Kimball’s.
“You saw the man’s face in the newspaper?”
“Yes.”
“Your father?”
“No, not him. The other one.”
“It was, too, your father,” Amy Baxter said, appearing over the ridge of the bern. “You’re confused, Holly. You’re making things up.”
There was no sign of a weapon on Amy’s person, but with that voice of hers, she was none the less armed. Joanna held up the Colt. “Stay where you are, Amy. Don’t come any closer. This is loaded. I’ll use it if I have to.”
“Don’t threaten me. You can see I’m not armed.
I came to get Holly and take her back to bed before she freezes to death. You had no business bringing an invalid out into weather like this.
You’re soaked, Holly. Come along.”
“She’s staying with me until I get to the bottom of all this,” Joanna countered. “Why did you have her locked in her room?”
“Isn’t that obvious?” Amy asked. “Twice, now, so far today, she’s taken off on her own and run to this dump. She could fall and hurt herself. Or worse.”
“What’s here on the dump?” Joanna demanded. “Or else under it. She said something about a house, a Quonset hut.”
“There’s nothing here.”
“Yes, there was.” Holly insisted suddenly, “Don’t you remember, Amy? My father told us all about it. About where Uncle Thorny and Aunt Bonnie were staying when it happened. When it happened the first time.”
“Be quiet, Holly,” Amy ordered sharply “You’re confused and making things up. He didn’t say any such thing.”
Slowly, the picture was beginning to shift into focus. Of course. Uncle Thorny. Thornton Kimball, The other picture in the paper along with Harold Patterson’s.
“Is Uncle Thorny the one who hurt you when you were little?”
Holly didn’t answer. Instead she collapsed face down on the bern, weeping.
“Look what you’ve done,” Amy Baxter said, taking a step toward them.
“I said don’t move, and I meant it!” Joanna ordered through chattering teeth. She was so cold now, she wasn’t sure she could pull the trigger if she had to, but Amy Baxter took her at her word and stayed where she was.
“That’s it, isn’t it?” Joanna said. “You fingered the wrong man.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Amy returned.
“Yes, you do. I know about you and your forgotten-memory program. I read the article in People. You correctly identified Holly as someone who had been molested as a child, but when you went through the forgotten-memory process, you dredged up the wrong man, didn’t you?”
Amy Baxter’s face grew stony. “Come on, Holly. It’s time to go. We’ll go back down to the house and put you to bed.”
“Why?” Joanna taunted. “So you can make her remember what you want her to remember and forget what you want her to forget?”
“Holly, come!”
But the cord had frayed too much. The choke chain of Amy’s voice didn’t work as it must have in the past. Holly Patterson didn’t move.
“She’s not a dog, Amy,” Joanna said. “She doesn’t have to obey you just because you issue an order. What else have you made her forget?”
“I remember the rocks,” Holly said softly, almost to herself. “Rocks that were so big, I could barely lift them.”
“Holly!” Amy warned, but her voice had no effect.
“I carried them for her one at a time. Carried the rocks over to the hole. I could hear him the whole time. He was down there in the hole, crying and begging her to stop, please stop. But she wouldn’t. Mother kept right on throwing the rocks down there…”
“Holly!” The tears had stopped. Holly’s voice had taken on a strange, dreamlike quality. It was as though she wasn’t telling a story that had happened almost half a century ago, but reporting something she was watching right then, the action being replayed on the indelible screen of a much younger mind.
“…and crying and saying he’d never do it again. He’d never hurt anyone ever, ever again. And then Father was there. He grabbed her by the arms. He held her and made her stop. I remember now. He held us both. And he said it was going to be okay.”
The whole time Holly was speaking, Joanna never took her eyes off Amy. For some time after Holly finished, they were all three quiet.
“You’re finished, aren’t you?” Joanna said at last to Amy Baxter. “This shoots your credibility right down the toilet.”
“You think someone’s going to believe her?” Amy said contemptuously. “If she remembered one thing wrong,
