A Clatter of Jars by Lisa Graff Page A

out a gold pocket watch where her soon-to-be-brother-in-law might find it, you couldn’t entirely say that it was her fault if he decided to wind it.
    The Talent was even more mesmerizing than Jo had anticipated. As soon as Juan twisted the watch key and set the gears in motion, he was singing. Full-voiced and gorgeous.
    Los golpes en la vida
    preparan nuestros corazones
    como el fuego forja al acero.
    The postman stopped his rounds to come listen. The town barber left his post to find the source of the sound. Children ceased their jump-roping. Even the squirrels seemed mesmerized.
    â€œRemarkable,” they all declared.
    Jenny didn’t think it was remarkable. She was angry, as Jo had expected she would be.
    â€œThat’s not your Talent,” Jenny had hissed at her fiancé. Jo listened through the front window, her toes anchored against the porch to stop the creak of the swing from betraying her.
    â€œBut no one was using it,” Juan had argued. “Don’t you think Talents are meant to be used? Joley said . . .” Jo wasn’t sure if Juan trailed off then, or if his words simply grew too quiet to hear.
    The argument continued so long into the night that when Jo’s parents found her, she was curled on the porch swing, asleep.
    Jenny and Juan did not get married. Jenny returned his engagement ring, but left him the watch. By then, word of Juan’s Talent had spread far beyond postmen and barbers, and soon he left on a six-month world tour. He found a new love, Jo read in the magazines, and started a new family, and with each new tour, his fame grew greater. El Picaflor, they called him. The Hummingbird. Journalists were particularly fascinated by his beautiful pocket watch—his good luck charm, they wrote, never suspecting the truth behind it—and how he wound it carefully before each performance, and kept it in a special glass case when he slept or bathed, so no dust or moisture would muss its gears.
    Jenny, in turn, forged a much quieter life for herself. Jo picked up snippets of information here and there, from news articles or bits of gossip around town. Jenny had named her orphanage Miss Mallory’s Home for Lost Girls. She’d found a daughter, Cady, and a home in a peanut butter factory, of all places. But no matter how much time passed, Jenny never forgot the original thought that had wiggled a crack into her relationship, and the person who had planted it.
    Jo had tried to stop the future from coming, but it came.
    Which was why, when she’d found those first jars at the edge of the lake five summers ago, glowing yellow-purple, hope had finally risen in her chest. If Jenny couldn’t forget on her own, maybe Jo could help her along a little.
    There was a knock on the office door.
    â€œAnd you are?” Jo asked, tugging it open. The girl before her was short and slim, with light brown skin and shoulder-length brown hair. Hers was a familiar face, although one at the very edges of Jo’s memory.
    The girl gulped. “I’m Lily,” she said. “Liliana.”
    The Pinnacle, Jo remembered now. She’d seen her photo on the camp application. “And what is it that you need, Liliana?”
    Lily wound a swampy length of yarn around her thumb. “I was hoping,” she said slowly, “that you could give me a Talent bracelet.”
    In one swift movement, Jo yanked Lily into the office, slamming the door behind them.
    â€œI don’t know what she told you.” Jo could tell that the finger she was jabbing in the girl’s face was making her nervous. Good. “But it’s lies, all of it.”
    â€œWhat wh-who told me?” Lily stammered.
    Jo wasn’t buying the act. “There are no Talent bracelets here,” she said. And that, at least for the moment, was the truth. “So you can scurry on back to your cabin and stop bothering me.”
    â€œB-But,” Lily said, “I was standing