They didn’t believe her. Peggy didn’t believe her, and Tracy thought she was crazy.
But it was true.
She knew it was true!
Her sobs slowly subsided, and finally she sat up. Her eyes fixed on the small depression in the earth, and she tried to figure out how she could prove that she was right.
But there wasn’t any way. Even if she dug up the grave and found Amy’s bones, they still wouldn’t believe her.
Almost unconsciously, her fingers began probing at the soft earth, as if looking for something. And then, a moment later, her right hand touched something hard and flat, buried only an inch below the surface.
She began scraping the dirt away, exposing a weathered slab of stone. It was deeply pitted, its cracks and crevices packed with the rich brown soil, and Beth at first had no idea what it might be. But then, as she scraped more of the earth away, the slab began to take shape.
One edge was rough and jagged, but from that edge, the stone had been worked into a smooth, clean semicircular curve, its edges trimmed in a simple bevel. After a few minutes, Beth had cleared the last of the dirt off its surface, and managed to force her fingers under the stone’s edge. When she tried to lift it, though, it held fast, and all she succeeded in doing was to break a fingernail, and bare the knuckles of her left hand. Wincing with pain, she wiped her injured hand as clean as she could, then held the smarting knuckles to her mouth. While she waited for the pain to ease, she searched the clearing for a stick, and finally found one that looked thick enough lying a few feet from the mouth of the trail.
She picked it up, and returned to the stone slab. Forcing one end of the stick under its edge, she pressed down on the other end. For a moment, nothing happened. Then the stone came loose. Dropping the stick, Beth crouched down and turned the slab over.
The other face had been polished smooth, and Beth knew immediately that her first feeling about it had been right—it was the top of what had once been a headstone.
With growing excitement, she rubbed the dirt away from the shallow engraving just below the upper curve. The letters were fuzzy, almost worn away by the ravages of time. But even so, she was able to read them:
AMELIA
There was nothing else, nor could she find the rest of the broken gravestone.
But it was enough.
Amy was real.
Beth thought about Tracy, and her mocking laughter.
And Peggy, who hadn’t believed her, and had run away from her.
But she had found the proof. Now, no matter what they said, they wouldn’t be able to take Amy away from her.
If they tried, she knew what would happen to them. Amy would do to them what she had done to Jeff Bailey.
For Beth and Amy were friends now—best friends—and nothing would ever be allowed to come between them again.
14
Tracy let herself in through the French doors leading to the foyer, and started up the stairs to the second floor. All the way back from the clearing in the woods, she’d been trying to figure out the best way to use what she’d overheard Beth saying, but she still hadn’t made up her mind.
Of course, she’d tell all her friends, starting with Alison Babcock.
But who else? What if she told her father? If he believed her, maybe he’d send Beth away somewhere.
But what if he didn’t believe her? What if he thought she was just making up a story? Then he’d get mad at her.
Her grandmother.
That’s who she’d tell. Her grandmother always believed her, no matter what she said. And if she had to, she’d make her grandmother walk all the way out there, and show her where Beth had been, standing over that stupid sinkhole, talking about a ghost like it was something real.
She hurried on to the top of the stairs, and started down the hall toward the far end. Just as she got to her grandmother’s closed door, she heard Carolyn’s voice calling her name. But instead of turning around, or even acknowledging that she’d heard, she simply ignored her stepmother, turned the knob of her grandmother’s door, and let herself in.
Abigail sat in a chair by the window. Her eyes were closed, and one hand rested in her lap. The other one hung limply at her