaching out . . .

  Their fingers touched, and his hand closed over hers. Warm flesh, solid, human. Real.

  “I . . . I don’t understand—,” she began.

  “I know, darling. It’s hard. But you need to come in now. She’s asking for you.”

  Edith’s mind balked for a moment, then stuttered into motion again. Abby at age six. Sam, young and dashing, only slightly older than the way she remembered him when they married. He must be—what? Thirty? Thirty-one?

  The truth came rushing at her, terrifying in its intensity. She was twenty-nine. It was summer. Grandma Gracie was dying.

  “No,” she whispered. “It can’t be. It’s too soon. I need more time.”

  Sam shook his head. “There is no more time, I’m afraid. You know this was the way Gracie wanted it, darling—to die at home, with her family around her.”

  “Yes, but—” Edith couldn’t go on. She began to weep, and Sam gathered her into his arms and held her while she sobbed against his chest. When her tears subsided, he handed her a clean handkerchief and waited while she wiped her eyes. Then he helped her up, put an arm around her waist, and led her into the house.

  Until she entered the foyer, Edith had only vaguely wondered about the changes—why, after all this time of being imperceptible to those around her, she could suddenly be seen and heard and even touched, not only by her child alter ego, but by Sam and Abby as well. She had been too caught up in the joy of seeing her husband again, and in the remembered pain of her beloved grandmother’s death. Now, as they passed through the foyer, she happened to glance into the mirror over the hall table, and her mind cleared.