you decide she is kidding. Then you bite into a soft maple cookie that melts in your mouth. It’s delicious-far and away the best thing this culinary lunatic has offered you since you arrived here in Bethel.
E mily didn’t know Molly Francoeur’s family at all, but she wasn’t about to say no when Molly’s mother, Jocelyn, called, absolutely frantic, to ask if Molly could stay for dinner that night. Emily had just walked into the house herself. It seemed that Molly’s grandmother had fallen down a flight of stairs and broken her hip. So Jocelyn Francoeur didn’t expect that she would be back from the hospital much before eight-thirty or nine that evening.
“Of course she can stay with us,” Emily said, adding that the girl could spend the night with them if need be.
“No, I’ll be back before bedtime for sure,” Jocelyn said, her tone a little crazed-which made all the sense in the world, given the accident that had befallen her own mother. “If not, then I’ll have Molly’s aunt come get her. She lives down around Hanover.”
“That’s almost an hour and a half away!”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Well, we have plenty of room and extra pj’s if you change your mind,” Emily said.
“No. She is not spending the night,” Molly’s mother said adamantly, and that was that.
H allie didn’t think Molly was all that worried about her grandmother. In truth, Hallie wouldn’t have been especially alarmed if her grandmother in Connecticut had broken her hip, either. She knew a hip was serious, but didn’t broken bones heal all the time? Back in West Chester, there had been a boy in Garnet’s and her class who had broken an arm falling off the zip line at the playground and, a year later, his leg learning to play ice hockey. Another boy they knew who was three years older than Garnet and she had broken his collarbone playing football.
“I think we need some leaves and grass and stuff,” Molly was saying now. “Enough of the snow has melted that we can get some.” They had done their homework after having snacks with Dad when they came home from school, and now, after dinner, they had bundled up and come out here to the greenhouse. The place didn’t have lights like most of the greenhouses in Bethel, but they had brought two battery-powered lanterns-essentially big flashlights that sat on the floor. It wasn’t going to be light enough to read with them, but they were able to build scenes with their dolls. It was a little after eight o’clock, and Molly’s mom had called from the hospital and said she would get here around nine-thirty. Emily hadn’t wanted the girls to head out to the greenhouse, but Hallie had reminded her that it was come out here or stay inside and play one of the computer games she really didn’t approve of or watch another DVD-and they were all bored to tears with their DVDs. And so Mom had relented and here they were. Molly wanted to gather some sticks and leaves because the scene they were constructing for their dolls was supposed to be in the woods. She wanted the dolls to be witches, and while Hallie didn’t believe that any of their dolls had the face of a witch, she was happy to go along with the game. They had put the dolls under the spell of witches the other day; making their dolls the witches themselves was refreshing and new.
“I’ll go with you,” said Garnet, grabbing one of the lanterns, and the two girls zipped up their parkas and wandered from the greenhouse. For a moment, Hallie was surprised at how quickly she had been left alone in the structure. She realized she had never been out here alone after dark and considered joining the girls outside. But even through the steamy, smudged glass she could see the lights of her house, and she could see the glow from Garnet’s lantern as it bobbed like a buoy in the dark. And then, abruptly, it was gone. She guessed either Garnet was holding it in front of her and walking away from the greenhouse or they had simply crossed the meadow and wandered into the edge of the woods. Either way, it wasn’t a big deal. And so she resumed work on their scene, standing the dolls erect in a circle around a toy copper kettle that was going to be the cauldron. She raised one of the dolls’ arms and extended it over the kettle as if it were sprinkling some sort of herb or powder into it. She wondered: Did the women around here who Molly insisted were witches use cauldrons? Or did they mix up their potions in everyday-looking, normal kitchen pots? One day, those pots were boiling spaghetti or potatoes. And the next? Love potions. Or, maybe, some sort of potion that made a person’s eyes less blue-or not blue at all. That was it: Maybe there was a witch with blue eyes and she used her magic to make sure that no one in Bethel could have eyes as blue as hers. Whenever a woman was pregnant, that witch would cast some sort of spell to make sure the baby had eyes that were brown or green or whatever colors eyes could be, so long as they weren’t blue like hers. Hallie liked this story: It could be the start of whatever scene they created tonight with their dolls.
Hallie had kept her promise to Molly and not told her mother that some people-including Molly’s own mom- believed that one of the twins who had lived in this house years and years ago had been killed by the local women. But the story had scared her because she was a twin. It was like when a plane crashed: She felt a connection. And so she had asked her mom whether she thought there might be witches living here in Bethel. Her mom, in turn, had said that the women were merely eccentrics, and then she had explained what this new word meant. She had said there were lots of rumors about what the women did, but there were no such things as witches-just as there were no such things as ghosts or vampires or werewolves. The truth, her mom insisted, was that these women were just very, very interested in plants-flowers and herbs, especially. And, maybe because they took themselves so seriously, they had made some enemies. Or, at least, gotten a reputation for being self-important and strange. But that’s all there was to it: Women like Clary and Sage and Anise and Reseda might be eccentric, but they most assuredly were not witches.
Hallie had moved a third doll in front of the kettle and was surveying her work, wondering what to add next, when she saw the house go dark. One moment she had been aware of the glow from the lights that were on in rooms on every single floor of the place, even the third floor, where she and Garnet slept, and the next the house had vanished completely into the moonless night. The greenhouse was still lit by her lantern, but the rest of the world had gone black. She understood that this was a blackout: They had had them once in a great while in the winter back in West Chester, and they had already had a couple of them here in Bethel. Nevertheless, this was scary. Blackouts always were scary. But this was worse because she was all alone out here in the greenhouse and her mind had been wandering among visions of witches. Her first thought was to race for the main house, maybe calling for Garnet and Molly and searching out their lantern as she ran. But she took a breath and reminded herself that either the lights would pop back on any second or-if they didn’t-Mom or Dad would be out here to get her and her sister and their friend. And the last thing she wanted was to be caught running like some terrified toddler back to the house just because there was a blackout. So, working very hard to remain calm, she started rummaging through the miniature trunk in which she stored the dolls’ clothes, looking for appropriate attire and props for the scene they were constructing.
T his is fall-of-man blackness, a despairing, debilitating sort of blindness. You hadn’t anticipated the cloak of misery that would descend upon you when you flipped the breaker-a light switch, but a click that is louder, sharper, and considerably more satisfying-and cut the power to the house. But the fuse box is in the basement, on the wall by the concrete pad that holds the appliances, so perhaps you should have known that you would not merely be blind, you would be dealt a body blow of gloom.
She deserves friends.
Usually, everything throbs more here in the basement. The top of your head, your lower back, and abdomen-sometimes the pain there is so pronounced that you see white spots of light and fear you will vomit. Back in Pennsylvania, you told a doctor it felt like you had been gored. But it’s not so bad at the moment. You can feel it, but it is more of an ambient twinge.
You are a pilot-you were a pilot-and so you tend always to be thinking ahead. Prior to flipping the breaker, you had counted exactly how many steps it was to the wheelbarrow ramp and unlatched the dead bolt and the chain, and removed the horizontal beam that Parnell Dunmore had used to keep out intruders. Prior to darkening the house-prior to even starting to clean the dinner dishes with Emily-you had brought down from the attic the carving knife that the Dunmores had left behind for you. Yes, for you. Every tool has a purpose. You cut the power with the fingers on your left hand because in your right you are holding the knife. Now you move across the basement, counting the steps in your mind, and in a moment you feel the start of the incline and you are walking up from the coal black basement into the nearly coal black night. There is no moon, but there are stars, and in the greenhouse there is still some dusky light because your beautiful daughters brought lanterns out there so they could play.
She deserves friends. Do what it takes.
And because you are a pilot, you have determined in your mind precisely how you will approach the three girls and who will live and who will die-who will die in addition to yourself. Because you know you can’t live
