The Grandmother Who Outlived the Prophecy

How it begins

Nessa's predicted death arrived by post between a seed catalog and a bill for gutter repairs.

She opened the catalog first.

At ninety-three, she had become particular about which promises deserved her attention. The beans claimed to mature in fifty days. The prophecy claimed she would not survive forty. Both had made similar claims last spring.

Her daughter arrived carrying a mourning cake.

“It's lemon,” she said.

“I can smell that.”

“We should talk.”

“About the gutter?”

“Mother.”

Nessa put on her spectacles. The prophecy had been printed on expensive paper this year. A gold border framed the familiar warning about the last frost, the black bird, and the woman who had borrowed more life than heaven intended.

In the bottom corner, almost too small to read, was a printer's mark.

She had seen it yesterday on a pamphlet advertising a miracle well.

“Where is Olin Reed living now?”

Her daughter sat down without removing her coat. “Why?”

“He used to print the council notices.”

“We're trying to prepare.”

“So am I. I'd like peas before June.”

At noon, Nessa found Olin behind the old station, repairing a bicycle that appeared older than either of them. He read the prophecy and stopped turning the wheel.

“That's not our paper.”

“I had gathered somebody was spending money.”

He brought out a drawer of print samples. There were blessings against poor harvests, warnings about marriages, predictions of prosperous journeys. Beneath them lay six versions of Nessa's death.

One had been printed before she was born.

She sat on a crate and read it twice.

“My dear fellow,” she said, “someone has been making an extremely long business out of my short remaining life.”

Olin looked toward the road.

“Do you want to know who?”

Nessa folded the seed catalog into her pocket.

“I've already packed a sandwich.”