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I warmed up by doodling in the margins of the notebook—a bird… a tree… a rocking chair. I lifted my head and set down the pencil, then walked downstairs to the hidden workroom I’d found where Rose Whisper had been refinishing wood furniture. I told myself I’d think about my novel while my hands were occupied.
On a side table sat the items I’d bought at the hardware store to aid in restoring a beautiful rocking chair the woman had been working on when she died. The finish was bubbled, and the wood was scarred with wear and tear. I picked up a sanding block and ran it over the top rail of the back. The wood was oak, I’d learned from a chart of wood grains hanging over one of the worktables. It warmed beneath my fingers as I moved the block back and forth, in the direction of the grain. Slowly the surface began to soften and smooth. The tension in my shoulders and neck melted away. It was therapeutic, I conceded, and pictured Rose in this room, preferring the company of old things to people.
Hiding out.
Like me.
It occurred to me that Rose Whisper, a stranger that I would never meet and knew about purely by chance, and I had a lot in common.
August 6, Tuesday
AFTER DROPPING off my extra eggs at the grocery store in exchange for the few items I needed, I walked to the post office to see if the mail my friend Frida had forwarded had arrived.
“Oh, you’re the woman who’s staying at The Whisper House,” the man at the counter said—Dilbert Newberg, according to his nameplate. The name rang a bell, then I realized Dilbert was part of the word-of-mouth rumor mill that had initially passed my name to Sawyer.
“Yes. For now.”
“You doing okay out there all by yourself? You got a gun?”
I blinked. “No, I don’t have a gun.”
He made a rueful noise. “You need a gun to be safe.”
The woman at the counter next to him sniffed. “Only if she gets a silver bullet for that gun.”
I was dismayed by the direction of the conversation. “Silver bullet?”
She put her hand up to the side of her mouth. “For the witches.”
The man cleared his throat loudly, then nodded at someone who had just walked up behind me.
Tilda Benson, sans the hooded robe she’d been wearing when I’d last seen her speaking to a group in the graveyard.
“Hello,” she said coolly.
“Hello,” I offered, then turned back to the counter where the clerks seemed to be frozen in place. “My mail?” I prodded.
“Right,” Dilbert said, then disappeared for a few seconds and returned with a large envelope. “Here you go.”
“Thanks,” I said, then turned to go.
Tilda extended a smile. “I understand you met my girls.”
I nodded. “Yes. Very pretty… and very interested in history.”
“Thanks. They like visiting the cemetery.”
“The Whisper Graveyard seems to be a popular place.”
Her eyes narrowed, but she kept smiling. “Some of us are intent on preserving history.”
“Then maybe you know who moved the granite slab on your family grave?”
Her mouth opened in surprise. “What? When?”
“Sometime around the last day of the month.”
“Whose grave?”
