Page 31 of The Premonition at Withers Farm
Perliett dared a glance into the mirror. She looked respectable. Pretty, perhaps, but certainly not beautiful. Her raven hair was dulled due to her not being able to wash it the night before, for her mother had sat in the tub until the water was cold. She wasn’t fond of cold-water baths or hair washing. Her stitches looked clean. George had done a fine job. No swelling or redness was a good sign. Of course, the paste she’d been applying at night might not be something Dr. Wasziak approved of, though it was obviously working.
Within minutes, Perliett was seated next to her mother in their carriage, and shortly thereafter, Perliett and her mother slipped into their usual pew with grace and dignity. She noted that the Witherses were not in attendance. Allowing her eyes to roam the room, Perliett mouthed the words to a hymn as she made out the stature of George, stiff-backed in the second row, standing next to his widowed mother. A few rows behind him was Kenneth, the thwarted-in-love man whom Perliett once again considered. Truly no one knew he and Eunice had been lovers? Perliett scolded herself quietly. She was crafting stories where perhaps there were none. Perhaps Kenneth had just been a remarkably empathetic discoverer of Eunice’s body? His relief at the verification there was no pregnancy to contend with as a second death, pure chance? Or maybe—maybe the Withers familydidknowabout Kenneth. Maybe they kept quiet so as not to add scandal to Eunice’s name in the wake of her death.
Perliett noticed Detective Poll was there as well, along with his wife. She would relieve her conscience by telling him her suspicions about Kenneth Braun. At least her suspicion that he was in love with Eunice Withers, not that he had murdered her. Heaven knew that Kenneth had barely been able to hold himself together the day of Eunice’s discovery. He certainly had no stomach for angrily skewering her multiple times with a knife.
Yes, that was the next course of action. Discuss this with Detective Poll so she could stop worrying over the idea of Kenneth Braun somehow being important to the mystery of Eunice’s death. It would be Detective Poll’s problem to address—if it was a problem at all. The pastwasthe past, after all. Maybe she was overthinking it all?
Easing onto the pew at the reverend’s bidding, hymnals closed and returned to their places, Perliett prepared to be lambasted with the glory of God. She felt her body grow weary from her fitful sleeps of late. She couldn’t help but be a tad annoyed that her mother sat beside her, with an inch of space between her back and the pew. Alert, composed, and for all sakes and purposes, as invested in the sermon as she was on an evening in the dark when she summoned the spirits.
Perliett’s gaze drifted to the long oval window at her end of the pew. The trees outside were full and luscious with green summer growth. She could see the churchyard, stones from the cemetery, and beyond that, cornfield. Across the street from the church was the narrow street’s lineup of critical places of service: the drugstore, the post office, the mercantile, the feed and seed. Kilbourn was a homey little town on a Sunday, and if the reverend would summarize God in a paragraph instead of pages’ worth of vocabulary, Perliett could go outside and enjoy it. That was if—
A scream from outside ripped through the congregation and made the reverend’s mouth remain open mid-sentence. His eyes sharpened under bushy white eyebrows, and he raised an arm, his clergy weeds bagging down to his elbow.
“Someone will investigate. All remain seated, please,” he instructed.
Detective Poll shot to his feet, as did George. Not to be outdone, Perliett did so as well and ignored Maribeth’s urgent insistence to “sit down!”
The three of them hurried up the middle aisle of the church. Perliett noticed Kenneth slipping from his pew and following them, his lanky frame awkward as he dogged her heels.
Murmurs broke out all around them. A few well-meaning men had also stood and were moving to join them, but were waved back by Detective Poll, who seemed not to have noticed Perliett or Kenneth behind him.
They burst through the front doors of the church, and, had Perliett been in a better mood, she might have been overcome with curious shock and dismay. As it was, she knew her own expression now mimicked the reverend’s as she took in the sight in the churchyard.
Mrs. Withers was kneeling on the lawn. Clutched in her hands was the violet shawl that belonged to Eunice. Her face was drawn, visibly haggard and pale, her mouth open in a silent wail. All Perliett could hear was a guttural gasping for air as Mrs. Withers’s lungs competed with the need to sob.
George pushed past the detective, his long strides eating up the earth between himself and the mourning mother.
“Mrs. Withers.” He was gentle as he approached her, his hands out with palms upward. “Mrs. Withers? It’s me, Dr. Wasziak.”
The woman rocked back on her heels, the shawl over her open mouth. Her eyes were wide and beseeching, and Perliett could see that she didn’t register who George was.
“Mrs. Withers?” George prompted again.
Detective Poll gripped George’s arm. “I’m going to calm the congregation down. They’re already on edge because of Eunice’s...” He paused and glanced at the distraught mother. “Well—”
“Yes, do,” George agreed.
Detective Poll breezed past Perliett, giving Kenneth a frown as he hurried back to the church. Perliett had gone all but unnoticed, and now, as George cautiously knelt beside Mrs. Withers, she noticed the woman fixating on her.
“Eunice?” Her daughter’s name floated across the air between them.
George looked over his shoulder, his gaze darkening as he noticed Perliett for the first time.
Mrs. Withers’s eyes clasped onto Perliett with an insistence that made Perliett question her intentions to follow George and investigate the scream. The expression on the lost mother’s face made her skin crawl and a shiver of apprehension slither up her spine.
“You’re not Eunice,” Kenneth muttered to Perliett with a shake to his voice that indicated he was twitchy and nervous.
Mrs. Withers struggled to her feet, the shawl still gripped by wiry fingers that had worked hard over the years to raise her precious children. Her hair hung over her shoulders, oily and unwashed. Perliett mentally vowed to wash her own hair that night, cold bathwater or not.
“Eunice.” Mrs. Withers took a wobbling step toward Perliett, noticed Kenneth, and stopped so suddenly she almost fell over.
George’s hand shot out to catch her.
“Kenneth Braun.” Mrs. Withers looked between him and Perliett. Her eyes narrowed. “You leave my girl alone.”
“I did nothin’ to Eunice!” Kenneth’s voice turned whiny.
Perliett gave him an impatient motion of her hand to stay quiet.
