“Yes, last year. I didn’t do anything after that.”
“Why not?”
Vivid, frenzied pictures went careening through her mind, shrieking as loudly as the wind outside. She clutched the edge of the kitchen table.
“It’s all right, baby, you don’t have to tell me. It really doesn’t matter. Goodness, what a day it’s been. I’m going to miss Doc. He’s been here forever. Everyone will miss him.”
“No, Amabel, not everyone.”
“So you don’t think it was suicide, Sally?”
“No,” Sally said, drawing a deep breath. “I think there’s a madness in this town.”
“What a thing to say! I’ve lived here for nearly thirty years. I’m not mad. None of my friends is mad. They’re all down-to-earth folk who are friendly and care about each other and this town. Besides, if you were right, then the madness didn’t begin until after you arrived. How do you explain that, Sally?”
“That’s what the sheriff said. Amabel, do you really believe that Laura Strather, the woman James and I found, was brought into town by a stranger and held somewhere before he murdered her?”
“What I think, Sally, is that your brain is squirreling around, and it’s just not healthy for you, not with everything else upside down in your life. Just don’t think about it. Everything will be back to normal soon. It’s got to be.”
That night, at exactly three o’clock in the morning, a blustery night with high winds but no rain, something brought Sally awake. She lay there a moment. Then she heard a soft tap on the window. At least it wasn’t a woman screaming.
A branch from a tree, she thought, turning over and pulling the blanket up to her nose. Just a tree branch.
Tap.
She gave up and slid out of bed.
Tap.
She didn’t remember that there wasn’t a tree high enough until she’d pulled back the curtain and stared into her father’s ghastly white, grinning face.
Amabel found her on her knees in the middle of the floor, her arms wrapped around herself, the window open, the curtains billowing outward, pulled by the wind, screaming and screaming until her throat closed and no sound came from her mouth.
Quinlan made a decision then and there. “I’m taking her back to Thelma’s. She’ll stay with me. If something else happens, I’ll be there to deal with it.”
She’d called him thirty minutes before, gasping out her words, begging him to come and make her father leave her alone. He’d heard Amabel in the background telling her she was in no shape to be on the phone to anybody, much less to that man she didn’t even know, to put down the phone, she was just excited, there hadn’t been anyone there, it had just been her imagination. Just look at all she’d been through.
And she was still saying it, ignoring Quinlan. “Baby, just think. You were sound asleep when you heard the wind making strange noises against the window. You were dreaming, just like those other times. I’ll bet you weren’t even awake when you pulled the curtains back.”
“I wasn’t asleep,” Sally said. “The wind had awakened me. I was lying there. And then came the tapping.”
“Baby-”
“It doesn’t matter,” Quinlan said, impatient now, knowing that Sally would soon think that she was crazy, that she’d imagined it all. He prayed to God that she hadn’t. But she had been in that sanitarium, for six months. She’d been paranoid, that’s what was in the file. She’d also been depressed and suicidal. They’d been worried that she would harm herself. Her doctor hadn’t wanted her released. Her husband had agreed. They wanted her back. Her husband was first in line. He wondered about the legalities of getting a person committed if that person didn’t volunteer.
Why hadn’t Sally’s parents done anything about it? Had they believed her to be nuts too? But she was a person with legal rights. He had to check on how they’d gotten around it.
He said now, “Amabel, could you please pack Sally’s things? I’d like all of us to get some sleep before morning.”
Amabel had pursed her lips. “She’s a married woman. She shouldn’t be going off with you.”