Ophie’s Ghosts by Justina Ireland

Author:Justina Ireland
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollinsPublishers
Published: 2021-03-06T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

OPHIE WENT TO THE ATTIC TO VISIT CLARA THE very next day while Mrs. Caruthers took her nap. She carried a bucket with a washrag and some hot water, ready to make an excuse in case anyone asked what she was about.

No one did.

Ophie climbed the stairs to the attic proper, huffing and puffing by the end. She was used to carrying weight up and down stairs by this point, but the attic stairs were much steeper than those of the grand staircase. There was still something off-putting about the attic, but if that’s where Clara was, then that’s where Ophie would go.

Her plan at this point wasn’t much of a plan. She hoped that if she could talk to Clara, then the young woman would be able to remember more about her life and, hopefully, what—or who—had killed her. Clara had clearly died violently, which meant that either Cook didn’t know that Clara was dead, or she hadn’t been telling Ophie the truth when she said that Clara had run off. Richard, too, had simply said she was “gone.” Did neither of them know that she was killed in Daffodil Manor? That her spirit lingered, unable to leave, never spoken of? Ophie was still worried about her and her mother spending every day in this house with all its dark secrets, but finding out what happened to Clara, maybe helping her to move on . . . it also felt like the right thing to do.

Daddy had often said that when presented with two choices, a hard thing and an easy thing, the right thing was usually the more difficult one. “The good Lord is always testing us, Ophie, in big ways and small. You do the thing you know to be right, always, no matter what.” Mama had clucked her tongue at Daddy, but she hadn’t disagreed. Now Ophie had decided that the easy thing to do would be to ignore Clara and continue on with the routine of Daffodil Manor, carrying trays and cleaning up after an angry old woman and never, ever wondering what had happened to all these sad, lonely ghosts, including her friend. The harder thing would be to put aside what Aunt Rose had told her, what Cook had told her, even what Mama would probably say if she knew about the haints and Clara’s sad end, and find out the truth. Didn’t Clara deserve the kind of justice so many folks never got? Someone had to find out how she had died, even share her story. Maybe that was the way to help her move on, too.

So, that was exactly what Ophie was going to do. When she thought about it that way, that talking to Clara was about justice and fairness, the bucket she heaved up the narrow staircase to the dusty, disused attic didn’t seem quite so heavy.

As she did, she thought about what little plan she had. Since there were no lights up in the attic and she had the water and rags anyway, she figured she’d clean the windows.

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