“Um.” I cast about for a reason to refuse. “I fear I’m still recovering from my illness at the moment…”
“We won’t go far. There’s something I wish to show you.”
I wanted to keep arguing, but if he suspected me of something, then it would probably only make me seem more suspicious. And from Phelps, at least, impropriety was unlikely to be an issue. “All right,” I said, trying not to sound as ungracious as I felt. I shoved my pencil in my pocket.
He led me around the shaded side of the house, toward the woods. They were certainly much cooler than the rest of the grounds, so I didn’t protest. Maybe he wanted my opinion on a plant? “I wish the heat would break,” I said, “but I suppose that won’t happen until fall.”
“It is in God’s hands,” intoned Phelps, demonstrating his superior grasp of small talk. I stifled a sigh. Even the preacher at the church, he of the multi-hour sermons, could talk about the weather without invoking the Almighty.
“Here,” said Phelps, at a spot that looked no different from any other. I glanced around, looking for whatever botanical mystery required my attention. Nothing presented itself. Sweet gum and hickory and a stand of tulip trees, a few Christmas ferns, and a willow oak with an impressive display of bracket fungus.Lord, don’t let him ask me about the fungus. I never can tell my turkey tails apart.
“Miss Wilson,” Phelps said, reaching into his pocket. “I wonder what you might think of this.”
Something about the way he held his hands in that moment, one cupped over the other, was so perfectly the image of a man presenting an engagement ring that I had a brief, horrible thought that Jackson had been right.Oh god,pleasetell me Phelps isn’t about to propose!
I felt a stab of relief when he opened his hands and it wasn’t a ring.No, of course not, he barely knows you, what an absurd thought.He held the object out and I took it, unthinking.
It was a candle. White wax, half burnt, with a dribble of wax down the side and a black wick. A perfectly ordinary candle,the same kind that burned throughout the house, the same kind that I worked by in the studio at night.
The kind I’d taken down into the room below the shed.
The kind I’d dropped, half burnt, when I had fled.
Years of enduring Headmistress Silverton came to my rescue. My mind screamed,He knows! He knows!but not a muscle moved in my face. I looked at the candle then up at Phelps, and let a puzzled line form between my eyebrows. “A candle?”
His face was still as well. I think perhaps he was surprised. “Do you know where I found this?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea. I think Mrs. Kent keeps a few dozen in the hall closet.”
“I found it,” he said, without acknowledging my response, “on the stairs in the shed.”
I waited, projecting polite disinterest as hard as I could. “And?” I said, after this pronouncement had hung in the air for a moment.
“You’re the only one who could have left it there.”
I rolled my eyes with exaggerated annoyance. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve been in bed for the past few days.”
“You must have dropped it before that.”
I briefly considered arguing that it could have been Jackson or Mrs. Kent, but throwing anyone else in the path of Phelps seemed like a cruel trick. “How do you know you didn’t leave it yourself?”
“We only use lanterns.”
“Fine, then maybe a rat dragged it in. They eat candles, you know.” I shoved the offending candle in my pocket and folded my arms, calling on all of my experience asschoolteacher who is getting tired of having this conversation.
He leaned forward. He was very tall and I felt my spine trying to sway back, out of the way. I stood my ground. “Nothing goesin or out of that shed, Miss Wilson. It’s built special that way. But you’ve been inside. Yousaw.”
The lines on his face were pulling tight, his jaw clenched. Adrenaline trailed cold insect feet down my spine. I had the feeling that it no longer mattered what I said. Phelps knew what he knew. Even if he had been wrong, it would not have mattered.Damnation. I can’t bluff my way out of this, can I?
Those washed-out blue eyes bored into mine. “God hates a liar, Miss Wilson.”
“Then He must be quite angry at you for telling people that shed is full of gunpowder,” I snapped.
To my astonishment, he took a half step back, as if I had struck him. His throat bobbed as he swallowed. “I have done what I must. I am… Iwas… trying to protect you.” He reached up and dug his fingers into the back of his scalp.
“Why would you even care?” I asked, taking a step back of my own. I wanted to bolt and run, but if I did, like the monsters of my childhood, he was sure to chase after me. “So the doctor keeps his bugs down there. Why all the secrecy?”
Phelps’s face went momentarily slack. Once again, I had the feeling I’d startled him—no, I’dshockedhim. He looked as if I’d hit him with a board.
