The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors by Michele Young-Stone Page B

Becca said, “I miss Bo.”
    “Me too. He was old like me, you know. He had a good long life. He used to sleep right outside that window with his head on his paw. I can still see him there. That’s the funny thing about memory.” Grandma Edna’s narrow shoulders were hunched, her bright silver hair lit up like tinsel by the spot of morning sun that seeped through the cinder-block-sized window. She wore blue polyester slacks and a matching shirt.
    Becca said, “My mom has bad memories.”
    Grandma Edna changed the subject as she was apt to do—quickly. She said, “Marianne Pamplin brought the worst potato salad you’ve ever tasted to the church dinner last Wednesday. I expected the reverend to eat it, but dear Lord, they all ate it. Everybody went on and on about the stuff and how delicious it was.” Grandma Edna laughed. “The poor dear has no idea how bad it is. I told them, the lot of ’em, that they shouldn’t have gone on so about it, not with how awful it tasted. Not with them being in God’s house.” Grandma Edna wiped two tears from her high cheekbones. “I’ll be,” she said, having brought herself to hysterics.
    “Which one is she?” Becca asked.
    “She’s Marianne.”
    They snapped the tips off the beans, dropping them in the colander. Grandma Edna told stories about more people Becca didn’t know. She talked about a man named Freddie. Blond and blue-eyed, he was tan from working in the sun. “He worked for the Civilian Conservation Corps. He built the cabins and trails atTwin Lakes. One night, he showed up here. Clayton was in Norfolk.”
    Grandma Edna never referenced time when she spoke, which made her stories even more confusing. Becca said, “And what happened?”
    “Nothing. We ate what I had: snaps, cured ham, and biscuits. Lord, he was a fine-looking man. Hardworking too; he smelled like the earth. Spent enough days digging in the dirt.” Grandma Edna seemed far away. “I let him clean up. Just as times were different then, people were different too. I guess we rise or sink according to our times.”
    “Are we still talking about Freddie?”
    Grandma Edna popped a bean into her mouth. “His hair was the color of sand.”
    Becca felt the smoothness of the bean between her fingers. “And we’re still talking about Freddie?”
    “We are.”
    Becca said, “Can I show you a trick?”
    “I don’t see why not.”
    “I need your watch.”
    Grandma Edna got her timepiece from the sink’s edge and handed it to Becca, who slipped the braided watch onto her wrist.
    “Don’t break my watch!”
    “I’m not.” She said, “Just wait. Watch the hands.”
    Grandma Edna leaned in close. “What am I seeing?”
    “Just watch.”
    Nothing happened.
    “Has it happened yet?”
    “No. Keep looking!”
    “I thought maybe I was supposed to be seeing something but with these grandma eyes I was missing what ever it was.”
    “Wait, Grandma. You’ll see.”
    Grandma Edna stared at the gold hands of her own wrist-watch, waiting for time to do what it always does: tick away. Butthat isn’t what she saw. She saw what Becca saw. She saw the second hand move counterclockwise: one second, two seconds. Grandma Edna sat up straighter in her chair.
    “Did you see it?”
    “I did! I do!” Grandma Edna was book-learned, no “simpleton” as Rowan Burke assumed. Remembering a quote she’d years ago forgotten,
Clocks slay time … time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life
, she smiled. Becca was a smart girl. Edna couldn’t remember the author of the quote, but he was someone important.
    Whether or not the second hand actually moved counterclockwise was in the eye of the beholder, as with all things, but what’s certain is that the old, like the young, can sometimes see shades and nuances that those who are too busy with life’s minutiae, too busy rifling through the past and seeking blame, fail to see. Grandma Edna saw