Chapter 14. Jonathan’s scream roared over the yard.

J onathan’s scream roared over the yard.

“What is it? What is it?” Rachel cried shrilly, running to the well.

Jonathan was too horrified to reply. Too horrified to move. Too horrified to pull his eyes away from the gruesome sight before him.

At the end of the well rope, sprawled over the bucket, was the body of his mother.

Her skin was blue and bloated. Her wet hair plastered against her skull and face. Her soaked nightgown clung tightly to her lifeless form.

“No! No! No!”

Jonathan’s sobs wrenched his throat.

“Mama!” Rachel whispered. “Mama—why?”

Jonathan’s father held on to the bucket with both hands. His eyes were shut. His lips moved in a silent prayer.

“No! No!”

Trying to turn his gaze away, Jonathan saw something. Something gripped tightly in his mother’s closed fist.

He reached down and pried open the cold, bloated fingers.

“Ohhh!” Jonathan gasped when he saw it.

A white cap with blue ribbons.

“Mama! Mama!” Rachel repeated. She dropped to her knees in front of her mother and began to sob.

Without a word, Jonathan helped Ezra lift Jane’s body and set it down on the grass.

Can that really be my mother? Jonathan asked through a blur of tears. Can that really be my mother so cold, so still?

He picked up his little sister and carried her, sobbing, into the house.

There is no doubt in my mind now, Jonathan thought later. The Fier family is cursed. I did not want to believe it. But Papa has been right all along.

The hair prickled on the back of his neck. In a flash Jonathan suddenly understood.

Delilah’s strange sadness … Her sudden desire to leave, to get away from the Fiers … It all fell into place like the pieces of a puzzle.

Jonathan ran past where his father sat slumped at the table, his head buried in his hands, and out into the yard.

Rachel’s face appeared in her bedroom window. “Where are you going?” she called down to him.

Jonathan did not answer her. Instead, he started to run. Glancing back, he saw Rachel following him, but he didn’t stop to send her home.

Jonathan ran down the road to the Wilsons’ farm. Delilah was in the yard, feeding the chickens.

As he came into view, she dropped the sack of feed. He grabbed her hands and held them tight.

“Delilah, my love!” he cried breathlessly. “You must tell me. You must tell me your secret.”

She stared at him, startled.

Rachel arrived, panting, holding her side from running so hard.

Jonathan ignored her. He did not care who was there, who heard what he had asked. He had to know if he was right. He had to know now.

“I already know your secret,” he told Delilah. “Just tell me yourself.”

He gazed deeply into her brown eyes.

“Yes,” she replied quietly. “I can see it in your face, Jonathan. You know my terrible secret, don’t you?”

She shut her eyes, a tear falling onto her cheek.

“I am a Goode,” she confessed.

Дата добавления: 2015-07-20