"About that," she said. "Give or take a lifetime or so," she added under her breath with a meaningful look in my direction.
"Oh, my - Mary Penelope - is she here? Do you know where she is?" the woman burst out.
"Er, look, does someone want to explain what"s going on here?" I said. "Or who these people are?"
The woman reached out and put a hand up to my cheek. "Emily darling," she said softly, "we"re your grandparents."
I stared at both of them. "My -"
The man smiled at me. "It"s true," he said. "We"re your grandparents."
"But why - how come - I mean, who -?"
The woman laughed. "There was no compet.i.tion at all, was there?" she said to Millie.
Millie proudly shook her head. "I didn"t think a simple invitation would cut it, so I called in a favor to rent the cottage for a few days and set this little ruse up."
"But how did you find them?" I asked.
"Well, we already had the town. I just did a bit of digging around on the Interweb."
"Internet," I corrected gently.
"Yes, exactly," she went on. "And actually it wasn"t hard at all. In reality, these things tend not to be. Very often, the only obstacles in our path are the ones we place there in our own minds," she said airily, throwing her cape over her shoulder for good measure.
"So what did you do once you"d found out where they were?" I asked.
Millie lowered her voice. "With the help of some spiritual knowledge, a little bit of mystical insight, a few carefully placed markers along the ley lines of the way, anything is possible," she said dramatically.
"She phoned us," the woman said.
Millie picked an invisible speck of dirt off her gown. "Well, yes, you could put it like that too, I suppose."
The woman went on. "She told us we"d won a weekend by the sea - for this weekend!"
"Well, it worked, didn"t it?" Millie said.
I stared at them a bit more. "So you really are my grandparents?" I asked. They nodded back at me with bright beaming smiles.
I turned to Millie. "Come on - we have to go and tell Mom!" I looked at my watch. "It"s past twelve. She should be home for lunch by now."
The woman - Nan - clapped a hand over her mouth and reached out to take Granddad"s arm with her other hand. "Is this really happening?" she asked him. "Are we really going to see our daughter again?"
He put his hand over hers. A lump in his throat was bobbing up and down, and it looked as though he was trying to speak. In the end he just squeezed her hand and nodded.
"Hang on a sec." Millie rummaged in her bag. "Where is it? I bought it especially for the occasion. I"m sure it"s here some - ah!" She pulled a small camera out of her bag. "Right, close together everyone. Say cheese!"
Aaron and I stood awkwardly in front of my grandparents and tried to smile while Millie clicked away.
"Lovely!" she said with a smile. "Right, come on, let"s go and tell Mary P. you"re here!"
Closing the door behind them, the old couple followed Millie out of the cottage and up toward the pier. I walked along with Aaron. We were still holding hands. The tingling feeling still hadn"t gone away - and my heart rate still hadn"t slowed down. It felt weird to be holding his hand, but at the same time it felt like the most natural thing in the world.
We walked up the jetty and over toward our boat. Millie turned to my grandparents. My grandparents! It felt so strange to think that. "Ready?" she asked.
They nodded eagerly. "Definitely!" the man replied.
"Right, come on then." Millie let herself in through the door, calling out to Mom as she did so. "Yoo-hoo! Mary P. - you"ll never guess who I"ve brought to see you!"
As my grandparents followed her inside, Aaron stopped. "I think you should go in on your own. It"s family stuff." Then in a shy mumble, he added, "I"ll catch you later, though, won"t I?"
"Definitely!" I said.
He let go of my hand and smiled. My palm was still warm from the feel of his hand on mine. "See you later," I said. And then he turned and left, and I went in for the happy reunion.
Only it wasn"t exactly what you could call happy.
My grandparents were doing the staring blankly thing again.
"What"s up?" I asked.
Millie stood in the middle of the room, gesticulating wildly. Mom stood behind her, arms folded, face like a shut door. "We"ve just been talking, over at your cottage! How can you not remember?" Millie was shouting.
"The cottage that we"re staying in for the weekend vacation that we won?" the woman asked.
"You didn"t win a compet.i.tion!" Millie sighed. "That was a setup! A pretense. I"ve just explained all that!"
"You mean we shouldn"t be there?" the man asked. "Do we have to leave?"
I stood in front of the couple. "Nan? Granddad?" I said.
I might as well have been a Martian that had just landed on Earth for all the recognition in their eyes.
"Who are you?" the woman said eventually.
I bit back a tear that had started to creep up my throat. "It"s Emily," I said. "Your granddaughter. I came over here with you."
The couple looked at each other, totally baffled. What was going on?
"Just leave." Mom"s voice was stern and cold. "You"ve had your fun, making a fool out of me. Now go." Her arms were still tightly folded over each other. Her face was closed just as tightly.
Millie ushered the couple to the door. "I don"t understand," she said. "I don"t get it." She followed them outside and directed them back to their cottage. Then she came back in and shut the door behind her.
Mom slumped down at the table. "Oh, Millie," she said. "What on earth did you do?"
"I - I thought it would be a wonderful surprise. A happy reunion. I thought it might jump-start the peacemaking process that"s supposed to be going on."
"How could they be so cruel?" Mom whimpered. "Not to acknowledge me at all. To pretend they didn"t even know me. I never thought they could stoop so low. My own parents."
I went over and put an arm around Mom. I wanted to say something to comfort her, but I couldn"t think of anything. What could I possibly say that could make up for what had just happened?
What had just happened?
They"d seemed so happy to see me, so excited to come and meet up with Mom - and then they"d looked through both of us as though they"d never met us in their lives. It just didn"t add up. Had they put it all on? Was it all an act so that they could make a fool of Mom? But why would they have wanted to hurt her so much? Were people really that cruel?
My head was spinning with questions I couldn"t answer.
And then I thought of a person who possibly could.
A person who had been around since the days when my grandparents lived here. And, now that I thought about it, a person who had acted very strangely the other day when we were talking about them. A person who had some answering to do - as usual.
The more I thought about it, the more determined I was to get to the bottom of this. Mom was far too upset to leave her now, but I"d decided what I was going to do. First thing in the morning, I knew exactly where I was heading!
Sat.u.r.day morning I woke up with one thing on my mind. I threw on some clothes and went out, still fuming, and determined to get some answers. I banged on the lighthouse door.
"Open up!" I shouted. "Let me in - I want to talk to you!"
A second later, the door opened and Mr. Beeston appeared. "Whatever is the matter, child? Is it your mother? Is she all right?" He was halfway out the door, but I stopped him.
"Mom"s fine," I said. "At least, nothing"s happened to her." I paused. "Unless you call having your life utterly destroyed and your family in tatters anything to worry about." I folded my arms.
Mr. Beeston stared at me. "What on earth are you talking about? What"s happened?"
"My grandparents," I said simply. At the word, his face changed. It was as though an invisible straw had sucked the color out of it.
He opened the door and beckoned me in. "You"d better come inside," he said.
The apartment inside the lighthouse was bare. Not that I expected it to be full of life and warmth. This was Mr. Beeston"s home we were talking about. A pile of boxes was stacked up in one corner. A pile of papers in another. At the sight of them, I couldn"t help wondering if he was still collecting files on us.
He noticed me looking around. "I haven"t properly settled in yet," he said, waving a hand over the boxes.
"Tell me about my grandparents," I said bluntly. Mr. Beeston looked at me for a second, mouth open, ready to start making up a pack of lies.
"The truth," I said, and he closed his mouth and let his head drop.
"You have to understand one thing," he began. I wanted to tell him I didn"t have to understand anything he said. And I didn"t have to do anything he said, either. But I bit my tongue and waited for him to continue.
"It was all a long time ago. Long before the current - what have you - arrangements, and recent friendships." He looked nervously up at me. Friendships? Hah! As if he would ever understand the meaning of the word. Again, I held my tongue, and he went on.
"Your grandfather was a sailing man, and a decent fisherman, too. He spent many of his days out on the ocean. And then one day, he saw something he shouldn"t have seen."
I kept quiet.
Mr. Beeston cleared his throat. "He saw a mermaid. He was so excited about it that he came straight to me and told me. You see, we were on good terms back then."
"You mean you conned your way into his life, just like you did with my mom and me?" I said tightly.
He ignored me and continued. "I couldn"t allow it. Not in my role at that time. We already knew about your mother and father, and the plans were in place for dealing with it. Your grandparents knew nothing, of course, and your grandfather suddenly having this information - well, it complicated things. We had to put a stop to it."
"How?"
"For one thing, we had to wipe his memory." He stopped.
Of course. The memory drug. I should have guessed. "And for another?" I prompted.
At least he had the decency to be struggling. Maybe he did have a conscience after all. "We had to stop him from going out to sea again," he said, shuffling even more awkwardly than usual.
"In case he saw something else," I said.
He nodded. "Once I"d wiped his memory, I told him that he and his wife had to leave. He never questioned it - the drug took care of that, too. That"s what we usually did in those days."
"And my mom?"
"Unfortunately, this also happened to be the time that your mother discovered she was pregnant and had decided to tell her parents everything."
"And they thought she was crazy, because you"d already wiped their memories." It was all starting to fall into place.
Mr. Beeston puffed his cheeks out. "Look, conditions were very different back then. Regulations were strict; Neptune was very firm on these laws. You know that."
I kept silent.
"I"m not proud of what I did," he said quietly.
"So what about my mom? How come she didn"t go with them?"
He shook his head. "I tried the drug on her several times, to get her to agree to it, but it wouldn"t work. Even once I"d taken away the memory of your father, I couldn"t make her leave. She simply refused."
"So my grandparents moved away, and they didn"t remember a thing?" I asked woodenly.
"Correct."
I swallowed hard, trying to dislodge the lump in my throat. It was too hard, though. It had a lifetime of hurt and anger inside it. "What about the cards?" I asked. "Every year, a birthday card and Christmas card?"
Mr. Beeston fiddled with a b.u.t.ton on his jacket. "I sent them," he said.
"You? But how?"
"I had to visit them regularly, to ensure that the memory drug was still working."
That made sense. He"d kept my mom drugged on a weekly basis, with cinnamon buns and doughnuts - laced with the memory drug.
"I"d write the cards, then send them while I was up there - so they had the right postmarks on them." He glanced nervously at me. "So your mother would still at least have something," he added.
I nearly laughed. He thought he"d been doing us a favor by scrawling a few measly, lying words on a card a couple of times a year?
"It was my way of doing one small thing for you," Mr. Beeston went on. "You see, your mother and I were friends back -"
"You mean they didn"t even sign their own names on them?" I interrupted. I wasn"t going to listen to him telling me he"d been our friend while he"d been lying to our faces for years!