Catherine Wheels
by E.L. Mellor
“Mark, what’s Catherine doing?”
Her brother closed the car door and turned. “Catherine! Where are your manners? Come here and greet your aunt!” he said, in a voice not as stern as his words.
Jane thought of their brother Paul, but even if Mark hadn’t told her anything in the years she’d been gone, no doubt he’d have mentioned it on the ride from the airport, as he’d warned her of his younger daughter’s shyness.
Catherine’s eyes focused on her father. “Sorry, Dad!” she called, then jumped up and ran across the lawn like any other nine-year-old. “Hello, Aunt Jane. Did you have a good trip? How long does it take to fly here from Nairobi?”
She held out her hand, which felt warm in Jane’s chilly one as she kissed her niece. “Hello, Catherine. It’s good to see you again. I guess I’m supposed to act surprised at how much you’ve grown, but I always thought that sounded stupid when people said it to me.”
The girl’s laugh reminded her of the ripple of wind through long grass.
“If I hadn’t grown at all in six years, there’d be something wrong with me.” She looked up at Jane’s eyes and spoke in a gentler voice. “I’m really, really sorry about Uncle Richard. He was so nice, and I wish I could see him again.”
“Thank you, Catherine.” Definitely not like Paul.
“Can I carry something?”
She handed over a tote. As her niece skipped into the house, Jane turned to her brother. “She’s even more precocious than she was at three.”
Mark shook his head. “You have no idea.”
As they approached the front steps with the rest of the bags, Mark’s wife came out to the porch. “I’m sorry about Richard,” said Jacqueline as she took Jane’s hand and kissed both cheeks. “He was such a good man.”
Jane had always admired her sister-in-law’s grace. It was obvious where Catherine got her appealing warmth of voice and manner.
They entered a front hall gleaming with polished wood. Her younger niece Rachel peered out from behind the archway to the living room, eyes startled wide, and whispered a barely audible greeting only when coaxed by her mother. Jane spoke quietly and kept her distance so as not to frighten the child.
Everything looked just as crisp and clean upstairs. She’d forgotten what a comfortable home Jacqueline had made of the dismal place it was before her brother married.
As he set down her bags in a room scented faintly with lavender, Mark said, “You know you’re welcome to stay here as long as you like.”
“It’s just until I find a job and a place to live. I don’t want to impose.”
The left side of Mark’s mouth twitched upwards in his old lopsided smile. “Jacqueline won’t mind, and we’ve seen so little of each other these last twenty years.”
Tears stung Jane’s eyes; she couldn’t trust her voice.
“And I’d like my daughters to have a chance to get to know their aunt before you go off to help people somewhere else. Catherine’s been looking forward to your visit and can’t wait to hear all about the places you’ve seen.”
“She’s so like Jacqueline.”
His brilliant smile made him look for a moment like the little brother she remembered. “They’re sunlit souls. I’m a lucky man.”
Jane suppressed a stab of envy. “And Rachel?”
“She’s more like us, I’m afraid. To her, the world is a darker place.” His smile faded and he looked his age again.
She didn’t know what to say; their family had never discussed such things.
“Stay with us until after Epiphany and rest for a while. And don’t tell me you’re worried about being a freeloader, because we both know you can’t help making yourself useful in the rectory and the parish. You might even find being around Jacqueline and Catherine brightens the darkness a little.”
After lunch in the backyard, Mark excused himself to finish his sermon for the next day.
Catherine asked, “Dad, is Mrs. Greydon all right?”
Her parents exchanged glances.
“I could come up with a reason to drop by this afternoon…” Jacqueline offered.
“You should probably just call—maybe ask something about the Harvest Festival?”
Catherine helped her mother clear the table, then came back out and sat near her aunt. “Maman said I could ask you about Africa if it won’t tire you out.”
“There’s not that much to tell. Running a clinic doesn’t leave time for the sort of adventures you read about in books.”
Her niece looked thoughtful. “Dad said you and Uncle Richard did good work, but it was really hard. What kind of diseases do people get there?”
“A lot of the same ones we have here, but also leprosy and tuberculosis. In our clinics in Tanzania and Burundi, we saw more malaria, and our last clinic was in the Kenyan highlands, where there aren’t as many mosquitos, but a lot of car accidents.”
“Did you and Uncle Richard ever get to go on a safari?”
That seemed safer territory for a child. “Your uncle didn’t like to leave the clinic for long, but a friend of mine from nursing school invited me to go with her to the Serengeti and Masai Mara—they’re national parks in Tanzania and Kenya. We saw elephants, lions, herds of wildebeests, even a rhinoceros, which looked like a grey rock in the distance.”
Christine had paid for both of them, which was the only reason Richard hadn’t protested her absence more. On the last night, her friend confided she’d been diagnosed with ALS and wanted one more adventure before she grew too weak to travel. When Jane told Richard about Christine’s diagnosis, he pointed out that many of their patients died without ever having been more than a few miles from their home village.
“What do wildebeests look like?” asked Catherine.
Jane showed her some photos she’d taken, but as the conversation turned to yearly migrations, Catherine stared at nothing for a few moments, then shook her head. Now Jane wondered if she didn’t have a minor seizure disorder.
They wandered back into the kitchen when the afternoon grew colder. Jacqueline sat at the table reading.
“Did you call Mrs. Greydon?” Catherine asked.
“Yes. She’s fine.”
“Good. I’m going to practice now.” She turned to Jane. “My piano teacher says I can start organ lessons next year, if I make enough progress.” They heard scales soon after she skipped out of the room.
“Who’s Mrs. Greydon?” asked Jane.
“Ellen’s a Sunday school teacher.”
“Has she been ill?”
Jacqueline shrugged. “No.”
Jane felt vaguely disoriented, as if she’d missed something obvious.
Her sister-in-law smiled. “Would you like some tea? I usually make a cup for Mark around this time on Saturday afternoon if he’s still working on his sermon.”
When Jane brought Mark his tea, he invited her to join him in the study, which looked more like her brother than any other room in the rectory. A blizzard of papers covered the desk, books stood piled in drifts next to overflowing shelves, but the green leather chairs were comfortable, once Mark had cleared them off, and the scent of bergamot rising from her cup reminded Jane of her favorite hotel in Nairobi.
She wanted to ask about Catherine, but Mark seemed uneasy and avoided her eyes. Was something wrong?
“I don’t want to offend you, but I doubt you and Richard made a fortune as medical missionaries, and I wondered… I wanted to know… that you’d be all right. Financially, I mean. If you need any help and would like to stay for longer than a few months…”
Jane relaxed. “Thank you, but I think I’ll be fine. Richard was funny about things. Whenever I proposed a trip home, he’d answer by listing everything we could buy for the clinic with the money our flights would cost, and I know he begrudged the expense of my yearly sanity breaks in Nairobi.” She took a sip of tea.
“But he refused to use any of the trust from Mom and Dad, no matter how badly a clinic might need it, and he paid for life insurance. There should be enough for a small house, with some to spare. I’ll still have to find a job, which won’t be easy at my age, but I’ll manage.”
“Maybe not as difficult as you think. There are rural clinics nearby that might wish to hire a nurse with your experience. I’ll ask around, if you like.”
She realized he hoped she’d stay in the area and swallowed more tea to clear the lump from her throat. It felt strange to be wanted rather than merely needed.
The piano stopped abruptly; Mark frowned. When Catherine shouted “No, no!” he leaped up, and Jane followed him out the door in time to see Rachel slip on the stairs as Catherine dashed into the front hall. Her brother raced up a few steps to catch his younger daughter before she could fall very far.
Once Jane saw only bruises, she left Rachel to her parents’ comfort, since the child still looked frightened of her. Oddly, they seemed almost more concerned with their older daughter’s distress. She went up to unpack, confused by the timing of what had just happened. Rachel had slipped only after Catherine cried out, and she didn’t think the stairs could be seen from the piano bench.
Catherine was waiting in the hall with a basket over her arm when Jane came back down. “Maman asked me to get some herbs for dinner. Do you want to see the sunken garden?”
She had only a vague memory of it from her last visit. It lay on the south side of the rectory, down three steps of stone, with a high hedge surrounding all but the entrance.
“Maman believes someone built this to protect their roses from the winds off the lake in winter. She planted her herbs here so she could have lavender like they did when she was growing up in France.”
The middle of the garden showed tidy raised beds of various herbs, now a little faded, surrounded by a border of lavender. Late roses bloomed on a few of the bushes around the outer edge.
Catherine snipped several sprigs of sage and thyme, then began gathering pink roses. “These are for your room,” she said. “Did you ever read The Secret Garden?”
Jane smiled. “It was one of my favorite books. I used to wish I had a walled garden to hide in.”
“I wish I could have seen this one when it was all overgrown like the one in the book, but I was only a baby when Maman cut back the roses and put in herbs.”
She marveled at the poise of her niece. How she’d longed for that when younger! The child had the luck of her mother’s charm and her father’s mind. Mark had sounded similarly old for his age as a boy, but with a stiffer manner.
On the way back to the house, Catherine asked, “Aunt Jane, when you were in Africa, were there people you couldn’t help?”
“Well… yes, of course. Many people, actually.”
Her niece looked thoughtful and followed with a stranger question than Jane had expected. “Did you ever get used to it?”
She wondered how much she dared say and settled on the truth. “No, I never did.”
Her niece took a deep breath and stood straighter, as if shouldering a burden heavier than herbs and flowers.
Jane woke early the next morning. Her mind might know she was in Vermont and her heart be glad of it, but her body hadn’t finished making the journey from East Africa. She lay warm under the blankets, savoring a rare chance to do nothing, even if she couldn’t stop ruminating.
Catherine showed something more than precocity, something she couldn’t yet comprehend. Although she’d barely exchanged greetings with Rachel, she felt she understood her better. At five, she’d been terrified of new people. Her younger niece even resembled her own childhood photographs, except that Rachel’s face had inherited traces of Jacqueline’s chiseled delicacy.
Her thoughts turned to Paul, the way they often had since her husband’s death, as if the new grief had reawakened the old. She’d been just seven when her brother was sent away. Almost her only memories were of him screaming for hours and her failure to teach him to talk. Once Mark was born, her mother couldn’t take care of both boys, even with Jane’s attempts to help. For years it had felt like her fault somehow, as if she should have done more so he could stay with the family, which left her protective of Mark. She now felt the same toward his children.
Jane loved the little stone church with its red door and smooth wooden pews, the familiar comfort of the liturgy, the sparkle of light through stained glass, the sweet treble of the children floating above the fuller voices of the adult choir. She hadn’t realized just how much she’d missed such things, including the family dinner in the rectory’s sunlit dining room.
She’d intended to sleep only briefly afterwards, but exhaustion from the trip and meeting so many strangers at the coffee hour stretched her nap to a few hours. Rain spattered the windows as she went downstairs.
Catherine sat curled up on a window seat in the front hall, staring out at the twilight gloom with a closed book on her lap. She jumped as her aunt greeted her. “Sorry, Aunt Jane. I didn’t hear you come down.”
“Where are your parents?”
Catherine looked distressed. “Someone in the parish had a stroke. Dad went to the hospital to see her and sit with her husband and son, while Maman drove to the university to get her daughter. She took Rachel but said I could stay here with you.”
More than three decades of treating patients had taught Jane to recognize when someone wasn’t telling her everything. “It’s damp. Let’s go into the kitchen for some hot chocolate.”
Once again, Catherine’s gaze became unfocused as she stared at her mug.
“I can’t help noticing you stare at things sometimes…”
Her niece looked at the floor. “I see ghosts. Dad said I could tell you.”
“Ghosts? Of people who’ve died?”
She shook her head. “No, I see ghosts of things that haven’t happened yet.”
“You mean you can predict the future?”
“Not really.”
“Why not?”
Catherine’s clear eyes met Jane’s. “Because they’re not all true. That’s why I call them ghosts.”
“Did you see Rachel fall right before she slipped?”
“Yes, but it hardly ever works that way. Mostly I can’t do anything to stop what happens.”
That explained the oddness of the timing. A flash of insight struck Jane. “Do you know the name of the woman who had a stroke?”
“Mrs. Greydon,” Catherine replied in a voice almost as small as her sister’s.
“Weren’t you asking about her yesterday?”
She nodded as if guilty of some terrible crime.
“Did you ‘see’ her get ill?”
“Just before you arrived…”
Jane patted Catherine’s shoulder awkwardly as tears streamed down the girl’s face. Practical aid, not comfort, had always been her strong suit. “Let’s make sandwiches and scones for when your parents get back.”
When Jacqueline came in, she told Catherine the doctors were doing everything they could. Jane had said that too many times herself to be fooled, but her niece grew calmer.
Once they’d eaten, Jane cleaned up while her sister-in-law put Rachel to bed and Catherine went upstairs to read.
“If you keep being this much help,” said Jacqueline after she returned to the kitchen, “we may not let you leave after the holidays.”
“I like to make myself useful.”
Jacqueline met her eyes. “You really don’t know how Mark looks up to you, do you? Or how much he admires the work you and Richard did? Of course, that’s mostly his fault, since I’m sure he’s never told you.”
Jane looked away and fidgeted with a dish towel. Not for the first time, she wished for ease with people.
“Although you may not believe it, Rachel is already more comfortable with you than with most people she doesn’t know well. And it’s clear Catherine loves and trusts you.”
“She told me she sometimes sees things that haven’t happened yet…”
“Not long after your last visit, Catherine said she’d seen her little sister, then found a picture of a dark-haired, brown-eyed girl to show us what she looked like, a week before I even suspected I was pregnant.” She shrugged and went on. “There’s Ellen Greydon, of course, and other parishioners Catherine told us would become ill, an accident in front of the church she saw a few days before it happened, and now Rachel’s fall.”
“Do you really think she can see the future?”
“I don’t know what to think. My Breton grandmother had premonitions of a sort, which my mother dismissed as nonsense because they didn’t always happen as Grand-mère said. In fact, I’m pretty sure she moved to Nantes and married a Frenchman just to get away from what she called ignorant, provincial superstition.”
“Did any of your grandmother’s predictions come true?” Jane asked.
Jacqueline smiled. “After teaching English in Nantes for ten years, I spent a summer with her not long before she died. Grand-mère told me I would marry a priest, move to America, and have two daughters. I didn’t believe her—and, of course, I was thinking about a Catholic priest, so it seemed absurd—but Mark and I met while looking at the stones of Carnac a few weeks later.
“Maybe it was coincidence, but it’s clear the world doesn’t work as I once assumed. I accept that Catherine sees visions of some sort and don’t need to understand how, although I wish there were more I could do for her distress at not being able to protect people from pain.”
Jane didn’t know what to say to any of that.
Her sister-in-law yawned. “Excuse me. I’d better make coffee so I don’t fall asleep before Mark comes home. Although I didn’t tell Catherine, the doctors aren’t very hopeful, and I don’t like him to be alone when he’s been out with a dying parishioner.”
“I could stay up. After my long nap this afternoon, I’m not in the least tired.”
Jane read the sad news on Mark’s face.
“She was only fifty-two. This will be hard on her family.”
“And on Catherine?”
He nodded grimly and went to his study. She gave him a few minutes alone before bringing in food and tea. They sat in silence for a while as he ate.
“Mark, do you believe Catherine can see visions of the future?”
“Belief and I parted company years ago, not long before I took that trip to Europe.” He buttered a second scone.
“You never said much about it.”
Mark hesitated. “I knew you and Richard were struggling with a new clinic in Tanzania, and…”
“You didn’t want to worry me.”
He raised an eyebrow, and Jane wondered if all siblings were so careful with each other.
“I woke up one morning after twelve years as a priest and wondered what I was doing. The God in whom I’d been taught to put my faith for four decades seemed dead to me, and I didn’t believe a word I’d been preaching.”
Jane remembered times in her own life when she’d longed for the greyness of simple doubt to lighten the black despair in which she felt trapped. She’d met Richard not long after learning Paul had died and been drawn into his work as an escape from the darkness into which guilt and grief had sunk her.
“So you tried a travel cure?”
“Something like that. Is that why you went to East Africa?”
“Something like that.”
They smiled in recognition.
“I felt as if I were drowning in unbelief, so I visited cathedrals, shrines, standing stones—anything solid I might be able to hold on to—and met Jacqueline at Carnac. We started talking about religion and…” Mark blushed.
“Did marriage make you believe again?”
“No. I found something more to live for.”
“But you’re still a priest.”
He got up and began to pace the room. The rug looked worn along his path. “In most ways, I’m a better priest for my lack of certainty. It taught me compassion and led me to a deeper faith.”
“What about Catherine’s visions?”
“When I first suspected what was happening, I read everything I could get my hands on, from theological works about prophecy to probability theory, quantum entanglement, and the non-linearity of time. None of it explained what Catherine could do or provided a way to help her.
“It hurts her to witness the suffering of others without being able to prevent it, and if she didn’t have such a cheerful spirit, I’d fear it might crush her. The only grace I see in this gift is the strength and compassion it will force her to build. I’ve come to accept just how much lies beyond my understanding, and perhaps that’s the beginning of trust in something greater than human creeds.”
Mark’s frankness startled her. Openness had not been one of their family’s virtues.
He continued. “I no longer chase answers and reasons. My love for my family, Jacqueline’s warmth, and Catherine’s joy amid pain have done more to show me there’s light in the universe than most of what I learned at seminary. If I can share some of that light with others, it’s enough for me.”
“So you do believe in God?” Another pang of envy pierced Jane’s heart.
The left side of his mouth twitched. “Let’s just say I’m open to the possibility.”
After Mark went upstairs, she returned to the kitchen to wash dishes and quiet her mind.
“Aunt Jane?” Catherine stood in the doorway.
“Are you ill?”
“No, I woke up and couldn’t go back to sleep. Did Dad come home? Is Mrs. Greydon going to be all right?”
Jane paused a beat too long.
“She died, didn’t she?”
“Yes. I’m sorry.” Jane didn’t know what else to say. She never had, not in all the years at all the clinics.
Tears seeped out of Catherine’s eyes, and the look on her face seemed too old for nine. “I just don’t know what to do. Maybe when I’m grown up, I’ll be able to figure out how to tell what will actually happen, and I can start something like the Red Cross—only that sends people out to prevent terrible things instead of afterwards.”
Jane remembered women damaged by childbirth beyond her and Richard’s aid, the wasting babies with illnesses they had no way to cure, the sorrow of those whose loved ones they couldn’t save.
“Do you think I can, Aunt Jane?”
“You’ll find a way to help some people, even if you can’t save all of them.”
“That’s what it was like in Africa, wasn’t it, when you couldn’t help everybody?” She paused. “Dad told me sometimes it hurts to be a good person.”
Mark clearly shared her own talent for cold comfort. “That’s probably true.”
They sat silent on the kitchen bench for a while. Jane felt warmed by her niece’s presence.
“Can we go outside—just for a few minutes?” Catherine asked.
Crisp air rode in on a wind that shredded the clouds to reveal glittering patches of stars.
“When I was little,” Catherine said, “I thought night was a black curtain and stars were tiny holes in it, until Maman told me they were suns like ours, only far away.”
In spite of her distress, Catherine’s face was lit with a joy Jane had never known, no matter how desperately she’d sought it in the night sky, a spring morning, or Richard’s eyes. All her life she’d wrestled with resentment at those who seemed to walk effortlessly in light while she remained trapped in darkness. A girl like her niece could easily grow into someone with little patience for the less gifted or buoyant. Even Richard, saint that he was, could be hard on those who lacked his endurance, but Catherine’s ghosts would make that sort of arrogance unlikely.
“Do you think what Dad said in his sermon is true, that the universe is filled with light, if only we can open our eyes to it?” Pain flattened her warm voice.
Jane looked up at the sky. Stiff, uncertain, she put her arm around Catherine. “I hope so,” she whispered, and thought she caught a glimpse of that light from the shadows.
E.L. Mellor is an Odyssey Workshop graduate who writes fantasy, science fiction, magic realism, and horror. She believes empathy and imagination can pan bits of gold out of the most unpromising streams. Her work has also appeared in Reckoning.
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