The Truth Against the World (17 page)

After running a few errands for his great-granddad—picking up milk and eggs from the grocer, dropping off some mail at the post office—Gareth walked back to the tiny house on the west side of the village. His steps were slow, but his mind raced. Wyn's great-gran. A daughter who died but nobody ever talked about. Olwen. And then there was Rhiannon's family, putting out the story that Rhiannon had had a long bout with illness, passing off the baby as belonging to a cousin. A likely story, but maybe that was what people wanted to believe.

Gareth much preferred the story of Rhiannon sneaking out to meet boys and gypsies and whoever else, despite the danger. Who would have thought Wyn's great-gran would have a reckless streak? Everyone always talked about how much Wyn took after her, too. Was Wyn a closet rebel? Gareth smiled to himself. That could be an interesting avenue of exploration.

Then something clicked, and he stopped abruptly in the middle of the sidewalk on his great-granddad's street, right in front of Mrs. Tilly's yard gnome collection.

Rhiannon sneaked out to meet boys. Rhiannon had a baby. But Rhiannon still lived at home.

Had she and John Evans been fooling around before they were formally married? That would explain a lot. It would explain why the family tried to insist that the baby came from a “cousin.” Naturally, they would have wanted to avoid any scandals. And if, perhaps, this all happened while John Evans was still married to his previous wife … that would have been quite a scandal indeed.

Gareth felt certain he was right. He hurried down the street to his great-granddad's place, let himself in, unceremoniously dropped the bag of groceries onto the kitchen table, and pulled his phone out of his pocket.

Wyn didn't pick up. He forced himself to take a few calming breaths. She probably just had the ringer off.

He hoped everything was okay.

He didn't want to be that annoying bloke who kept ringing and ringing, so he tried to distract himself by making dinner. Half an hour later, he and his great-granddad were seated at the little kitchen table sharing soft-boiled eggs, a mound of back bacon, and some sliced fruit. It was the most exciting thing in Gareth's cooking repertoire, and in fact it had managed to keep him from checking his phone every thirty seconds.

Now, though, he had it sitting next to his plate. Just in case.

Without realizing it, he was jiggling his foot against the table leg, tap-tap-tap, tap-tap-tap, in a nervous rhythm.

Tap-tap-tap.

“That's enough of that!” His great-granddad glared over at him. “I don't need my eggs scrambled,” he said.

“Sorry.” Gareth took another bite of egg and bacon, hardly tasting it. What was taking Wyn so long? He couldn't wait to tell her what he'd figured out. She'd be amazed. He couldn't imagine what it would be like to find out something like that about his own dull family.

“You're quiet tonight,” Great-Granddad said, peering at Gareth across the table. “Trip to the museum put you to sleep?”

“Not exactly,” Gareth said. He hesitated. His great-granddad's piercing gaze didn't really inspire one to confide in him. In fact, it sort of made him feel like clamming up, but he forced himself to explain briefly: Rhiannon's illness was worsening. Her family was sad and frantic in their cottage up at the farm. He felt bad for Wyn.

Great-Granddad pushed back the shock of white hair that had fallen over his forehead and kept eating, silently.

Gareth frowned. “I thought you knew Wyn's great-gran.”

“Yes … yes,” came the irritable response. “It's very sad, of course. Then again, she did have a hard life when she was here. I know it's difficult to think of it this way, but sometimes it's a blessing to make peace with it and leave it all behind.”

“What?” Gareth nearly dropped his fork. “Why would you say that?” It made him feel awful, really. It made him feel like maybe his great-granddad shouldn't have been living alone all these years.

“Those war years were not easy, Gareth. Even life on a farm wasn't all leisure and horseback riding the way it is now, you see. I
had
to live out here, me and my mum both, because London was getting bombed. We were in the temporary barracks set up on Rhodri Davies' farm. Milking, sowing, harvesting, everything had to be done, and I had to go to lessons besides. When I was older, I left for the mines. And that's all there is to tell, really. Nothing you haven't heard thousands of times before.” He gave Gareth a smile that was more like a grimace.

“Yeah, I know. I guess that would be hard.” The conversation seemed closed, but Gareth still had one last question. “It's just that Wyn is trying to find out as much as possible about her great-gran's life, before … you know.” He swallowed. “Is that really all there is? Do you remember much about her?”

“Oh, all the young lads liked Rhiannon,” his great-granddad said shortly. “High-spirited, very pretty girl. But yes, that's really all there is.” He picked up a few empty plates and got heavily to his feet, turning his back and going into the kitchen.

Strange, Gareth said to himself later, as he finished brushing his teeth in the house's tiny bathroom. Great-Granddad really didn't want to have that conversation. Or maybe he didn't like Rhiannon. Either way, Gareth couldn't help wishing it was as easy to talk to his great-grandfather as it was for Wyn to talk to her Gee Gee.

He spat foamy toothpaste into the sink, rinsed, then padded back to the guest bedroom. The house only had two bedrooms, so Gareth was sleeping on a narrow twin bed with a squishy mattress that was crammed into the second room along with decades' worth of boxes and files and a wooden desk with old-fashioned pigeonholes along the top. The mess gave him a bit of a headache. If only his great-granddad had been one of those old people who was compulsively tidy.

The flimsy beige curtains were still open, so he went over to the window to shut them, his reflection growing larger in the dark glass as he approached. Suddenly, his reflection disappeared.

He blinked and looked again. His heart thudded. It was no longer his own dim figure in the window glass.

It was Olwen.

The little girl looked sadly at him, a mere ghost of a shape, the dark night bleeding right through her form as if she wasn't there. Which, he supposed, she wasn't. Was she?

Gareth was afraid to look away. He just kept staring at her, and she kept staring back, not moving.

Then his phone rang.

He twitched, then stood perfectly still, his muscles tense. The skin on the back of his neck crawled.

The phone kept ringing. Ringing and ringing, while Olwen just looked at him from the reflection in the window glass.

She opened her mouth. It was moving, but he couldn't hear anything. Of course he couldn't.

Almost as if it weren't under his control, his hand reached out for his phone, lying on the desk. He hit the
Talk
button and held it to his ear.

At first all he heard was the sound of the wind. And then, a voice like a breath, a little girl's voice.

“You promised,” she whispered. “I'm so lonely. You promised.” All the while, she looked at him, pleading.

He felt as if his heart might break, yet at the same time, he was terrified. He hung up the phone and put it back on the desk. But he didn't look away. Gradually the little girl's form faded, and all he could see through the window was moonlight and the dark shapes of neighbors' houses, his own reflection looking wide-eyed and pale.

He'd said he would come back. When he'd seen her in the cromlech, he'd made a promise. But that fear wouldn't leave him. She was a
ghost
. She
shouldn't exist
.

If he went back there, would he find her? Did she want him to find her? Or was she trying to tell him something else?

He sat down on the bed, heavily, wiping beads of sweat from the back of his neck.

Maybe he shouldn't have hung up. Maybe he should have listened.

17

Y gwir yn erbyn y byd.

The truth against the world.

Motto of the Gorsedd (society)
of Bards of the Isle of Britain

“Why don't you take a break?” Mom said, hovering in the doorway of Gee Gee's bedroom.

I glanced outside. Drizzle was pinging the windows, and a draft seeped in from somewhere. I pulled my crocheted shawl closer around my shoulders and huddled in the armchair. My mind felt dull and my body heavy, too heavy to bother going to the farmhouse to check email.

“I'm worried about you. You've been quiet the last couple of days.” Mom came over to the chair and leaned down, putting an arm around me.

I shrugged and turned my face away. “It's nothing. I'm just tired.”

“Well, I want you to know you can talk to me,” she said. She knelt next to the chair and put a gentle hand on my cheek, stroking it with her thumb before standing up.

I didn't know what to say. Mom was always the one who did the talking. Even when I tried … with Dad, for instance. I'd asked him about Great-Grandpa John, tried to start a conversation. But I could hardly get more than a few words out. He'd been abrupt, distracted, as if he wasn't able to deal with anything beyond the immediate situation.

“Mom,” I said. And then I stopped. There was a movement from Gee Gee's bed.

I turned to look, and my mother's head turned to follow my gaze.

Gee Gee's eyes were open, staring right at me, her mouth working as if to try to speak. I rushed over to the bed and picked up the tumbler on the nightstand.

“Gee Gee, do you need some water?” I asked. But when I held the cup to her lips, she just shook her head.

“Rhys,” Mom called in a strained voice. Dad hurried in from the neighboring bedroom. Gee Gee just continued looking at me, two small tears now running down her papery, lined cheeks.

“My Olwen,” she croaked, barely audible. “Olwen, Olwen.
Wela i ti.
”

I sank down on the bed and put my arms around her, but she'd already closed her eyes again and drifted back into sleep, into dreams that made her flutter her eyelids and breathe in rapid, shallow gasps.

“What was that? What did she say?” Mom sounded panicked now. “Do I need to call the nurse?”

“I don't know. She's still breathing. I think she's asleep,” I said. I could feel the rise and fall of her chest, the beating of her heart like a small animal.

“She said ‘
wela i ti
,' which means goodbye,” Dad said hoarsely. He came over to me and gently tugged me upright so that we were sitting side by side on the edge of the bed. He leaned against me. “Your Gee Gee loves you very much. You know that, right?”

I nodded, but my throat was too tight to respond.

“She hasn't spoken at all for a day and a half. She—” He paused and took a deep breath. “She must have really wanted to say goodbye to you.”

I couldn't move. Gee Gee's words kept ringing in my ears. Olwen, she'd said, not Wyn. And
wela i ti
—it did mean goodbye, true, but according to Hugh, it was more like saying “I'll see you.”

Tiny goose bumps appeared on my arms. Of course, Mom and Dad didn't notice. They had no idea there was another Olwen. Only Gareth knew. And Rhiannon, but she wasn't going to tell.

I wanted to tell them. My heart felt like it was going to burst inside my chest, and I clutched my hands into a knot in my lap. But what if they didn't believe me? And why would they, anyway? I had no evidence. I had Gareth's photo of the graveside and the plaque, but they'd probably dismiss that as circumstantial, as coincidence. Plus, I remembered what had happened when I'd tried to talk to my dad about Great-Grandpa John. I didn't want to make him any unhappier.

But I couldn't help feeling that Gee Gee hadn't actually been talking to me.

It felt like she was talking to the other Olwen. To some unseen daughter she hoped was waiting for her somewhere. It seemed plain to me, now, that one of the reasons Gee Gee wanted to come back here was to get some kind of closure, put her mind at rest.

Olwen, though, the little girl—she clearly wasn't at rest. Maybe she was waiting for her mother. She seemed to want us to help her. But why Gareth? What was the connection? Was it just that he'd dropped his phone where Olwen happened to be buried, or was there something else we were missing?

Maybe there was something we had to do, something more we had to find out that would somehow free Olwen. I hung my head and put my hand on Gee Gee's arm, feeling the bones just under the skin. I wanted it all to fit together somehow, to make sense. And I'd have to hope that knowing the truth would set us all free.

I tossed a tuppence coin onto the tiny round table in front of the armchair.

“Ante up,” I said. Dad put in his two pence and glared at the cards in his hand. He did not have a poker face. I looked at my hand: a pair of tens, a jack, a four, and a seven. I decided to get rid of the four and seven.

“Are you sure this is a complete deck?” Dad grumbled.

I hid a smile behind my fanned-out cards. “You're just resentful because you already lost a pile of pennies. I bet five.”

More coins clinked into the center of the table. It was the only sound in the back bedroom besides our occasional comments, Gee Gee's hoarse breathing, and the droplets pelting the windows. Yesterday's drizzle had turned into yet more rain overnight, covering everything outside with a fine sheen of water. There was a break in the clouds off in the distance, though, and the sun was lighting up the tops of the hills to the east.

We'd been taking turns around the clock watching over Gee Gee since she'd spoken. Mom was out in the front room working on her laptop. Technically it was Dad's turn this morning, but I felt like keeping him company.

“I fold,” Dad said.

“Jeez, what a wimp.” I grinned and threw my cards down. “All I had was a pair of tens.”

“You must get your poker face from your mother,” he said. “You should consider a career in law.”

Then I heard a small sound from the bed. Gee Gee had shifted slightly, and her breathing suddenly became more ragged and labored. Her eyes were bleary and half-open, and there were tiny beads of sweat on her forehead.

Dad got up and used a soft hand towel to gently wipe her forehead, his face a mask of worry. I patted her neck with the lightest touch of her lily-scented powder, trying to hide the stuffy smell of the room. Her hair hung white and lank against the rose-colored pillowcase. She no longer had the bright-eyed, sharp gaze that she'd had even when we'd first arrived at the cottage, and my heart twisted.

“Gran, do you need to move to a better position?” Dad asked softly. She made a very faint noise in reply, which might have been “mmm-hmm.” Together, we gingerly turned her onto her side. At first, her breathing eased, but then it became shallow and rapid, and I looked up at my dad, feeling helpless and terrified.

“Wyn, go get Mom and then call the nurse,” he said, his voice too calm. “I'll stay here. Come right back when you're done.”

I managed to hold it together long enough to talk to Mom, but my voice trembled as I asked for Lisa Morgan. In the middle of telling her to please come now, tears spilled over my cheeks.

“I'll be there in five minutes,” she said. “You did the right thing calling straight away. Take some breaths now and go drink a glass of water and I'll be there in a jiff.
Hwyl nawr.
” Her brisk, lilting voice was soothing, and I managed to pull a few deep, hitching breaths into my lungs before hurrying back into Gee Gee's bedroom.

My parents stood over Gee Gee's bed, silently, watching her breathe. Dad was cradling one of her hands in his own. I joined them, hoping with each inhalation that there would be another breath and another.

I didn't even hear the front door open and close. I looked up briefly when the nurse walked in, but turned quickly back to Gee Gee. Not a moment too soon, because then I heard her sigh, heavily and deeply, as if she were exhaling from every nook and cranny of her body. And then she stopped breathing.

We waited. Nobody moved for what seemed like an eternity, listening for the slightest sound from Rhiannon's motionless figure on the bed. But everything remained silent. She might have been asleep, except there was a strange sort of stillness about her—no breath, no movement. Silence.

I heard a sudden inhalation from my dad, and turned to see his head bowed and his hand clutching Mom's. Mom lay her head on his shoulder, looking smaller somehow.

I felt dazed. Distantly, I realized I should be sad, or maybe scared. But I couldn't seem to muster any emotions except for puzzlement. What was going to happen now?

I opened my mouth, fully intending to ask a whole series of questions, but when I tried to speak, the room tipped and swayed around me. I leaned against the wall behind me and closed my eyes. Maybe I'd just rest here for a minute.

The next moment, Nurse Lisa was supporting my arm, and I heard her as if from far away.

“Better for you to get to bed now,” she said, and I didn't protest. I was exhausted.

It was over. It felt like everything was over. I let Lisa lead me to my tiny bedroom and followed her suggestion to lie down on the bed. She tuned the clock radio at my bedside to something soothing. It sounded like folk music in Welsh, and I tried to let the music wash over me, the words flickering in and out of my understanding in a language I'd only half learned, or maybe half forgotten.

I opened my eyes, after a while, when I heard a vehicle pull up outside. My mother opened the door, and I heard her speaking officiously to someone. All I caught was “before the funeral Friday,” then a bustle of movement. After that, all was quiet again in the little cottage. I felt an incredible lassitude and closed my eyes again.

The next time I opened them, it was dark. I must have slept, but I had no idea what time it was. After tiptoeing to the bathroom in the dark, I refilled my water glass, put on my pajamas, and slid under the covers. It wasn't raining anymore, but the wind was rustling the leaves right outside my window. It felt like I was in a forest.

Then I thought of my dream about Gee Gee slipping off into the woods with some young man, and my chest ached with tears I was too tired to shed. What really did happen that night? Was the man Great-Grandpa John? If not, then who?

What if I never found out?

After I finally dropped off, my sleep kept getting interrupted by dreams: trying to revive Gee Gee as part of a CPR test, and failing; running along the gravel path trying to get to the cottage for some urgent reason but not getting anywhere; trying to explain to Rae and Gareth that I'd had an important dream but they didn't seem to care. I kept shouting Welsh words instead, words that made no sense.

Traeth
. Beach.

Cerrig
. Stones.

Ysbryd
. Ghost.

As I slipped between dreams of anxiety and grief, there was one lucid moment of clarity, almost too vivid to be a dream. I saw myself packing away Gee Gee's things, lifting and folding dresses and pants and shirts. The room took form around me: the empty hospital bed, the profusion of doilies on the furniture. Sadness overtook me like a tide and tears ran down my cheeks. I looked up, trying to force the tears away.

The square of sky visible through the window was pearly gray with a mist that made the village, the whole world, eerily nonexistent. Gee Gee was gone, and maybe everything and everyone else I knew was gone, too.

I shivered, watching myself as if it were an out-of-body experience. I saw myself lifting a metal box, laying the box in my lap, and opening it.

My doppelganger reached into the box as if to draw something out, and then everything dissolved into an incoherent swirl of images. Only one stood out—the little girl Olwen, her expression pleading. It felt more like a dream now, and I had a sudden overwhelming feeling of urgency, that there was something I had to find, or do. I opened my mouth to ask, but I was back in the dream trying to explain to Gareth that I had something important to tell him. We were walking along a grassy path, the sea roaring in the distance. I was urging Gareth to listen to my dream about the metal box, saying something about how we had to find it now because Olwen wanted us to. He was looking at me seriously, nodding, when I noticed that the sky above was darkening moment by moment. I stopped talking, stopped moving forward. One by one, the stars winked out.

There was total darkness. I couldn't even see Gareth beside me. I involuntarily reached out for him and clutched his hand, relieved he was still there. He squeezed back, and then the quality of the darkness changed. The breeze stopped, and I had the feeling we were no longer outdoors but in an enclosed space. I reached out my left hand, the one that wasn't holding tightly to Gareth's, and felt cool, rough stone.

Then I felt an overwhelming loneliness so keen that I nearly dropped to my knees in despair. Somehow I knew it wasn't coming from inside myself, but from outside, and I moved even closer to Gareth, grasping his arm with my other hand. Then the loneliness gained a desperate, wild quality, and a small girl's voice came from everywhere and nowhere.

“I want my mum! You promised, you promised!”

I was scared, really scared. My heart was pounding frantically and there seemed to be no escape. Stone walled us in, all around. But then the darkness started to fade, and gradually I slipped back into a regular dream about home and Rae and scarfing onion rings at the school cafeteria.

For some reason, in the dream, I was crying.

The next morning I woke up early, before six. My movements felt mechanical, my limbs like they weren't attached to me, as I pulled on a robe over my pajamas and brushed my teeth at the basin in my room.