Page 121 of The Premonition at Withers Farm

Perliett

The funeral of Alden the handyman was a solemn affair. Mrs. Withers refused to condemn him for the murders of her daughters, and she had also refused to admit that he was the one who had attacked Perliett.

Perliett had attended the funeral with George, not because of grief but because she needed the closure it provided. Now she watched as they lowered the man’s coffin into the grave. A fine mist fell from the gray sky. The air felt sticky. Her hand was hooked in George’s elbow, and she glanced to where Maribeth stood. She had, to her credit, cut off communicating with Mr. Bridgers. Apparently, the man had no qualms about it, as he was at the funeral as well, standing beside a young woman Perliett recognized from town. Charmer that he was, he’d lost no time—and for some reason, Mr. Bridgers seemed to have no intention of leaving Kilbourn. That was fine, Perliett concluded. He could stay, he could marry, he could become part of the Kilbourn community and leave generations in his wake. Perliett could do nothing butavoid him from now on, and pray, for the sake of the Bridgers generations, that they could separate their spiritual lives from the otherworld of deceased souls and instead center themselves on the truths stretching through history by the hand of God himself.

There were things Perliett still couldn’t explain. The fingers that had snuffed out the candles before the window shattered. Maribeth insisted that if Perlietthadseen ghostly fingers, they were real. The very idea sent chills through Perliett. Perhaps. Yet she suspected Mr. Bridgers might have figured some way to create that illusion as well.

Perliett let her eyes roam until they fell on the girl, Jacqueline Withers, clad in all black, standing by her mother. A dazed look stretched over Mr. Withers’s person. He would adopt the child, George had said. He had been given little choice. The Withers name was tarnished because of his wife’s actions, and he couldn’t add child abandonment to the list of sins now that the entire town of Kilbourn knew of Jacqueline’s existence.

Perliett lifted her gloved hand to wipe a droplet of rain from her cheek. Her movement caught Jacqueline’s eye, and the girl stared at Perliett, unblinking. There was calculation behind her eyes that assessed Perliett.

How she had survived the attack by Alden, Perliett was afraid she would never know. Even now, as she stared back at Jacqueline, allowing herself to soak in the girl’s coldness, she wondered if Alden trulywasthe monster his letters to the newspaper made him out to be. Or had it been a vicious little girl who had influenced him? A girl who experimented with her violence toward birds? Who took her animals and buried them in graves, as Mrs. Withers had alluded to? She wondered if it was Jacqueline who had left them on others’ doorsteps.

Perhaps.

Perhaps there would never be any answers to the questions.

Perliett leaned into George, hugging his arm now, sensing Jacqueline’s stare that had not broken.

George’s mouth moved against her ear. “Should we go?” he asked.

Perliett met the girl’s eyes. She waited. Jacqueline looked away finally. Perliett shook her head. “No. There’s no need to run.”

And there wasn’t. No matter what happened going forward in this small farming community, no matter what ghosts were left behind as generations passed, Perliett would stand on what she knew to be true. A burgeoning faith and a stability in the knowledge that no spirit was outside the supremacy of God.

George pressed a kiss behind her ear. Subtle but telling.

Perliett leaned against him, contentment growing inside her. Silly George. She would give up her apothecary box for him, and her own ruse that she was anything but a hobbyist dabbling in remedies. She would embrace truth. Truth was valuable and not to be trifled with. Perliett resolved to seek truth for the sake of her own future generations, even as Jacqueline Withers turned her back on her father’s grave and walked away into the mist.