herself) she was simply suffering from her pregnancy, which, despite her insistence that she was feeling fine, was beginning to bother her. Though she wouldn’t admit it to Phillip, she was secretly glad that Dr. Blanchard had insisted that she get at least two hours’ rest every day.
If nothing else, at least it provided her with an escape from the tensions of the house.
She slipped into the bedroom, and closed the door behind her. Lying down on the bed, she stretched luxuriously, and then let her eyes wander out the window to the enormous maple that stood a few yards away, its leaves completely blocking out the sunlight.
Concentrating on the cool peacefulness of the greenery, she drifted into sleep.
At the other end of the house, in her rooms that were almost an exact mirror image of those her daughter-in-law occupied, Abigail Sturgess was wakeful and wary. She was staring out the window, her eyes focused angrily on the forbidding building that had represented so much tragedy for her family.
More and more, she was becoming convinced that her husband had been right.
There was something evil about the mill, and though she wasn’t yet sure what it was, she had made up her mind to find out.
Beth pedaled away from the mill, but instead of heading out River Road to start the long climb back up to Hilltop, she turned the other way, riding slowly along Prospect Street, then turning up Church toward the little square in the middle of the village. Once there, she slowed her bike, looking around to see if any of her old friends might be playing softball on the worn grass. But the square was empty, and Beth rode on.
Almost without thinking about it, she turned right on Main Street, then left on Cherry. A minute later she had come to a halt in front of the little house in which she’d lived until she had moved to Hilltop.
The house, which had always seemed big to her, looked small now, and the paint was peeling off its siding. In the front yard, weeds were sprouting in the lawn, and the bushes that her mother had planted along the front of the house didn’t have the neatly trimmed look of the gardens at Hilltop.
But still, it was home to Beth, and she had a sudden deep longing to go up to the front door, and ask whoever lived there now if she could go into her own room, just for a few minutes.
But of course she couldn’t—it wasn’t her room anymore, and besides, it wouldn’t look the same as it had when she had lived there. The new people would have changed it, and it just wouldn’t feel right.
She got back on the bike, and continued down the block, looking at all the familiar houses. At the corner, she turned right again, then left on Elm Street.
In front of the Russells’ house, Peggy was playing hopscotch with Rachel Masin, and Beth braked her bike to a stop.
“Hi,” she said. “What are you guys doing?”
Peggy, whose lager was in one corner of the number-four square, was concentrating hard on keeping her balance in the number-five, while she leaned down to pick up the key chain she had won from Beth herself last summer. Finally, snagging the chain with one finger and taking a deep breath, she hopped quickly down the last three squares and out of the pattern.
“Playing hopscotch,” she announced. “And I’m winning. Rachel can’t even get past number three.”
“But I’m using a rock for a lager, like you’re supposed to,” Rachel protested. “Anybody can do it with a key chain. They always stay right where you throw them.”
“Can I play?” Beth asked. She leaned the bike against a tree, and fished in her pocket for something to use as a lager. All she came up with was the key chain—identical to the one she had lost to Peggy—that held her house key. “I’ll start at one.”
Peggy looked at her with open hostility. “How come you’re not out riding your horse? Peter says you go out every day now.”
Beth’s heart sank. Why couldn’t Peter have kept his mouth shut? Now Peggy thought she was just like Tracy. “I don’t have a horse,” she said. “It’s Uncle Phillip’s horse, and all he’s doing is teaching me to ride it. And we don’t go out every day. In fact, we’ve only been out a couple of times.”
“That’s not what my brother says,” Peggy challenged, as if daring Beth to contradict