Page 2 of The Premonition at Withers Farm
“Miss Van Hilton, Eunice Withers has been murdered.”
“I would assume such. One doesn’t fall onto one’s own knife eight different times in succession.” She hoped her flippancy hid the fact that her eyes were burning. Eunice Withers. The poor girl. The poor sweet girl...
George’s face reddened. “I need your services.”
“Truly?” Perliett set the teacup on a white wicker side table that also held a small potted fern. She folded her hands in her lap and rested them on top of her emerald-green skirt. “I cannot bring her back to life, you know.”
“I didn’t mean yourmedicalservices.”
“So, you admit I provide those?”
“I admit nothing of the sort. I merely need your services to clean the body.”
“I see. Eliminate the signs of violence before Miss Withers is given over to the undertaker?”
“Yes.”
“Yes,” Perliett echoed. “I suppose that would be unseemly for your ... er, delicate sensibilities.” She raised her eyes and knew her blue orbs were blinking in coquettish innocence at the man.
He opened his mouth to reply.
Perliett interrupted to spare him the effort of defendinghimself. “Absolutely.” She pushed up from the chair, and this time Dr. George Wasziak didn’t have the opportunity to step back. She tapped the knot of his tie with her fingertip. “I would be more than honored to help prepare Miss Withers for the afterlife.”
“She’s already entered it,” George growled. “Her body needs no preparation for that.”
Oh, heavens. She simplyhadto poke at him one more time or she might burst into tears. To mask her emotion, Perliett jabbed at George’s tie again, and he stiffened. “My mother might beg to differ, but we’ll ask Miss Withers the next time we speak with her.”
George’s eyes darkened further—if that were possible.
For a moment, he unnerved Perliett. Then she recovered. She knew that most average Christian members of the small Michigan farmland community didn’t respond with welcome to the fact that her mother spoke to the dead.Sawthe dead. Spiritualism, for many, was dabbling in a world one should leave very much alone. For Perliett’s mother, it was her livelihood—even her companionship. Especially now that the staying hand of Perliett’s father had dissipated with his passing. There was no further influence from the churchgoing man to temper her mother’s fascination with the afterlife.
Perliett? Oh, she accepted it. Because it was her mother, and because it was the only way she could stay in communication with her beloved father. The man whom death had stolen, and the only time Perliett had hated death for such an act.
2
Molly Wasziak
PRESENT DAY
Weep for the living, not the dead.
While she related to the sentiment, it did not thrill Molly that it was chiseled into the basement’s stone foundation. A foundation made of broken sections of old gravestones. She offered her husband a side-eye. He wasn’t looking at her, but instead was studying the old gas furnace.
“It’s LP, right?” Trent asked of their real estate agent, Maynard Clapton.
The man dipped his bald head in response. “Oh yeah. No natural gas lines out this way. It’s liquid propane all right.”
“We’d need to work on insulating the house better.” Trent reached overhead and swiped his callused palm along the edge where the joists met the wall.
“It is an old farmhouse, so yes, it’s not going to be efficient. As you can see, the basement is more of a cellar.” Maynard ducked as a string slapped his face, attached to the lone lightbulb that was screwed into a fixture in the middle of the ceiling. “It’s solid, though.” He slapped the stone wall,his palm against the half-finished name ofWilber Smy—. “Farmers back in the day used fieldstone, but in order to recycle and be frugal, they also used castoff headstones, as you can see. The stone carver made an error, or something cracked, or what have you and the markers were worthless.”
“Granite is good in a foundation,” Trent acknowledged. He didn’t seem bothered by the idea that the farmhouse had been built on the lives of dead people. Their half names and epitaphs intermingling with stones from the fields as though they were insignificant.
Molly looked down at her shoes, now covered in a layer of basement dust. The floor was hard-packed with earth and stone. She didn’t dare look up, because between the wooden rafters were so many spiderwebs, Molly was sure you could throw a tennis ball up there and it’d get trapped. Spiders were the spawn of Satan, plain and simple.
Maynard looked between them. Molly knew what he saw without even needing to think about it. A couple in their early thirties, married straight out of high school, and about as close now as two buddies living in a dorm together. Molly called Trent herroommate. He hated it, but never said—or did—anything to change it. Maynard was probably wondering why they were bothering to buy an over one-hundred-year-old farmstead as a hobby farm instead of using the money to file for divorce.
She wondered about it too. Not that she wanted a divorce. It was just ... the next logical step? Isn’t that what people did when they coexisted? What once had thrived as two best friends had diminished into an unargumentative silence. It didn’t help that she knew a lot of it was her fault. But it also didn’t help that Trent had about as many emotions as one of the fieldstones in the basement foundation.
