Granny’s stern look softened. “She left them behind, a long time ago, when she was in college, I think.” Granny shrugged. “I never throw anything out.”
Ellie’s jaw dropped. “Wait, you’re saying…you mean this stuff belonged to my mom?” She ran her hands down the front of the dress, and stopped at the waistline to finger a tiny bow. “She wore this outfit?”
Aunt Grace wrapped her arm around Ellie’s shoulder and looked her in the eye. “Yeah, kiddo. I remember it like it was yesterday. Lucy took her gawky baby sister along to the mall to pick it out. She was looking for something special to wear on a first date with a handsome young man she’d just met. When she was all dressed and ready, I thought she looked like a fairy tale princess.”
“She did.”
Ellie’s head jerked up at Joe’s remark. She wrinkled her forehead, trying to frame the question, but Grace stopped her. “Come on, honey. Let’s grab a plate and go in the other room. It’s time to talk.”
# # #
It had been so many years since Grace had been told that her siblings—Lucy and Samuel—were different, that they carried a gene that made them special…in a good way. Oh, and that she, Grace, their baby sister, did not. That information, and all that had followed from it, had shaped their lives in ways they never could have imagined. That original conversation had taken place in this very room, the farmhouse library, when Grace was only nine, and Lucy, sixteen, the same age as Ellie was now.
Not that Grace would’ve chosen this age to tell Ellie. In fact, she’d just as soon have kept it a secret for as long as possible. At least until Ellie was in college. Or grad school. Or starting her first job. Or maybe on her thirtieth birthday. Just sometime when it wouldn’t disrupt all her life plans, and shatter her world, and crush her dreams.
“Don’t you agree, Grace?”
“Huh? I, uh…what was the question?” Grace flushed under Granny’s scrutiny. All these years, and the old bat could still make her squirm like a worm. She sighed, “Sorry, Elmyra, I was thinking about…” Joe met her eyes across the room. Yeah, he knew what she was thinking about.
Granny set her jaw. “I was saying that I’m sure Elodie has a lot of questions for us, and that perhaps, we should just start there.”
“Oh, right, good idea. El, honey…” Grace waved her encouragement toward the cushy brown leather sofa, where Ellie sat cross-legged at one end, and Angel, as usual, was draped lazily over the other.
Ellie set her half-finished plate on the coffee table in front of her and pushed it away. She glanced around at each of them in turn as she spoke, “Really? You mean someone’s finally going to answer my questions?”
Angel quickly swallowed another mouthful of food and answered first, “Yep, but don’t look at me. This is his department.” She pointed her fork at Joe for a moment, then over towards Granny. “And hers. Me? I’m just here for the food.” She stuck the fork back into some kind of broccoli casserole and began wrestling with molten cheese strings.
That made Grace smile. How could anyone not like Angel Espinoza? Angel was one of the few people at the farm who didn’t make Grace feel like a misfit. She was casual, comfortable, and down to earth; she said exactly what she was thinking, even when it wasn’t quite appropriate; and she wasn’t an astrophysicist or a best-selling novelist or a Fortune 500 CEO. Or whatever it turned out that Ellie would become.
But it looked like Ellie still considered Grace her best source of information, for she directed her first questions at no one else. “Aunt Grace, what the heck is going on? What was that craziness last night? Who were those people? And why we did fly all over the country to get away from them? In a private jet, no less. And what’s with the impromptu vacation? Not that this isn’t a nice place, but what are we doing here, and how long are we staying?”
She stopped for a breath, but before anyone could begin to process the barrage of queries, she shifted her focus to Joe, “And you, Uncle Joe…no offense, but why? I haven’t seen you since I was a kid, and all of a sudden, you show up outta the blue…” She motioned toward Angel, “With your…girlfriend?”
Angel laughed so hard she practically sprayed broccoli casserole. Joe frowned and grumbled, “Well, is that so unimaginable?”
Angel hid her grin behind a napkin. “Uh, sorry, Joe, I didn’t mean, uh…it’s not that…” Joe, who had been standing the whole time, dropped into a chair and raised a hand to stop the embarrassing backpedal. Angel returned to Ellie’s question, “Chica, I wasn’t there for him. I came to save you.”
“Me?” Ellie’s forehead wrinkled in consternation. “Save me from what? My first kiss?”
Grace’s voice was gentle, “Honey, how well do you remember what happened last night?”
“I remember it. I went to Nathan’s, and we watched some vampire movie, and then I went to pick up the pizza with Aiden, and we stopped at the river, and he, uh, he…” She glanced at the faces around her, and her cheeks started to turn a little pink. “Well, that is, I think he was going to kiss me, and then, Aunt Grace showed up, and there were these scary guys, and then Angel was there, and…” She shook her head out, “It’s a little fuzzy after that. Like, really fuzzy. Like…blank.”
“Hmph.” Joe made a sour face. “That’s because that little piece of sh—”
“Joe!” Grace and Granny admonished him simultaneously. Finally, something they agreed on.
Joe rephrased, “Lover Boy drugged you, sweetheart.”
“He…” Ellie bit her lip and looked at the floor. Quietly she said, “I thought he liked me. Like he thought I was pretty or funny or smart…”
Grace fought the urge to run over and wrap her arms around Ellie. Why did her first horrible experience with the opposite sex have to be shared with so many people? Virtual strangers, no less. “I’m sorry, honey. I’m sure that’s what he wanted you to think. He was trying to gain your trust.”
Ellie was quiet for a moment, then she looked up. “Okay, so I’m an idiot. I got tricked by some stupid guy. Why all the cloak and dagger? I mean, did we really have to leave town? And did you have to call in the troops?” She waved her hand toward Joe and Angel.
Granny set her coffee cup down loudly. “She didn’t call them, Elodie. I did. Good thing, too, or your Aunt might be washing up a few miles down the river about now, and God knows what would have happened to you.” She sat forward in her seat, bringing her closer to Ellie. “You’re a hot commodity, my dear, and it’s time you understood that.” With a sidelong glance at Grace, she added, “High time.” Grace just frowned and looked away.
“Hot commodity? Me?” Ellie laughed, “You’ve got me mixed up with someone else.”
“No, honey,” Grace said. “She doesn’t. You are, well, Gifted.”
“Gifted? In what? Being a total klutz? What are you talking about?” Ellie’s amusement appeared to be turning into frustration.
Joe stood again, accepting his role. “You’re Gifted, Ellie, as in, one of us.” He made a whirling motion with his finger, indicating the people in the room, then pointed back out toward the hall. “One of them. You have a gene, Ellie. The Gifted gene. I have it. Granny has it. Your mother had it.”
Angel pulled her hand back from where she’d been picking a piece of food out of her teeth, and added, “Even me.”
“Seriously? I have a-a gene, a special gene?” Ellie looked at Grace. “You have it, too, Aunt Grace?”
Grace shook her head. “No, not me. Grampa Ellicott, your mom, and your Uncle Sam, they all had it, not me. You inherited the gene from your mom.”
Ellie seemed tickled by the news. “So what does it do? What is this Gifted thing? Will it make me super smart or give me bionic hearing or something?”
Joe grinned. “Uh, no bionic body parts, but super smart or super talented…yeah.”
Granny broke in, “Everyone who has the gene is gifted at something. They’ll have a superior ability in one particular area that goes beyond anything normal humans can attain, if it
’s nurtured properly. The skill might be scholarly, such as science or math or languages, or something creative, like writing, music, or art—”
“Poppy,” Ellie said matter-of-factly.
Granny nodded. “Yes, Poppy Prentiss is a remarkably talented visual artist. But there are other, more subtle Gifts, too. Leadership, persuasion, healing…like Joseph Manning.”
Then Joe motioned toward Angel. “And some are physically gifted, as with strength, speed, and agility. They may be sports stars or experts in the defensive arts.”
Ellie raised an eyebrow, “Defensive arts…”
Angel shrugged. “He means ass-kicking. They call us Defenders.”
Ellie nodded, taking it all in, then asked tentatively, “So, why are you so sure I have this gene? I’m not good at anything.”
“Sweetheart, you’re plenty good at a lot of things,” Grace said. “And you definitely have the gene. Your mom and I, we had you tested when you were little. But as far as your Gift…well, we just don’t know yet. The Gift will manifest at different ages for different people, usually sometime in adolescence or the teen years, but sometimes earlier, sometimes later. It depends on the environment and the life experiences—”
Granny eyed Ellie knowingly. “Your mother was an early bloomer. She whizzed through all the high school science courses and half the collegiate curriculum by the time she was your age.”
Grace threw her an angry look. Could the old woman not see Ellie’s insecurities? The kid already felt like a failure compared to her genius scientist parents. Her Gift would show itself when the time was right. Why not just let her be a happy-go-lucky teenager in the meantime? That was just one reason she knew, no matter what this place and these people had to offer, that she had to get Ellie out of here and re-establish a normal life for her niece.
“Look, chica, I never knew I had any special abilities, either—until I needed ’em one day. I was fifteen, this skinny little string bean, and some creep tried to hurt my baby brother. All of a sudden, I turn into Wonder Woman.” She snapped her fingers. “Just like that. I got angry, scared, knew I had to save him, and I started kicking and scratching and throwing punches, and, next thing you know, this big ol’ ugly dude is laying on the sidewalk, groaning and bleeding, and a crowd of people are staring at us. A few days later, this stranger walks up to me,” she pointed at Joe, “and offers me a new life. That was over ten years ago, and I’m still here.”
“Wait, I don’t understand…” Ellie looked at Joe. “You found her? On the streets? How?”
“It’s part of what we do here, El. We keep tabs on Gifted Ones all over the world.” He inclined his head toward Granny. “Granny has made it her life’s work to track the history and genealogy of Gifted folks. There are thousands of us around the world…that we know of. Undoubtedly, many more that we don’t.”
“And she’ll be happy to tell you a-a-all about it, if you give her enough time,” added Grace, with a roll of her eyes.
Granny made a sour face in response, but then turned toward Ellie. “You have to understand, Ellie, we don’t just do this out of curiosity. Our work is important, for a lot of reasons. Gifts can be misused, especially scientific ones or persuasive ones. Most of the Gifted strive to make the world a better place, to save lives, feed the hungry, help the environment, or just build a better mousetrap, but there are some who use their gifts for less benevolent purposes. Being gifted doesn’t make us immune to greed and lust and human frailty.” She pushed herself up from the chair and walked to the window. She stared out into the dark night for a moment, seemingly lost in another time and place, then turned back toward the group. She set her jaw. “We see it as our job to intervene, or at least try to intervene, when those things happen.”
“But the best part is what goes on here,” said Angel, throwing her arms wide open. “This place is amazing. Gifteds from all over come here to study, to work together, to do research, and to teach. Like Willow, and Dr. Jameson, and Maya Petanu—she speaks twenty-four languages. Can you believe it? I only know two, and I’m not so good with those. And then there’s Dr. Draco, and Maury Swan, and—”
“Wait a minute. How many people live here? The place doesn’t look that big.”
Joe grinned. “You haven’t actually seen it all, Ellie. It’s, um, larger than it appears. And there are several more buildings out back.” He shook his head. “Don’t worry, you can get the full tour tomorrow. For now, just realize that most of us don’t live here full-time. People come and go.”
Grace threw in, “Yeah, kind of like a vacation hot spot for artists and geeks and politicians.”
“Hey, you said you loved coming here as a kid,” Joe reminded her.
She couldn’t help but smile. “Yeah, I did. It is a wondrous place for children, Gifted or not. Arts and crafts, science experiments, animals, crazy inventions…what’s not to love?”
“So you came here, Aunt Grace? When you were little? You and Mom?”
“Yes, honey, we came here…after Elmyra and her second husband—”
“Third,” corrected Granny.
“Uh, right, third husband. They approached my parents, because Granny suspected, through her genealogical traces, that Daddy was Gifted, and therefore, that one or more of us kids probably were, too. They knew we didn’t have a lot of money, and they wanted to make sure we’d have the best opportunities to succeed.”
Ellie looked confused. “But you said you weren’t—”
“No, as it turned out, the tests showed I did not have the gene, while Daddy and Lucy and Sammy did. But I got to come along anyway, whenever they came here to study and visit.”
“Well, of course you did,” said Granny, as she plunked back down in her chair. “Just because someone doesn’t have the Gifted gene doesn’t mean they wouldn’t benefit from being here. And us, from having them around. We’re not elitists.”
Grace managed to eke out a half-smile for the old woman. No, they weren’t. That part was certainly true; the Gifted Ones had always welcomed her and treated her like one of the family.
“So…this gene thingy,” started Ellie. “That’s the reason my mom was such a genius. Why she wrote all those papers and made all those discoveries and everything. I get it. But what about my dad? He was a brilliant scientist, too. Everybody thought he was gonna win a Nobel Prize for all that hydro-botanical stuff he was doing. Did he have the Gifted gene, too?”
“No!” The firmness of the unanimous response from Granny, Joe, and Grace, all at once, hushed the room. No one seemed quite sure how to proceed.
# # #
Joe got up from his chair and began pacing. He ran a hand through his hair. He hadn’t really wanted to get into all this today. He had looked forward for many years to telling Ellie she was one of them, one of the Gifted Ones. At least he could share that with her, an ancient genetic bond. It was better than no kinship at all. He hadn’t wanted this night to be about digging up old painful memories and wounds that would never heal.
But she had asked. And he was the Gifted Ones’ leader, at least for now. It was his job to tackle these messy questions. He strode to the wall across from the couch that Ellie and Angel were sitting on, then pressed a button and waited. A large painting slid away in its frame, revealing a white board behind. He grabbed a colored marker from a shelf nearby and began to write. “Ellie, you took biology, right?”
“Yeah, sure, but…” She shook her head. “I’m not like my parents. I wasn’t particularly good at it.”
Joe continued drawing on the board as he spoke, “But you remember Punnett Squares? The gene inheritance diagrams?”
“Uh…oh yeah, I remember. Actually, that part was pretty interesting, like who would have blue eyes or red hair or…” She pointed to herself. “Freckles.”
Joe turned back to face them. “Yes, Ellie, freckles.” Just like her mother. He waved his hand at what he had drawn on the board—a cross-tab, with the boxes filled in with big Gs and little Gs, intended to show h
ow different pairs of parents would yield different combinations of children, with and without the Gifted gene. He proceeded to explain, “The Gifted gene is a dominant gene. That means if you have it, the phenotype will express. You will show a unique ability in some field. It can’t be hidden, like a recessive gene, like the gene for blue eyes.”
“Okay, I understand.”
“Good. Well, here’s what’s important to know. All of us here have one copy of the gene. We had one Gifted parent and one not.” He motioned toward his cross-tab, showing the Gifted gene with a capital G, and the not-gifted as a lower case G. “As long as there is only one Gifted gene in the mix, the children of these people will have at most one copy of the gene, and some will have none.” Grace raised her hand in acknowledgment of the fact that she was one of the have-nots.
Joe continued, “In fact, the odds are fifty-fifty that any such child will be gifted.” He then erased one of the normal parent’s lower case Gs and replaced it with a capital G. “If, however, we have two Gifted parents, well, then we have a problem.”
Ellie shook her head. “What problem?”
Joe took a deep breath. He thought he could handle this. He thought he could just stand here and talk about the revelation that had shattered his life, but the words caught in his throat. From across the room, Grace met his gaze. She gave him a small smile, then turned to Ellie and answered the question for him, “Because, honey, the child of two Gifted people could potentially have two copies of the gene.”
Ellie looked from one to the other of them. “And that’s a problem, because…”
Angel jumped in, “Because the double-G is bad news, sister.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really, young lady.” Granny stood and walked toward Joe. Even the crotchety old matriarch seemed to know he couldn’t finish what he’d started. She tapped her finger on the board, on his theoretical double-gene child. “These children are…troubled.”
The Gifted Ones: A Reader Page 7
