Chapter 24 Jill #2
Worried that he’d bolt, Jill put a hand on his back. His T-shirt was soaked in sweat. “We don’t have to stay long, but we
might find another clue. You know, something to help us figure out exactly what she is. All we have to do is weed between the paths. Do you have gloves?”
Charles produced a pair from his back pocket. Focusing on the ground seemed to steady him. “How can you tell the difference
between the weeds and the plants?”
“Just pull out all the grass. And the dandelions. I’ll do the rest.”
Jill was soon lost in a rhythm of grabbing weeds by the base, yanking them from the dirt, and tossing their bodies into the
trash bag. She sat cross-legged on the bricks and tackled the weeds on the left while Charles focused on the bed to the right.
They worked in silence until Jill pulled out a dandelion and felt something heavy dangling from its roots.
“Charles! Look at this.”
Charles detached the piece of rusty metal from the roots. “It’s a belt buckle. Kind of a weird thing to find here.”
Their eyes met and Jill knew they were both thinking the same thing.
The tooth with the braces. A belt buckle. Things that might be found in a grave, not a garden.
Charles put the buckle next to the thermos and went back to work. A half hour later, after they’d both finished weeding their areas and had started on a new area, Charles made a discovery of his own.
“Hey,” he hissed, shooting an anxious glance at the house. “I found something.”
Jill tried to ignore the prickly sensation on the back of her neck. Mrs. Smith was watching them; she was sure of it. But
from which window?
Charles scuttled over to Jill and opened his hand. A coin sat in the middle of his palm. “I rubbed off most of the dirt. It’s
from 1870!”
Jill picked up the silver-colored coin and stared at the woman’s profile and the date. Its reverse side showed three straight
lines that looked like the columns on a Greek temple.
“Do you think it’s worth anything?” she asked Charles.
“Maybe. But what if she finds out we took it?”
Jill pinched the coin between her thumb and index finger and slipped it inside her sock. “We need to show everything we find
to Una.”
Charles opened his mouth to argue when a shadow fell across the path. They both pivoted to find a tall, dark-haired woman
in a sky-blue halter dress standing over them.
“Good morning, children. I’ve been watching you work with such diligence. You must have built up quite an appetite by now
and Mrs. Pulaski brought me these lovely cookies.” She held out the silver plate piled with cookies. “As tempting as they
look, I’ve never taken to sugary foods. Would you care for one?”
Unable to meet the woman’s dark, bottomless eyes, Jill studied the hands holding the platter.
Milky-white skin stretched over bony fingers. Her long, pointy nails were the yellow of old paper. They were the hands of
a fairy-tale witch disguised as a princess.
Jill lowered her eyes to the ground and said, “No, thank you.”
“What about you, young man?”
Charles lurched to his feet. “No, I c-can’t. I’m s-sorry. I have to go home now.”
Jill’s chest tightened. Charles was going to leave her alone with this terrifying creature?
She turned to him, wordlessly begging him to stay, but he scurried away in that quick, awkward gait that made him look like
a rodent being chased by a feral cat.
Jill had to swallow twice before finding her voice again. “I need to go, too.”
“I owe you remuneration. How many hours did you work?”
Jill grabbed the trash bags and her tools. She still didn’t meet the woman’s eyes. “Two.”
“I’ll put an envelope in your mailbox. After the carrier comes, of course. Perhaps he would like these confections. He looks
like a man who indulges in sweets all too often.”
Jill mumbled a goodbye and hurried off. The trash bags made it impossible to run, but she could feel the slithery caress of
the woman’s gaze on her back.
She cursed Charles for abandoning her. He was supposed to be her ally. He was supposed to help her figure out a way to defend
themselves against something neither of them understood. But he was too much of a wimp. She could only rely on Una.
As soon as she was safely inside her house, Jill turned on the kitchen sink and drank deeply from the tap. Then she washed
her hands, her arms, and her face, scrubbing hard to get rid of all traces of dirt from Mrs. Smith’s garden.
But no amount of soap could erase the snake-tongue feeling of looking into that creature’s soulless black eyes. Mrs. Smith
had assessed her in the same way her mother inspected a piece of meat at the butcher counter.
“She’s gotta be a monster,” Charles had said.
He’d been talking about the stone woman, but Mrs. Smith had the same eyes. Arrogant, angry, and old. Too old to belong with
such a smooth, sculpted face.
Jill turned off the water. Her hands were shaking so badly that she gave up trying to dry them with the dish towel. Instead,
she called the dogs. When they trotted to her side, she sank down on the floor and buried her face and hands in their soft
fur.
She didn’t care how much money she was offered. She didn’t care what her mom said. She was never going back to that house.