The Women of Wild Hill

The Trespasser

Five years after the girls left, a young man slipped over the wall in the dead of night. He snuck into the caretaker’s house and walked through all the rooms. He didn’t take anything. He didn’t rifle through drawers. I doubt he knew what he was after. Then he found it.

He stood on Flora’s grave with his hands shoved into his pockets and studied the name etched into the stone. I hadn’t spoken to a man in almost four hundred years. As a rule, I avoided them. But one should allow for exceptions to every rule. So I made the decision to greet him.