Page 56 of I Know How This Ends

Quietly, I let myself into my grandfather’s house again.

Without a noise, I slip my shoes off and tiptoe into the kitchen, hoping I don’t frighten the life out of him while he’s trying

to make tea. There’s nobody there, so I walk straight to the wall where the calendar is hanging: the robin has gone, replaced

by a jay, then a finch and—finally—a small, bright-eyed blackbird.

Although I already know, I lift my hand to feel the paper. It’s the same: shiny, stiff, thick, not quite card. Just to confirm,

I run my finger to the top and pull a little section of the month away until it’s crinkled and serrated at the edge. With

my eyes shut, I feel along the edge until I reach the little half-circle, cut out so that the calendar can hang on the wall.

It’s the blue tit. That’s what is in my pocket after the funeral: I have the month of the blue tit clutched tightly in my

hand.

Which means it’s my grandfather.

“Meg?” I hear him in the living room. “Is that you? Are you creeping around my house again like a helpful little mouse?”

He was always the obvious choice—being many, many times older than the other candidates—but I didn’t think it could be him. I saw him at my wedding, didn’t I? I saw him watching me, his eyes full of love. That vision convinced me I had years

left with him. Wrapped me up in false security, sent me down the wrong path.

But I didn’t see him at all, I suddenly realize. I felt him.

And it’s the twenty-eighth of December: they don’t take the Christmas tree in the park down until early January. It’s the same calendar, and there won’t be any more. My hair is short again, exactly the length it was in that vision.

We don’t have years left at all: we have days.

“Just a minute!” I call, finally finding my voice. “What kind of mess have you made in here, Grandad? Let me just tidy up.”

Breathing out, I lean against the calendar with my head pressed against the bird.

I don’t think this is a part of my future I have changed at all. I don’t think I can . This is not a giant that is going to be moving just because I’ve held up a few bits of teeny-tiny cutlery and yelled, “I brOKE

UP WITH MY BOYFRIEND, NOW GO AWAY.”

Straightening, I square my shoulders and hold my chin up.

We have days.

“Well, hello .” I walk into the living room. “What are you doing here?”

Grandad beams at me. “That’s what I was going to say!”

“Beat you to it.” I smile as I sit down opposite him and try to drink him up, try to remember everything: every vein, every

freckle, every tiny hair, every line in his beautiful face. “ Now what shall we talk about?”

“I guess there’s nothing left.” My grandfather shrugs. “That’s it, all conversation over, thank you for visiting, it’s been

a joy and an honor.”

We both chuckle and I reach out to hold his hand. He can’t see me well enough to know that there’s a tear trickling down my

face, so I let it drip down my nose until it hits his finger. He frowns and I flinch: shit .

“Is it Henry?” Grandad’s face softens. “Has it happened?”

I frown. “We broke up, if that’s what you mean. I told you that months ago.”

Now is not the time to get arsey, Margot.

“Yes, I know.” He shakes his head slightly, looking a bit confused. “Sorry. You know what old men are like. Always forgetting.”

Something else hits me: another thing I didn’t see at the time. The clues are scattered everywhere, like raindrops. Data that’s

easy to miss if you’re looking in the wrong direction. The signs are always there, as long as you’re paying attention.

I just... wasn’t.

“You’ve said that before,” I say blankly, my brain starting to reel. “Months ago. You said, ‘Is it Henry? Has it happened?’”

“Did I?” Grandad scratches his nose. “How strange.”

I stare at him narrowly and he’s now avoiding my gaze. My grandfather is lying.

“You didn’t say, ‘Has something happened?’ You said, ‘Has it happened?’” I think a bit harder. “And you knew I’d gone on a date with someone called Henry before I’d told you, but even

Mum didn’t know his name at that point. I hadn’t told Eve or Jules his name either. Nobody knew.”

My grandfather is now staring at the ceiling light.

“You said, ‘Stick at Seventeen,’” I point out . “‘A good, powerful number,’ you said.”

“Well, it is.” My ninety-four-year-old grandfather has the slightly defiant expression of a little boy who’s just been caught

with his hands in a birthday cake. “It represents change and new beginnings, numerologically. As I think I mentioned.”

I stare at him as he shifts his gaze to a painting, then to a plant, then to the newspaper in front of him.

“Look at me,” I say firmly.

“Um, no, I don’t think I will.”

“Grandfather, you look at me right now .”

My grandad bites his lip and raises his gaze until he’s staring me right in the face with his bright blue, all-seeing eyes.

His magical, other-worldly eyes. Because he’s not just sitting here, waiting. I already felt that. I knew it, somehow.

He’s sitting here and he’s watching .

“You get them too,” I say simply. “Don’t you. The visions.”

“Oh!” He nods and grins sheepishly. “Those old things? Yes, I suppose I do.”

I thought it was just me.

This whole time, it never occurred to me once that anyone else I knew might also be able to see the future. I assumed this was a big, totally insane, lifelong secret that

would die with me and nobody would ever believe it.

And it sure as hell never occurred to me that it could be genetic.

Is it genetic? What even is it?

“But...” I stand up. “I don’t—how do you, why didn’t you—”

“Do you need a cup of tea?” My grandfather starts to stand up too. “It feels like now is a good moment for a cup of tea, help

calm the nerves. I think there’s some lovely lemon shortbread in the fridge.”

“ Fuck the shortbread,” I say in exasperation, then flinch as my grandad laughs loudly. “Sorry, Grandad. I didn’t mean fuck the shortbread.

Please forgive me. I’m just, I, uh—this is a lot to process . ”

“Of course it is.” He chuckles and sits back down with an air of relief. “Honestly, I think you’ve been handling it all with

grace and aplomb, Meg. Far better than I did when it started. I was an absolute nightmare. Your poor grandmother nearly divorced

me on the spot. ‘What are you raving about now?’ she’d say.”

I stare at him. “You know I’ve been having them?”

“I worked it out.” Grandad shrugs humbly. “Put the pieces together. When you came out of the cupboard, you looked like how

I felt the first few times. As if you’d been hit by a bus consisting of buses yet to come. Then you started behaving really

quite oddly, in a very familiar way.”

“Why didn’t you say ?” I’m even more exasperated now. “I could have asked you questions, sought support. I thought I was going clinically insane .”

“Well, if I was wrong, you’d have thought I was going insane. I’m older. It’s riskier. You could have sent me away to a retirement home. And I figured you’d tell me when

you were ready.”

“What, just casually lob it in? Over tea and biscuits? ‘By the way, I can see the future, Grandad. Ring any bells?’”

“Fair,” he acknowledges. “I’ve found that it’s a difficult topic to broach in polite conversation, which is probably why I

never told anyone.”

I sit down heavily on the armchair again. Bloody hell. Where do I even start ?

“So what is it? Do you know? You know, right?”

Grandad has to know: he knows everything .

“Not really.” He looks annoyed with himself. “I’ve spent a very long time researching, trying to understand it, looking for

medical possibilities. There weren’t any firm explanations—other than wild hallucinations, obviously, but that didn’t quite

fit because—”

“Too many accurate details,” I say quickly. “And they come true.”

Grandad nods his head, then shakes it, nods it again.

“ Do they come true?” I lean forward eagerly. “Because it feels like they do, and that’s been my experience so far, but I’ve also stopped them, so I guess there’s a chance that they don’t? That they’re guidelines? Alternative versions?”

“I think...” Grandad says slowly “...I probably shouldn’t answer that question.”

“What? Why not?”

“Because that’s something you have to work out for yourself, Meg. And my experience is not your experience. It may be different for each of us. I don’t have the answer and I don’t want to influence anything.”

I know that feeling all too well: do I prod fate in the right direction or leave it alone?

“Except you did. ” I frown again. “You did influence. Those twenty dates—they were your idea. You told me to go apologize to Henry. Because you knew .”

“What can I say?” Grandad grins sheepishly. “I’m an old man and you’re my only grandchild. My willpower is fading.”

My brain is racing through my entire life: what other signs were there? What else has my Grandad done, not done, seen, not

seen? Aaron. He must have known about Aaron before I even met him. And Lily. But he also knew that by saying something, I

might not end up where I was supposed to be. He was trapped, just like I’ve been.

“My current theory,” he continues with genuine interest, gazing back out at the garden, “is not that helpful. It does appear

to be genetic, in some way. Your great-great-grandmother, on my side, was frequently called a witch by her neighbors, although

she did also have very bushy eyebrows, so it’s hard to know if it was just misogyny. And when I dug into our surname, Wayward does appear to have been a shift from Weyward , a very long time ago. Which means—”

“Yes, I know, it means weird . Henry told me.”

“Actually,” my grandfather corrects amiably, “it goes a bit deeper than that. Weird means ‘the power to control fate.’ The word is of Germanic origin, but with the proto-Indo-European root of wer , which means ‘to watch.’ So Weyward technically means ‘those that watch the future.’”

I stare at him. “You didn’t think you could have mentioned that at some point?”

“Felt a bit on the nose.” Grandad shrugs.

I blink at him.