(eng) Patricia A. McKillip - SSC by Dreams of Distant Shores

Author:Dreams of Distant Shores [Shores, Dreams of Distant]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

“Oh, hush, Beau,” Greer said, though my grandmother seemed to be doing a fine job of ignoring everyone. She sat in the glider with Bertram on her lap and Fargo pushed close against her. Her shoes were off; she ran fingers through her hair, smiling gently into the summer breeze. She was there and not there, waiting for someone who hadn’t yet arrived. She looked, I thought incredulously, exactly like a woman in love.

“Grandma Abby?” I said, my voice going small, childish.

She looked at me, still smiling, without seeing me. “Yes, dear?”

“Mom,” Sabrina said gently, sitting on the other side of Fargo, rocking the glider with the tip of her shoe. “We’re worried about you. This story about space aliens—it can’t possibly be true. Why would you make something like that up?”

“Well, I wouldn’t, would I?” she answered, taking a small, precise sip of beer. “That would be just silly.”

“We’d like to make an appointment for you with Dr. Gammon. Okay, Mom?”

She shrugged. “I feel fine.”

“I—we thought maybe you could have a little chat with him. About your aliens.”

My grandmother’s expression changed; she looked directly at her oldest child, her lips thinning. “My aliens. You don’t believe anything I’ve said.”

Sabrina drew a big breath, let it out. “Not a word.”

“Well.” Grandma Abby leaned back again, her gaze shifting back to the horizon that, last night, we had all stared at, mesmerized by intimations of aliens. “You weren’t there, were you.”

Sabrina rolled her eyes at the porch roof, shook her head mutely. She got up after a moment, went inside to make the phone call, I guessed. I left my perch on the porch railing, and went to lean on the glider frame. Bertram was asleep on my grandmother’s lap; Fargo uncurled into the space Sabrina had vacated, propped his head on a cushion and hummed a faint little tune while he ran a tiny toy Ferrari up and down his bare leg. Aunt Greer was setting the picnic table; Miranda and Wallace had wandered off into the trees. I heard Gage inside the house, playing some kind of online game with Holly’s boys.

I said very softly, “What are they like, Gran?”

She answered after a moment, still watching the empty sky above the trees. “Like nothing you could possibly imagine.”

I tried anyway. The swamp monster? Something dark, mysterious, capable of passion? A silvery, scaly Cary Grant? A reptilian creature with three sets of teeth and a sense of humor? A being that could change its shape to match anything you wanted?

I studied my grandmother, with her short white hair, her skin drooping, melting away from her bones. I had inherited her blue-gray eyes, her oval face, her hair that once had been heavy, dark, and smooth. With a sudden prickle of premonition I saw myself in her, that alien in me, waiting patiently, appearing little by little, line by line, hair by turning hair, until one day I was taken over by nothing I could possibly have imagined.

She glanced behind her, listening for Sabrina, and began to stand up.

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