“I found her in the woods,” Martin explained, “calling out to Gertie, as if she thought Gertie was still out there, lost.”
Lucius nodded. “Keep a close watch on her, Martin. Someone with Sara’s history … who has had episodes of madness before … such a person is very susceptible to slipping back into it. As I said, she may even become dangerous. We must prepare to admit her to the state hospital if it proves necessary.”
Martin had shivered at the idea of Sara’s becoming dangerous.
Now, out of bed and dressed at last, Martin padded down the stairs and found Sara in the kitchen with a fresh pot of coffee. She looked thinner than ever, the dark circles under her eyes more pronounced. Had she even come to bed last night? Martin had the feeling she’d been down here, waiting for him, all night.
“Morning,” he mumbled, bracing himself for whatever might come next.
“Do you know where the shovel is?” Sara asked. “I couldn’t find it in the barn.”
“It’s there, lined up with the other tools,” Martin said, pouring himself a cup of coffee and peering at her through the steam. “Not enough fresh snow to need to shovel, though.”
Besides, that was his job. Was she teasing? Mocking him?
“Oh, I’m not going to shovel snow.” She had a curious look on her face, like a child up to no good.
Martin took a swallow of bitter coffee.
“What do you need the shovel for, then?”
“Digging.” She paused here, watching Martin’s reaction.
He didn’t want to ask, didn’t want to know, but the words bubbled out of him. “Digging what?”
“I’m going to dig up Gertie’s body.”
He splashed coffee down his front, burning his chest.
“You’re going to …” His voice sounded shaky, strange to his own ears.
Sara smiled slyly. “Gertie left me another message,” she said, pulling a folded piece of paper from her apron and handing it over to Martin. He unfolded it, and there, in shaky, childish writing, was:
Look in the Poket of the dress I was waring.
You will find somthing that beelongs to the 1 that Kilt me.
He swallowed hard, but the knot in his throat stayed there.
He had a flash of Gertie at the bottom of the well, wearing her wool overcoat and blue dress. Heavy wool stockings bunched up on her legs.
When they pulled her from the well, he saw her hair had been cut. No one but Martin noticed. Martin, who’d carried the hank of hair coiled up in the pocket of his coat, buried it in the snow.
“But Gertie wasn’t killed, Sara. She fell.” He tried to keep his voice calm and level; his best you’ve-got-to-see-reason tone, like a parent reprimanding a small child.
But hadn’t some part of him been wondering all along if it had truly been an accident? How had Gertie’s hair been cut? Who hung it up in the barn?
Sara only smiled. “We buried Gertie in the dress she was wearing when they found her in the well. I need to do this, Martin. I need to know. I need to know if it’s her.”
“Her? Her who?”
“Auntie. Though Auntie died so long ago … The spirit of Auntie. I need to know if she killed our little girl.”
“You think Gertie was killed by a spirit?”
“I don’t know!” she said, exasperated. “That’s why we have to dig her up. Don’t you see?”
She looked at him long and hard, waiting for a response.
“Don’t you, Martin? Don’t you need to know the truth?”
He stayed silent.
Gertie had been laid to rest in the small family cemetery behind the house. Beside her were the graves of Sara’s parents, her brother, Jacob, and Gertie’s tiny infant brother.
“Sara, Gertie’s been in the ground for two weeks now. Have you thought about the … condition her body will be in?” It was dreadful to imagine, and he felt cruel bringing it up, but he had to find a way to stop her.
She nodded. “It’s only a body. An empty vessel. The little girl I love is out there still, in the beyond.”
Martin took in a breath.
Calm. Be calm.
He felt his face and ears burning, his heart hammering away in his chest.
He remembered seeing Sara come out of the barn the day Gertie disappeared. How he had gone in just after and found the fox pelt gone and the hair hanging in its place.
A terrible possibility began to dawn—something that he hadn’t allowed himself to believe in, or even to consider, until now.
Could Sara have killed Gertie?
She may even become dangerous.
He looked down at the note scribbled in childish handwriting. He tried to recall his daughter’s penmanship, but could not quite picture it. To his eye, the note Sara had produced looked more like the writing of an adult trying to write like a child.
Was this Sara’s way of confessing? Did she know there was something of hers tucked in the pocket of poor Gertie’s dress?
The room seemed to tilt slightly, and Martin grabbed onto the table to keep his balance.