Banished

shoulders. Her jacket, plain and cut low enough in the front to show a little bit of her silky top underneath, fit her so perfectly it pretty much said money with a capital M. I guess the hostess was thinking the same thing. There were very few rich families in Gypsum; almost everyone was just trying to get by.

I was going to order the chicken sandwich. I read all the prices on the menu and added up in my head what dinner would cost. Part of me wanted to order the most expensive thing just to see what Prairie would do, to see if there was a limit to her concern for me, or maybe to see if I could get her to crack and show me who she really was. Like if under this nice exterior she was just waiting to tell me what she really wanted, and it would be something bad.

But when the waitress came around to take the order, Prairie said, “The filet mignon sounds really good, doesn’t it, Hailey?” It was twenty-three dollars, but I hadn’t had a steak in as long as I could remember and I just said yes, it did.

When the waitress walked away, neither of us said anything for a minute. Prairie fiddled with her knife, spinning it back and forth.

“Tell me about your dog,” she finally said. “If you don’t mind.”

That caught me off guard. Rascal wasn’t something I felt like talking about. “There’s nothing to tell.”

“It’s just that I can tell he’s… that something happened to him.” Her face went soft, and her eyes were sad. “Where did you get him?”

“Um… Gram got him from a guy she knew.”

“Alice traded him for drugs.” Prairie’s expression didn’t change.

“Yeah.” I shrugged like it was no big deal. “Probably.”

“Hailey… I saw the scar. What’s left of it, anyway. On his stomach.”

I blinked. This morning the scar had almost disappeared. You had to push the fur to the side to see the faint pink line.

I wanted to ask Prairie how she knew, but I didn’t want her to think I cared too much. Caring about things made you vulnerable. “He got hit by the Hostess truck a few days ago.”

“Was he badly hurt?”

“He…” I swallowed, remembering the way Rascal looked. But I didn’t want to tell her what I had done, didn’t want to have to try to explain how he’d healed so well in one night. “No, just a little cut.”

Prairie watched me carefully. “I bet you must have given him good care, Hailey. What did you do?”

Her voice was so kind that I had to look away. I swallowed hard and took a little sip of my ice water. “I, um, I just cleaned it with antiseptic and, you know, kept him inside.”

“Did you talk to him?”

“Did I… what?”

“While you were cleaning up his injuries? I mean, maybe he was scared. I know how that can be. You must have wanted to make him comfortable.”

She knew.

Somehow she knew that I’d healed Rascal, that something I’d done to him after the accident had fixed him, just like I’d fixed Milla during gym. I felt my face go hot. It was like she could read my mind.

“I don’t think I said anything special,” I answered her carefully, “while I was taking care of him.”

Prairie nodded. “All right. Well, I’m glad he’s… better.”

“Yeah, it, um. I mean, he has that limp, you probably noticed. But that’s all.”

The waitress came along with our salads. We thanked her and just as I was about to pick up my fork, Prairie took a deep breath.

“I have some things to tell you, Hailey,” she said. “I’m sorry to have to do it now, when we’ve only just met, but I think it’s necessary.”

Bad news, then; she was about to tell me what she really wanted from me. But, honestly, how much worse could my life get?

“Whatever,” I said.

“Now I wish I’d ordered a drink,” Prairie said, smiling a little. “A really strong one. Okay, where to start? How about this-Alice isn’t as old as you think she is.”

“What do you mean?”

“I think she’s turning fifty this year,” Prairie said. “Let’s see, I’ll be thirty-one, and she was nineteen when she had me, so, yes, she’s still forty-nine, barely.”

I thought of the old pages, the names and dates written there. Alice Eugenie Tarbell, 1961. But Gram was old-she had the wrinkled face, the thin gray hair, the bent fingers that elderly people have. And she was weak. She could barely get up and down the stairs to the basement. She couldn’t do chores, which was why it was always me who mopped and swept and washed the windows and shoveled snow and carried the laundry and the groceries.

And she was sickly. She caught colds constantly, lying in her bed for days at a time, getting up only when her customers came calling. I found her hair in clumps in the shower drain, and her nails were yellowed and cracked. If she bumped into the furniture, she’d have purple and yellow bruises. Every time she lit up a cigarette, she hacked and coughed as though her lungs were about to fall out.

“That’s impossible,” I finally said.

Prairie sipped at her water. “I wish you could have known your great-grandmother. My grandmother Mary, Alice’s mother.”

I thought of the photo in the cheap frame, the woman’s bright red lips and sparkling eyes. My great- grandmother-I could barely imagine it.

“She died when I was ten,” Prairie continued, “but she was beautiful and strong and fun and smart… so smart. Most of the women in our family are.”

“What happened to Gram, then?”

“Well, here’s part of what I need to tell you, Hailey. Tarbell women-all your ancestors-are incredibly healthy and strong. It’s-well, it’s our birthright, I guess you might say. In our blood. Tell me, I bet you hardly ever get sick, right?”

“Uh… not much.”

“And you’re strong-stronger than the other kids. And more coordinated, right?”

I just shrugged.

“Well, like I said, it’s in our genes. Except that every so often, maybe every five or six generations, there is an aberration.”

“A what?”

“Someone born who doesn’t fit the genetic pattern. Like Alice. Where the rest of the Tarbell women have phenomenal genes, Alice has been in poor health her entire life. She’s aging much too quickly, her tissues are decaying. I don’t imagine she’ll live to see her fifty-fifth birthday.”

I thought of Milla and what she’d said about the necklaces, about how they were cursed. How do you think your grandmother got the way she is?

I didn’t say it, but if it was true, and Gram had been cursed, I wasn’t sorry. Gram could die tomorrow for all I cared. I did the addition in my head-I’d be twenty. Twenty, and free of Gram-my heart lightened at the thought.

An idea came to me, a missing piece of the puzzle of my life that maybe Prairie could supply. “Did you and my mom have the same dad? Do you know who he is?”

Prairie shook her head. I’d wondered, sometimes, looking at Gram with her withered skin and bent body, if she had ever been young, if a man had ever loved her. It didn’t seem possible.

“Alice never talked about that part of her life.”

“What about my dad?” I asked. “Like maybe my mom had a boyfriend or something?”

Prairie gave me a look that was so full of sadness I almost wished I hadn’t asked. “Clover was my younger sister. When I left Gypsum, she was only fourteen. She was already pregnant with you. I never knew.”

Fourteen. I couldn’t believe it. I mean, I knew it was possible-they talked about it in Health enough.

“She would be… twenty-nine,” I said. Barely old enough to be a mother of a kid,