side, and a few inches below her hand, a book lay open, facedown, on the floor.
Tracy stared at her grandmother. Was it possible she’d died, just sitting there in her chair?
Tracy’s heart skipped a beat.
She edged slowly across the room. How could you tell if someone was dead?
You had to feel for a pulse.
Tracy didn’t want to do that. It had been horrible enough having to look at her grandfather when he was dead. But to actually have to touch a dead body … she shuddered at the thought.
She paused. Maybe she should go and get her father, or even Carolyn.
But then, as she was about to back away, her grandmother’s eyes flickered slightly, and her hand moved.
“Grandmother?” Tracy asked.
Abigail’s eyes opened, and Tracy felt a surge of relief.
Relief, and a twinge of disappointment. Telling Alison Babcock about finding her grandmother’s body would have been even better than telling her about how crazy Beth Rogers was.
“Tracy?” Abigail said, coming fully awake, and straightening up in her chair. “Come give me a kiss, darling. I must have dozed off for a moment.”
Tracy obediently stepped forward and gave her grandmother a reluctant peck on the cheek.
“What are you doing here, child?” Abigail asked. “Why aren’t you outside? It’s a beautiful morning.”
“I was,” Tracy said. She searched her mind, trying to figure out how to tell her grandmother what she’d heard without admitting that she’d followed Beth. “I … I went for a walk in the woods,” she went on, deliberately making her voice shake a little. As shed hoped, her grandmother looked at her sharply.
“Did something happen?” she asked. “You look as though something frightened you.”
Tracy did her best to appear reluctant, and, once again, the ruse worked.
“Tell me what happened, child,” Abigail urged her.
“It … it was Beth,” Tracy began, then fell silent once more as if she didn’t really want to tell on her stepsister.
Abigail’s eyes darkened. “I see. And what did Beth do to you?”
“N-nothing, really,” Tracy said.
Abigail’s sharp eyes scanned her granddaughter carefully. “Well, she must have done something,” Abigail pressed. “If she didn’t, why do you look so worried?”
Still Tracy made a show of hesitating, then decided it would be better to let her grandmother pull the whole story out of her. “Grandmother,” she said, “do you think maybe Beth could be crazy?”
“Crazy?” Abigail repeated, her brows arching slightly. “Tracy, what on earth happened? What would make you say such a thing?”
“Well, I was out in the woods, just hiking around, and all of a sudden I heard something,” Tracy explained. “It sounded like Beth—like she was talking to someone, so I went to find her. But when I got there—” She paused, wondering if she should mention Peggy Russell at all. She decided not to. “Well, she was talking to herself. She was out there in the woods, and she was talking to herself!”
Abigail’s forehead wrinkled into a frown. “And what was she saying?” she asked.
Slowly, as if struggling to remember every fragment of what she’d heard, Tracy repeated the words she’d heard Beth speak. “It was weird, Grandmother,” she finished. “I mean, she was talking like there was really a ghost. She had a name for her, and everything. She called her Amy, and she said the ghost killed Jeff! She said it killed Jeff, and she watched it happen! Doesn’t that sound like she’s crazy?”
Abigail sat silently for several long minutes, feeling the erratic pounding of her heart.
Amy.
“Amy” was a corruption of “Amelia.”
And Amelia was a name she’d heard before.
Her husband had used it sometimes, when he was muttering to himself about the mill, and about Conrad Junior.
“Where?” Abigail finally asked, her blue eyes fixing intently on Tracy. “Where did all this happen, child?”
“In a little clearing,” Tracy replied. “Down the hill from the mausoleum. There’s a trail to it.” She hesitated, then went on. “Do you want to go down there, Grandmother? I can show it to you. I can even show you the thing Beth thinks is a grave. Only it’s not a grave. It’s just a little sunken spot.” She fell silent for a moment, but when her grandmother didn’t say anything, she spoke again. “Well? What do you think? Is she crazy?”
Abigail glanced up at her, and Tracy suddenly realized that her grandmother was no longer listening to her.
“What?” Abigail asked.
Tracy’s expression tightened into an angry pout. “Nothing,” she said. “Nothing at all.” Then she turned and stamped out of her grandmother’s little parlor, slamming the door behind her.