just having a weak moment. Let me finish undressing, and then let’s talk about something else, all right?”
Reluctantly Phillip released her, and went back to the bed. Carolyn moved through the dressing room into the bathroom, and quickly ran cold water in the sink, then washed her face, and began running a brush through her hair.
Maybe it had been a mistake to marry Phillip — maybe, no matter how badly she wanted it to work, it was an impossible situation.
But she had to make it work.
After Alan—
She tried to force the thought out of her mind, but couldn’t. The problem, she knew, was that Phillip and Alan were too much alike.
Good, kind, decent men.
And she’d lost Alan, simply because she hadn’t been able to accept him as he was. She’d always wanted more.
She wouldn’t make the same mistake with Phillip. Westover was his home; this house was his home. He belonged here. And no matter what happened, she wouldn’t ask him to leave. She would figure out a way to deal with his mother, and she would win his daughter over. And she would never ask him to leave.
She’d married him for what he was. A large part of that identity was defined by the fact that Phillip was a Sturgess. And Sturgesses lived at Hilltop.
Suddenly fragments of the old stories flitted through her mind — stories she’d grown up with, stories about the Sturgesses. But as quickly as they came, she rejected them. They were only the unkind whisperings of people who had less than the Sturgesses and therefore envied them. Legends. And they had nothing to do with Phillip.
She put the hairbrush away, and returned to the bedroom, then slid into the bed next to her husband. Switching off the lamp on her bed table, she snuggled close, feeling the tension drain out of her body. And then a thought occurred to her.
“Phillip …”
“Hm?”
“Phillip, that plan you’ve been working on — the one to refurbish the mill?”
“Mm-hmm. What about it?”
“You’re not … you’re not thinking of going ahead with it, are you?”
Phillip drew away slightly, and looked down at her. “Don’t tell me you’ve been talking to Mother?”
“Abigail? What made you think that?”
“Because we were talking about the mill today. On the way up here, after the church service. She asked me if the plan was ready.”
Carolyn felt her heart beat faster. “What did you tell her?”
“That it was all set. Everything’s on paper.”
“And what did Abigail say?” Carolyn realized that she was holding her breath.
Phillip chuckled. “For once, Mother agreed with me. She said that now that Father’s gone, it’s time I went ahead with that project.”
Carolyn lay silent for a long time, then spoke again. “Phillip, maybe you shouldn’t go ahead. Maybe … maybe your father was right.”
Now Phillip sat full upright, and turned on the light. When she looked at him, she saw his eyes flashing angrily.
“Right? All Father would ever say about the mill was that it was evil, and should never be touched. Not restored, not converted to some other use, not even torn down. Just left to rot, for God’s sake! How can that be right?”
Carolyn shook her head unhappily. “I don’t know. But there have been so many stories. And you don’t know how everyone in town feels about the mill.”
“They feel the same way I feel about it,” Phillip declared. “That it’s a hideous old eyesore, and that something ought to be done with it.”
“But that’s not it,” Carolyn replied. “It’s something else. It’s a reminder of how things used to be here—” She stopped herself, not wanting to hurt her husband, but it was already too late: she could see the pain in Phillip’s eyes.
“You mean a reminder of the bad old days, when my family used to work children to death in the shoe factory?”
Mutely, Carolyn nodded.
Phillip stared at her for a moment, then flopped back down on his pillow, averting his eyes.
“I think that’s another reason to renovate it,” he said tiredly. “Perhaps the best reason. Maybe all those old stories will finally be forgotten if I do something with the mill and some people in Westover make some honest money from it.”
“But maybe … maybe the stories shouldn’t be forgotten, Phillip. Maybe we always need to remember what happened there.”
“My God,” Phillip groaned. “You sound just like Father. Except that he’d never say exactly what he was talking about. It was always vague references, and dark hints. But nothing I could ever put my finger on.” He propped himself up on one elbow, and his tone lightened. “And you know why I could never put my finger on any of it?” he asked.
Carolyn shook her head.
“Because maybe there was nothing to put my finger on! Just a bunch of stories and legends about terrible abuses in the shoe mill. But that sort of thing went on all over New England. Christ, child labor was our answer to slavery. But it’s all over now, Carolyn. Why should we keep torturing ourselves with it?”
“I don’t know,” Carolyn admitted. “But I just can’t help feeling that somehow your father was right about the mill.”
Phillip reached over and turned off his light again, then drew her close. “Well, he wasn’t,” he said. “He was as wrong about the mill as he was about everything else. He was my father, darling, but I have to confess I didn’t like him very much.”
Carolyn made no reply, and lay still in her husband’s arms. Here, in bed with Phillip, she felt secure and safe, and she would do nothing to threaten that security. But as Phillip drifted into sleep, and she lay awake, she couldn’t help feeling that Phillip was wrong about the mill, and that old Conrad Sturgess, whom they had buried that day, was right.
The mill should be left alone; left to crumble away until there was nothing left of it but dust.
3
Tracy Sturgess lay in her bed listening to the faint echoes of the old grandfather clock that had stood in the entry hall for as long as she could remember. She counted the chimes, then checked her tally against the little clock on her night table.
Eleven.
She threw the covers back, put on her robe, then went into the bathroom that adjoined her bedroom. Switching on the light, she inspected herself in the mirror.
She didn’t look quite right.
Carefully she mussed her hair until she was satisfied that it looked as though she’d been tossing in her bed for the last hour. Then she turned the bathroom light off and moved quickly through the darkness to her bedroom door. Opening it a crack, she peered out into the dimness of the corridor, lit only by a small night-light that sat on the marble-topped commode midway between the stairs and her grandmother’s rooms.
