Brett Kilpatrick nodded. “I saw her the same time Jeff did. She was in the upstairs hall, right by the top of the stairs. And when we spoke to her, she disappeared.”
Beth looked around at the rest of Tracy’s guests. All of them were nodding agreement and looking a little bit frightened. Maybe, after all, it was true. Then, slowly, an idea began to form in her mind. “Maybe … maybe she was looking for Amy,” she said.
Tracy Sturgess’s eyes clouded uncertainly. “Amy?” she repeated. “Who’s Amy?”
“The ghost who lives in the mill,” Beth replied, her confidence beginning to grow. “Don’t you know about her?”
Tracy shook her head slowly, glancing at her friends out of the corner of her eyes. “Tell us about her.”
Beth shrugged. “She’s a little girl,” she improvised. “And she’s lived in the mill practically forever.”
“Oh, sure,” Jeff scoffed. “But have you ever seen her?”
Beth felt herself flush. “No,” she admitted. “But … but I’ve heard her.”
“Really?” Tracy asked. She was smirking now. “What did she say?”
“She said—” But before Beth could think of anything a ghost might have said, Jeff and Brett looked at each other and broke into loud laughter.
“She believes it!” Brett crowed. “She really believes there’s a ghost in the mill.”
As the boys’ raucous whoops filled the room, Beth felt her face flush with humiliation once again. “Well, if there’s a ghost here, why couldn’t there be one in the mill?” she demanded, her face scarlet and her voice desperate as the laughter grew among Tracy’s friends.
“Because there isn’t any ghost here,” Tracy said triumphantly. “I just made all that up! And you believed it, just like I thought you would. You really are stupid, aren’t you?”
Beth stood up, her chin quivering. “Not as stupid as you and your dumb friends, Tracy! There is a ghost in the mill, and I know who it is! And I’m leaving!”
“So leave,” Tracy taunted, dropping the last vestige of politeness from her voice. “Who wants you here anyway?”
Beth fled from the room, intent on finding her mother.
And then she remembered.
Her mother had made an emergency appointment to go see Dr. Blanchard. Neither she nor even Uncle Phillip was home.
Her father.
She would go and see her father.
Tears welling from her eyes, she hurried out the front door, and started toward the driveway.
And then, as she came to the lawn, she remembered the trail leading down the hill.
It was a shortcut, and would get her to the village much faster. She ran across the lawn, and plunged through the brush until she came to the trail from the paddock, then hurried along to the path that led down the hill.
It was when she was halfway down the hill that the idea came to her.
She wouldn’t go see her father after all. Instead, she would go to the mill, and find a way to get inside.
And once she was in the mill, she would find out if Amy was truly there or not.
But even as she started on her way again, she knew what she would find in the mill.
Amy would be there—because Beth wanted her to be there.
9
Jeff Bailey and Brett Kilpatrick presented an odd contrast as they walked along River Road. Though they were distant cousins, Jeff was blond and gangling, while Brett’s thatch of dark curly hair gave the same clear evidence of Celtic descent as did his compact body. They were approaching the point at which River Road crossed the railroad tracks, where they would turn right, cross the trestle over the river, and head north toward their homes near the country club. It was the long way around from Hilltop, but neither of them had felt like taking the shortcut directly down the hillside to the river.
“How come she was even there?” Jeff asked, casually kicking a battered beer can that lay by the road. It arced into the air, then dropped back into the drainage ditch. “Tracy hates her.”
“She lives there,” Brett replied. “Tracy tried to switch the party, but her stepmother found out. She’s sure a creep, isn’t she?”
“She’s a local—they’re all like that.” Jeff watched idly while Brett took careful aim on the beer can, then snickered when it rolled only a few feet ahead. “And you think you’re going to make the soccer team next year?” At St. Francis Academy, where both of them spent nine months of each year, the soccer team was the team to be on.