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Promise me? And also what I said about finding the love that was made for you."
    She had never spoken to me about that kind of love.
    "Grandma Sophie, I'm only eleven."
    "I know." She smiles.
    I want to tell her that I don't want to go away, so far from this place, as the summer draws to a close. That I worry that she and my grandfather and the magic of Gloucester cease to exist when I am not here. But I fight back the tears, trying not to let my own selfish sadness ruin the last days of our summer together. She presses her arms into me tightly, as if she is transferring something into me: strength, courage, filling me for the future.
    "Can't I stay here with you? Go to school with Emily and Lily? I don't ever want to lose you; I don't want to go back."
    "You won't ever lose me, Gabriella, and you will have so much."
    "How do you know?"
    "It's time to go to sleep now." I notice the white light the moon makes on the ocean, like a path to infinity. "Good-bye, my beautiful child, may all your dreams come true."
    I stop and look back at her and wait for her to speak, to correct her mistake, to say something—to realize.
    "You mean
good night
right? Not good-bye."
    "Yes, of course, good night."
    She has always given me so much and tonight, I know, she is preparing me for everything ahead. Giving me her blessing as if she had to do it now, as if her words were not a mistake at all.
    As if
I
was not the one who would run out of time.

----
5
----
    I LIE IN BED and stare at the ceiling. I try to listen to the sea, the rhythmic pounding of waves on the shore, but instead hear my grandmother's reluctant steps down the staircase. I imagine where she is as she carefully holds the banister and walks by framed pictures of the many years of play at this beach, documents of lives well lived. I hear the sounds the house makes along her path, through the main hallway and into the room where my grandfather always stands behind his desk. I go to sit at the top of the stairs and listen, finding comfort in the familiar voice of the architecture, out of sight where I can easily hear their conversation. I have done this many times before because, so often, they were talking about me.
    "It's absurd, Sydney—this has really gone too far."
    "Nonsense. We thought that this was the generation where it would be revealed."
    "You are not an army for God!"
    My grandfather laughs as he exhales slowly. The worn leather chair behind his desk creaks loudly as he spins away from her accusing voice.
    "We are not going to discuss this again, Sophie. It is done."
    "Sydney, for thousands of years the information has remained hidden. Concealed. Others before you understood and made that choice."
    Silence.
    "We have the proof . . . of the connection. Traditional science can no longer provide the answers that will satisfy those who—" My grandfather is cut off by my grandmother.
    "This is not about science or even faith. It's all about money and fame and their own ideas about immortality. One alone.
One
would be motivation enough, but together they form an irresistible platform on which some of your colleagues' research rests. Einstein understood didn't he, Sydney? Darwin, Newton, and so many before."
    "Sophie, Einstein believed simply that religion would be made more profound by science. Darwin offered evolution—no God, no moral code."
    "Just what Hitler used to justify his actions."
    "Do NOT say that name in this house!"
    "It's true, though, isn't it? In his twisted logic, Hitler used the idea of evolution as justification for the 'master race.'"
    "There are rules in the universe,
order,
despite what some have been able to do."
    "Order? And rules, Sydney? Enforced by whom?"
    "I don't have the answer."
    "Tell me, why is he back now?"
    "Benjamin?"
    "Yes, there must be a reason—it's not about Gabriella is it?"
    "We made a deal, Sophie. He promised me. If I agreed to keep my proof secret, he would stay away from her, from Gabriella that is. He would allow her to