She smiled, placing her purse on the empty chair next to her but keeping her keys out and setting them on the table next to her napkin. Attached to the ring were two very ordinary-looking keys and a very unordinary blue medallion. It was wafer-thin, about three inches in diameter, and emitted a glow that seemed unusually bright in the dim room. It lit up the back of Mom’s menu and I could see tiny blue dots reflected in the silverware. The light reminded me of a glow-tube necklace I’d won at the Montgomery County Fair a few months back, but this was much brighter and more elaborate. In the very center of the circle was an hourglass. The sand still flowed from one side to the other, even though the medallion was lying flat on the table.
Mom either hadn’t noticed the strange item, which seemed impossible, or else she was ignoring it. If Mom was ignoring it, the last thing I wanted to do was stir up a hornet’s nest between the two of them by calling it to her attention. I decided to follow her lead, at least for the time being. As I turned back to my menu, however, I saw my grandmother watching my reaction to the light and smiling softly. The expression in her eyes was hard to place, but I thought she looked… relieved.
Everyone tried to keep the conversation light during the first part of the meal. The weather and food were both safe zones, but we had explored these from every possible angle within the first ten minutes.
“How do you like Briar Hill?” my grandmother asked.
I dove into the new topic eagerly, sensing another safe zone. “I love it. The courses are more challenging than anywhere else I’ve been. I’m glad Dad took the job.”
My new school has a very generous policy that grants free tuition to the children of faculty members. They even offer small cottages for faculty members willing to live on campus, which is why I crash on Dad’s pull-out sofa three or four nights a week. The mattress is lumpy and you can feel the iron bar if you roll too far toward the middle, but I consider it a fair trade for the extra hour of sleep on school mornings.
“It definitely sounds like a good opportunity for you—and Harry tells me that you’re doing very well.”
“I didn’t know you and Dad… spoke much.” I wanted to know, even though I suspected this might lead the conversation into treacherous territory. “That’s why you knew to call me Kate?”
“Yes,” she said. “But you’ve also signed the thank-you cards for your birthday and Christmas presents as Kate for the past several years.”
Duh. I had forgotten about that. “I’m sorry if it hurts your feelings. Really I am, but—”
“Why on earth would my feelings be hurt? Prudence was an awful name forty years ago, but I named your mom, so it only seemed fair to let Jim name the other twin. He named Prudence after his mother. She was a sweet lady, but I still think it was a dreadful handicap to put on a small, defenseless baby.”
Mom, who had of course done the same to me as a small, defenseless baby, took the indirect reproach silently, and my grandmother continued. “I’m pretty sure that Prudence isn’t considered a cool name for a sixteen-year-old. And I have to admit I’m flattered you chose my name instead.”
I was now thoroughly confused. “But I thought… aren’t you a Prudence, too?”
Both of them laughed, and I felt the tension level at the table ease the tiniest bit. “No, she’s a Katherine, too,” Mom said. “Prudence was named after my father’s mother, but her middle name was Katherine, after my mother. So you are Prudence Katherine, as well. I thought you knew that.”
Major sigh of relief. I had worried all day that if I insisted on being called Kate instead of Prudence, it would hurt my grandmother’s feelings. The name was an ongoing point of contention between Mom and me. I’d even asked to legally change it when I started school at Briar Hill the previous January so that there would be no chance that the damaging info would leak out to potential enemies. But Mom’s eyes had watered at the mere suggestion, so I dropped it. When you’re named for an aunt who died much too young, your options are limited.
I pushed a too-mushy piece of zucchini to the side of my plate and glanced pointedly at Mom before replying. “I’ve never heard anyone use her name, so how would I have known? You always say ‘your grandmother.’”
My grandmother wrinkled her nose in distaste.
“Do you prefer Nana?” I teased. “Or maybe Gran-Gran?”
She shuddered. “No, and most definitely no to the last one. How about Katherine? I’ve never been one for formal titles and I’m Katherine to everyone else.”