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     they were angry with and how far back that bitterness ran. It was hard to avoid conflict in this village. We lived too closely;
     we needed each other for too many things.
    I heard the pastor talking to Susannah—she was nodding her head and seeming to listen, though I wondered if she really heard
     him, or if she was thinking of her home in London. I prayed it wasn’t so. She had no real reason to stay now that Mama was
     gone—except that I needed her. I watched her now and wondered what I could say to keep her. I was so caught up in trying to
     imagine the words that when Jude jerked hard on my hand, I jumped in surprise.
    I looked down, thinking she’d tripped on the rocky ground, but she only pointed to a place near the edge of the crowd. “Look,
     Charity,” she said. “There’s Mary.”
    I forgot about my aunt Susannah. I should have been prepared to see Mary Walcott, but I was not. She was walking beside Elizabeth
     Hubbard, who was everything I was not—plump and sweet and seventeen. They were talking as if the two of them were the oldest
     of friends.
    I should have known the moment I saw Thomas Putnam and his wife that Mary would be here too. She was Sergeant Putnam’s niece,
     and she’d lived in their home as a servant since her stepfather had put her out for lack of room. It had been months since
     I’d spoken to her. Not since Mama had taken to her bed. Now I heard my mother’s voice:
When you open the door to the Devil, child, he doesn’t fail to come in.
    I wished there were some way I could disappear. Even as I had the thought, I saw Mary whisper something to Elizabeth and look
     at me. Her glance was sideways and sly, and I looked away. I focused on my mother’s coffin, but it was just an expanse of
     blurred purple broadcloth before my eyes, and I quickened my step until Jude protested.
    Nothing so easy ever kept Mary away. I was not surprised when I felt her come up behind me. She yanked at my cloak, hard enough
     that my hood fell down around my shoulders. I wrenched it back and kept my gaze straight ahead. As evenly as I could, I said,
     “Mary, ’tis good to see you. I’m grateful that you came.”
    “My aunt was a great friend of your mother’s.” Mary came full up beside me so I could see her smile. “She is grieving so,
     you see.”
    I glanced back to Sergeant Putnam’s wife, walking huddled beside her husband while their eldest daughter, Annie, herded the
     rest of the children behind. Mistress Putnam did look pale and wan, but she always looked that way. Mama had often said Ann
     Putnam was as like to be sick as well.
    Mary leaned close. “But the truth is, I think she wanted to meet this mysterious aunt of yours. The whole village is talking
     about her, you know. ’Tis said she was an actress in London. Tell me, is it true?”
    I jerked to look at her. “They say she’s a
what?
”
    “An actress.” Mary smiled again. She put me in mind of a cat, with her satisfied smile and slanted eyes and that little tongue
     that flicked constantly at her lips. With the gray of her hood pulled tight around her face, the image was even more pronounced.
     “You know, a mime, a player upon the stage, a—”
    “I know what it is,” I snapped.
    “Well, is she?” Mary glanced over at my aunt. Susannah’s heavy hair was covered by her hood, but it was impossible to miss
     the fine beauty of her face. In the light, her cloak was a deep, true blue, unlike the muted colors I saw every day. She stood
     out among my neighbors as a cock pheasant among drab hens.
    “Of course she’s not.”
    “You sound so sure.”
    “I am sure,” I said. “It cannot be. Why, I’ve talked with her. She is a godly woman—”
    “Is she? Has she been praying with you, then?”
    Unbidden, the images sneaked into my mind. Susannah standing at the fire, refusing to come listen to my father’s nightly sermon;
     then again, stepping away, murmuring to little Faith as we knelt by my