Page 106 of The Witch

“Fresh air?” Ethel sounds amused. “At two in the morning?”

I don’t know what to say to that. I look down at the phone in my left hand. It still says “no service.” Can you dial 911 if you don’t have service? I’m pretty sure you can’t.

“What are you really doing here, Julia?” she presses me.

As I stand there, trying to figure out a way to explain what’s happening, the beam of Ethel’s flashlight travels down the length of my body, stopping at my feet. I look down and realize that the beam is trained on the bone that my grandmother dug from the ground. The expression on Ethel’s face when her eyes lock on that bone is unsettling, and I unconsciously take a step back, stumbling slightly on the slippery dirt.

“Yes,” Ethel says. “I see.”

“Sorry,” I say quickly. “I didn’t mean to…you know…”

“Yes, I’m sorry too.” She jerks the beam back up to my face, temporarily blinding me. “I really, really wish you hadn’t found Ethel.”

What?

“Celia.” It’s Mick’s voice now, low and a bit shaky. “Let’s go inside to talk about this.”

Celia? Why did he call her Celia? Celia is… Well, I don’t know where she is. She seemed to vanish after her time working at Pemberton. But she’s certainly not…

“We’re not going inside,” the woman holding the flashlight—Celia, it seems—says in a firm voice. “We’re going to deal with it right now.”

I glance back down at the pelvic bone on the ground. She doesn’t know that it’s three hundred years old. She thinks I found something else in this backyard, something much newer—something she buried here.

Or should I say someone.

“How did you know about the bones buried here?” Celia demands.

There’s a tone of accusation in her voice and, underneath that, anger. Whatever is buried in this backyard, she didn’t want me to find it. And now that I have…

I think back to the day I found Gram holding the pelvic bone in the backyard. She was on her knees, crying. I’m so sorry, Ethel!

I thought she was talking to me, because she kept calling me Ethel. But she wasn’t talking to me. She was talking to her sister, who apparently was buried in the backyard many years ago. I never saw a photo of the real Ethel, but I have a feeling that I look like she used to. That’s what got Gram so confused.

And now, with a sinking certainty, I realize that when she kept saying the name Celia, she wasn’t talking to me. She was talking to the woman standing in front of me right now.

“You killed her,” I sputter in disbelief. “You and Gram killed her sister.”

Celia doesn’t say a word.

“Why?” I ask. “Why would you do such a thing?”

“If it makes you feel better,” she says, “your grandmother had nothing to do with it. It was all my idea.” She glances at Mick. “Our idea, actually.”

I look over at Mick, whose brow is furrowed. I turn back to Celia. “What could you possibly have to gain by killing her?”

“What didn’t I have to gain?” she retorts. “I had a prison record, no education, and barely a penny to my name. But Ethel had everything—except a husband, of course. If she were gone, I could step into her life without missing a beat. We looked a bit alike back then, enough that I could use her passport and driver’s license to get out of town, away from everyone who knew her.”

My head is spinning. I can’t believe the woman I thought was my aunt has been a stranger this whole time. “How did you get away with it?”

“It was easy!” She beams with pride. “I convinced Letty and Ethel to let me deliver the baby at home, pretending I had experience. After your father was born, I smothered Ethel with a pillow.” A smile curls her lips. “She was so weak from the birth—it was too easy.”

I clasp a hand over my lips, sickened by what she’s telling me.

“Your grandmother was devastated, of course.” Celia lets out a laugh. “I told her that Ethel died in childbirth, and that her memory would be tarnished if everyone knew what happened to her. At that point, she was sick with grief, and desperate for a child. It took some coaxing, but I finally convinced her that covering up Ethel’s death and hiding her in the yard would spare her memory and her parents’ grief.”

“I don’t understand,” I murmur. “How did you keep her parents from finding out?”

“That little falling-out, of course.” The flashlight wavers briefly in her hand, but then she steadies it. “Unfortunately, I didn’t realize they would cut Ethel out of the will like they did, although Letty has provided me with plenty of money over the years for keeping her secret.”