The Winter People(50)

“But she’s not the only one who has told us things about you,” said Mrs. Cobb, pouring tea. She was a plump woman with a ruddy face. “Isn’t that right, ladies?” she practically chortled. It was as if they all shared a joke.

They all nodded excitedly.

“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” I confessed, setting my fork down on the china plate. It made a terrible clanking sound. My hands began to tremble.

It was the old woman, Mrs. Willard, who spoke. She was sitting across from me, staring fixedly at me. “We have a message for you.”

“A message?” I asked, dabbing at my lips with a starched napkin. “From whom?”

“From your child,” Mrs. Willard said, her dark eyes boring into my own. “Gertie.”

“You … you’ve seen her?” I asked. Was this where my Gertie had gone? To these ladies? But why?

Mrs. Cobb chuckled, her cheeks growing even more pink. “Good heavens, no,” she said. “The spirits don’t manifest themselves to us that way.”

“How, then?” I asked.

“Various ways,” Amelia said. “We meet once a month and ask any spirits who are present to join us. Sometimes we will request a certain spirit.”

“But how do they communicate with you?” I asked.

“Rapping on the table. They can answer questions that way—one knock for yes, two for no.”

My throat tightened as I remembered talking with my beloved Gertie this way only yesterday.

“Sometimes they can communicate through Mrs. Willard,” Amelia explained. “She’s a medium, you see. A very gifted one.”

“A medium?” I looked at the old woman, who hadn’t taken her eyes off me.

“The dead speak to me. I’ve been hearing their voices since I was a little girl,” she said. Her eyes were so dark, so strangely hypnotic, if I looked into them for too long, I began to feel dizzy.

Parched, I reached for the crystal glass, took a swallow of cloyingly sweet wine.

“The message your Gertie has for you is this,” Mrs. Willard said. “She says to tell you the blue dog says hello.”

I gasped, put a hand over my mouth.

Mrs. Willard nodded knowingly and continued. “She also says that this thing that you are doing is not right. She doesn’t like it at all.” Her look turned sharp, almost angry.

I set my glass down carelessly, and it toppled. I stood to blot the spilled wine from the table with my napkin and swayed dizzily, steadying myself on the edge of the table. The room felt dark and airless.

“Aunt Sara, are you all right?” Amelia asked.

“May I have a glass of water?” I asked.

“Yes. Please, sit down. Why, your face has gone white.” Amelia hurried over with water, dampened a napkin, and began to dab at my forehead.

“I’m afraid I’m not well,” I whispered to her. “Could you please take me home?”

“Of course,” Amelia said, helping me to rise and making apologies to the ladies.

Once outside, I took in gulps of cold air until my head felt clearer. The sun was directly overhead, and made the world seem impossibly bright. Amelia helped me into the carriage and laid the blanket over me.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Perhaps it was all too much.”

“Perhaps,” I told her.

The other luncheon guests crowded together in the open doorway, waving their goodbyes, brows furrowed with concern. As we pulled away and moved down Main Street, I saw other faces watching, too. Abe Cushing peered out from the window of the general store and raised his hand in a wave. Sally Gonyea was wiping down tables in the dining room at the inn. She stopped and watched us pass, her face somber. And across the street, Erwin Jameson watched us from the window of the tack-and-feed store. When he noticed that I saw him, he looked away, pretended to be busy with something near the window.

I know what they are all thinking: There goes poor Sara Shea. She’s no longer in her right mind.


When we returned home, Amelia insisted on putting me to bed and offered to go find Martin.

“No need,” I told her. “I’ll just rest awhile. I’m feeling much better, really.”

As soon as she left, I jumped out of bed and searched the house again, more frantically than ever.

I kept hearing Mrs. Willard’s words: This thing that you are doing is not right. She doesn’t like it at all.

What had I done wrong? How had I scared my Gertie off?

Unsure of what else to do, I put on my coat and walked through the woods to the old well, but I found no trace of her. It was a miserable sight, looking down into the darkness at the bottom of that circle of stone, like peering down the throat of a hungry giant.

The whole time I was up on the hill, I felt as if I were being watched. As if the trees and rocks themselves had eyes. As if the branches were thin fingers scrabbling against my face, waiting to grab hold of me.

“Gertie?” I cried out from the center of a small clearing just behind the Devil’s Hand. “Where are you?”

The great rocks that formed the hand cast shadows over the snow—long, thin shadows that turned the fingers into claws. And there I was, in the middle of them, trapped in their grip.

I heard branches breaking. Footsteps behind me. I held my breath and turned around, arms open wide to catch her, to hold her tight. “Gertie?”