Page 59 of The Premonition at Withers Farm
Perliett looked down at their hands. She would undermine her mother to admit it aloud. But sometimes—sometimes she burst to share it. To hear herself say it and then have someone explain why she was wrong. Why she shouldn’t doubt. Why she was right to believe.
“It makes me question whether she reallycanreach the other world.” Perliett’s words came in a jumble. Flowing over each other like a wellspring that couldn’t be stopped. “She seems to connect with others. Why can’t she with my father? He was why she became who she is in the first place—because we wanted to connect with PaPa. Now? She won’t even try.”
“You’ve asked her to?”
“Yes!” Perliett was aware of how her voice rose. “Yes, I’vebeggedher! Now we simply don’t discuss it. PaPa is off-limits. Why should he be, unless she knows she cannot reach him? She doesn’t wish to admit it. Are there elements of the spirit world that prohibit people with my mother’s abilities to make the connection? Or is it—?” She stopped, her emotions making her words trip thoughtlessly over themselves.
“A ruse?” Jasper supplied gently.
“Yes!” Perliett was embarrassed by the word as it escaped her lips. “Oh, I don’t believe my mother resorts to trickery. Idon’t. How do you explain what happened when she summoned Eunice Withers and the window shattered? Still, there are gaps. Pieces. Unfulfilled hopes...”
“So then you question if perhaps the narrow pursuit of God alone is truer?”
“Could it be? Are we merely muddying the waters by trying to broaden the scope of things? Isn’t it difficult enough to understand God, let alone to understand a world of deceased spirits lingering and hovering with incomplete lives?”
Perliett pulled away from Jasper, grabbing her glove from his leg and yanking it onto her hand. She had said too much. She had opened herself to this stranger too much. Somehow he drew it out of her, and still all she knew of him was that he was from Chicago and he had a sister. He was still a stranger. For all she knew, he was the Cornfield Ripper flirting with her before he speared her with his blade and left her to bleed out amongst the corn spiders and corn silk.
“I need to go.” She looked toward town, then to the river that ran through the park behind them, only a quick jaunt down a manicured path. The solitude of the river beckoned her. Reason pointed her toward town. “I need to go,” she mumbled again, and her feet urged her toward the body of water instead.
“Perliett!” Jasper jumped to his feet as she hurried away. She heard his voice carry over the breeze behind her. “You shouldn’t go alone!”
She waved him away. “Please.” Perliett turned, stopping in her tumultuous and now-embarrassing display. “Please,” she pleaded, “I will be fine.” It was daylight after all. No one struck with murderous intent in the sun’s glare.
Perliett hurried down the path. She thought she heard Jasper shout once more. She was tempted to look behind her and see if he followed. Part of her wished he would. Wished he would overwhelm her womanly outburst and, in a fit of male passion, manhandle her into his arms and kiss her senseless. She’d never been kissed. She’d never been held. She was lonesome and lost and...
The river was a gentle current, muddy and brown. It wasn’t beautiful. But the greenery on either side made it come alive like a pretend world, and Kilbourn merely a wispof a memory behind her. Perliett left the trail and pushed through the grasses, looking up at the oak and maple that lined the riverbanks. Daisies spread their white faces and yellow smiles throughout the long grass. Moss grew on rocks that lined the river and edged the rotting tree that had fallen into the river’s path years before.
Perliett halted, her long dress tangled in the weeds. She pulled the greenery from its claw-like embrace of her embroidered dress that skimmed her hips and hung narrowly to her ankles. She tugged off her gloves so she could grab at the weeds. A ladybug flew from its hiding place and bumped into her elbow. Perliett brushed it away just as a black fly announced its annoying presence.
Always. Always there was something evil to ruin something beautiful.
Always there was something pressuring peace to float away as chaos consumed.
Always—
Perliett froze. Her eyes focused on something in the weeds. White. Smooth. She strained to see over the bank. Whatever it was, was half in the river, and something like soaked chiffon floated just beneath the surface.
She stumbled a few steps forward until her vision grasped what she saw. The woman’s hand was curled in death around a bunch of daisies. Her skin was pale—almost translucent—and her dress was torn, soiled in a dark brown stain Perliett closed her eyes against.
Perliett drew in a steadying breath. She leaned over and saw the woman’s legs in the river, the chiffon of her torn skirt drifting back and forth in the current as it stuck to her body by a seam twisted around her bare white leg.
She knew before she even mustered the courage to look at who it was. And when Perliett allowed her gaze to settle on the woman’s face, there was no scream, no words, no tears. Just the whisper music of the leaves as they moved anddanced in the breeze. Just the tinkling notes of the river as it rolled over itself on its journey.
Millie’s eyes were open. They were vacant. Still, they stared at Perliett as if to accuse.
I told you.
Perliett heard the words float through the air.
I told you.
19
Molly
Gladys was a warrior in polyester. She plopped next to Molly at the coffee shop table, dropped her purse on the floor next to her, and pushed her plastic-framed glasses up her nose.
“It was wise of you to meet that woman in a public place.”
