Hellfire

Epilogue

Almost a year had passed.

On the morning of July 4, Carolyn Sturgess started across the lawn toward the two stone lions that flanked the path to the mausoleum. She walked at an easy pace, enjoying the warmth of the sun. The sky was a deep blue that morning, and nowhere was there even a trace of a cloud that might foreshadow an afternoon shower. The day, she knew, would be perfect.

She wished Beth were there to share it with her.

The pain of her loss had eased with the passage of time, and as she remembered her daughter today, there was only a dull ache to remind her of the terrible days of the previous summer. And even that ache, she was finally beginning to believe, would someday fade away.

She stepped into the shade of the path, and started up the gentle grade toward the top of the hill and the marble structure that guarded the remains of her husband’s ancestors. The light was different here, filtered into a soft green by the leaves of the trees above her head. Here and there the sun shone through, its rays dancing on specks of dust that hung in the air. A squirrel paused in the path a few yards ahead of her, sat up, and examined her with bright inquisitive eyes before darting up a tree to chatter angrily at her from a perch twelve feet up. Carolyn stopped to chatter back at the squirrel, laughing softly at the indignant thrashings of its tail. When the squirrel finally gave up its tirade and disappeared into the treetops, she moved on, coming at last to the mausoleum itself.

There was a seventh chair at the table now, and the broken pillar had at last been repaired. The addition of the chair and the new pillar had changed the feel of the monument, as well as its looks. No longer did it have an air of mystery to it, as if it were filled with unanswered — and unanswerable — questions. There was a completeness to it, as if the addition of the chair for Amy Deaver Sturgess had closed the family circle around Samuel Pruett Sturgess. Now he sat with his wife at his side, and his four sons flanking them. But directly opposite him now, providing a kind of symmetry, was his only daughter’s chair. And beyond her chair, the new pillar blocked the view of the place where the mill had stood for so many decades.

No longer would Samuel Pruett Sturgess spend eternity gazing at the source of both his wealth and his guilt. Now he would sit with his completed family, his long-denied daughter acknowledged at last. For Carolyn, the mausoleum had finally lost its feeling of the grotesque, and had become a place of peace.

She paused there that morning, then moved on down the trail that would eventually lead to the river. But that trail was no longer an overgrown tangle of weeds and fallen trees. It had been cleared and widened, and neat stone steps had been carefully installed to look as if they’d been there forever. So well had the work been executed that even the week after they had been laid the steps had blended perfectly into the hillside.

Carolyn came to an intersecting path, and turned left, following the well-worn trail she had once used nearly every day. Since spring, though, she had found herself coming here less frequently. Indeed, she realized as she came into the little meadow where both Beth and Tracy were buried, it had been almost two weeks since she had been here last.

Now, as she slowly approached the graves that lay flanking the slight depression where Amy’s bones had once been buried, she remembered the funeral that had taken place here last summer.

There had been no question of separate funerals for the two girls — they had been bound too closely together by their deaths.

Almost all of Westover had been there that day, and both Carolyn and Phillip had come to realize that their tragic loss had not been totally in vain. Though nothing had been spoken, there was a feeling that the funeral for the two young girls marked a turning point for the town, a final severing of its ties to the past, a laying to rest of the last vestiges of resentment toward the Sturgesses and the other old families who had once controlled the lives of the townspeople.

After the service there had been a reception on the front lawn, for even the mansion itself had not been large enough to hold the crowd. And as Carolyn and Phillip had moved through the throng of people, accepting the condolences that were that day genuinely offered, they began to sense the healing that was taking place.

It was that night that they had decided to build a park on the site of the mill, and donate it to the town. Then, during the weeks when the park was being built and the charred remnants of the mill were being obliterated, they had discussed the naming of the park.

It was Phillip who finally suggested they dedicate it to the memory of Alan Rogers, and Carolyn had immediately concurred. It seemed fitting that the Sturgess name would no longer be associated with that part of Westover.

Carolyn gathered a few wildflowers, and placed them as she always did between the two graves where Beth and Tracy lay. As always, she wondered fleetingly what had really transpired in the basement of the mill the night the girls had died, but she had never asked Phillip what he’d seen in the little room beneath the loading dock, nor had he ever volunteered to tell her. Though she knew in her heart that it was a fiction, she liked to believe that they had simply gone out together on what was intended to be nothing more than an adolescent adventure, an adventure that had gone disastrously wrong.

The truth, she knew, was something too painful for her to bear.

She turned away from the graves, and started back to the house, putting the past behind her.

“We’re only going on a picnic,” Phillip observed wryly as he watched Carolyn pack the immense basket with more things than he could imagine her finding a use for. “It’s not as though we’re going to be gone for a week.”

“Babies may be small, but they’re great little consumers,” Carolyn replied placidly, adding two more diapers, and a stuffed bear that was even bigger than their child to the contents of the already overfilled basket. “Besides,” she added, “didn’t I hear you telling Hannah to put two extra cases of beer in the car?”

“I don’t want to run out, do I?”

“Heaven forbid. Of course some people might suspect you of trying to buy votes with beer, but I suppose it’s better than just handing out money.” She finished with the basket, and tried to close its lid, which seemed to be impossible. “Here,” she said, hefting the basket and handing it to Phillip. “It’ll be good for your image if you’re seen dragging baby stuff around the park. Gives you the domestic look.”

“That, I suppose, is as opposed to the idly arrogant look of the old aristocracy?” Phillip asked as he took the basket.

“Whatever. Take it down and put it in the car, and I’ll bring the baby. And if you want to kiss her, do it now. I won’t have you kissing every other baby in town, then bringing the germs back to your own daughter.”

“Candidates for alderman don’t kiss babies,” Phillip sniffed good-naturedly. “That’s strictly state and federal stuff. See you downstairs.”

Alderman, Carolyn thought as she picked the baby up from the crib and began wrapping the blanket carefully around the little girl’s robust body. Who ever would have thought a Sturgess could run for alderman? Yet it had happened, and not through any effort on Phillip’s part. Rather, a delegation of merchants had come to him back in December, while Carolyn was still in the hospital after delivering their baby, and after a great deal of awkward hemming and hawing (which Phillip had delighted in detailing for her the next day) had finally informed him that they had met among themselves and decided that what Westover needed was an alderman who had the time to make tending to the town business a full-time job. And it had to be someone with some business sense, and strong ties to the town. After giving it due consideration, they had come to the conclusion that Phillip Sturgess was the man they wanted.

Phillip had been shocked. He’d noticed that since the funerals for his daughter and stepdaughter, the attitudes of the townspeople had changed. They spoke to him now whenever he went down to the village, stopping to pass the time of day with him as they did with each other.

Conversations no longer eased when he came near. Instead, circles widened to include him.

The same thing had happened to Carolyn.

It was as if the town, recognizing that even the Sturgesses were not immune to tragedy, had closed ranks around them.

And now they wanted Phillip to lead them.

When they arrived at the park twenty minutes later, they found that Phillip did not, after all, have to put on the great display of domesticity that Carolyn had threatened him with. Instead, Norm Adcock grabbed the basket of baby supplies, while four of his men unloaded the beer.

Eileen Russell appeared out of the crowd, and pulled open the front door of the Mercedes, reaching in to take the baby from Carolyn.

“I swear to God, Carolyn,” she said as the other woman released the seat belt and got out, “if you don’t start using that baby seat I gave you, something horrible is going to happen to Amy.”

Then her face turned scarlet as she realized what she’d said, but Carolyn — as she always did at moments like this — ignored the gaffe, knowing it had been unintentional.

“When she gets older, she goes in the seat. For now, I just prefer to hold her.” Then she took Amy back, cradling her gently in her arms.

Amy.

At first both she and Phillip had been reluctant to give the child the name that had come to both their minds even before she was born, but in the end, they realized, there was really no other choice.

But this time, there was no chance that Amelia Deaver Sturgess was going to have anything but a perfectly happy life.

There had been a few shocked looks when people first heard the baby’s name, but after either Carolyn or Phillip had explained to them where the name had come from, and what had happened to the first Amy, people had quickly come to understand.

And Amy, too, had become a part of the healing of Westover.

Carolyn began threading her way through the crowd, doing her best to keep up with Phillip. Everywhere they went, people flocked around them, chatting with Phillip for a few moments, then clucking and cooing over the tiny dark-eyed baby nestled in Carolyn’s arms.

And Amy, her big eyes serious, looked up at all of them almost as if she recognized them, even though she was only six months old.

At last they came to a spot near the back of the park, where the wall separating the park from the railroad tracks lent some shade against the afternoon sun, and the babbling of the fountain in the wading pool made it seem cooler than it actually was. Phillip spread a blanket, and Carolyn gently laid their daughter in its center.

The moment she touched the ground, Amy Deaver Sturgess began screaming.

The spot Phillip had chosen for the picnic blanket was exactly where the little room behind the stairs in the basement of the mill had once been. Though Phillip and Carolyn were unaware of it, their child was not.

For even in her infancy, Amy Deaver Sturgess remembered perfectly everything that had ever happened in that room.

She remembered, and her fury still grew.…