Page 15 of The Women of Wild Hill
Brigid shrugged. “She was dumb anyway.” She didn’t always take her sister’s side, but in this case, it would have been ridiculous not to. The games Brigid dreamed up werefardarker than playing surgeon.
FLORA HAD WARNED PHOEBE THATshe might not have much time for her dolls that summer. Aunt Ivy had a great deal to teach them. So much, in fact, that she’d asked Flora to send the girls on their own, so she could have their undivided attention. But once they were there, Ivy encouraged Phoebe to play. She’d even loaned her great-grandniece a wheelbarrow with which to transport the dolls—and a picnic blanket to spread out beneath her makeshift field hospital.
Phoebe always took great care when she loaded her patients into the wheelbarrow. As she walked, she would reassure them that there was a reason she was taking them out to the lawn in front of the old mansion.
“Sunshine kills germs,” Phoebe told them. “It also helps your body make vitamin D. You wouldn’t want to develop rickets, now, would you?”
When she reached the right spot, she liked to spread out the picnic blanket and lay the dolls in a row. There was Alice, who suffered from hideous boils; Gertie, with a growth that remained undiagnosed; twins Roger and Richard, who shared a liver; and Janice, who suffered from at least a dozen unsightly afflictions and—poor thing—couldn’t have long to live.
On the day the raven came to visit, Phoebe had just finished covering the dolls with the individual blankets she’d made for themout of moss when her guest arrived, chic and somber in a cloak of black feathers. Phoebe sat back on her haunches as the raven strutted from one end of the blanket to the other, pausing to inspect each patient. The bird must have been pleased with the care they’d received, for it turned to Phoebe and laid a gift down before her—a silver key blackened with tarnish. The raven watched Phoebe examine the object and slip it into her pocket.
“Thank you,” Phoebe told the bird.
The bird opened its wings and lifted off toward the sky.
Phoebe followed the raven’s flight to a sill on the second floor of the mansion. There, the rosebushes and ivy had parted and the window was open. Watching from inside was the same pretty woman in a plain white gown whom Phoebe and Brigid had seen the previous summer. With her chestnut hair cascading over her shoulders, Bessie looked like somebody’s mother, Phoebe thought. Nothermom, of course. But some other kid’s mom, maybe. The kind who might wear a simple white nightgown instead of walking around naked—and serve pancakes in the morning, not seaweed smoothies. Phoebe thought all of this knowing full well that the woman in the window had never been anyone’s mother. When she lifted a hand and waved, the witch smiled and disappeared. The next time Phoebe glanced back up at the window, it was closed, and the ivy had grown over the glass once more.
There were so many operations to perform that afternoon, Phoebe forgot about the incident until dinnertime.
“How are your patients doing?” Aunt Ivy asked her. “Perhaps you’ll be ready to try your skills on living people soon?”
“Maybe,” Phoebe told her as she offered a recovering patient a taste of her vichyssoise. “I forgot to tell you. I saw Bessie when I was playing surgeon.”
“She appeared to you while you were on your own?” Ivy set down her spoon and dabbed at the corners of her mouth with a napkin. “Did she speak to you?”
Phoebe’s answer was interrupted by the screech of Brigid’s chair as her sister shoved back from the table in protest. “What? Why did Phoebe get to see her? I’m the oldest. I’m the one who sees the dead!”
The attention immediately shifted to Brigid, whose jealous outbursts were becoming an all-too-common ordeal. She wasn’t adjusting well to her powers, and she could pivot from Phoebe’s best friend to her bitterest rival with no warning whatsoever.
It was at that moment Phoebe remembered the key in her pocket. As she listened to Aunt Ivy try to talk Brigid down, she decided that it would be best not to mention it. If her sister was put out that she’d seen the witch, she definitely wouldn’t take the news of a present very well.
“So,” Aunt Ivy said once Brigid’s tantrum was over. “Did Bessie speak to you?”
“No, she didn’t say anything,” Phoebe informed her relatives. It wasn’t a lie, but it felt awfully close.
PHOEBE HAD NEVER HAD Asecret of her own before. Though she didn’t really intend to keep it, for the rest of the summer, she relished it. Whenever no one was looking, she would try her key in any nearby keyholes. There seemed to be thousands. Doors, chests, cabinet and desk drawers. All refused to accept it. The key wouldn’t open anything in the caretaker’s cottage.
Eventually, she hid the key in a book where no one would find it—including all the creatures on Wild Hill who liked to snatch shiny things. When the day to fly back to California finally arrived, the key was the last thing on Phoebe’s mind. She needed to touch a frog in the pond for good luck, shout her goodbyes to the ravens in the old oak, and skip one last rock out to sea. It was there on the beach that Bessie found her. The silver key dangled from a chain she held in her hand.
“Take this and keep it with you,” she said in a voice that still bore a trace of a brogue that had worn thin over the years. “Wear it around your neck.”
“What does it open?” Phoebe inquired.
“It won’t open anything until your daughter arrives.”
“My daughter?” Phoebe didn’t know what to think—and Bessie was already gone.
WHEN THE GIRLS ARRIVED INCalifornia, their mother greeted them at the airport. She pressed Phoebe to her chest, then immediately pulled back as though she’d experienced a painful shock. She placed her fingers on her daughter’s sternum and felt the key lying flat against the bone. Then she wrapped Phoebe up in her arms once again. She knew better than to discuss it in front of Brigid.
“Where did you get the key?” she asked that night when she came to tuck Phoebe into bed.
“A raven brought it to me. And Bessie told me I should wear it.” Phoebe was glad to give her secret to her mother—the person she loved most in the world.
“You saw Bessie?” Flora asked.
“Yes.” Phoebe watched her mother’s face fall at the news. “I’m sorry. Is that bad?”
Flora shook off her frown. “No,” she assured her daughter. “It makes perfect sense. You’re one of The Three.”
