grandmother,” Beth said as she started backing toward the door.
“It’s okay,” Tracy replied. “She was so old it’s a miracle she didn’t die years ago. I mean, it’s not like she was young, like your father.” Tracy forced herself not to snicker when Beth’s eyes flooded with tears. “I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “I guess you don’t want to talk about your father, do you?”
Beth quickly wiped the tears away, and managed a smile. “I just can’t think about him very much yet. But Mom says I’ll get over it.” Then she frowned uncertainly. “But I don’t know. It just hurts so much. Did you feel like that when your mom died?”
Tracy shrugged. “She died when I was born. I don’t even remember her. My grandmother raised me.”
Beth’s frown deepened. “Then how come you don’t miss your grandmother like I miss my father?”
“I told you. She was an old lady.” She glanced at Beth out of the corner of her eye, then did her best to work up some tears. “Besides, she didn’t love me anymore. She loved you more than she loved me.”
Beth gasped. “That’s not true—”
Now Tracy managed a little sob. “It is, too! She didn’t ask to see me when she was in the hospital. At least not the first night. She only wanted to see you.”
“But that was about—” And then Beth stopped short, afraid to speak the name that Tracy had used against her for so long.
“About Amy?” Tracy asked, her voice showing no hint of the mockery of the past.
Hesitantly, Beth nodded.
Tracy’s heart beat a little faster. She had to be careful now, or she might scare Beth off. “Grandmother talked about her,” she said, thinking as fast as she could. “She told me she wished you could come and live here again, because she wanted to know all about Amy.”
“She … she did?” Beth stammered, wondering if it could possibly be true, and if maybe Tracy didn’t think she was crazy anymore.
Tracy nodded solemnly, remembering her grandmother’s last words. Maybe she could use them to get Beth talking. “And she said there was a fire.” At the look in Beth’s eyes, she knew she’d struck a bull’s-eye.
“In the mill?” Beth breathed. “Did she really talk about the fire in the mill?”
Now Tracy hesitated. What if Beth was lying too, trying to trap her just as she herself was trying to trap Beth? But that was silly—Beth wasn’t smart enough to do that. “I think so,” she said. “When she was in the hospital, what did she tell you?”
“Nothing,” Beth replied, and Tracy’s heart sank. But then Beth spoke again. “Except that when she got home, she’d show me something that proved Amy’s real.”
A surge of excitement seized Tracy. It’s in the box, she thought. It’s in the box Grandfather was always going through.
But she said nothing.
24
It was a little past midnight. The house was silent, but from outside her open windows Tracy could hear the soft chirpings of crickets and the murmurs of tree frogs calling to their mates. Her feet bare, and only a light robe over her pajamas, she opened her closet and fished her grandmother’s jewelry box off the top shelf. Then she turned off the lights in her room, and carefully opened the door.
The corridor outside was dark, but Tracy didn’t even consider turning on the night-light on the commode. Her grandmother’s door was only thirty feet away, and she could have walked it blindfolded if she’d had to.
She was halfway down the hall, moving carefully to avoid bumping into the commode that stood at the midpoint, when she realized that the corridor was not completely dark after all. At the far end, there seemed to be a faint glowing, as if a dim light were spilling from beneath a door.
Her grandmother’s door.
She froze in the darkness, clutching the jewelry box tighter, her eyes fixed on the light. It seemed now to be flickering slightly. Why would there be light coming from her grandmother’s room? It was empty, wasn’t it?
Unless it wasn’t empty.
But who could be in there? She’d been awake all night, listening.
Her father and stepmother had come in to say good night to her, and then she’d heard them going down the hall to the other end of the house. She’d even opened her door so she could listen, and been able to hear their voices until the closing of their door had cut off their words.
Twice, she’d crept down the hall to listen at Beth’s door,