Somebody behind them said, “No, you’re not.”
Ettie found that she had turned to look, although she had not wanted to. The woman behind them was old and bent, and looked blind.
Susan smiled, laid a hand on Ettie’s shoulder and tried to grasp that shoulder in a way that would make it clear to Ettie that she, Susan, was counting on her not to misbehave. “Mrs Betterly?”
“Ain’t no business of yours, young woman.”
“My name’s Susan Price,” Susan continued bravely, “and my daughter and I are friends — good friends — of Kate Eckert’s. We’re looking for Hunter’s Lake — ”
The old woman moaned.
“And Kate said your husband would help us.”
“He won’t talk to no women,” the old woman declared. “He hates women. All of us. Been fifty years since he spoke civil to a woman, he told me once.”
Susan looked thoughtful. “My daughter isn’t a woman yet.”
“Mother!”
“Really now, Ettie. What would Nancy Drew say?”
“ ‘I’m getting out of here,’ if she had any sense.”
“He won’t hurt you. How old is he, Mrs Betterly?”
“Eighty-seven.” The old woman sounded proud. “He’s ten year old’n me, and won’t never die. Too mean.”
Susan gave Ettie her very best smile. “You see? What are you afraid of? That he’ll hit you with his walker? He might call you a name, at worst.”
“Or shoot me.”
“Nonsense. If he shot little girls for asking polite questions, he’d have been sent to prison long ago.” Susan turned to the old woman. “All right if Ettie tries?”
“Door’s not locked,” the old woman said. After a moment she added grudgingly, “That’s a brave little gal.”
As though by magic, Ettie found that her hand was on the doorknob.
“He’ll be in the parlor listenin’ to us. Or if he ain’t, in the sittin’ room. If he ain’t in the sittin’ room, he’ll be in the kitchen for sure.”
The hinges are going to squeak, Ettie told herself. I just know it.
They did, and the floorboards creaked horribly under her feet. She closed the door so that her mother would not see her fear and pressed her back against it.
Outside, Susan endeavored to peep through several windows, returned to her car, and got her camera. “All right for me to take your picture, Mrs Betterly?”
“Just fog your film,” the old woman said. “Always do.”
“Then you don’t mind.” Susan snapped the picture, being sure to get in a lot of the house.
In it (it appeared immediately on the back of her camera) the old woman was holding a bouquet of lilies. “Where did you get the flowers?” Susan asked.
“Picked ‘em,” the old woman explained. “Grow wild ‘round here. Buttercups, mostly.”
“Where did they go?” Susan tried to hide her bewilderment.
“Threw ‘em away once your picture was took.”
Inside, Ettie was poking around the parlor, pausing every few seconds to look behind her. The carpet, she noticed, was too small for the room, torn and moth-eaten. Dust covered the bare floor, and there were no footprints in the dust save her own.
He isn’t here, she thought. He hasn’t been here for a long, long time.
And then: I could take something. A souvenir. Anything. None of this stuff is doing anybody any good, and I’ve earned it.
There was a glass-topped case at the end of one of the divans. It held old coins and arrowheads, and the top was not locked. She selected a worn little coin with a crude picture of a Native American on it, and slipped it into her pocket. It had not looked valuable, and she would have it always to remember this day and how frightened she had been.
There was no one in the sitting room and no one in the kitchen. No one in the dining room, either.
A crude stair took her upstairs as effortlessly as an escalator. He’s old, she thought, I’ll bet he’s sick in bed.
There were three very old-fashioned bedrooms, each with its own small fireplace. All were empty.
He’s gone, Ettie told herself happily. He’s been gone for years and years. I can tell Mother anything.
Outside again, speaking to Susan from the porch, she said, “Do you want everything, or just the important parts?”
“Just the important parts.”
“Where’s the old lady?”
“She went away.” For an instant, Susan forgot to look perky. “I turned around, and she wasn’t there. Did her husband call you names?”
That was easy. Ettie shrugged. “You said you just wanted the important stuff. Here it is. He said for us to go home.”
Susan sighed. “That’s not what I sent you in to find out.”
“Well, that was the important thing.” Ettie did her best to sound reasonable.
“All right, everything. But leave out the names.”
“Okay. He said, ‘Little lady, that lake’s a real bad place, so don’t you ever forget you’re a grown woman and got a Ph.D. and a daughter of your own.’ Am I supposed to do the dialect?”
“No.”
“Fine. He also said, ‘If you got to go there, you time it so your alarm goes off before anything bad happens. You go home. One way or the other. That’s all I’m going to tell you. Get on home.’“
Curious, Susan asked, “Did he really call you ‘little lady’?”
“Heck, no. You said to leave out the names so I did.”
Susan sighed. “I suppose it’s better that way. How did he say to get to the lake?”
“He didn’t.” Ettie shrugged. “Want me to go in and ask him again?”
“Will you?”
“Not unless you tell me to.”
“All right. Ettie, you get yourself back in there and tell him we must find Hunter Lake. Don’t take no for an answer. You have to be firm with men, and you might as well learn now.”
Nodding, Ettie went back inside. It would be smart, she told herself, to spend quite a bit of time in there. She pulled a book off the shelf in the parlor and opened it. The Alhambra by Washington Irving. It looked as though it had never been read.
After a minute or two, she realized that her mother was trying to peer through the very dirty window-pane and the filthy curtains, and went into the sitting room. There was a nice old rocker in there. She sat in it and rocked a while, reading Washington Irving.
Outside again, blinking in the sunlight, she realized that she had never really decided what to say when she came out. To buy time, she cleared her throat. “You really want to hear this?”
“Yes. Of course.”
“Okay, first he asked me all about you. That was after I had said you kept sending me back in. He said you sounded like a real bitch, and if you came in he’d get the chamber pot and throw shit at you.”
“Ettie!”
“Well, you said you wanted to hear it. After that he explained to me about Hunter Lake. He said didn’t I know why they called it that? I said because a hunter found it. He said that was wrong. He said it was ‘cause it hunted people. He said it could move all around just like bear and climb trees-”
Susan stamped her foot. “We want directions.”
“What do you mean, ‘we’?”
“Did he give you any directions? Any directions at all?”
“Just go home. I told you that the first time.”
“We need directions, not stories. Go back in there and tell him so.”
Ettie walked through the empty house, slowly, stopping to stare at things and open drawers, until she felt that something was following her. When she did, she hurried back outside, slamming the door and running down off the porch. “I’m not going back in there! Never! Never any more. You can ground me forever! I won’t!”
Susan studied her, her lips pursed. “That bad, huh?”