Touch of Fate

by: Christine Amsden

Chapter 1

 

 

No matter what you do,

Nor how hard you try,

The signs will come.

 

We don’t always know when,

We don’t always know why,

But futures can’t be changed

By you or I.

 

Marianne Waters knew she could not change the future. God help her, she knew, but sometimes even a lifetime of experience could not keep her from wanting to try. Sometimes it was too personal to ignore.

“Mom, what’s wrong? What did you sense?” asked Gabrielle, Marianne’s sixteen-year-old daughter.

They had been talking about the party Gabrielle planned to attend that evening until Marianne’s violent shudder brought the conversation to a dead halt. Gabrielle must have recognized the tell-tale shudder. She would know as surely as Marianne that something had sparked a sign. In this case, it was a spoken name: Rebekah Thompson.

“Nothing yet,” Marianne said. A name was not much to go on, but she had a feeling this would end badly. That particular feeling had no truth to it, but was the understandably paranoid result of so many years of experiencing true feelings.

Marianne could predict the future.

Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the signs showed Marianne the future, for she did not seek them out. They fell upon her, manifesting as an electric tingle that ran up her spine and made her shudder, sometimes violently.

“Was it Rebekah or Melissa?” Gabrielle asked.

Marianne shuddered again the instant Gabrielle finished forming Rebekah’s name, which seemed to be answer enough for Gabrielle. She peeled herself from the antique sofa in their formal living room and dashed to the kitchen.

“What are you doing?” Marianne called after her.

“I have to tell her,” Gabrielle yelled back. Marianne could hear her punching buttons into the phone.

“Tell her what?” Marianne rose from her Chippendale chair and followed Gabrielle into the gourmet kitchen.

“Something bad’s going to happen to her tonight,” Gabrielle said. She placed the phone against her ear.

“How do you know? I could end up finding out that she’s going to win the lottery.”

“She doesn’t play the lottery.”

“Then maybe that she’ll get a dog.”

“They already have…” Gabrielle stopped abruptly. “Hello? Is Rebekah there?”

“Gabrielle…”

“Sh, I’m on the phone.”

Marianne gave up. She left the kitchen to seek out her prediction journal, which she kept in a secret room under the garage. She had commissioned the secret room when the house went up twelve years ago. Gabrielle knew about it; Marianne had told her when she discovered their shared curse, but Stephen, Marianne’s husband, still did not know. Ex-husband, Marianne chastised herself. He was her ex, her ex, her ex. Six months after the divorce was final she still could not quite accept it. Her plea to him that she had changed had been too little too late, even followed by her seeing a psychiatrist, volunteering at the local church, beginning an exercise program, and losing thirty pounds.

Marianne entered the secret room beneath the garage by means of a lever hidden in a wall sconce. The room itself, windowless and black, had a truer source of darkness than that of the missing sunlight: a large leather-bound tome that rested on a pedestal at its heart. A single incandescent bulb lit when Marianne flipped the switch, illuminating not only the book, but also shelves of forgotten charms, herbs, spell books, potion ingredients, and other magical paraphernalia she had borrowed from sources ranging from modern Wicca to ancient African lore. None of it had worked, but Marianne kept it around, hoping to find something that might help her take charge of her curse.

She opened her journal to the first empty page and wrote the date, August 19, 2005, in large black letters at the top. The signs did not always neatly pack themselves into one day, but the date of the first sign was as good a marker as any for keeping the predictions in order. She always made one prophecy before the signs started showing her another.

Marianne described, in as much detail as possible, everything she could remember about the moment she had felt the shudder:

 

1. I was seated in the living room on my Chippendale chair. Gabrielle sat on the couch. She was talking about the party she will attend tonight. I felt the tingle the moment she said, “Rebekah Thompson.” I felt the tingle again when she said, “Rebekah” a few seconds later.

 

Marianne felt certain she had pegged this one right. As a matter of fact, she had only misunderstood a sign once, and that had happened when a series of signs scared her into failing to wait for the accompanying electric tingle. If it looked like a sign and sounded like a sign, it still might not be a sign. She had learned that the hard way, and did not wish to repeat the incident. Since then, her journal entries had become much more detailed.

Marianne closed the book. She did not want to dwell on the past, particularly the past that involved the mistaken sign. That had been the same weekend she caught her husband with Cheryl. No, her ex-husband, and now Cheryl was his girlfriend.

“Mom, you in here?” Gabrielle stuck her head in the secret room. She dared not come fully into her mother’s private place without permission.

“I’m just leaving.” Marianne did just that, closing the door behind her by placing the wall sconce back in its original position.

“Rebekah thinks I’m nuts,” Gabrielle said. “She doesn’t get it.”

Rebekah wasn’t the only one, but Marianne refused to say so out loud. Her daughter would have to learn about the signs in her own time and her own way, just as Marianne had done. If only Marianne had ever finished that learning, then maybe she could help Gabrielle now.

“What did you tell her?” Marianne asked.

“That she shouldn’t go to the party tonight, that I had a bad feeling something was going to happen.”

As warnings went, it was ambiguous enough that it might have worked. A feeling differed from a prediction. Everyone had feelings that bad things were going to happen from time to time. They could relate, they could understand, they might even opt out of a party for an evening. A prediction was voodoo, it was weird, and it made the predictor a nut.

“There’s no use trying to do anything else until we figure out what the prediction is,” Marianne said. There was no use doing anything else even then, but she did not say so. Rebekah was Gabrielle’s best friend, and Gabrielle would naturally want to do something. Marianne could not count the number of times she herself had failed to heed that most important of warnings: that the future could not be changed.

Gabrielle seemed to want to argue. She opened her mouth but closed it again and began playing with her long auburn hair, as she did when she was nervous. She twisted it around her finger over and over again.

“Come on, let’s get some lunch,” Marianne said.

* * *

After lunch, Gabrielle went to her room and Marianne read the paper. She lived in fear of the newspaper, knowing it almost always held a sign, but she read it every day. The signs could get violent if she ignored them. She had said something like this to her psychiatrist, whose answer had been to put her on anti-psychotic drugs. The prescription lay forgotten and unfilled in her nightstand drawer. He had not believed her, despite all the proof she had offered. The contrivances people came up with to explain away the truth always amazed Marianne.

Stephen had made those excuses. He had believed her, and not believed her, and then believed her again. His fickle mood toward Marianne’s curse had been his contribution to the breakup of their marriage. Once, he had suggested to Marianne that she might be a statistical anomaly.

“Everyone ends up predicting the future once in a while,” he had said. “We constantly think about what might be and one time in a thousand we’re right on the money. Maybe you’re just lucky so often that you can trust your predictions.”

At least it had been creative, Marianne thought as she scanned the headlines. She saw that a fire she had predicted came to pass. In other news, a small private plane had crashed nearby, killing the pilot.

Marianne shuddered. Then she froze. She knew she had just felt a death sign. “Don’t jump to conclusions,” she said aloud. She had been reading a headline about a plane crash; the sign could have been for any number of things: the pilot, the plane, or the crash, not just for death.

Marianne scanned more headlines, looking for some means to clarify what she had felt. A local radio personality had died of a heart attack; again she felt the shudder. Now she had no doubt, for the only thing the two headlines had in common was death.

She put the paper aside and closed her eyes. It never got easier, no matter how many deaths she predicted, especially when the victim was her daughter’s age, not to mention her daughter’s best friend.

Marianne turned to her prediction journal again, hoping to keep the reality at arm’s length for a time. She snuck downstairs, so Gabrielle wouldn’t know she had found another clue in the unraveling mystery of what would happen to her friend. Gabrielle might try to stop the death from happening, possibly putting herself in danger in the process.

She managed to make the entry without interruption. When she went back upstairs, she stopped in the kitchen to make herself a bowl of ice cream. She knew she should not let the prediction drive her to emotional eating, but she could not help it. Mechanically, she got the carton from the freezer, grabbed a bowl, and scooped out a sinful scoop of chocolate chip cookie dough. She had been working on that with her psychiatrist as well, although it would help if he believed her about the signs. How could he help her relieve the stressful source of the eating from her life if he did not acknowledge its source? As Marianne reached into the refrigerator to get the chocolate syrup her hand brushed against a strawberry daiquiri wine cooler. She shuddered.

“Oh no.” She suddenly did not feel hungry anymore. She dumped the ice cream down the garbage disposal and ran it, wondering if there was any other interpretation of her latest sign than the obvious: that Rebekah Thompson’s death would relate to alcohol. One sure way to find out would be to start digging through the liquor cabinet. Marianne looked at it, not wanting to find anything inside, but knowing that she would be better off learning the truth than trying to ignore the signs. They would find a way to get their point across.

Marianne opened the cabinet and began pulling out bottles. She felt a tiny tingle when she touched each and every one.

“What are you doing?” Gabrielle asked.

Marianne jumped. She had not heard her daughter enter the kitchen. She put back a bottle of rum and braced herself to tell Gabrielle the terrible truth. “Gabrielle, is there going to be alcohol at the party tonight?”

Gabrielle’s face reddened a bit and she cast her eyes at the ground.

“Please, Gabrielle, it’s not like I wasn’t ever a teenager. You’re not going to get in trouble, but I need to know if there will be alcohol there.”

Gabrielle nodded mutely. Then she looked up. “Is this about Rebekah?”

“Yes.”

“Is she going to get into an accident or something?” Gabrielle asked. “I’ll be the designated driver; it’s not a problem.”

Marianne’s heart nearly missed a beat when she considered the implications. “The future can’t be changed by you or I,” Marianne intoned. Her grandmother had taught her the silly little rhyme ending in those words, and it did help her to never forget. If Gabrielle were in the same car as Rebekah it would not save her friend. It would, however, put Gabrielle at risk.

“I don’t know if it will be a car accident or not,” Marianne realized. Her mind had leapt there, logically enough, but alcohol also had the power to poison. Perhaps Gabrielle would not be in danger. Still, she feared for Rebekah’s life. No, it was more than fear, for she was certain that a young life would soon end. She felt helpless, completely and utterly helpless.

“What good are these stupid signs?” Marianne asked for the umpteenth time. She shoved the door to the liquor cabinet shut and kicked it as she stood.

“Mom, we have to do something,” Gabrielle said. “There has to be something we can do.”

“There isn’t.” Marianne wished there were.

“Please try.”

“There’s nothing we can do.” It would hurt more if they tried; it would rub in how helpless they really were.

“She’s my best friend.”

“No matter what you do…” Marianne began.

“Stop saying that!” Gabrielle started tugging at her hair.

Marianne fought back tears. She thought of Rebekah, really thought about her, for the first time since she had started receiving the signs. Rebekah was an intelligent, black-haired beauty who attended the same private school as Gabrielle. They were also both on the cheerleading squad. Over the summer, the two had spent many afternoons together with various other friends, taking turns at each other’s houses. Rebekah had last been at Marianne’s home on Tuesday. She, Gabrielle, and Melissa had practiced cheers, giggled about boys, and watched chick flicks. She had helped Marianne bake cookies and had been polite enough to offer to help with the dishes. None of Gabrielle’s other friends did that.

Marianne realized that she was thinking of Rebekah in the past tense, as if she had already died. Had she really become so numb to impending death?

She thought about all the death she had helplessly foreseen in her life. I have to be numb or I’d go crazy.

“Mom,” Gabrielle said, her eyes wet with tears.

“Give me a call when you’re ready to leave tonight. I’ll do anything I can.”

* * *

The final sign in the series, the one for the car accident, came to Marianne after Gabrielle left for the party. She decided that The Blues Brothers would be a good comic relief choice for the evening, but she had a fit near the end when all the police cars began crashing. She hit the stop button and ran downstairs to her tome.

The journal had started out on scraps of paper in a binder. She had purchased the large leather-bound diary just after Gabrielle was born and spent a month transcribing all her old predictions onto its pages. Now it was more than a book or even a record, it was a comforting friend. She had pages filled with theories and discoveries as well as those filled with signs and portents.

Marianne flipped through the pages, as she was prone to do at times like this. Memories flashed with each page that passed across her vision. Some she treasured, others she abhorred. She stopped on a page she had written in April of 2004, when she was still trying to make things work with Stephen:

 

The signs never showed me that my marriage would fail. They never showed me that Stephen would have an affair. I did that. I won’t say Stephen was blameless, but I did not give him anything to hold onto.

I have decided to take charge of my own destiny, at least where the signs will let me. They can’t tell me about the entire future, and until they tell me otherwise I will find a way to make Stephen fall in love with me again.

 

If only she had found that way, but love could not be forced or coerced, and Stephen was finished with her. He had been finished with her a long time ago, but had let his Catholic upbringing convince him to stay with her past their time.

Marianne’s wandering fingers seemed to have found the most worn page in the book. She knew the page by heart, this page that bespoke her mother’s death. She had been sixteen when it happened, Gabrielle’s age. A car accident had finished her off, but then, unlike now, Marianne had not even considered sitting idly by.

She had been at school when the signs showed her the tragedy to come. She had run out of class, to the utter amazement of her history teacher, and tried to use the phone in the office to warn her mother to stay at work. The guidance counselor had taken the phone from her and asked her mother to come pick her up. Marianne would never forget the guidance counselor’s ashen face when, an hour later, he said, “What a terrible coincidence.”

The phone rang. Marianne slammed the book shut and ran upstairs, not even bothering to close the secret room. With Stephen gone, it no longer seemed to be an urgent task. She picked up the extension in the kitchen. “Hello?”

“Mom, she’s ready to leave already and she’s pretty drunk.”

Marianne looked at her watch: three minutes past eleven. Where had the time gone? “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

Marianne grabbed her coat and purse, which were waiting by the front door, and practically flew to her car. She thought of her mother, driving to Marianne’s school and thinking that Marianne was some sort of delinquent. She had died with those thoughts in her mind; died because Marianne had run screaming to the office and tried to stop her mom from coming home that night.

Suddenly, her mother’s face disappeared from her mind and Gabrielle’s replaced it. Marianne had never realized how much Gabrielle looked like her grandmother.

“The prophecy wasn’t about Gabrielle,” Marianne reminded herself. No, it was about another bright and beautiful sixteen-year-old who was about to make a mistake that would cost her her life. It would not be Marianne, but another mother who would mourn for her little girl. The only difference was that the other mother would not know in advance, nor would she be prepared. The other mother would never know how lucky that made her, but what a scant comfort if she did.

Marianne made it to the party in five minutes and spotted Gabrielle and Rebekah at the door right away. Gabrielle was trying desperately to take Rebekah’s keys while Rebekah was stumbling and laughing as if she thought it was a great game.

Marianne parked the car in the middle of the street and left the keys in the ignition as she walked briskly to the front porch.

“Hey, Gabri-Gabi-Gab, what’s your mom doing here?” Rebekah asked. She slurred her words as she spoke, and Marianne could smell the alcohol on her from several feet away.

“Get in the car,” Marianne said.

“Why?” Rebekah asked.

“No questions, just get in my car,” Marianne repeated.

Rebekah teetered there for a moment, as if considering. “You gonna tell my mom?”

“Not if you get in the car.”

Rebekah looked over her shoulder at Gabrielle, “Come on.”

“She’s driving her own car home,” Marianne said. She stumbled over the decision for a moment, though. She studied her daughter carefully and asked, “You haven’t been drinking, have you?”

“Not even a sip,” Gabrielle said. Her white face told Marianne that the prophecy would have scared her into sobriety tonight. Good, because if there was going to be a car accident tonight, Marianne wanted to be the only one in the car with the victim.

“I won’t go without Gabi,” Rebekah said.

Marianne grabbed the girl by the wrist. “Let’s go. Now.”

Rebekah did not argue again. She followed Marianne to her car and got in the passenger seat. Only then did Marianne begin to feel the true implications of what she was doing. Rebekah was going to get into a car accident. It was going to be because of alcohol. Just because she was not at the wheel did not mean that, in her uninhibited state, she wouldn’t find some other way to interfere with the car. What if she decided to play games with Marianne, to put her hands over Marianne’s eyes so she could not see the road?

Marianne put her car into drive and took her chances. At least Gabrielle was not in the car. At least Gabrielle would get home safely.

She drove slowly and cautiously, her eyes constantly moving to make sure she knew precisely where all the other drivers on the road were. If Rebekah tried anything, she would know how to stop and which direction to turn the wheel.

Rebekah’s house seemed far away, though it was closer than her own house. When she turned into Rebekah’s subdivision, she kept an eye out for kids, but they all seemed to have gone in for the night.

Finally, she turned into Rebekah’s driveway. They were both safe and whole. Marianne could not understand.

The front door swung open and a woman in her late forties stepped out. Rebekah’s mother, Sarah, was quite a bit older than Marianne and the expression on her face right now showed every year.

“Aw crap,” Rebekah said, slouching down in her seat.

“There’s no point in hiding there,” Marianne turned off the ignition and stepped out.

“Marianne,” Sarah said in surprise. “I expected, well, I don’t know what I expected. What are you doing here?”

Marianne went around to the passenger side and opened the door. She had to tug on Rebekah’s arm to get the girl to come out, but she managed it. Grudgingly, Rebekah made her way up the path to her house.

“Have you been drinking?” Sarah asked. She looked at Marianne for explanation, bypassing her daughter.

“She needed a ride home and I gave her one,” Marianne said. “She asked me not to say anymore and I figured it was better than her driving herself home.”

Judging from the way Sarah pursed her lips, she did not entirely agree, but she nodded. “Thanks for giving her a ride.”

“No problem.” Marianne took her cue to leave, her head spinning with the idea that Rebekah Thompson remained safe and whole.

* * *

By the time Marianne arrived home, she knew why Rebekah remained alive. Most of her signs took place within days of a prediction, but unless an actual date was a part of the prediction, they could happen at any time. In fact, she had several predictions recorded in her journal that were not due to come to pass for centuries. Rebekah would die in an alcohol-related car accident, but it might be next week, next month, next year, or when she was eighty-five, there was simply no way of knowing for certain.

Gabrielle’s first reaction to learning that her friend had not died was surprise, followed shortly by glee. “I knew you had to be wrong, I just knew it. You have to be able to change the future. I mean, it’s the future, there has to be a way.”

“It might happen tomorrow,” Marianne warned, but Gabrielle was not listening. She headed off to bed with a spring in her step.

Marianne considered calling after her, but she could not bring herself to spoil Gabrielle’s delusion. Besides, it reminded Marianne of the futility of the situation. She could not possibly protect Rebekah every evening for the rest of her life. Let Gabrielle sleep peacefully tonight. She would be the only one.

* * *

Shortly after breakfast, Gabrielle received a phone call. She took it in her room but was only gone for a few minutes. When she returned, her face was twisted into a snarl of rage. “I hate her!”

“Who?” Marianne asked.

“Rebekah! I saved her life last night and she tells me she never wants to speak to me again! She knows I called you and asked you to pick her up. Her mom grounded her for a week and she says it’s all my fault.”

Marianne did not know how to respond. She remembered arguing with friends, particularly as a teenager, and that often these arguments lasted for short periods of time, but she did not think it would help Gabrielle to tell her so. At least, Marianne thought, Rebekah would not die this week. Hopefully she and Gabrielle would make up before that, or Gabrielle would really learn misery.

They spent the day together; a rare occurrence since Gabrielle had entered her teenage years. They went shopping, although Gabrielle insisted upon going to a mall that her friends did not frequent. They went to dinner, saw a late movie, and Marianne almost managed to forget that Rebekah was going to die.

They did not return home until almost midnight. The red light on the answering machine was flashing when Marianne checked the phone. She pushed the button and barely recognized the voice of one of Gabrielle’s friends, Melissa. It sounded as if she had been crying.

“Gab, Rebekah’s dead. She snuck out to go to a party tonight and wouldn’t let anyone drive her home. I guess I–I mean, give me a call when you get this message. I don’t care what time it is.”

Marianne heard a click and a double beep, and then looked up at Gabrielle, whose face had gone white. A tear glistened wetly on her cheek. “You knew,” she said.

Marianne shook her head.

“The prophecy didn’t say when and you knew it,” Gabrielle said. “I wasn’t thinking, but you should have said something. I hate you!”

“I’m so sorry,” Marianne said, but she doubted that Gabrielle heard her. The girl had already run off to her room.

Marianne went into the den and sank down into her recliner. She picked up a mystery novel she had been reading, but when she had not managed to read a page after half an hour she threw it against the wall. Rebekah was supposed to have been safe tonight. She was supposed to have been grounded. Marianne swallowed a lump in her throat and realized that there were tears on her face. When had she shed those? She had not even been aware of starting to cry, but now she could not stop. She wanted Stephen here, now, to comfort her.

After a long time, she fell asleep in her chair.

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