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It all started – or at least her memory did – with Lewis being bad at packing his suitcase.
Mom had been too busy fighting with Grandma Edie about leaving the house to pay attention to what Edith and Lewis were doing.
They were supposed to be packing to evacuate, because of a big forest fire that was spreading all over their end of Orcas Island.
Instead, Mom and Grandma Edie were fighting. Again.
“It’s okay,” Lewis had told Edith, patting her on the head (she usually didn’t like when people did that, but it felt nice coming from Lewis) as he’d helped her pack. “It’s just for a few days.”
“What about the house?” Edith asked.
She tried to sound brave, because only babies got scared this easily, but she’d gotten a book from the Eastsound library, about a girl who told lies and when her house caught on fire, nobody came to rescue her.
And the thought of the house, their house, going up in flames, scared her.
A lot.
“What, this old thing?” Lewis asked, gesturing to the house, which was rickety and swayed in the breeze like they were all about to get blown away to Oz. “It’s seen a lot, kid. It’ll be fine.”
This made her feel a little better.
“Are we gonna die if we don’t leave?”
Lewis zipped her suitcase for her, and handed it over, so heavy that she almost dropped it, but Edith held on.
“You’re too young to worry about dying.”
“No I’m not,” she says stubbornly. "Grandma Edie says Finches die all the time! It’s the curse.”
“Watch it,” Lewis said, glancing out the door, like he was worried Mom would show up and yell at them. “You know Mom doesn’t like talking about that.”
“But it’s true.”
Lewis just sighed, and pulled his baseball cap lower over his eyes. “Don’t worry about it. Nobody’s gonna die.”
“Promise?”
Lewis held out his pinky finger to wrap around Edith’s. “Pinky promise.”
Edith smiled. “Okay.”
“Now let’s go downstairs before they start going at it again.”
“But what about your packing?”
“I’m packed,” Lewis said, but Edith could tell he was lying. “Let’s go. You can say goodbye to Molly’s room while we’re down there.”
This made Edith – who was feeling gross and scared – feel a bit better.
She’d spent a long time staring through the peephole into Molly’s room, had asked Mom over and over again until she got mad about it, who was she?
All Mom had said was “She was family. She’s gone now.”
(Grandma Edie had called her a princess, said she’d been cursed.)
Edith, who had what Grandma Edie called “a wonderful imagination,” decided to make up a story.
Molly was a princess, kept in a tower so she’d be safe.
Molly had gone back to her kingdom and married a handsome prince.
Molly was beautiful and she’d be Edith’s best friend, if she was real.
As she skipped down the hall, she could hear Mom and Grandma Edie in the kitchen.
Mom sounded mad. Except… she sounded sad too.
“Grandma, you need to come with us.”
“I have never spent a night outside of this house since it was built, child, and I don’t intend to start now.”
“So you want to burn to death?”
Edith flinched away, because Lewis said-
She turned, and stood on the little step-stool Grandma Edie built for her so she could look through Molly’s peephole.
The room was normal, like it always was, but then Mom’s voice broke through the stillness of the house, and the stillness of the forest around it.
“Edith! Lewis! Are you packed?”
“Yeah Mom!”
“Then get down here! We’re leaving in five minutes.”
Edith grabbed her suitcase from the floor, and ran down the stairs, almost knocking over Grandma Edie.
“What’s the rush, Dawn?” Grandma Edie asked Mom, who frowned, turning to Edith instead of answering her.
(Edith privately thought if she did that, she’d get in trouble.)
“Where’s your brother?”
“Upstairs.”
(One time, trying to tell a joke, Edith had asked which brother? But then Mom had looked so sad, she’d never tried it again.
She didn’t really remember Milton that well, but she knew Mom and Lewis were sad and missed him.)
“Is he packed?”
“Yes.”
Mom marched over to the staircase, and yelled, “Lewis, if you’re not down here in five minutes, you’re hitching a ride!”
“So harsh,” Grandma Edie murmured, sitting down on the couch, and patting her lap. “Edith, would you like to hear a story? It’s about a dragon.”
“A dragon?” Edith asked, scrambling into her great-grandmother’s lap.
“Yes. A dragon.”
“Did it breathe fire?”
“Yes, it did. It lives right outside, in the pond.”
Edith’s eyes went wide. “Really?”
“Yes. It was a very brave and very strong dragon. It could not be tamed, even though your Grandpa Sven tried. The dragon killed him.”
Edith frowned, trying not to look as scared as she felt. “It did?”
“No,” Mom said, coming into the room, looking even madder now, and Edith shrank under the look, even though it was pointed at Grandma Edie. “Grandma Edie is just telling a story.”
“But she said great-grandpa-.”
“He built a slide that looked like a dragon,” Mom said. “And then it collapsed, so he fell. And died.”
“Let the child have some whimsy!” Grandma Edie protested.
“What’s whimsy?”
“Magic,” Grandma Edie said.
“Grandma, if you come with us… maybe you can tell me more stories?”
“I’d love to, min skatt, but I have to stay.”
“But…” Edith felt her eyes start to water. “What about the fire? What if it burns you up?”
“I’m tough as old Norwegian leather,” Grandma Edie said, and Edith wanted to laugh, but she couldn’t. “They couldn’t burn me up if they tried.”
“Grandma,” Mom said, warningly. “I don’t want to have to worry about you and the kids.”
“Pish tosh, child. I’ll be fine.”
Lewis ran into the room right then, skidding on the carpet and almost falling over.
“We’re all going,” Mom said firmly.
“Absolutely not,” Grandma Edie replied, her voice polite.
And that was that.
Edith could see Mom was frustrated but Grandma Edie wouldn’t budge.
Edith had heard Grandma Edie’s stories about a curse on the family, but it felt like something out of a fairytale.
(But Edith, privately, liked the idea of being a princess under a spell. It made her feel special.)
“Don’t die,” she told Grandma Edie, hugging her. “I love you.”
“I love you too. And I will die someday, min kjære. We all will. And it’s nothing to be afraid of. We all must be very brave when the time comes, and that’ll be its own reward.”
“But I don’t want you to die.”
“I’ll do my very best that it won’t be soon.”
“Okay.”
Edith, once she was in the backseat of the car, focused on folding her paper into a finch – the way Grandma Edie had taught her – so she wouldn’t cry.
And it took until they were in their hotel room in Eastsound, before Mom opened Lewis’s suitcase, and frowned.
“Lewis, what is this?”
She lifted out his video game machine, and Lewis grinned.
“You said essentials, right, Mom?”
“Yes, I… I said essentials.”
“Well, these are essential. For me.”
Mom stared at him, with that I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed look on her face, but as Edith looked between the bag with the video game console and Mom’s annoyed look, she couldn’t help but start giggling.
And soon, they were all laughing.
It was the last time she’d remember them laughing like that for a while.
“HA! I got you! I got you!”
Edith did a little victory dance as Lewis groaned, falling back on the bed as his character died again in the video game.
He was so bad at them!
“You’ll have to plan a nice funeral for me, kid,” Lewis said, grinning as he sat back up. “Rematch?”
“Okay!”
“Kids, can you turn that down? I can hardly hear the radio!” Mom yelled from outside.
Lewis punched down the volume two notches, and then when Mom wasn’t looking, he notched it right back up.
“Lewis!”
“Sorry, sorry, keep your pants on!” Lewis yelled back, turning down the volume.
While they waited for the video game to load, Lewis grinned over at Edith.
“See? This was a good idea.”
“Yeah,” Edith said, wrinkling her nose back. “Except you’ve had the same shirt on for four days. And it smells.”
Lewis threw a pillow at her, as Edith giggled.
Technically, after Lewis had broken Milton’s arm when Edith was three during a pillow fight, they weren’t allowed to throw things at each other.
But Mom was still outside on the porch, watching as the storm clouds rolled in, listening to the radio.
“A cold front is expected to roll in and bring some much-needed rain to the area. With the forest fire on Orcas Island mostly contained, there’s nothing left to do but start to rebuild. Some roads remained closed, including Fireweed Road, Tower Road, and the National Park roads. Also particularly affected has been the Orcas Island railway, which was shut down out of concern that the trains might be travelling through active forest fires. Service won’t be restored for a few more days, possibly the end of the week. And now onto sports-.”
“You with me, kid?” Lewis asked.
“Yeah. I’m with you.”
“Try not to kill me this time. I want to live forever.”
Edith laughed. “Okay.”
It took about two more seconds for Lewis to die again.
The rain finally stopped, a weak March sunshine appearing outside.
“Do you think it’s spring yet?” Edith asked Lewis, who was too busy playing video games to answer.
Edith was in the middle of playing with the princess Molly she’d folded out of newspaper – Lewis having gotten bored of playing dolls with her after about an hour – when the phone rang.
“Mom, come play dolls with me!” Edith called, but Mom waved her off, picking up the phone.
“Hello? Yes, this is she.”
A pause, a heavy one, and then Mom’s voice changed, turned raw and sad. “What? What happened?”
There was a sudden silence, as Mom wrapped the phone cord around her finger, and Lewis paused his video game.
“Edith. Let’s go outside.”
“But I want to play-.”
“Bring Molly too,” he said, looking between Edith and Mom.
“… Okay.”
But they were barely out on the porch before Mom came and stood in the doorway, her eyes wet.
“Kids, we’ve got to go back home. As soon as the road opens.”
“Did something happen?” Lewis asked, and Edith felt a sudden sick scared feeling, like she was about to throw up, hot and cold all at the same time.
“That was Great-Grandma Edie. Apparently… your Great Uncle Walter died.”
“Shit,” Lewis said, and even though it was a bad word, Mom didn’t say anything to him about it. “I’m sorry, Mom.”
Edith just stood there, confused.
She knew the room she played in, with the fun paintings all over the walls, was called Walter’s room.
“Who’s that?” she asked.
But no one answered.
Things did not get a lot better once they returned to the house, although Edith was excited – even though she knew she was supposed to be sad about Great-Uncle Walter – to see Grandma Edie standing on the porch waiting for them.
“See, min kjære, what did I tell you? Old Norwegian leather!” she cried, wrapping Edith up in a hug that made her actually feel better.
(Mom had been silent the whole car ride back, and Lewis had immediately disappeared in the direction of upstairs to shower and change his shirt.)
And the thing was, Grandma Edie was at her best when things were going bad.
(She’d helped Mom make Milton’s missing poster, and although Edith doesn’t remember it, Lewis had told her she’d accepted the doors being sealed.)
“The funeral will be tomorrow,” Grandma Edie said over Edith’s head to her mom.
“I’ll start making calls,” Mom said, disappearing into the house.
“Grandma, what happened to Walter?”
“Well, you know, that’s quite the story. Are you sure you want to hear it?”
“Did he die in the fire?” Edith asked, insistently.
“No, no, child, he didn’t. Come. Let Grandma Edie tell you about it.”
Grandma Edie sat down on the porch swing at the back of the house, pulling Edith into her lap.
For a second, they were both quiet, looking out at the glow of the flashing red light in the water, against the evening sky.
(That house had always given Edith the creeps, and tonight she still shivered.)
“What about the dragon?” she asked, in a hushed whisper. “Did it get him?”
“No, no, that dragon was defeated by your Great-Grandpa. An eye for an eye, as the saying goes. Walter died on a far-off adventure…”
“Where was he?”
“Oh, a long ways away,” Grandma Edie said, pointing out to the water. “You see that horizon there?”
“Yeah…?”
“He was far beyond that. But of course… the curse found him.”
Edith shivered again. “Oh.”
“He was killed by a monster,” Grandma Edie said, her voice hushed.
Edith was very scared, but tried to sound brave. “Did he fight back?”
“Oh, I’m sure he did. All the Finches are very brave.”
“And the monster… is it going to come here?”
“No, min kjære, it will not hurt you. It’s gone. Now go wash your hands, dinner is in the oven.”
When Edith turned back, she could still see Grandma Edie looking out at the house.
She looked sad.
“Mom,” she said, walking into the kitchen. “Who was Walter?”
“He was your great-uncle. Great-Grandma’s son.”
“That explains why he was cursed. Grandma Edie said a monster got him!”
Mom slammed down the casserole dish she was holding, hard enough that the dishes on the table rattled. “What?”
“Yeah! She said he was off exploring, and a monster got him!”
“Edith, honey,” Mom said, coming over and kneeling down in front of it. “Grandma was just pulling your leg. There’s no such things as monsters.”
“There are! That’s what the curse is!”
“There is no curse. Sweetie, Great-Uncle Walter was killed because he fell onto some train tracks. No magic. A train ran him over.”
“But Grandma Edie said-.”
“Grandma Edie likes her stories. Go wash up for dinner.”
Edith frowned, but did as she was told.
It wasn’t a very big funeral service, just the minister from the nearest church, and the four of them, standing out in the cemetery, the faint smell of smoke still in the air, lingering like burnt popcorn.
Afterwards, Lewis turned to Edith, tousling her hair. “What do you say, kid, how about some video games?”
“Mom said-.”
“Mom’s busy. Don’t worry.”
Once they were in Lewis’s room, Edith asked the question that had been waiting inside all week to burst out. “Lewis, why do Mom and Grandma Edie act so different?”
“They’re just different people,” Lewis said, pretending to concentrate on his video games. “People get weird about dying, just in different ways. And lots of people in this family died young, so Mom worries.”
“… How young?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Lewis said, looking over, but Edith just frowned harder.
“But if we’re cursed…”
“That’s just what Grandma Edie says so she doesn’t feel sad all the time. A lot of our family is gone now. We’re all that’s left.”
“And Milton.”
His smile faded, and Edith felt bad. “And Milton, yeah.”
“Do you think we’re cursed?”
“I think a lot of sad things happened,” Lewis said. “We’re unlucky. But not cursed.”
“And you’re not gonna leave, right?”
“Not if I can help it.”
“Good.”
And Edith felt better. Mostly.