Rivulet by Jamie Magee Page A

This won’t take long.”
    “Give me a second to check on Gran. I’ll be your hands.”
    I was close to telling her no, that I’d call Mason over to help, but I didn’t feel like fighting with her about it.
    I’d been staring at this camera for almost fifteen minutes before Cadence showed up. I’d already had everything else ready to go. I just needed her hands.
    “Told you so,” I said absentmindedly as she came to my side.
    “You don’t think this is weird?” she asked with eyes wide.
    “Developing my dead mother’s film? Yes, that is weird.”
    “Not that. Ben told me yesterday that he was going to start to make the calls, tell everyone to say their goodbyes, and today she is out of her bed, out on a date or something?”
    “What is it with Ben lately? He didn’t tell me that either,” I seethed.
    “Either? What else did he not tell you?”
    “That I’d won against Rasure.”
    “You won?” Cadence said with absolute disbelief.
    “I’ll believe it when I hear it myself. That is what Gran said.” I peered to the side at her. “She also told me to get that woman out of our house.”
    “I bet she did. Gavin told me last night that the doctor that oversaw Gran after her stroke was put in jail last week, for malpractice.”
    “How did he know that?”
    “Read it online. I guess you were right to have Ben fire him. Gavin thought you’d seen it online or something and that was why you were all frazzled. Apparently, that doctor was paid more than a few times to end a life and make it look natural.”
    “The doctor Rasure insisted should look over Gran? Are you telling me she paid someone to kill Gran?” I fumed as the room around us turned to ice.
    “I’d tell you to chill out, but that statement is apparently overrated. It doesn’t matter anyway. Gran survived her, and we will, too.”
    With a soothing sigh, I managed to make the ice vanish once again.
    “There are more facets to that woman than just a gold-digger. I can feel it.”
    “She’ll get hers. One way or another.”
    I nodded for her to go to the camera. Slowly, step-by-step I told her what to do, what chemicals to pour, and what temperature the water needed to be, and she carefully listened to every direction I gave. Before long, we were watching images come to life before us.
    “Nothing…” Cadence said with a sigh as we stared at the dripping film.
    “Just wait,” I said as the first one began to come to life. At first I thought it was me, but that was impossible. The figure looked like I did today, a young blonde with a scarf tied around her head. I assumed it was her, my birth mother.
    “Whoa,” Cadence whispered. “You could be twins.”
    I understood her awe. She had no idea what her birth mom looked like. She was raised by a reckless aunt that authorities had to rescue her from at age seven, then she bounced around in the system until she was thirteen, when our parents found her. Cadence never got her closure. I don’t really think she wanted it in the first place. She had a lot of buried hate for her birth family that no one would blame her for not facing.
    The next three images were whitewashed, only shadows across them.
    The fourth image made my skin boil and the room freeze again. Cadence gripped my arm, telling me to get a grip. She didn’t want me to damage the last stages of development.
    The image showed Rasure, standing with all of her dominance. It was an image of an image, meaning someone took a picture of an old newspaper, a newspaper that was dated May 12, 1901. She was standing with a man that had obvious wealth, about to board a ship.
    “That has to be an ancestor or something, right?” Cadence said with a gasp.
    “Then they must all look alike,” I teemed as the next image came to life. It was of a painting dated with the year 1810. Rasure was there again, with another man, shrouded with wealth.
    “I don’t know what I’m more freaked out about, the fact that Rasure looks just like her