Page 37 of The Women of Wild Hill
Ivy was alarmed. “Did someone hurt you?”
“No,” Rose said. “I had a vision of the future. The world will suffer unless we take action.”
Ivy knew her sister was not prone to hyperbole. “There’s someone who must die?” She didn’t ask who.
“Yes,” Rose said without elaborating. “Do you have what we need?”
“I’ve developed something much better than cyanide,” Ivy told her. “It’s a poison made from mushrooms Bessie showed me. As far as I can tell, the fungi are unknown to science. The poison should be difficult to trace. But have you thought it all through? How will we administer the poison? What will we do with the body?”
“Mother won’t be back this week?”
It was an odd question. “No,” Ivy told her.
“Then Henry and I will join you for lunch tomorrow. We’ll come by boat. I’ll run into the rocks and we’ll swim to shore. Do you think you can be ready by noon?”
“We’re going to kill Henry?” It hadn’t occurred to Ivy that her brother-in-law might be their intended victim. “Are you certain this is necessary?”
Her sister answered with a nod, and Ivy let the information sink in. She could tell by the look on Rose’s face that it wasn’t time for questions. “I’ll dig another hole in the basement,” Ivy said.
THE FOLLOWING DAY AT NOON,Rose was at the wheel of the Jansson family boat when it hit a rock off the coast of Wild Hill. Henry and Rose had no trouble swimming to the beach, where Ivy happened to be waiting with towels and blankets.
Once they were back at the cottage, Ivy gave Henry a drink and took Rose upstairs and tucked her into a warm bed. When she returned downstairs, Henry’s body lay on the floor by the fire. She checked his pulse before dragging him by the heels across the floor and rolling him down the stairs to the cellar. Once he was buried beside Uncle Charles, she phoned the police to report the boat wreck.
Henry Jansson’s body was never recovered. Two weeks after the tragedy, Rose went into labor with their baby.
“I’ll do the hard work,” Rose joked weakly when the contractions began. “All you’ll have to do is raise her.”
When she realized what Rose was saying, Ivy put her foot down. “Absolutely not,” she ordered. “I forbid it. You are not leaving this child without a mother.”
“She’ll have one,” Rose said. “You and I are twins, Ivy. She’s as much you as she is me.”
Ivy used every bit of her magic trying to save her sister. She knew how to bring babies into the world, and she knew exactly what to do when it looked like the mothers’ lives were in danger. But Rose didn’t hemorrhage, nor did she come down with a fever. She simply grew colder and colder as the child emerged, as though she was expending the last bit of her energy. As Ivy pulled the baby out, she brushed against her sister’s icy thigh. She passed the child to Sadie, but it was already too late for Rose. Even Bessie was powerless to save her.
ROSE DUNCAN WAS THE FIRSTof the Duncan family to be buried on Wild Hill. Ivy and Sadie wrapped her body in a linen shroud and lowered it into a hole they’d dug themselves. The infant she’d given birth to lay in a wicker bassinet on the grass, with Bessie keeping her company. Ivy cried the entire time, but the baby never once made a peep during her mother’s burial. She would be a force to be reckoned with, that much was clear. Ivy named her Lilith.
It wasn’t the last time Ivy saw her sister. Throughout Lilith’s childhood, whenever the little girl seemed far too quiet, Ivy would peek into her room and spy the mother and daughter together—one slightly less solid than the other. Their backs were alwaysturned toward the door, but their heads were close like they were in deep conversation. What they discussed Ivy never knew. She didn’t dare ask. But Lilith was always wise in the ways of the world. From an early age, she knew things that Ivy couldn’t have taught her. And she had no intention of following in her mother’s footsteps.
Lilith
The stock market crashed on Lilith Duncan’s ninth birthday, plunging the country into a financial crisis that would eventually be called the Great Depression. The morning after the plunge, she read all about it in theNew York Times.
Lilith folded the paper and lay it down neatly beside her coffee. “I want you both to know I had nothing to do with this,” the nine-year-old informed her aunt Ivy and her grandmother.
“I know, dear,” Aunt Ivy assured her.
“Nor did I experience any visions,” Lilith continued, adjusting her wire-rimmed glasses. “I could see it coming, of course, but the signs I read were all in the business pages.”
“Yes, you’ve made it quite clear that you don’t have the sight,” Sadie chimed in as she lazily brushed buttery crumbs off the silk kimono she’d thrown on over her nightie. “In time we’ll discover what your gifts will be. The family blood is filled with surprises.”
Lilith stared daggers at her grandmother and prayed the lovely kimono wouldn’t stain. Fit for a queen, it was a masterwork of weaving that told the story of spring. Lilith disapproved of Sadie’s reckless ways and irresponsible approach to life. Lilith, with her carefully parted hair and perfectly pressed dress, liked things neat and orderly. Polar opposites, she and her grandmother had been at odds from the day Lilith was born. Even as an infant Lilith had refused to play Sadie’s games. They loved each other dearly, but their personalities came from two distant branches of the family tree.
“As I’ve told you before, I intend to choose my own powers,” Lilith told Sadie.
“This one is channeling a very dark ancestor,” Sadie muttered into her tea.
Lilith lifted the paper again. She didn’t want Sadie to see her smile. She’d suspected as much as well.
FROM THE VERY BEGINNING, IVYand Sadie fed her a steady diet of fond memories about her mother. Lilith drank them all in.
