idea of where she might be.” Her eyes drifted toward the window.
Following Hannah’s lead, Carolyn gazed out the window. Barely visible through the treetops, she could make out the marble ring that surmounted the mausoleum.
“The mausoleum? Why would she have gone up there?”
Hannah shrugged. “She might not have. But there was a bit of a ruckus down at the stable a while ago, and I’ve noticed that when people want to be alone around here, they often go up to the mausoleum.” Her eyes met Carolyn’s once more. “If she wants to tell you what happened, she will. But don’t push her, Miss Carolyn. She’s doing her best to fit in. Just let her do it her way.”
Then, as Carolyn hurried out the kitchen door, Hannah went back to shelling her peas. But as she worked, she wondered if either Beth or Carolyn would ever be allowed to fit into this house. If it were up to Tracy, she knew, they wouldn’t.
Tracy would die first.
Beth sat alone in the coolness that pervaded the mausoleum despite the growing heat of the morning. Her tears had long since dried, and she’d spent a few minutes reading the inscriptions on the backs of each of the chairs that surrounded the marble table. Now she was perched on the edge of Samuel Pruett Sturgess’s marble chair, staring out at the village she’d grown up in.
From here, Westover almost looked like a miniature village—like one of the tiny model-train layouts her father had taken her to see at a show in Boston last year. She could see the tracks coming around the hillside, crossing the river, then disappearing behind the mill and reemerging to curve in a wide arc around the village until they disappeared into the distant hills.
But it was the mill that interested her most. From where she sat, the old brick building was framed exactly between two of the marble pillars. The town itself was mostly to the left of the mill, but from this vantage point the mill was precisely centered below her.
In fact, if the seventh pillar—the pillar that had once stood opposite Samuel Pruett Sturgess’s chair—hadn’t been broken, the mill would be completely invisible.
For a while, she’d sat trying to decide whether the mausoleum had been built the way it was on purpose, or if, after the whole thing was finished, someone had noticed that if one of the pillars was broken out, then old Mr. Sturgess would be able to look down at his factory from his chair.
For that’s the way it had struck Beth.
It was almost as if the table was for all the dead Sturgesses to meet around, as though they were still alive, and had business to discuss, and the oldest of them—Samuel Pruett Sturgess—was sitting where he could watch over the whole town, and especially his mill.
Then, while she had been pretending to be Mr. Sturgess, she had seen it.
It was a flash, like some kind of explosion. Suddenly, it had seemed as if the mill was on fire.
At first she’d thought it was the sun, reflecting off the windows of the building.
But then she remembered that all the windows were boarded up, and there wasn’t any glass in them.
Now she was staring at the old building, waiting to see if it would happen again. So far, it hadn’t.
“Beth?”
She jumped, startled, and turned to see her mother coming up the steps from the path to the house. Quickly, she slid off the marble chair.
“Honey? Are you okay?”
Beth felt a sudden stab of embarrassment. Did her mother know what had happened down at the stable? Had Tracy told on her? But she hadn’t really done anything—not really. Just let Patches out into the paddock.
“I … I’m fine,” she said.
Carolyn surveyed the little girl carefully. She could see from the puffiness around her eyes that Beth had been crying, but she seemed to be over it now. Panting slightly, Carolyn eased herself into the chair next to the one Beth had been occupying, then sighed as the cool of a faint breeze touched her forehead.
“Go on,” she said. “Sit down again.” Then she lowered her voice slightly, and glanced around as if she was looking to see if they were being watched. “Actually, I’ve been dying to sit in these chairs ever since Phillip told me no one’s allowed to sit in them.”
Beth’s eyes widened. “They aren’t? I didn’t know that. I didn’t mean to—”
“Of course you didn’t mean to do anything wrong. And you didn’t,