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ever known.
    "Oh, she thinks I should get out more, meet people, go places."
    "Don't you ever want to? I mean don't you get bored sometimes?"
    "Now you sound like your father. He's never understood why I left New York and came up here to live like a hermitess, as he puts it." She sat back on her heels and gazed into the distance, at the mountains and the sky beyond. "I love it here. The peace and quiet,
the beauty of it. I had enough social life in New York. I'm happier here than I've ever been, Laura."
    I looked at the mountains too, wishing I could enjoy them the way she did, but they still looked like a wall to me. On the other side of them was Stoneleigh and that was where I wanted to be, not here sweating away in Aunt Grace's vegetable garden. I sighed. "Maybe I'm just not old enough yet, maybe I haven't had enough social life."
    Aunt Grace nodded. "You've got a point, Laura."
    "Wanda's got a sister named Charlene," Jason said abruptly. "She works at the Dairy Queen and she's got a baby named Tanya Marie and she ain't got no husband." He stuffed a pea in his mouth and grinned, oozing a little green through his teeth.
    Aunt Grace looked surprised. "She hasn't got a husband," she corrected him.
    "That's right. I guess they got a divorce too, just like Wanda's mommy and daddy. And just like our mommy and daddy."
    "I guess so." Aunt Grace got up. "I think we have enough peas. Why don't we go inside and see how the chicken's doing? You and Laura could probably use a tall glass of something cold to drink, and so could I."

    Before I went to bed that night, I turned out my light and went to the window. Although I looked in both directions, I didn't see or hear anyone on the road. Just moonlight and shadows and a mockingbird singing somewhere. No sign of Maude. To be sure, I stood at the window until the cool night air made me shiver.
    As I crawled into bed, thinking I was safe from her, I realized it was awfully early. Not even ten o'clock. Maybe after midnight, while I was sleeping, she would
creep past the house again, staring at my window, waiting for me to come to her and ask her for help.
    Sometime in the middle of the night, I did wake up, but it was Jason who woke me, not Maude.
    "Laurie, Laurie," he whispered, plucking at the covers and trying to climb in next to me.
    "What's the matter? Did you have another bad dream?" I moved over, letting him curl up next to me.
    "It was about Maude. I dreamed she was chasing us in the woods. We ran and ran and I fell down. You just kept on running, Laurie, and I was trying to scream but I could only grunt and I tried to get up and run but I couldn't. Then she caught me and her fingernails were long and sharp and so were her teeth. She laughed and laughed and she picked me up and took me away. She put me in a cage and she told me I was hers forever and I couldn't move, I couldn't move at all. Mommy and Daddy were there too, but they were mad; they didn't want to be there in the cage with me. They thought it was all my fault."
    He was crying and shivering, so I put my arms around him and hugged him. "There, there, Jasie, it was just a dream, don't cry. Nothing like that could ever happen. I wouldn't let Maude hurt you, I'd save you, Jasie."
    "I'm so scared, Laurie, I'm so scared. I wish we were back home in Stoneleigh."
    "I wish that too, Jasie." I hugged him again. "Do you want to sleep in here?"
    "Yes." Jason pressed closer to me, snuffling in my ear. "You don't really think Maude is a witch, do you?"
    "Of course not. Like Aunt Grace says, she's just a harmless old crackpot. She can't hurt anybody." I tried hard to sound convincing, but the more I thought about
it the more I believed that Maude really was a witch. Not the kind Jason had dreamed about, the wicked Baba Yaga sort of witch who ate little children, but a real witch who knew how to cast love spells and put hexes on people and tell the future and, most important, stop mothers and fathers from getting divorces.
    "Are you