I’d gone downstairs to make coffee and laid my head on the old farm table, and the next thing I knew, I woke to a stiff neck and the digital clock on the microwave reading 3 a.m., the coffee now cold. I trudged up the stairs, hearing their voices and quiet crying from where the door was slightly open. I’d reached for the handle when I heard Nanna say, “He was the only one who knew what we’re capable of doing.”

My hand had hovered. “Hon, don’t go there just now. Give yourself a moment to just say goodbye,” Roxy said, her own voice broken.

“I said my goodbyes to him a hundred times over the past few days. He’d become so sweet, you know, especially after he got sick. Death does that, the doctors said. It softens a person, knowing the end is near. I told him every hour how much I loved him, and apologized for everything I’d done all those years ago. All he would do is hold my hand and say how important it is that I keep up the work. Our work. Now that he’s gone, I can’t imagine doing it without him.”

“Shhhh. Come on, now. Let’s call hospice, and you need to tell the girls–”

“I need to tell them everything. Everything. And William deserves to know. What I can do. What he can do. What they did to us.”

“Lynn, you still don’t know what they did to you—”

“It’s there. Inside me. Inside William. Even if we don’t know what it is, I know what I read in those computer files and saw in those interviews. I know what I saw underneath the hospital, with all those people. What we’re capable of doing. And once it comes—the pain, the bleeding in the ears—it means we’re activated. Not long after, we’ll die, and so will anyone near to us.”

“Lynn, don’t do this now. You know nothing has happened in fifteen years. You wouldn’t have remained by your family if there was any hint that you were dangerous. No one’s been activated or anything like that—”

“And William. He’s different. He has it in him too. He’s the conduit. I don’t even know what that means, but he’s the final stage; the trigger to activate all of us.”

“This isn’t the time. You’re exhausted—”

“Tom kept telling me that it was important that we just lived our lives. That William knew he was loved. And he was right.…”

He could hear Roxy move in to comfort her. I’d stepped away from the door, feeling numb.

The binge that came next lasted a few days. Everyone thought I was just grief drinking. Maybe I was. Grief for my grandfather, and grief knowing I could be the one to ultimately cause the death of my own grandmother—