Page 61 of The Premonition at Withers Farm
“The police have questioned Trent,” Gemma said, ignoring Gladys’s sympathies.
“Questioned and charged are two separate things,” Molly retorted.
“Girls.” Gladys laid both of her wrinkled hands on the table, and they silenced like reprimanded children. “I have been alive for over eighty years. I’ve lived through World War Two, I lost my brother in Vietnam, and I’ve suffered my own losses—especially when my husband, Kendrick, passed away thirteen years ago. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that what you think isn’t always whatis. There are stories behind each of us, and until we shush up and listen, we’ll never hear the truth of it. Do you understand?” Her last question was pointed.
Gemma nodded.
Molly nodded.
They exchanged looks laced with a tentative truce.
Gladys shifted in her chair, and Molly caught a whiff of the elderly woman’s menthol joint rub mixed with what she thought might be honeysuckle hand lotion. The older woman searched Molly’s face for a moment before her eyes softened and the wrinkles that lined her face grew deeper with understanding.
“It wasn’t a mistake, our meeting in the grocery store today.” She reached over and took Gemma’s hand, squeezing her fingers. “And now you too. All right? Let’s start over with what wedoknow. Gemma, you’ve lost your sister. Molly, you’ve lost someone too. I can see grief in your eyes.”
Molly regretted the tears that sprang to the surface.
Gemma sniffed back her own emotion, looking away and out the coffee shop window.
Gladys released them both, her hands shaky with age. “Grief is a shadow man that follows us into our futures and swallows it up if we let him. Just like it did back in the daywhen the Cornfield Ripper roamed Kilbourn.” She tapped the table and directed her words at Molly. “My mother was friends with one of his victims. Millie Withers was her name. She was the second girl to be killed—after her older sister. The Withers family saw more grief than most of us in this lifetime.”
“I’ve not even heard of them,” Molly inserted lamely, more for Gemma’s sake than anything. It was important to her that Gemma realized she truly wasn’t hiding any secret knowledge of some vintage killer no one cared about anymore.
Gladys smiled, but there was an edge to it. Almost a warning. Her eyes narrowed with caution. “Youshouldhave heard of the Withers family.”
“Why?” Molly wondered if anything in this conversation would ever make sense.
Gladys’s smile was thin, sad, and a little troubled. “Well, because of what we’ve already established. You and your husband bought their farm. The Withers farm. You live in their house. The house of the murdered sisters.”
“Did you know about this?” Molly struggled to temper her voice. She didn’t want to engage in a full-frontal attack on Trent, but her nerves were raw. She noticed her hands tremored, and she slipped them into the front pocket of her hoodie.
The evening was blessedly cool. A breeze had dropped the humidity significantly and pushed the almost ninety-degree temps into a more manageable eighty-something. They sat on the front porch, iced tea in glasses perched on a wicker table between them. Trent was freshly showered, his hair damp with waves in it that at one time Molly would’ve assaulted with her fingers, and he would have tickled her sides to get her to quit.
Not anymore.
Her chickens pecked at the yard. She noticed Sue, her orange feathers glossy and fluffed, poke under a stick and flip the stick with her beak. Chickens had such purpose. Such central focus. She envied them. She envied Sue the chicken.
Trent stuck his finger in his paperback to save his place. He chose his words carefully, and Molly could tell that, yes, hehadknown this was the house of the historically murdered Withers sisters.
“I knew,” he admitted. He didn’t look at her, instead choosing to aim his vision at the broadside of the barn. “Maynard told me when we were first looking at the listing. It’s one reason the place was on the market for as long as it was.”
“Because people don’t like buying a house someone was murdered in?” Molly heard the quaver in her voice.
Trent gave her a quick glance. “Technically, the Withers sisters weren’t murderedinthe house. They just lived here.”
Molly drew her knees up to her chest, attempting to perch her feet on the edge of her chair. She realized she couldn’t do it anymore—curse that extra twenty pounds. She shoved her feet back to the porch floor.
“Trent, I can’t—” She stopped. What? She couldn’t what? Live in a house that was haunted? What should she tell Trent?
Hey, so the other day I saw a ghost moving in our bedroom when I was watching from the chicken coop?
Hey, remember when I collapsed on the basement stairs? Yeah, so January Rabine is back from the dead.
Did you know I hear voices...?
“Molly.”
“Trent.”
