here all day and –”
“I know, Margaret Elizabeth. But that was before you started spending all day every day up there. You haven’t cleaned your room in over a week. Your sheets need changing and there are books and clothes all over the floor. You haven’t done any housework, either. I thought that we agreed that, with me working these long hours, you would take over most of the chores.”
“Come off it, Mom! It’s been too hot to stay in this stupid trailer and do housework. I’ll clean my room tomorrow, all right?”
“It’s not fair, Elizabeth. You promised —”
“Sure, I promised!” Elizabeth’s cheeks flushed in anger. “I promised to try to help you all I could while we were here. But what about me? I have to stay a whole year in this armpit of a town with nothing to do, no one my own age around, and you screaming at me because I spend time in Barkerville, the only place for miles where there’s something interesting going on. I know it’s not fair. It’s not fair to me!”
“Don’t shout at me, Elizabeth.” Joan Connell’s voice was tense. “I’m having a hard enough time as it is, without having to cope with this!”
Elizabeth stood up, pushing away the mug of milk, not caring that it spilled on the table. “If you’re having such a hard time why don’t we go home!”
They glared at each other for a moment. Then Joan Connell said in a small voice, “Please, Elizabeth.”
Elizabeth sat down again, mopping up the spilt milk with a Kleenex. “I’m sorry, Mom,” she said at last. “I guess I’m just upset.”
Her mother sighed. “I know you are, dear, but we have to stay. You know that your father and I agreed to spend a year apart. We both need time to work things out, and I need time to prove to myself that I can hold down a job, that I can exist outside of the family. I don’t want to be just ‘Mrs. Connell, Mike’s wife’ for the rest of my life. I want to be a person in my own right.” She took a deep breath, then continued. “You know how important this is to me — to the whole family.”
It was Elizabeth’s turn to sigh. She’d heard it all before. She knew her mother’s reasons for the move, but that didn’t make it any easier to live in Wells. “I know, Mom, I know. I’ll get busy on the housework tomorrow.”
Joan Connell sat beside Elizabeth and put an arm around her. “Try to understand, dear. It isn’t easy for me, either. I worry about Brian and your father, and if I’m doing the right thing. I worry about you, too. We’ve been here nearly a month and you haven’t made any friends. You just sit by yourself in the trailer, or wander around Barkerville alone.”
“But I do have friends, Mom. The Judge, Linda, and —”
“Elizabeth, you’re fifteen years old! You need friends your own age — to listen to music with, talk to, exchange clothes with. You don’t do anything that normal girls your age do. You don’t even read suitable books! You al ways have your nose in some science fiction thing, or a horror story.”
Elizabeth wanted to shout out, “And whose fault is it that I’m here, away from my friends in Vancouver?” but she choked back the words and attempted a smile instead. “That’s not true, Mom. When I read The Shining it scared me so badly that I’ve never read another horror story.”
In spite of herself, Joan Connell laughed. “I know that, dear, but you do have a fascination for weird things. First it was that Ouija board, then the Tarot cards and now you’re hanging around Barkerville all day — a ghost town. I wonder, sometimes, if you’re hoping to see a ghost up there.”
Elizabeth smiled. “I don’t believe in ghosts, Mom. But something did happen . . .” She stopped, uncertain if she should tell her mother what had happened in the graveyard that afternoon. But Joan Connell was busy with her own thoughts.
“I guess it’s just a stage and I suppose that, now that I’m a single parent at least for a year, I worry more about you than I would if your father and I were together. Well, will you try, Elizabeth? Will you try to be happy here?”
“Okay, Mom. I’ll try. And I’ll bet that you’ll find you aren’t so tired once you get used to the work. We’ll have a good year; wait and see.”
Her mother gave her a hug. “Sure we will. Just the two of us. We’ll manage.” Elizabeth and her mother smiled at each other, the harsh words forgotten, at least for now.
“Listen, Elizabeth. Evan — the Judge — is taking me out tonight. There’s a group of people in Wells who paint and do pottery and that sort of thing, and he asked me if I’d like to go over and meet them. Maybe I’ll be inspired and get out my old oil paints on my next day off, if I can still remember anything about painting!”
“Sure, Mom. You should go. You need friends your own age, too, you know!”
“Cheeky brat.” Her mother grinned at her. “I’m off then. Pick up your room before you go to bed, okay?”
“Yes, Mom. No problem.” Elizabeth paused, then spoke softly. “Mom?”
Her mother turned around, hand on the front door knob. “Yes, dear?”
“Mom? Do you think, when this year is over, that you’ll go back to Dad?”
Joan Connell waited a long time before she answered. “I don’t know, Elizabeth. It’s too early to tell. I need this time away from your father, but it might work out that way. I don’t know, I just don’t know yet.”
“That’s okay, Mom. I was just asking.”
“I know, Elizabeth. This has been hard on you. Let’s both keep our chins up, dear, and hope that things work out. We’ll just have to wait and see.”
Chapter 5
The next day Elizabeth sat among the tourists that crowded the tiny Wesleyan Methodist Church and waited for the Judge to finish his monologue.
It won’t be long now, she thought. The Judge was already telling the story of Cataline, the muleskinner, and how his lands were saved by a timely action of Begbie’s.
Elizabeth had decided to talk to the Judge about what had happened to her yesterday. She had stayed awake last night, worried and unable to sleep, long after her mother had returned to the trailer. The Judge had been in Barkerville for a long time. He, if anyone, would be able to help her understand what had happened in the graveyard — if, in fact, anything had happened and she wasn’t just going crazy.
Staring at the Judge, hoping to catch his eye, she once again had the frightening feeling that the man in the long robes who stood before her was not her friend, Evan, but the real ‘Hanging Judge’ himself. The Judge finally saw her and acknowledged her presence by nodding to her and saying, “Isn’t that a fact, young lady?” after a statement. Elizabeth relaxed.
Come on, Judge, she thought. Finish talking. I need to tell you about the graveyard.
As if on cue, the Judge finished his speech, and threw the courtroom open to questions. Luckily, there were only a few, and soon he was bowing to the applause that shook the foundations of the tiny old building. The audience, content with the performance, slowly
