Read Online Escaping Fate by DelSheree Gladden - Free Book Online

met or even heard of, but every one of them had lived a life
worth remembering. Wondering what the little man with the bowler
had done for a living or what was if his wife’s wicker basket, I
found another photo.
    Not surprised when I found two more
pictures with traits matching my own, my stomach still turned with
each new discovery. The weight on me seemed to deepened as I
searched. I had to keep reminding myself that I needed to do this.
Along with several more pictures of Katie and Maera, I found
several photographs of a young woman named Elizabeth Malo, who
lived during the early nineteen hundreds, and only one picture of a
young girl named Victoria. She sat in an old fashioned family
portrait dated 1845.
    I kept searching after finding the
picture of Victoria, but I found no other pictures of the raven
haired girls. Eventually my mom excused herself to make some tea,
and I laid the pictures out and stared at them. Yes, I had found
more girls who looked like Katie, but did they share more than
that? I was afraid to find out.
    Trying to beat back the desire to look
up the names of the two new girls in my mom’s genealogy books, I
held out as long as I could. The need to discover what was
happening to my family grew stronger every moment I sat staring at
their faces. Giving in to the nagging feeling, I wandered into the
kitchen. Drinking a glass of iced tea, my mom looked up at me when
I stepped into the room.
    Casually, I asked, “Hey, Mom, would you
mind if I looked through some of your genealogy
binders.”
    Laughing at the odd request, she was
still more than happy to fuel my supposed new found curiosity.
“Sure, Arra. Why don’t you bring them over to the
table?”
    “Okay,” I said.
    I quickly retrieved the notebooks from
a box in the living room and brought them to the kitchen table.
Continuing to organize the cupboards, my mom glanced over at me
every so often as I began searching the pages for the two long dead
girls. Every page I turned that did not hold their names sent both
fear and relief down my spine. Although it took me so long to get
through a single page that the mix of emotions could not come very
often.
    “Do you need some help?” my mom
asked.
    “Uh, that’s okay,” I replied. The last
thing I wanted to do was explain to my mom what I was really
looking for. I could hardly think of a plausible lie to explain my
interest in the forms. Quietly I hoped mom would give up organizing
the kitchen and return to the photo albums in the other room. After
my “help” you could barely walk across the floor because of the
mess.
    “Those forms can be a little confusing
the first time you try to read them,” my mom explained. She took
the chair next to me, settling in for a detailed lesson.
    What else could I do but accept her
offer? Pushing her away would only provoke more questions. “Yeah, I
guess they are a little confusing,” I said.
    Nodding her head in agreement, my mom
pointed to the top of the page and began explaining. There was much
more information on one page than I had expected. My mom showed me
where to find the names of the parents of the family the worksheet
was about, then how to find the children’s names as well. There was
also detailed information about where and when each person was
born, married, died, and buried.
    “Is there someone specific you were
trying to find?” my mom asked.
    I turned my face to look out the
window, unable to trust my features not to betray my uneasiness.
“No, I was just curious,” I said. I felt bad lying to my mom, but
the truth would only make things worse. “Grandpa was telling me
stories about our family, about some of our ancestors in South
America. I was just curious to learn about some of the people he
mentioned.” I smiled hoping my explanation would hold
up.
    Smiling even wider than before, my mom
put a hand on my shoulder. “You know, Grandpa was the one who
inspired me to start researching our family history too. When your
father