Suffer the Children - By John Saul Page 0,120

around. They saw another Port Arbello legend in the making.

For Jack and Rose Conger, the weeks after Sarah left their home were difficult Rose stayed in the house almost all the time; after the second week she telephoned the Port Arbello Realty Company to tell them she would not be back. They were not surprised; rather, they were relieved. They had been trying to figure out the most diplomatic way of telling her that her services would no longo: be necessary, that Conger was no longer a name to be proud of in Port Arbello.

Jack Conger couldn’t stay at home. He had a paper to run, and he had to try to act as if nothing were wrong. It was impossible, of course, and he imagined that people were looking at him strangely even when they weren’t. He found that he was spending most of his time barricaded in his office, talking to no one but Sylvia Bannister.

Sylvia had come into his office on his first day back at the Port Arbello Courier and had closed the door firmly behind her.

“Are you going to be all right?” she had asked him without preamble.

“That depends on what you call all right,” he had said. “I intend to go on living, and go on working, if that’s what you mean.”

“I suppose that’s what I meant,” Sylvia had said. Then she had left his office as abruptly as she had entered it.

The Congers told Elizabeth that her sister had finally had to be put in an institution, and she had accepted it without further explanation. She had not asked any questions about the day Sarah had come out of the woods, and while they thought it was a little odd, they accepted it gratefully. Neither Jack nor Rose wished to discuss that day, and they counted themselves lucky that Elizabeth, too, seemed to want to forget it.

In early November, about a month after Sarah was sent to the Ocean Crest Institute, Jack and Rose Conger were sitting in the small study at the back of the house. Jack was reading; Rose was trying to read. Without knocking, Elizabeth came into the room and sat down on the sofa beside her mother. When Rose looked up to see what she wanted, Elizabeth was staring at the portrait of the young girl that hung above the mantel. Rose glanced up at the picture.

“Sometimes it’s hard to remember that she isn’t you,” Rose mused. Elizabeth looked at her mother sharply.

“Well, she isn’t,” Elizabeth said petulantly. “I don’t think she looks anything like me at all.”

Jack set his book aside and smiled at his daughter. “You wouldn’t have said that two years ago, or three. Of course, you’re older than she was when that picture was painted, but when you were that age you looked exactly like her.”

“I’m not like her,” Elizabeth said flatly.

“Well, no one said you are, dear,” Rose said. “All your father or anyone else ever said was that you looked like her.”

“I don’t want to look like her,” Elizabeth said, her face growing slightly red with anger. “She’s an awful person, and I don’t want anything to do with her. I wish you’d take the picture down.”

“Take it down?” Rose said, puzzled. “Why on earth should we take it down?” She examined it once more, trying to see what her daughter could dislike in it. She could see nothing.

“Because I want you to,” Elizabeth said. “I think it should go back in the attic, where you found it.”

“I don’t see any reason to put it away,” Jack said. “I should think you’d be proud of it. Not every girl has a portrait like that of herself.”

“It isn’t me,” Elizabeth insisted, her anger swelling. Her parents glanced at each other nervously.

“Well,” Jack said, hesitating, “if it means that much to you—”

“It does,” Elizabeth declared. “I never want to see that picture again. I hate it.” She paused and glared at the picture, at the little girl who looked so much like Elizabeth smiling down at her. “I hate you!” Elizabeth suddenly shouted at the picture. Then she ran from the study, and a moment later her parents heard her pounding up the stairs to her room. They looked at each other again, and there was worry in their eyes.

“What do you suppose brought that on?” Jack said.

Rose thought about it a moment, and when she spoke it was in a manner of thinking out loud.

“She seems to be changing lately. Have you noticed it?

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