Page 9 of The Witch

Somewhere underneath the soil are the remains of one of Pemberton’s former residents. Her body has decomposed, and her bones are intermingled with the dirt. There may not be a marker, but she is here—somewhere.

Caroline was burned at the stake. That sounds…terrible. I feel a brief but powerful wave of sorrow for this woman who could have been my great-great-great-etc.-grandmother. She could have been the one who helped her husband build the town, whose son became the mayor, whose family was respected in the community. Instead, she was executed for a crime that should not have even existed. What must she have felt before she was burned alive?

I can’t even imagine.

As I walk across the grass, so unkempt that the blades nearly reach my knees, a light breeze rustles past. The wind almost sounds like a voice whispering in my ear:

See…see…

I look around to confirm I’m all alone. I am.

Just then, my phone lets out a little chirp. I raise it to look at the screen, and all of a sudden, several text messages appear in my alerts. Hallelujah, I have two bars!

I scroll through my text messages and emails, Caroline Eldridge now forgotten. I submitted online applications for a dozen jobs, but I haven’t received even one response. Apparently, nobody is interested in hiring a woman whose last job was as an unpaid tutor. Not that I regret spending the spring helping those kids make it through the rest of the school year—I couldn’t just abandon them, although I regret that it resulted in losing my apartment.

At least I still had Pemberton to come back to.

Before the cellular gods change their favor, I place a call to my father. It rings twice, and then he picks up. “Jules?” His voice is anxious. “Did you make it in all right? How’s Gram doing?”

“I’m here,” I say. “And Gram is…” I hesitate, trying to figure out what to say. “It’s not great here, Dad. Gram seems really confused. Ethel acts like she’s got everything under control, but the house looks neglected.”

He sighs deeply. “I was afraid of that…”

I need to figure out what Ethel was talking about earlier. I wouldn’t put it past my parents to have an ulterior motive in sending me here. I hate it when everybody seems to know what’s going on except me. It makes me feel five years old again. I need to have all the information.

“Dad,” I say, “Ethel was telling me that you have some sort of top-secret reason for sending me to check on them. She seemed kind of angry about it, but that’s all she would say.”

“Oh?”

“So do you know what she’s talking about?”

My father pauses long enough that his window for lying has slammed shut. “Sorry, Jules,” he says. “There was actually something…”

I grit my teeth. Can anyone in my family do something nice for someone else without there being a secret reason why? “Gee, thanks for the heads-up.”

“Look,” he says, “the fact of the matter is that I am worried about my mother. I’m worried about her and Ethel all alone in that big house. And Mick…well, he’s not in great shape either. Every day, I’m sure that I’m going to pick up the phone and get a call from the hospital telling me your grandmother broke a hip.”

I had the same thought, but I sense there’s more.

“Your grandmother received a very generous offer,” my father continues, sighing again. “The Woodhaven Museum would like to purchase Pemberton and build on the property. The house is one of the oldest in the entire country, and they want to preserve it just as it is. They want to pay Pemberton the respect it deserves.”

They want to build on the property. That must be what Ethel was talking about when she said she didn’t want to disturb Caroline’s grave. “What do they want to build?”

“An extension of the museum,” he says, clearly excited by the idea of his childhood home becoming part of history. “They have several very generous benefactors, and the offer is solid. Plus, we all have concerns about what will become of the house if they don’t purchase it. History is very important. Archibald Eldridge’s family built that house with their bare hands, and it would be a crime if it wasn’t preserved just as it is.”

“So basically”—I dig the toe of my sneaker into a hard clump of dirt in the ground—“you want to force Gram out of the house where she’s lived her entire life?”

“I want to move her to a place where she’ll be safe and well cared for,” he insists. “There’s an assisted living facility in the area with a memory care unit, and she’d be really happy there. And I wouldn’t have to worry about something bad happening to her.”

He has a good point. This house was always far too large for my grandmother, even back when my grandfather was alive, and now it seems almost ridiculously so. If the museum wants it, it might be in better hands with them.

But there’s also something that seems very wrong about the whole thing.

“Pemberton has always belonged to our family,” I point out. “For hundreds of years. You’d really just sell it?”

As much as Pemberton frightens me sometimes, it’s ours. The idea of it belonging to someone else is almost physically painful. This house has always been a place where we could go—a safety net.

“Let me put you in touch with someone from the museum,” he says. “They’re really passionate about this, and I promise that after you talk to them, you’ll realize that this is the right thing to do.”