“Jane’s father? What do we know about him?”
“Nothing at all. Hattie never married. She lived alone in that little house by the bog. Then, not long after the fire, she was pregnant. Like she wasn’t enough of a pariah before. Imagine being a single mother back then. Holy shit. The woman had guts, that’s for sure. Staying here. Raising that girl on her own.”
“Do we have anything on Jane?” Helen asked.
“Not a lot,” Riley said. She reached into a box on the table, grabbed a photo there and handed it to Helen.
It was another school photo, showing about fifteen children ranging from tiny to almost adult in front of a one-room schoolhouse.Hartsboro School, 1924,said a neatly penned note in the corner. Helen flipped it over, and someone had written the children’s names in now-faint penciled letters. Jane Breckenridge was the third girl from the left in the back row. She looked to be about twelve in the photo and was a near exact replica of Hattie at that age. Same dark hair and eyes, same haunted look. As with Hattie, Helen recognized her immediately—after all, a grown-up ghost version of Jane in a singed dress had visited her about twelve hours before. She could almost still smell the smoke.
“That’s the last photo of the schoolhouse before it burned down,” Riley said.
Burned down. She’d forgotten that’s what happened. First, Hattie’s family home burns, killing her mother. Then a fire at the schoolhouse. Another at the mill years later. A coincidence? Or something more?
“And Hattie was blamed for the fire?” Helen asked.
“She’d predicted it, kept Jane out of school that day. Three children were killed. Let’s see.” She looked through some notes on the table. “Lucy Bishkoff, Lawrence Kline, and Benjamin Fulton.”
Helen turned the photo over again, searched for the names of the dead children. Benjamin and Lawrence were two little boys in the first row. They sat side by side with mischievous smiles. Lucy Bishkoff stood in the back row, right beside Jane. She had blond hair, pale eyes, and a warm smile.
Helen studied the photo, looked at their smiles, and thought,None of you have any idea what’s coming.She felt like the Grim Reaper now, pointing a finger at the photo, at the little faces.
“Did they determine what caused the fire?” Helen asked.
Riley shook her head. “No, but they say the fire spread very quickly. And apparently the kids and teacher had trouble getting out of the building.”
“Oh?”
“The door was stuck. Not just stuck, but people said someone had wedged it closed with a tree branch. It took some time, and a great deal of force, to get it open.”
Another strange coincidence.
“That’s so terrible,” Helen said, studying the black-and-white photo of those schoolchildren, wishing she could go back in time and warn them, warn them all, like Hattie had tried to warn them. Tell them the danger was real.
That was the cruelest part about history, whether your own or a stranger’s from a hundred years ago—there wasn’t a damn thing you could do to change it.
Helen reached into her bag, pulled out the picture she’d printed from her computer of the workers at the Donovan and Sons Mill, taken just months before the fire.
“Meet Jane Whitcomb,” she said, pointing to the woman in the back row with dark hair and eyes.
“My god,” Riley said. “It’s her. It’s got to be. She looks just like Hattie, right?”
Helen looked down at the mill worker version of Jane, then the photo of young Jane outside the schoolhouse, then Hattie as a girl and Hattie as a teenager. They could have been sisters.
“Too bad we don’t have anything of Hattie as an adult,” Helen said.
“Just wait,” Riley said with a sly smile. “I’ve saved the best for last.” She stood up and went to a large wooden cabinet with long, narrow drawers. She pulled one open and lifted out a painting, keeping it facing toward her. Helen guessed it to be about two feet by four feet.
“What is it?”
“May I present: Miss Hattie Breckenridge,” Riley said, slowly turning the painting so that Helen was face-to-face with the subject.
Helen’s eyes locked on the framed portrait. Hattie stood in a bloodred dress and had her long raven-black hair held back with combs. Her lips were painted the color of the dress. Her eyes sparkled, teased, taunted, and seemed to glisten, to move, watching Helen.
Helen felt the air pulled out of her lungs, as if Hattie were sucking it in, inhaling the very life out of her.
I know you,the eyes said.And you think you know me.
Helen studied the neat signature in the bottom right corner; it was only two initials: W.T.
