Tracy shrugged. “She died when I was born. I don’t even remember her. My grandmother raised me.”
Beth’s frown deepened. “Then how come you don’t miss your grandmother like I miss my father?”
“I told you. She was an old lady.” She glanced at Beth out of the corner of her eye, then did her best to work up some tears. “Besides, she didn’t love me anymore. She loved you more than she loved me.”
Beth gasped. “That’s not true—”
Now Tracy managed a little sob. “It is, too! She didn’t ask to see me when she was in the hospital. At least not the first night. She only wanted to see you.”
“But that was about—” And then Beth stopped short, afraid to speak the name that Tracy had used against her for so long.
“About Amy?” Tracy asked, her voice showing no hint of the mockery of the past.
Hesitantly, Beth nodded.
Tracy’s heart beat a little faster. She had to be careful now, or she might scare Beth off. “Grandmother talked about her,” she said, thinking as fast as she could. “She told me she wished you could come and live here again, because she wanted to know all about Amy.”
“She … she did?” Beth stammered, wondering if it could possibly be true, and if maybe Tracy didn’t think she was crazy anymore.
Tracy nodded solemnly, remembering her grandmother’s last words. Maybe she could use them to get Beth talking. “And she said there was a fire.” At the look in Beth’s eyes, she knew she’d struck a bull’s-eye.
“In the mill?” Beth breathed. “Did she really talk about the fire in the mill?”
Now Tracy hesitated. What if Beth was lying too, trying to trap her just as she herself was trying to trap Beth? But that was silly — Beth wasn’t smart enough to do that. “I think so,” she said. “When she was in the hospital, what did she tell you?”
“Nothing,” Beth replied, and Tracy’s heart sank. But then Beth spoke again. “Except that when she got home, she’d show me something that proved Amy’s real.”
A surge of excitement seized Tracy.
But she said nothing.
24
It was a little past midnight. The house was silent, but from outside her open windows Tracy could hear the soft chirpings of crickets and the murmurs of tree frogs calling to their mates. Her feet bare, and only a light robe over her pajamas, she opened her closet and fished her grandmother’s jewelry box off the top shelf. Then she turned off the lights in her room, and carefully opened the door.
The corridor outside was dark, but Tracy didn’t even consider turning on the night-light on the commode. Her grandmother’s door was only thirty feet away, and she could have walked it blindfolded if she’d had to.
She was halfway down the hall, moving carefully to avoid bumping into the commode that stood at the midpoint, when she realized that the corridor was not completely dark after all. At the far end, there seemed to be a faint glowing, as if a dim light were spilling from beneath a door.
Her grandmother’s door.
She froze in the darkness, clutching the jewelry box tighter, her eyes fixed on the light. It seemed now to be flickering slightly. Why would there be light coming from her grandmother’s room? It was empty, wasn’t it?
Unless it wasn’t empty.
But who could be in there? She’d been awake all night, listening.
Her father and stepmother had come in to say good night to her, and then she’d heard them going down the hall to the other end of the house. She’d even opened her door so she could listen, and been able to hear their voices until the closing of their door had cut off their words.
Twice, she’d crept down the hall to listen at Beth’s door, and opened it just enough to hear the even rhythm of her stepsister’s breathing as she slept.
The only other person in the house was Hannah.
So it had to be Hannah.
Hannah was in her grandmother’s room, going through her belongings, looking for things to steal.
Her grandmother had told her about servants, and how they always stole things. “You have to expect it,” her grandmother had explained to her. “Servants resent you for what you have, and they think they deserve it. So they simply take things, because they have no sense of right and wrong. You can’t stop it — it’s simply the price we pay for what we have.”
And now, with her grandmother barely dead, Hannah was in her room, using a flashlight to go through her things, looking for things to steal.
Tracy smiled in the darkness, congratulating herself for having already removed the jewelry box from its place in her grandmother’s vanity. She turned, and started back toward her own room.
But then she remembered how Hannah had always fawned over Beth, and how, for the last three days, she had refused to do even the simplest thing for Tracy herself. Slowly another idea came to her, and she knew exactly what she would do. She would catch Hannah in her grandmother’s room, and then make her father fire her. Hannah could even be blamed for the pieces missing from the jewelry box. Maybe she could even fix it so the old housekeeper would go to jail.
She moved quickly on down the hall, stopping outside the closed door to her grandmother’s room. Pressing her ear close, she listened, then stooped down to peer through the keyhole.
The room was dark now, and she could hear nothing.
Maybe Hannah had heard her.
Gingerly, Tracy turned the knob, and pushed the door slightly open. Then she reached in, and flipped the switch just inside the door. The chandelier that hung from the center of the ceiling went on, and the room was flooded with bright light.
Tracy pushed the door open, and looked around.
The room was empty.
But there had been light under the door, she was certain of it. Her eyes scanned the room again, and fell on the door that led to her grandmother’s dressing room, and the bathroom beyond.
The dressing room, too, was empty, as was the bathroom. She paused on her way back to the bedroom, and put the jewelry box back in its accustomed place in the top drawer on the right side.
Finally, she returned to the bedroom, and looked around once more. She couldn’t have been wrong — she
And yet, nowhere was there any sign that anyone else had been in these rooms. All was exactly as it had been earlier when she had stolen in to take the jewelry box in the first place. All the clutter — the things her grandmother prized so much, and that Tracy regarded as just so much junk — was exactly as it had always been. The lights, all of them except the chandelier, were off, so that wouldn’t account for the strange light coming from beneath the door either.
She went to the window, and looked out into the darkness. In the village there were still a few lights on, and in the distance she could barely make out the shape of the mill. And then, as she watched, she saw the strange flickering light again.
This time, though, it was at the mill. It seemed to light up for just a moment, then disappear once more into the blackness of the night.
And then Tracy was sure she knew what it was. A car, winding along the road, its headlights flashing briefly on the mill as it rounded a bend.
The same thing must have happened when she’d been in the hall — it had been no more than a car coming up the hill, its lights flashing into the room for a few seconds.
