Page 22 of From the Darkness

“I’d like my cereal now,” Dinah said, her cat clamped under her arm as she moved to the buffet. It was high for her, and she stood on tiptoes to reach for the cereal box.

Bree crossed the room. “Let me help you,” she said, picking up the box and pouring cereal into a bowl. Next, she added milk and a spoonful of sugar. “Do you want fruit on top?” she asked.

“Yes, please,” the child answered politely.

Bree spooned on banana slices and strawberries, then carried the cereal to the table, waiting until Dinah had taken a seat.

“Do you want anything else?”

“No thank you.”

“What do you drink at breakfast?”

“Orange juice, please,” the child answered with excruciating politeness.

“And some milk.”

“Okay.”

Bree watched the little girl hunched over her breakfast. She wanted to ask what Nola had meant. It sounded like the woman was deliberately trying to drive a wedge between her and the girl. Or had something bad really happened? Something it was important to know.

Picking up her cup, she went back to the cart and busied herself fixing more tea.

She hoped she looked calm. But she didn’t feel calm inside. She’d suddenly thought about a story she’d read in an English literature course in college. It wasThe Turn of the Screw,by Henry James. And the similarities to her own situation were startling. It was about a woman who’d been hired as a governess to two parentless children. The boy and girl had seemed nice at first. But then it turned out that they’d been corrupted by a previous governess and her lover—whose ghosts came back to haunt the children.

With a shudder, Bree ordered herself to put the tale out of her mind. It was just a ghost story meant to be disturbing, and it had nothing to do with her—and nothing to do with Dinah.

When she turned, she found the child watching her. “As soon as you’re finished, you can show me the way to the schoolroom, and we can see what you’ve been doing.”

When Dinah finished breakfast, they retraced the route Bree had taken in the morning, climbing the stairs and then walking down the hall—past Bree’s room and stopping in front of a door that was just around another corner.

As she crossed the threshold, Dinah turned on the light. It was as though they’d stepped into an old-fashioned one-room school, with blackboards, several dark wooden desks and chair combinations and a teacher’s desk at the front.

Bree walked to the desk and looked through the neatly stacked books and papers. “What are you doing in math?” she asked.

“Addition,” Dinah answered promptly, as though anxious to be of help.

It felt strange to be in this classroom with only one pupil, Bree thought as she found a sheet with suitable problems and handed them to the girl. “Why don’t you do some of these while I look over the materials Miss Carpenter left. Do you have a pencil?”

“Yes.”

For the next half hour, while her student worked on the addition problems, Bree studied lesson plans.

But the hair on the back of her neck kept prickling, and she couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching her—just as she was watching Dinah.

Was Troy nearby? In a spot where he could observe them without being seen. Or was somebody else checking up on the schoolroom?

She got up and walked across the polished floor, pretending to inspect the pictures of birds and animals on the bulletin board. She saw no obvious peepholes—or hidden cameras, for that matter. But that didn’t mean anything. There could be a microphone in the light fixture, for all she knew.

A small noise made her head turn. Dinah was looking at her.

“Yes?”

“I have to go to the bathroom.”

“Sure. You don’t have to ask my permission. You can just get up and leave when you have to.”

Dinah nodded and slipped out of her seat, taking Alice with her.

---