She touched her bottle to Harry’s, the clink of glass loud in her new apartment.

“Here’s to giving a little boy a balloon,” she said. “And the look on my father’s face when he does it.”

DESTINY by Julie Hyzy

‘I am not building a shuttle,” Gran said, irritated.

“No?” I asked with a tiny bit of hope.

“I’m modifying one I have.”

She must have seen the look on my face then, because she laid her warm, freckled hand on my arm and winked.

As Gran refilled my iced tea, a breeze kicked up and rushed through my hair. A little bit cool on this otherwise warm afternoon, it made me glance over to Emily, who sat on the whitewashed planking of the porch. Gran had given Emily plenty of cookies to share with the doll perched on one dimpled leg. To give myself opportunity to process Gran’s comment, I moved over to Emily to feel her arms. She was warm enough for now.

Back at the table, I took a deep breath. “Tell me more about this modification.”

“Now… you ask that like you’ve got a pain somewhere,” Gran said, grinning. “Look at you, trying so hard to smile, kinda gritting your teeth, your eyes all worried.”

I wanted to argue. But she was right.

Gran grabbed me by both arms and made me look at her. I could feel the strength in those skinny little hands, see it in her bright blue eyes.

“I have a project I’m working on,” she began, slowly, the same way she used to explain things when I was five. “And it’s something I don’t want just anybody to know about.”

“But the doctors said…”

“Those doctors,” she said with a sniff, “think they’re so smart. One of them came nosing around here. Can you believe that? Don’t they have anything better to do with their time than spy on old ladies?” Gran sat back, shaking her head. “They caught me, too,” she said, looking more bemused than angry, “out in the workroom. Had to come up with something, so I told them I was studying sculpture. Ha! Thought I fooled them. Guess not.”

“No… I guess not…”

“Come on then. You’re the only one I wanted to show, anyway.”

The workroom was a long walk from the house through a dandelion-strewn field. It was slow going, with Emily stopping every few feet to pick up the dried weeds and blow them to the wind. I grabbed her hand to pull her along but Gran bent down and plucked one of her own.

“Make a wish, Emily!” she said. Together, lips pursed, she and Emily scattered their wishes to the wind, and then turned to each other with twin grins of uncomplicated joy. I watched the seeds take wing on the breeze and tried to remember wishes I’d made when I was Emily’s age. How many of them hadn’t come true?

As we got nearer, Emily noticed humming and pulled me along, eager to see what was making the noise behind the door.

Gran’s eyes glittered as she stood before the keypad.

“Are you ready?”

I bit my lip. “Sure.”

She tapped in a code on the entry keypad. In answer the door whooshed open. Dust danced, fairy-like, swirling through sun rays that fell in from the skylights above. I watched the motes hover, then land gently on the silver contraption that stood before us.

“Yay!” Emily said, clapping.

Gran hadn’t been too far off when she picked sculpture as her cover story. Shiny metal flanges almost obscured my old playhouse. Gramps used to tell me it was a shuttle, and as a child, I’d spent endless hours inside, hoping it could fly me backwards in time so I could meet my parents. Now, graceful curves shaped like twisted flames engulfed the cab and reached skyward. I released the breath I’d been holding as I walked around it, unsure of what it was, now. And yet, something about it…

I pointed at the back end. Completely redone, and fitted with jets, wires, conduit. “What’s this?” I asked.

“A multiphase conversion catalyst.”

“Speak English.”

“Your grandfather and I invented this catalyst, years ago.” She grinned, rocking back and forth on her heels. “This little dohicky makes it possible to propel the shuttle and its occupants into another dimension.” She gave a little half shrug. “Theoretically.”

I almost couldn’t speak. “This isn’t a real shuttle, Gran. This is my playhouse… I hoped someday it would be Emily’s.”

Her eyes were clear, her expression bemused. Not at all what I’d expect from someone clearly losing touch with reality. “I believe this creation has the power to take us exactly where we want to go.”

“Us?”

She shrugged. “I’m hoping you’ll come with me.”

I didn’t know what to say for a long time. Finally, all I could do was ask, “Why?”

Gran pointed.

I ran my hand over the hull. Carefully lettered on its side-Destiny.

My eyes asked the question; Gran tut-tutted. “Now don’t you go thinking that I’ve gone out of my head. Think about it some, honey. Gramps and I decided long ago that people who really care about each other should be together. But then he died. Too soon.” She shook her fist at the sky, “Too soon, you hear me?” She made a funny face then, and I thought she might cry. Instead, she turned with a smile as big as the object before us. “I know he’s waiting for me, but he’ll have to wait just a little longer because it’s a bit more difficult with only one person working.”

I didn’t know what to say.

Gran wasn’t finished. “I’m going to be with your grandpa. We’ll be together again, forever, this time.”

“But Gran, that means you’ll die.”

She wagged a finger at me. “Now that’s where assumptions’ll get you into trouble.”

The doctor’s diagnosis flashed before my eyes. I tried to mask my reaction, but I knew that Gran had read my mind. She stopped right there and made what I used to call her “mad face.”

“You know I’m not crazy,” she said.

I must have squirmed, because Gran continued, a bit vexed. “Gramps and I had it all figured out, honey,” she said. “Death is just existence in a different dimension.”

Then she grinned and grabbed Emily’s hand, “How would you like some ice cream?”

“I’m worried about Gran.”

Don sat at the kitchen table, head bent, reading. Watching him, I grabbed a mug from the cabinet and banged the door shut a little louder than necessary.

The top of his head moved back and forth as he followed the words on the page before him, and he pushed his too-long brown hair out of his eyes. Don was one of those people who never learned to track the written word without moving his head, a habit that hadn’t bothered me years ago. Now, it was one of many that drove me insane.

I closed my eyes for a moment and breathed in the fresh-brewed aroma of the coffee warming the mug in my hands. Give me strength. A tentative sip stung as the liquid trailed a path down the back of my throat. The warmth felt good, very good.

Don was fiddling with his bottom lip, squeezing it till it formed a tight “U,” and studying a brochure he’d brought home. The same brochure that had been too important for him to put down earlier when Emily stood on tiptoe to give him a kiss goodnight. He’d said, “Uh-huh,” and absently patted her brown curly head. “Daddy’s busy.”

“Don?”

He made eye contact, but his mind remained on the glossy paper in front of him. I could almost see the struggle going on in his head: Keep reading? Or talk to her?

Talk won. Barely. His eyes were so glazed that I felt like he hadn’t stopped reading-that he was still poring over the copy now tattooed on my forehead.

“We gotta get one of these.”

“Get one of what?”

“Here,” he said, “it’s new.”

He turned the brochure for me to see, but when I tried to pick it up, Don held a corner, as if it were something very precious and he was afraid to let go. With obvious reluctance, he loosened his grip. “Where’s my coffee?” he asked as he stood.