come back to Hilltop, they should make Carolyn leave. They could go back to their crummy little house on Cherry Street. Her father could buy it back for them.
She pulled the library door open, ignoring the broken glass that ground into the polished surface of the floor, leaving deep scratches. Hannah could clean up the mess tomorrow, and call someone to fix the floor.
She hurried up the stairs, glancing down the corridor to see if her father’s door was closed. Then she turned and started toward her grandmother’s rooms.
She didn’t bother to knock; she simply pushed the door open and stepped inside. At first she thought the room was empty. Her grandmother was no longer in her chair, and Tracy started toward the bedroom.
Then, from the window, she heard Abigail’s voice.
“Tracy? Are you all right, child?”
Tracy turned and saw the old woman, leaning heavily on her cane, a robe wrapped tightly around her. She looked much smaller than Tracy ever remembered, and she looked sick. Her skin seemed to hang in folds from her face, and her hands were trembling. “Daddy wants to send me away,” she said.
Abigail hesitated, then slowly nodded her head. “I know,” she sighed. “He told me.”
“You have to make him change his mind.”
“I’ve already tried,” the old woman replied. “But I don’t think I can. He’s decided I spoiled you, I’m afraid. If your mother were alive—”
“But she’s not!” Tracy suddenly shouted. “She’s dead! She went away and left me, just like you did!” She started across the room, her face contorting as her fury, which she’d been holding carefully in check, rushed back to the surface. “You went to the hospital and left me here with them! They hate me! Everybody hates me, and nobody cares!”
Abigail felt her heart begin to pound in the face of the girl’s anger, and instinctively turned away. She tried to close her ears to Tracy’s fury, and made herself concentrate on the night beyond the window.
She shouldn’t even be standing here. The doctor had insisted that she stay off her feet, but after her conversation with Phillip, she’d had to get out of her chair, had to pace the room while she tried to decide how to handle the situation. And finally she’d gone to the window, where she’d looked out toward the mill that was always, inevitably, the source of all her family’s troubles.
She concentrated once more on the mill, still trying to shut out the shrill sounds of Tracy’s angry voice.
And then, as she stared out into the black night, the dark form of the mill seemed suddenly so close she could almost touch it.
She could see the front doors, and the windows, neatly framed with their shutters, as clearly as if she were only across the street.
It was her imagination; it had to be. It was far too dark, and the mill much too far away, for her to see what she was seeing.
Her heart pounded harder, and once more she felt the bands begin to constrict around her chest.
And then, as the mill seemed to grow ever larger and closer, she saw the strange glowing light of a fire. At first it was only that, a strange glow emanating from the stairs to the basement.
But as she watched, and felt her ancient heart begin to burst within her, the glow turned bright. Flames rose up out of the stairwell, licking at the walls, then reaching out beyond the blackening brick as if they were searching for something.
Searching for her.
“No!” she whimpered. With an effort of pure will, for the pain in her chest was consuming her now, she turned from the window and groped for a chair. “Tracy!” she said, hearing the gasp in her own voice. “Tracy, help me!”
“Why?” Tracy said in a low voice, indifferent to her grandmother’s pain. “Why should I help you? What do you ever do for me?”
“My heart—” Abigail whispered. She reached out, but as the pain clamped down on her breast, then began shooting down her arms toward her fingers, she dropped the cane and pitched forward, crumpling to her knees. She stretched out her left arm, and just managed to touch Tracy’s leg.
Tracy’s breath caught, and she pulled away from the strange apparition on the floor. She scrambled from the room, screaming for her father.
“It’s Grandmother!” she yelled. “Daddy, come quick! Grandmother’s dying!”
Phillip found his mother on the floor of her parlor. She lay on her side, her hands clutching at her breast as if trying to free herself of the demon that possessed her. He dropped to his knees, and reached down to take her hands.
Her eyes, death already taking possession of them, fixed on him, and she reached up to touch his face.
“Fire,” she whispered. “It’s burning again. You have to stop her, Phillip … you have to …”
For a moment Phillip thought his own heart would stop. “Who? Who has to be stopped, Mother?”
The old woman gasped for breath, then made one final effort. “Amy,” she croaked. “Amy …”
And then she was gone.
23
Almost everyone in Westover went to the funeral for Alan Rogers or to the funeral for Abigail Sturgess.
Only a handful went to both.
For a few fleeting moments, Carolyn and Phillip had considered the possibility of combining the two services, but quickly rejected it. There had been no relationship between the two people who had died, nor did their circles of mourners overlap. So, in the end, they had decided that services for Alan would be held in the morning, three days after he died, and for Abigail the following afternoon.
What Carolyn had noticed most as the two long days wore on were the differences between the two services.
For Alan, the little church had been packed full with all the people she had been close to during her childhood and the years she had been married to Alan. The minister, who had grown up with Alan, had talked for forty minutes about the friend he had lost, and carried them all back into the past. It was, for Carolyn, a time of memories shared with people she hardly knew anymore, and she found herself missing all the old friends she had unwittingly cut herself off from when she married Phillip. Alan, for those forty minutes, had come back to life for everyone in the church, and Carolyn had found herself half-expecting to get up at the end of the service, turn, and see Alan himself leaning against the back wall of the church, grinning sardonically at the fuss being made over him. But when the service was over, and she stood at the door of the church with her daughter, her feeling of momentary nostalgia faded quickly away.
No one, she realized almost immediately, knew quite what to say. Should they offer condolences to the woman who had divorced the man they were honoring?
Nor did they know quite what to say to Beth, for the gossip had not yet died down, despite the statement Norm Adcock had issued the day after Alan died. So as Alan’s friends filed slowly out of the church, they paused for only the briefest of moments to speak to Carolyn, and eye Beth with ill-concealed curiosity. Then they hurried on. As soon as was decently possible, Phillip shepherded her to the waiting car. Carolyn, as they drove toward Hilltop, had found herself relieved that in his will Alan had specified cremation for his remains. A service at the cemetery, she was sure, would have been too uncomfortable for anyone to have borne. She found herself wondering if Alan had arranged for there to be no graveside service just for that very reason. It would, she decided, have been very much like him.
The next afternoon they had gone back to the church for Abigail’s funeral. Once again the church had been full, but for the most part it was a different group. For Abigail, people had come from as far away as Boston, and the streets around the church were lined with Cadillacs and Lincolns. The same minister conducted the service and
