Besides, that was his job. Was she teasing? Mocking him?
“Oh, I’m not going to shovel snow.” She had a curious look on her face, like a child up to no good.
Martin took a swallow of bitter coffee.
“What do you need the shovel for, then?”
“Digging.” She paused here, watching Martin’s reaction.
He didn’t want to ask, didn’t want to know, but the words bubbled out of him. “Digging what?”
“I’m going to dig up Gertie’s body.”
He splashed coffee down his front, burning his chest.
“You’re going to…” His voice sounded shaky, strange to his own ears.
Sara smiled slyly. “Gertie left me another message,” she said, pulling a folded piece of paper from her apron and handing it over to Martin. He unfolded it, and there, in shaky, childish writing, was:
Look in the Poket of the dress I was waring.
You will find somthing that beelongs to the 1 that Kilt me.
He swallowed hard, but the knot in his throat stayed there.
He had a flash of Gertie at the bottom of the well, wearing her wool overcoat and blue dress. Heavy wool stockings bunched up on her legs.
When they pulled her from the well, he saw her hair had been cut. No one but Martin noticed. Martin, who’d carried the hank of hair coiled up in the pocket of his coat, buried it in the snow.
“But Gertie wasn’t killed, Sara. She fell.” He tried to keep his voice calm and level; his best you’ve-got-to-see-reason tone, like a parent reprimanding a small child.
But hadn’t some part of him been wondering all along if it had truly been an accident? How had Gertie’s hair been cut? Who hung it up in the barn?
Sara only smiled. “We buried Gertie in the dress she was wearing when they found her in the well. I need to do this, Martin. I need to know. I need to know if it’s her.”
“Her? Her who?”
“Auntie. Though Auntie died so long ago…The spirit of Auntie. I need to know if she killed our little girl.”
“You think Gertie was killed by aspirit?”
“I don’t know!” she said, exasperated. “That’s why we have to dig her up. Don’t you see?”
She looked at him long and hard, waiting for a response.
“Don’t you, Martin? Don’t you need to know the truth?”
He stayed silent.
Gertie had been laid to rest in the small family cemetery behind the house. Beside her were the graves of Sara’s parents, her brother, Jacob, and Gertie’s tiny infant brother.
“Sara, Gertie’s been in the ground for two weeks now. Have you thought about the…conditionher body will be in?” It was dreadful to imagine, and he felt cruel bringing it up, but he had to find a way to stop her.
She nodded. “It’s only a body. An empty vessel. The little girl I love is out there still, in the beyond.”
Martin took in a breath.
Calm. Be calm.
