But she had heard the plea too clearly for that. She stayed awake until dawn, afraid to close her eyes. She was afraid that if she slept, something would come back.
At last the sun rose and filled the room with warm light. The night’s terror retreated a little under ordinary daylight. Lydia got up, washed, and drank strong tea to steady herself.
Then she stepped outside into a normal September morning. Smoke rose from chimneys. Gates creaked. Dogs barked. The world looked perfectly ordinary.
But Lydia had made up her mind. She was going to get to the bottom of it. She needed to know what had happened in that house and why it still felt so heavy.
She headed straight for John Simmons’s place. He was the same neighbor who had warned her that first night. If anyone knew the truth, it would be him.
His house was easy to find. A neat little place with a newer fence stood directly across the road. Lydia knocked firmly on the gate.
In a moment the old man came out onto the porch. Seeing her, he frowned and asked why she hadn’t left yet. Lydia said she had nowhere to go and that she needed the truth.
He sighed, stood there a moment, then invited her in. He said he would tell her what he knew, though he doubted it would help. Lydia stepped into a clean, warm house that smelled of tobacco and homemade soup.
The old man sat her at the table and poured tea from a kettle. He introduced himself properly as John Simmons and said he had lived in the community all his life. He had known the former owner, Mary, since she was a little girl.
Lydia asked him not to leave anything out. John took a sip of tea, gathered his thoughts, and began. Mary had lived in that house her entire life, from birth to death.
She grew up there, married, brought her husband home, and had two children. They were an ordinary family. Her husband drove farm equipment, and Mary worked as a school custodian. The children grew up, and for a while life was uneventful.
John paused and looked out the window. Then he told her about the tragedy that broke the family. Their eighteen-year-old son, Alex, had gone swimming in the river and drowned.
The current carried him off, and they didn’t recover his body for three days. Lydia listened in silence. Mary never recovered from it. She withdrew from people and stopped going to work.
Her husband took to drinking and died of a heart attack a year later. Their grown daughter married and moved to the city. Mary was left alone in the big house…
