Family Secrets by Ruth Barrett Page B

happened--remember? No one else but Grandpa actually saw her 'fall'.” He jerked his head toward Grandpa. “We only have his word for it. And I sure as shit don’t believe him.”
                "You mean you think that Grandpa killed-”
                “Robert!” called Aunt Carol from the back porch. “Get in here and help me set the table.”
                Freed from the hateful chore by a lesser one, Robert leapt up and ran to the cottage without a backward glance. I enviously watched him go then turned back toward the old man.
                Grandpa had stopped snoring. His one good eye was open now… staring straight at me. I could tell by his expression that we’d been overheard.
                                                                
                I could barely eat any supper that night. Throughout the meal, Grandpa glared at Robert and me with his one watery-grey good eye. His silence was oppressive. A lump of roll got caught in my throat and no amount of water would dislodge it. Grandpa's intense staring didn’t seem to faze Robert, who ended up eating my cob of corn and most of my ham. I told my mother that I didn’t feel well, and asked if I could be excused and go to bed early.
                I couldn’t get to sleep. I kept thinking about my Grandma Annabelle. Mom told me she’d been known as 'Belle' because she’d been so lovely.
    “In fact, you look a lot like her, Jill. You’ll be the spit of her when you grow up. A real heart-breaker.”
    I could see the strong family resemblance. Old photographs showed a kind-faced woman with large eyes and a plait of thick, dark hair just like mine. I even had her name: Jillian Annabelle. There was a framed picture of her in the cottage bedroom where I slept. Her face was the last thing I saw before I turned out the bedside lamp--like a mirror image of my own future grown-up self. But even smiling for photos, she always looked sad. I wished I could’ve known her in my lifetime, but almost all of my grandparents had died before I was born.
    All but Grandpa.
    Maybe that was why he didn’t seem to like me--I reminded him too much of his dead wife. I tossed and turned in the July heat. The small electric fan simply blew the warm air around the stifling room, and did nothing to cool me that night. The cottage had long grown quiet before I finally dropped off and had a nightmare.
     
                In the dream, I am sitting at my grandparents’ kitchen table. Grandma is at the stove with her back to me, humming a tune and stirring a pot. Grandpa bursts in through the back door. He is young and strong, with lean farmer’s muscles--and his two good eyes are narrowed in cold accusation. He has a half-empty bottle gripped in his fist. Ignoring me, he lunges at Grandma and grabs her arm, twisting her around to face him.
                "Bitch! Slut!”
                Terrified, she stares at him in confusion and cringes as he leans in closer, spitting vile words into her face with his boozy breath.
                “Don’ t pretend you don’t understand me, woman! I saw you, Belle--out there in the barn with that bastard farmhand!”
                 He hurls down the bottle, smashing it into lethal-looking shards. Grandma is barefoot.
              “Who? You mean Jasper? We were just talking... I was asking after his sister-”
    She is trying to pull away but Grandpa is holding her fast, squeezing deeply into the flesh of her upper arms. He starts forcing her backward across the room in a sick parody of a joyless two-step dance. Stumbling into the glass, Belle gashes her foot, leaving a streak of whiskey and blood on the floor. I realize exactly where he’s pushing her and that the cellar door is wide open. I try to scream… to warn her… but no sound comes out. I can’t move. I can