The Blackstone Chronicles - By John Saul Page 0,39
her gazing out the kitchen window at the Hartwicks’ brightly lit house, had pulled the blinds down, taken her by the arm, and marched her into this downstairs room that served as her aunt’s private chapel.
It wasn’t really a chapel at all, of course. Originally it had been her uncle’s den, but shortly after Fred Ward left, her aunt had converted it into a place of worship, sealing the windows that once looked out on a lovely garden with curtains so heavy that no light penetrated them. Where there had once been a fireplace—which on a night like this might have blazed with crackling logs—there was now an ornate fifteenth-century Italian altar that Janice Anderson had discovered somewhere in Italy. Venice, maybe? Probably. Rebecca had found a book in the town library with a picture that showed a piece very much like Aunt Martha’s. For all Rebecca knew, it might be the very same one.
The pungent aroma of incense and smoking candles filled Rebecca’s nostrils and stung her eyes. Finally, when she was certain that her aunt was so far lost in her prayers that she wouldn’t notice her absence, Rebecca eased herself onto the hard wooden bench, the only furniture in the room except for the altar and the prie-dieu upon which her aunt often knelt for hours at a time. As soon as her knees stopped hurting enough that she trusted them to hold her, she slipped out of the chapel and up to her room.
After changing into her nightgown, Rebecca was about to turn back the coverlet on her bed when she heard the sound of an automobile engine starting, and went to the window. It had begun to snow, and the night had turned brilliant in the glow of the streetlights. Next door, the party was breaking up, and Rebecca easily recognized all the guests as they said their good-nights to the Hartwicks. Maybe, after all, she should have accepted Oliver’s invitation, she reflected. But it wouldn’t have been right—Madeline Hartwick meticulously planned every detail of her dinners, and the last thing she’d have been able to cope with would be the last-minute appearance of an uninvited guest.
Still, it would have been nice to have gone, and spent an evening with smiling people, and pretend that they were her friends.
That’s unkind, Rebecca told herself. Besides, Oliver is your friend!
As if he’d heard her thought, Oliver, who was seeing Lois Martin into her car, suddenly looked up. Smiling, he waved to Rebecca, and she waved back. But then, as first Janice Anderson and then Bill McGuire followed Oliver’s glance to see who he was waving at, she felt a hot surge of embarrassment and quickly stepped back from the window. If Aunt Martha caught her, she would spend the next whole week repenting in the chapel!
Going to bed, Rebecca turned off the light and lay in the darkness, enjoying the glow from beyond her window and the shadow play on her ceiling and walls. Soon she drifted into a sleep so light that when she came awake an hour later she was barely aware that she’d been sleeping at all. She listened to the utter silence in the house. No chants drifted up from downstairs, which meant that her aunt, too, had gone to bed. It must be very late, Rebecca thought.
What had awakened her?
She listened even more intently, but if it had been a noise that had startled her awake, it wasn’t repeated.
Nor had any strange shadows appeared on her ceiling.
Yet something had disturbed her sleep. After several minutes, Rebecca slipped out of her bed and went to the window, this time leaving the light off.
The night was filled with snow. It swirled around the streetlights, burying the cars in the street and covering the naked trees with a glistening coat of white. Next door, the Hartwicks’ house had all but vanished, appearing as nothing more than an indistinct shape, though a few of its windows still glowed with a golden light that made Rebecca think of long-ago winter evenings when her parents had still been alive and her family snuggled in front of the fireplace and—
A sudden movement cut into her reverie, and then, out of the shadows of the Hartwicks’ porte cochere, a dark figure appeared. As Rebecca watched, it went quickly down the driveway to the sidewalk, crossed the street, then vanished into the snowstorm.
Save for the footprints in the snow, Rebecca wouldn’t have been sure she’d seen it at all. Indeed, by