Nathaniel

Michael's brow furrowed as he considered his mother's words. But there were too many memories, too many images. His father, his grandfather… Dr. Potter. His frown deepened.

Janet nodded. "I know, honey. Dreams are like that. When you're having them, they seem terribly real. Sometimes they still do, even after you wake up. But in a while, you realize they were only dreams, and forget them." She stood up, and drew Michael to his feet. "I want you to come out and say hello to Grandpa now, and then we're going to go over to see Grandma. Okay?"

But Michael drew back. "Do I have to? Can't I stay here?"

Janet frowned. "No, you can't. Grandpa needs you to help him with some things, and after all he's done for us, I can't see that you wouldn't want to help him."

"But-sometimes he scares me!" Michael protested.

Suddenly Janet reached the end of her patience. "Now, that's enough. Your grandfather loves you very much, and he'd never do anything to hurt you, just as he never did anything to hurt your father. So you're going to pull yourself together, and act like a man. Is that clear?"

Michael opened his mouth, then closed it again. Silently, he nodded his head, then started up the short staircase that led out of the storm cellar, his mother behind him.

Just outside, where he must have heard everything they'd said, they found Amos Hall. But if he had heard them, he gave no sign.

Janet leaned over to give her mother-in-law a kiss on the cheek, but for the first time since they'd met, A

"It was so good of you to get the truck for me," Janet began, but A

"We couldn't very well have you begging favors off strangers, could we?" she said in a distinctly cold voice.

"Strangers?" Janet echoed. "You mean Ione Simpson?"

"I'm sure Ione and Leif Simpson are very nice people, but you do have a family, Janet. If you need something, I wish you'd just ask us."

Janet sank into a chair across from the older woman, barely able to believe that A

"So you invited her to di

"-And it's still a mess," Janet interrupted, improvising rapidly. "Last night was hardly what you could call a party. Ione brought over some things she had in the 'fridge, and we just sort of had a picnic." She thought A

A

"Why on earth would they?" Janet asked, now genuinely puzzled by A

"They've always talked about us around here, even though we've been here longer than anyone else," A

"Well, you can believe I won't give anyone anything to talk about," Janet declared. Then, before A

Now it was A

"Late last night, we decided to explore the attic." She waited for a reaction, but there was none. Instead, A

Now A

Janet stared at her. "You were never in the attic? But you lived in that house so many years-"

A

"And so you never went?" Janet asked, amazed. "If Mark had ever told me something like that, you can bet it would be the first place I'd go." Of course, she thought, Mark never would have told me something like that.

A

"But what about the children? Didn't they ever go up there?"

"If they did, I don't know about it," A

"But still, they were children-"

"Children can be controlled," A

Suddenly Michael's words flashed through Janet's mind, but when she spoke, she managed to keep her voice light.

"What did he do, beat them?"

A

Janet shrank back defensively. "No-no, of course not."

"Amos may have used the strop now and then," A

"But a razor strop-"

"My father used one on me," A

No, Janet thought to herself. It didn't hurt you at all. All it did was make you think that whatever a man told you to do, you had to do. All it did was make you into a nice obedient wife, the kind of wife I could never have been, and the kind that Mark, thank God, never wanted. No wonder he ran away.

But even as she allowed the thoughts to come into her mind, she rejected them. They struck her as somehow disloyal, not only to A

"But what about the things we found in the attic? What shall I do with them?"

A

"There's a lot of silver and china. And there's a-" She stopped short, for A

"Don't tell me," A

Janet's mind churned.

Abby Randolph's diary, written just a hundred years ago.