Chapter One
The day that Nana May died was hot and syrupy and clung to the skin in tiny beads. The sun sat at its highest peak in a cobalt sky, searing the earth until it cracked open, scorching the grass until it singed brown. There was no breeze to bring cool relief, no rain cloud to break at any time soon. As each minute of the day dripped by, the world slowed down, hissing and spitting like an old car engine.
Nana’s many cats crawled from one shady place to another as midday shadows shifted across the dusty front yard. A young ginger tom named Red found solace beneath the rusty shell of a pick-up truck. Other felines pawed their way under hedgerows and the lush woodland canopies that surrounded Nana May’s whitewashed house. Even the birds, usually so full of song, moved on their branches, spreading their feathers to expel the warmth. Crickets in the foliage chirped lethargically. Fat honeybees swayed drunkenly through the air. For miles around the land lay flat on its back, melting away on the last Sunday of July.
It could have been the coldest of winters before Nana May looked up to notice. Upon returning from the village church, she’d spent the last hour and twenty-four minutes of her life preparing the culinary delights that now baked and sizzled in the kitchen.
There were butter almond cookies, sweet bread, and sponge cake. Sugary smells permeated the air, mingling with the delicate scent of tea leaves that were steeping in an old brown teapot.
Nana May finished pumping pink icing onto the cooling cookies, paused to wipe perspiration from her brow, and was on the move once more, shifting her large frame toward the kitchen table.
A battalion of gingerbread men smiled up at her. Nana May smiled back as she pictured the wide, hungry eyes of her grandchildren. They had seen more than their fair share of horrors, but if they could finish off a mountain of her butterscotch fudge (which contained more butter than sense) and still come back for more, she knew they were over the worst of it.
This was her gift to them. Every Sunday, a different tasty mountain to fill their stomachs. Every Sunday, a little further away from the past.
Nana scooped up one of the biscuit men and frowned.
‘Your smile’s not big enough for my little ones,’ she sighed. The gingerbread man looked pensive, melancholy even; his eyebrows pulled down over sad blue eyes. ‘Oh well, plenty more where you came from.’
Pinching his leg between finger and thumb, Nana May tore it from his body.
‘Sorry about that,’ she chuckled, as she popped the gingerbread limb into her mouth.
It was hot against her tongue, so she sucked in a deep, cooling breath. Caught up in the sudden rush of air, the leg flipped over, hit the back of her throat, and lodged itself in her gullet.
Nana May’s face flushed red.
Her free hand reached for her neck. She stared at the gingerbread man with wide eyes, then watched it slip from her fingers and break into pieces on the flagstone floor.
Panic scrambled up Nana May’s throat.
Her heart fluttered, beating faster and faster, then not at all, then in mad, erratic measures. Nana spun a full circle, her long skirt billowing like sheets on a washing line, her arms flapping at her sides. Scarlet rivulets filled her eyes as blood vessels started to burst.
The coal oven that she refused to replace with a modern stove emitted enough heat to keep out the coldest of winter nights, and now it blasted her with molten waves.
She stumbled, striking her hip on the corner of the table. The back door swung into view and she lunged towards it, a cacophony of gurgles and squawks punctuating every step. Trembling fingers curled themselves around the door handle and with one final and tremendous effort, Nana May wrenched the door open and staggered outside.
The first thing she saw was her rocking chair.
A summer evening had not passed without her sitting in this spot, rocking back and forth, listening to the evening chorus of birds and insects. She told stories to her grandchildren from this chair—stories that filled them with laughter, sometimes with fear. This was the chair that had rocked her to sleep each night at the bedside of her cancer-stricken husband, the chair she’d wept in when he’d died. It was as much a part of her as her own bones.
Nana May slumped back into the chair’s well-worn grooves. Her head rolled back and she saw the sky falling towards her. The sun was coming down with it, setting fire to the world. Where the woodland met the garden, she saw a darkness lurking in the trees, and it terrified her.
Above the din of her hammering heartbeat, she heard an irrevocable quiet. Then there was only beauty. Then there was only light.
Nana May found she could breathe again.
