Hellfire

12

There was nothing comfortable about the silence that reigned in the Mercedes-Benz as Phillip maneuvered it up the long drive and brought it to a stop in front of Hilltop. It was as if, by mutual consent, all of them were waiting until they were once more inside the mansion before they faced the argument that all of them now knew was inevitable.

For Carolyn, it was particularly difficult, for she was in the unique position of finding herself in agreement with her mother-in-law, albeit for reasons that Abigail would never understand. Still, the fact remained that for the first time Carolyn was about to side with the woman who hated her, against the husband who loved her.

She waited for Phillip to come around and open the door for her, and offered him an uncertain smile that was part gratitude and part apology. Getting out of the car, she started up the front steps. Hannah opened the door for her, and she nodded a greeting to the old woman before crossing the foyer to turn right down the wide corridor that led to the library. Beyond the French doors and the terrace outside, she could see Tracy and three of her friends playing tennis.

Beth was nowhere to be seen.

She dropped her purse on a table, and glanced at the fireplace, where — as always — a fire was laid, ready to be lit. For a moment she was tempted to put a match to it, despite the warmth of the day. But warming the room even further would do nothing to alleviate the chill that was emanating from Abigail.

“It won’t help,” Abigail said as she entered the room, apparently reading Carolyn’s mind. Then, stripping off her gloves and expertly removing the pin from her veiled hat, she turned to her son. “I don’t think there can be any question now of continuing with your project. We shall order Mr. Rogers to begin closing the mill tomorrow.”

Phillip’s brows rose a fraction of an inch, and his arms folded over his chest. He leaned back against the desk that had once been his father’s. “Indeed?” he asked. “And when did it become my project, Mother? Until yesterday, it was our project, unless I’m suddenly getting senile.”

Abigail’s sharp eyes raked over her son, and her lips curved into a tightly cynical smile. “If that remark was intended to suggest that I’m losing my grip, I don’t appreciate it. I’ve simply changed my mind, and in light of what happened to Jeff Bailey—”

“What happened to Jeff Bailey was an accident, Mother. We’ve seen the reports, and there’s nothing to suggest there was anything more to it than the simple facts. He tripped, and fell on a pick. That’s that.”

“He tripped and fell on a tool on the precise spot where your brother tripped and fell on a tool. Don’t you consider that a bit more than a coincidence?”

“No, Mother, I don’t,” Phillip replied, his voice and manner clearly indicating that his mind was made up on the subject.

But Abigail was not about to give in so easily. “I’m sorry you can’t see that which is perfectly clear,” she went on. “But it doesn’t really matter, does it? I shall speak to Mr. Rogers myself.”

“Will you?” Phillip asked. There was a hardness in his tone that neither Carolyn nor Abigail had ever before heard. Carolyn gazed curiously at her husband, while Abigail’s eyes suddenly ‘dickered with uncertainty. “You may certainly speak to Alan if you wish, but I hope you understand that he won’t act on your orders. He’s working for me, not for you.”

The uncertainty vanished from Abigail’s eyes. She regarded her son with undisguised fury. “You?” she asked, making no effort to conceal her contempt. “Working for you? How dare you suggest that my wishes will not be obeyed. Particularly when all I am doing is seeing to it that your father’s own wishes are honored.”

“Enough, Mother,” Phillip said, his voice suddenly sounding tired. “You might be able to buffalo everyone else that way, but it won’t work with me. I’ve read Father’s will. He left me in charge of all Sturgess business enterprises, and it is my decision to go ahead with the mill project. If you want to give in to Father’s superstitions, that’s up to you. But don’t expect me to go along with them.”

“Your brother’s memory should mean something to you,” Abigail flared.

But Phillip only shook his head. “My brother’s memory?” he repeated. “Mother, I wasn’t even born until a year after Conrad Junior died. And I wouldn’t have been born at all if he hadn’t died.”

Abigail, looking as if she’d been struck, sank into one of the wing chairs. “Phillip — that isn’t true!”

“Isn’t it?” Phillip demanded. “I’m not a fool, Mother. Don’t you think I know that I was nothing more than a replacement for Conrad? God knows, you and Father certainly never let me forget it. I grew up being compared to a brother I never even met! And now you want me to close down the restoration of the mill, simply because there have been two accidents there in the space of forty years? Well, you can forget it, Mother. What you choose to do is your own decision, but I won’t be bound by Father’s superstitions.”

Abigail sat coiled in her chair like a serpent ready to strike. “I’ll stop you,” she hissed. “I’ll use everything in my power to stop you from finishing that mill.”

“Fine!” Phillip said in a mild tone. “Start calling your lawyers, and mobilizing your forces. But you won’t get anywhere. The power resides in me. Or have you forgotten that particular Sturgess tradition?”

Carolyn, who had said nothing throughout the exchange, preferring to remain as invisible as Abigail sometimes made her feel, suddenly spoke for the first time. “Tradition?” she asked. “Phillip, what are you talking about?”

Phillip turned to face her, a glint of triumph playing in his eyes. “Something I’m sure Mother’s never mentioned to you. In my family, while the women have always been strong — we Sturgesses seem to attract strong women — there has always been a carefully drawn line. And that line, as Mother knows perfectly well, is the line where personal affairs stop, and business affairs begin. There has never been a female Sturgess who has had anything to say about our business affairs. That is always left up to the men. So when Father died, sole control over the family’s assets passed to me. In short,” he finished, smiling grimly, “Mother can make my life as miserable as she wants, and scream to her lawyers as much as she wants. But in the end, there isn’t a thing she can do. When it comes to the mill, or anything else outside of this house, she is totally without power. Indeed, Mother,” he added, his voice taking on the same chill Carolyn had felt so often from the old woman, “if I chose to, I could throw you out of this house.”

Abigail was on her feet again, her eyes blazing. “How dare you?” she demanded of her son. “How dare you speak to me that way? And in front of her, of all people?” She wheeled around, and the full force of her anger was focused on Carolyn. “This is all your fault,” she went on. “Before Phillip met you, he never would have talked to me this way. He would have asked for my advice, and heeded my words. But not anymore. You’ve hypnotized him! You’ve come into our lives — you and your common little daughter — and done your best to take Phillip away from us. But you won’t succeed! Do you understand me? Somehow, I shall find a way to stop you!” She started toward the door, her anger making her stagger slightly, even though she leaned heavily on her cane. Carolyn took a step toward her, wanting to reach out to her, to steady her. But Phillip shook his head, and made a gesture that kept Carolyn where she was.

A moment later they were alone, with Abigail’s fury hanging between them like a cloud.

“I’m sorry,” Phillip said. “She shouldn’t have attacked you and Beth. But she knows there’s nothing she can do to stop me from finishing the mill project, so she had to turn elsewhere. And you were convenient.” He moved toward her, his arms spread wide, but instead of stepping forward to meet him, Carolyn turned away, and sank into the chair Abigail had vacated only seconds earlier.

“Maybe she’s right,” Carolyn replied. Conflicting emotions were battering at her now. All the control she’d developed so carefully in the months since she’d moved to Hilltop seemed to be deserting her at the moment she needed it most. “Maybe our marrying was a mistake, Phillip. Maybe you should never have met me. Maybe you should have stayed away from Westover for the rest of your life.”

“You don’t believe that,” Phillip said, his face ashen, his eyes pleading. “Darling, you can’t mean that!”

“Can’t I? I don’t know what I mean. But I can’t go on much longer living with a woman who hates me. And it isn’t just me. It’s Beth, too. Phillip, Beth knows how Abigail and Tracy feel about her. Even though she tries to pretend it isn’t happening, she feels every slight they inflict on her! I’d hoped we could be a family — all of us. But it’s not like that! As long as we’ve been married, it’s been like a war, with Beth and me on one side, and Abigail and Tracy on the other. And you’re caught in the middle.”

“Well, at least the sides are balanced,” Phillip said in a wry but futile attempt to defuse the situation. “At least you’re not ganging up on me!”

Suddenly Carolyn laughed, but it was a high-pitched, brittle parody of her normal laughter, and Phillip realized how close she was to slipping into hysteria. “Aren’t we?” she asked. “Abigail made a mistake just now, but I don’t think she knows it. On the subject of the mill, I would have sided with her. Isn’t that funny? Isn’t that just about the funniest thing you ever heard?” And then she crumpled in her chair, sobbing.

Phillip came to her then, kneeling by the chair and gathering her into his arms. Carolyn neither resisted him nor moved closer to him, and even as he held her, he could sense the loneliness she was feeling.

“It’s all right, darling,” he whispered, stroking her hair gently. “We’ll get through this. Somehow, we’ll put all of this behind us. But you mustn’t even think of leaving me — without you, I’d have nothing.”

“Nothing?” Carolyn echoed. “You’d have your mother, and your daughter, and Hilltop, and all the rest of everything the Sturgesses have always had. You’d hardly miss me at all.”

Phillip groaned silently, and held her closer. “It’s not true, darling. The only thing that matters to me is you. You and our baby.”

Carolyn stiffened in his arms. For that moment — that moment of overwhelming anguish — she’d forgotten about the baby. She drew back slightly, and tipped her face up to look at Phillip. In his eyes, she could see his love for her, and she felt a glimmer of hope.

“You do love me, don’t you?” she asked, the need for his reassurance gripping her once more.

“More than anything,” Phillip replied.

“And the baby? You really do want the baby? You haven’t just been saying that for my sake?”

Phillip smiled fondly at her. “How could I not want the baby?” he asked. “It’s going to be our baby. Ours! It won’t be anything anyone can use to try to drive us apart. In fact, it might even help. It will be Mother’s grandson, and she’ll fall in love with him the moment he’s born.”

Deep in Carolyn’s mind, a warning sounded. “Son?” she asked. “What makes you so sure it will be a boy?”

“What else can it be?” Phillip asked. He was grinning broadly now, the crisis behind him. “I’ve already got a daughter, and so have you. And I need a son. After all, if it’s not a boy, who will there be to carry on the Sturgess line?”

The Sturgess line.

The phrase echoed in Carolyn’s mind. She tried to tell herself that he hadn’t meant anything by it, that he’d meant it as a joke. But deep inside, the warning sounded stronger.

He wants an heir. He wants a boy, to name after himself, and to raise in his own image. Abigail’s right. He’s a Sturgess, and I mustn’t ever forget it.

“And what if it’s a girl?” she asked, careful to keep her tone as lightly bantering as his had been.

“Then I’ll spoil her,” Phillip assured her. “I’ll give her everything she wants, and treat her like the princess she’ll be, and she’ll be the happiest little girl who ever lived.”

But she’ll be a girl, Carolyn said to herself. And to the Sturgesses, girls just aren’t quite as good. Nice to have around, but just not quite as good.

She kissed Phillip on the cheek, and stood up. “Well,” she said as blithely as possible, “I shall certainly do my best to produce a boy for you. But if I fail,” she added, “it will be your own fault. As I understand it, the gene that determines sex comes directly from the father. If the Sturgesses want boys, their chromosomes better be able to handle it.”

Phillip nodded affably, and his eyes once again took on the gentleness that Carolyn had fallen in love with. There wasn’t a trace left of the cold anger with which he had told his mother that she was little more than a guest in her own home. “And what about the mill?” he asked. “Are you really planning to form some kind of unholy alliance with my mother?”

Carolyn hesitated, then shook her head. “I suppose not,” she said. “For one thing, in their own way, my reasons for keeping it closed are just as superstitious as hers. And I have a feeling that she’d change her position before accepting support from me anyway. So I’ll just stay out of it, bite my tongue, and hope for the best.”

But as she slowly climbed the stairs and started toward the master suite at the end of the hall, Carolyn wondered, once more, what the best would be. Perhaps, indeed, she had been right in her hysterical outburst, and the marriage — no matter how much she and Phillip loved each other — was doomed to failure already.

Or perhaps (and much more likely, she told herself) she was simply suffering from her pregnancy, which, despite her insistence that she was feeling fine, was beginning to bother her. Though she wouldn’t admit it to Phillip, she was secretly glad that Dr. Blanchard had insisted that she get at least two hours’ rest every day.

If nothing else, at least it provided her with an escape from the tensions of the house.

She slipped into the bedroom, and closed the door behind her. Lying down on the bed, she stretched luxuriously, and then let her eyes wander out the window to the enormous maple that stood a few yards away, its leaves completely blocking out the sunlight.

Concentrating on the cool peacefulness of the greenery, she drifted into sleep.

At the other end of the house, in her rooms that were almost an exact mirror image of those her daughter-in-law occupied, Abigail Sturgess was wakeful and wary. She was staring out the window, her eyes focused angrily on the forbidding building that had represented so much tragedy for her family.

More and more, she was becoming convinced that her husband had been right.

There was something evil about the mill, and though she wasn’t yet sure what it was, she had made up her mind to find out.

Beth pedaled away from the mill, but instead of heading out River Road to start the long climb back up to Hilltop, she turned the other way, riding slowly along Prospect Street, then turning up Church toward the little square in the middle of the village. Once there, she slowed her bike, looking around to see if any of her old friends might be playing softball on the worn grass. But the square was empty, and Beth rode on.

Almost without thinking about it, she turned right on Main Street, then left on Cherry. A minute later she had come to a halt in front of the little house in which she’d lived until she had moved to Hilltop.

The house, which had always seemed big to her, looked small now, and the paint was peeling off its siding. In the front yard, weeds were sprouting in the lawn, and the bushes that her mother had planted along the front of the house didn’t have the neatly trimmed look of the gardens at Hilltop.

But still, it was home to Beth, and she had a sudden deep longing to go up to the front door, and ask whoever lived there now if she could go into her own room, just for a few minutes.

But of course she couldn’t — it wasn’t her room anymore, and besides, it wouldn’t look the same as it had when she had lived there. The new people would have changed it, and it just wouldn’t feel right.

She got back on the bike, and continued down the block, looking at all the familiar houses. At the corner, she turned right again, then left on Elm Street.

In front of the Russells’ house, Peggy was playing hopscotch with Rachel Masin, and Beth braked her bike to a stop.

“Hi,” she said. “What are you guys doing?”

Peggy, whose lager was in one corner of the number-four square, was concentrating hard on keeping her balance in the number-five, while she leaned down to pick up the key chain she had won from Beth herself last summer. Finally, snagging the chain with one finger and taking a deep breath, she hopped quickly down the last three squares and out of the pattern.

“Playing hopscotch,” she announced. “And I’m winning. Rachel can’t even get past number three.”

“But I’m using a rock for a lager, like you’re supposed to,” Rachel protested. “Anybody can do it with a key chain. They always stay right where you throw them.”

“Can I play?” Beth asked. She leaned the bike against a tree, and fished in her pocket for something to use as a lager. All she came up with was the key chain — identical to the one she had lost to Peggy — that held her house key. “I’ll start at one.”

Peggy looked at her with open hostility. “How come you’re not out riding your horse? Peter says you go out every day now.”

Beth’s heart sank. Why couldn’t Peter have kept his mouth shut? Now Peggy thought she was just like Tracy. “I don’t have a horse,” she said. “It’s Uncle Phillip’s horse, and all he’s doing is teaching me to ride it. And we don’t go out every day. In fact, we’ve only been out a couple of times.”

“That’s not what my brother says,” Peggy challenged, as if daring Beth to contradict her big brother.

“Well, I don’t care what Peter says,” Beth began, and then stopped, realizing she sounded just like Tracy Sturgess. “I … I mean we don’t really go out every day. Just sometimes.” Then she had an idea. “You could go with us sometime if you want to.” Peggy said nothing, but her face blushed pink, and Beth belatedly remembered what Peter had told her. “Uncle Phillip wouldn’t fire Peter,” she blurted out. “Really he wouldn’t.”

The red in Peggy’s face deepened, and her eyes brimmed with tears. “Why don’t you just go away?” she demanded. “We were having fun until you showed up!”

“But we’re supposed to be friends,” Beth protested. “You’re supposed to be my best friend!”

“That was when you lived on Cherry Street. You were just like us then. But now you live up on the hill. Why don’t you be friends with Tracy Sturgess?”

“I hate Tracy!” Beth shot back, on the verge of tears herself now. “I hate her, and she hates me! And I’m not any different than I ever was! It’s not fair, Peggy! It’s just not fair!”

Rachel Masin, looking from Peggy to Beth, then back to Peggy, suddenly stooped down and picked up her lager. “I gotta go home, Peggy,” she said hurriedly. “My—” She searched around for an excuse, and seized on the first one that came to mind. “My mom says I have to baby-sit my little brother.” Without waiting for either of the other girls to reply, she ran off down the street and around the corner.

“Now look what you did,” Peggy said, glowering at Beth. “We were having a good time till you came along.”

“But I didn’t do anything. How come you don’t like me anymore?”

Peggy hesitated for a moment, then planted her fists on her hips, and stared at Beth.

Beth stared right back.

The two girls stood perfectly still, their eyes fixed on each other, each of them determined not to be the first to blink. But after thirty seconds that seemed like ten minutes, Beth felt her eyes beginning to sting.

“You’re gonna blink,” Peggy said, seeing the strain in Beth’s face.

“No I’m not!”

“You are too. And if you do, you owe me a Coke. That’s the rules.”

Beth renewed her concentration, but the harder she tried not to blink, the more impossible it became. Finally giving up, she closed her eyes and rubbed at them with her fists.

“You owe me a Coke,” Peggy crowed. “Come on — you can ride me down to the drugstore.”

The spat forgotten, Peggy climbed onto the rack that was mounted over the back fender of the bike, and wobbling dangerously, Beth pedaled them away. Ten minutes later they were in their favorite booth in the rear corner of the drugstore, sipping on cherry Cokes.

“What’s it really like up there?” Peggy asked. “I mean, what’s it like living in that house? Isn’t it scary?”

Beth hesitated, then shook her head. “It’s not really scary. But you have to get used to it. The worst part is Tracy Sturgess.”

Peggy nodded wisely. “I know. Peter says she’s the meanest person he ever met.”

“She is,” Beth agreed. “And she really hates me.”

“How come?”

Beth shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess she thinks Mom and I are just hicks. She’s always acting like she’s better than everybody.” Then she grinned. “But wait till next year — she’s going to be going to school right here!”

Peggy’s eyes widened in astonishment. “You mean she isn’t going back to private school?”

“That’s what I heard.”

“Wow,” Peggy breathed. “Wait’ll the other kids hear about that!” Then she snickered maliciously. “And wait till the first day of school. I bet everybody cuts her dead.”

“I hope they do,” Beth said, her voice edged with bitterness. “I hope they’re all just as mean to her as she is to me.”

Peggy nodded, then sighed despondently. “But they prob’ly won’t be. They’ll prob’ly start kissing up to her just because she’s a Sturgess.” She sucked the last of the Coke through the straw, then tipped the glass up so that the crushed ice slid into her mouth. She munched on it for a minute, then looked across the table at Beth again. “Do you know what really happened to Jeff Bailey?”

Beth felt a slight chill go through her. “I — he just tripped and fell, didn’t he?”

“Search me,” Peggy replied. “But I heard my parents talking about it last night, and they kept talking about the other boy that got killed in the mill—”

“Uncle Phillip’s brother,” Beth put in.

Peggy nodded. “Anyway, my mom said that she didn’t think it was a coincidence at all. She said there’s always been stories about the mill, and she thinks maybe there’s something in there.”

Beth hesitated, then nodded. “There is,” she said.

Peggy stared at her. “How do you know?” she asked.

Beth hesitated, then made up her mind. “Come up to Hilltop tomorrow, and I’ll show you something. And I’ll tell you what’s in the mill. But you have to promise not to tell anyone else, all right? It’s a secret.”

Peggy nodded eagerly. “I promise.”

“Cross your heart?”

“Cross my heart,” Peggy repeated. “Cross my heart, and hope to die.”