Feeling a bit better, she put her arms through the straps of her backpack and reached for the handlebars of her bike. Then she saw, snugly encircling the little finger of her left hand, the small gold ring with the red stone.
Chapter 4
Elizabeth reached home later than usual that evening. She took an aspirin, lay down in bed and tried to sleep. But whatever had happened that afternoon in the Barkerville cemetery had left her uneasy, and sleep would not come. She worried about the ring. Should she tell her mother about it? There was no point in trying to tell her mother the rest of what had happened to her today. Joan Connell was a very practical woman and disapproved of anything that, to her, resembled the occult: ghosts, Ouija boards, Tarot cards and science fiction alike. She would not be able to help Elizabeth sort out her feelings about her strange experience in the graveyard.
At nine o’clock, when Joan Connell finished work and returned to the trailer, Elizabeth was still lying in bed. She heard footsteps in the kitchen, then her mother’s voice: “Elizabeth? Are you here? What’s the matter, dear? You didn’t come over for supper.”
Elizabeth sighed. “I’m in here, Mom. I just wasn’t hungry.”
Joan Connell hurried into the bedroom. “You must be sick if you’re not hungry,” she said. “Here. Let me feel your forehead.”
“I’m okay, Mom. I just felt a bit . . . a bit sick to my stomach. So I thought I’d skip dinner and lie down for a while.”
“You don’t seem to have a fever and you look all right.” Joan Connell had finished inspecting her daughter. “Come on, get up, and I’ll fix you some warm milk. That will give you some protein at least, and it should help to settle your stomach as well.”
Elizabeth groaned inwardly. Her mother was very matter of fact about illness; if you were sick, you were sick and stayed right in bed. If you were well, you had no business in bed, so up you got. Make up your mind and be quick about it, was her unstated rule.
“Mom, I really don’t want any hot milk.” Elizabeth got out of bed and pulled her jeans and teeshirt on.
“Nonsense,” her mother replied. “Warm milk is the best thing for you if you aren’t feeling well. Besides, you did miss supper.” Joan Connell was a short, stocky woman who had fought with her weight all of her life. Her black, curly hair topped a round face with dark eyes, and when she became angry her eyes flashed and she held her chin up. To her, the idea of anyone missing a meal through choice was unbelievable. She battled daily with her own appetite, and often wished that she would not crave food so much. “Were you eating junk food at Barkerville again today? How many Cokes did you have?”
“I didn’t have anything today except the lunch I packed. Honestly, Mom, just because you have to count every calorie doesn’t mean that I have to, you know. And I’m getting lots of exercise these days.”
Elizabeth settled herself at the kitchen table while her mother bustled about preparing the milk and a cup of coffee for herself. Elizabeth hated the taste of warm milk; it reminded her of curdled soup or of cream pies that had gone bad. But, it looked like she would have to drink it this time. “I wrote to Dad today,” she said in an attempt to take her mind off the thought of warm milk.
“You’re always writing to your father,” snapped her mother. “I’m sure he knows more about what you’re doing these days than I do.”
“Oh, Mom, don’t be ridiculous! I always tell you what I’ve done during the day.”
Placing the mug of milk in front of Elizabeth, her mother sat down, holding her own cup of coffee. “Yes. I know what you’ve been doing during the day, and I want to talk to you about it.”
Here it comes, thought Elizabeth.
“You are spending far too much time in Barkerville and I’m not sure I like it.”
“But Mom, you said you didn’t mind my going up there. You said I was learning some history and it kept me from being bored and I wasn’t hanging around 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