Escaping Fate Read Online Free

hoped there would be.
    The jingling of keys in the already
unlocked door barely even reached my hearing. My dad pushed his way
into the mess laughing at himself for trying to unlock the door and
I looked up with a smirk. We never left the door unlocked in
Manhattan, even when we were home. I guess my mom was already
feeling much safer being away from the city. My mom greeted my dad
with a quick kiss and excused herself to start making lunch. With a
quick wave and a mumbled “hi” to my dad, I waited until they left
the room before digging into the boxes and getting back to my
search. All the photos of Katie I could find went straight into my
book.
    I had only asked to keep the one
picture, but each new snapshot I found added to Katie’s life and I
found that I could not let go of any of them. The pictures were
filled with life and activity. Katie’s smile and obvious energy
were contagious. I found myself grinning every time I stopped to
look at a photo for too long. I wondered if we would have been
close friends had she lived long enough to know me. The happy
photos were bittersweet, knowing that Katie had not lived past
sixteen. Sixteen. That thought sent pins and needles up and down my
spine. I was almost sixteen myself.
    The small amount of pictures I found
echoed Katie’s short life, but having to dig them out of the piles
no one had looked at for years affected my even worse. Katie had
died and then was nearly forgotten by those who had loved her in
life. Knowing the pain of loss had, in a way overridden love, sent
a quiet panic through my mind. It made me shudder to think about
it, and I hoped this was not a normal reaction to death. Would
everyone put away my things if I were gone? Would David’s children
know my name?
    Sounds of my mom making lunch filtered
out of the kitchen, as I searched the rest of the box I was working
on for photos of Katie. The connection I had to my aunt grew with
each new picture. I felt a need to understand why Katie died. While
wondering what it had been like for Katie to confront death, I
stumbled across another picture that looked like it might be my
aunt.
    Studying the photo intently, I was not
sure what I had found. It looked just like Katie except for the
clothes and hair style. Katie had been a child of the seventies,
wearing bell-bottom jeans and flowers in her wild black hair more
often than not. This lookalike was wearing a full skirt and button
down blouse with a perfectly styled, bobbed haircut.
    I turned the picture over and saw Maera
1959 printed in scrawling handwriting on the back. Who was this new
ghost, I wondered. Their faces were almost identical, especially
the eyes. This new photo was also black and white, but her
startling silvery eyes could not be hidden by the colorless
world.
    Suddenly brought out of my wonder when
my mom called me to the table for lunch, I stuck the photo I had
just found into my book with the pictures of Katie. Stopping by my
bedroom on the way to the kitchen, I pulled the drawer out of my
nightstand and held the pictures over it. I wanted to hide the
pictures away because of my mom’s warning about how my dad might
react, but changed my mind at the last minute and headed back
towards the kitchen. I wanted to know more about the photos,
especially the newest one I had found, the one that was not Katie.
I barely made it to the table before my question about the second
picture burst out.
    “Mom, who is Maera?”
    “Maera? Um, I’m not sure. Let me see,”
she said as she took the picture I was holding out to her. She
looked at the back. “1959, hmm. I can’t remember. I’m sorry. I just
haven’t looked at any of this stuff in so long because of the
move.” She turned the picture towards her husband. “Honey, who’s
Maera?” she asked him.
    My dad turned away from the picture
with a frown and said, “She was your grandfather’s sister, your
great aunt.” Why had he not just said that when I first asked the
question?
    “Was?” I