Coal River Read Free Page B

loud and she didn’t feel like talking. As they drove through town, she was dismayed by how little things had changed. She felt like she’d gone backward in time and everything and everyone was still here, frozen and waiting for her return.
    The two-story Company Store looked exactly the same, with brick chimneys, peeling red clapboards, and black shutters. A gathering of old codgers still sat in rocking chairs and stools on the slanted porch, whittling or playing checkers on overturned barrels. The burned-wood sign to the garbage dump was still nailed to the mule barn, and potholes still filled the narrow road leading past the village green.
    Up ahead on the sidewalk, an old woman with white braids doddered toward them, hunched over as if she were about to pick something off the ground. Beside her, a young boy thumped along on wooden crutches, one empty trouser leg tied shut. Emma stiffened. The boy could have been Albert’s twin. He had the same thick shock of black hair, the same sprinkling of brown freckles across his nose, the same buckteeth. As Percy drove past, she turned in her seat, unable to tear her eyes from the walking apparition. The boy stared back at her with solemn eyes, his head turning on his neck. Then he stopped and scowled as if he recognized her.
    The icy fingers of fear clutched Emma’s throat. Was it all just a horrible nightmare? Had Albert been alive all this time, trapped in Coal River and waiting for her to come back and rescue him? But why hadn’t he aged? And what happened to his leg?
    Then the boy turned and kept going, seemingly unfazed by the encounter. Emma faced forward, a hollow draft of grief passing through her chest. The falling sensation returned with such force that she had to resist the urge to grab Percy’s arm to keep from swooning.
    No, she thought . Albert is dead. I saw his frozen body after it was pulled from an ice jam beneath the train trestle. I saw his small coffin lowered into the ground in Freedom Hill Cemetery on that bright winter day. I felt the bone-chilling wind shriek down from Bleak Mountain. I watched my mother sob in my father’s arms. It can’t be him.
    She took a deep breath and held it, trying not to panic. Was this how it was going to be? Was every little boy in Coal River going to remind her of Albert? Were they all injured or maimed? Or was she finally, once and for all, losing her mind?
    Maybe she should have taken her chances in the Brooklyn poorhouse after all.

CHAPTER 2
    P ercy’s Model T sputtered up the steep grade of Flint Hill, and the trees fell away on both sides of the road. On the right, Emma could look down on the center of town. On the left, the Flint Mansion overlooked all of Coal River. Perched high on a manicured lawn, the Italian-style manor was massive and rambling, with low roofs and wide eaves, a multilevel porch surrounding the two bottom stories, and cast-iron railings painted white to match the ornamental trim. At the house’s highest peak, an oversized, octagon cupola sat above the red tile roof like a miniature lighthouse.
    A chill passed through Emma. She shivered, staring up at the mansion and wondering if a house could put a curse on people. The scandal and death connected with the mansion occurred several years before her birth, but it had instantly become a tragic tale that would be ceremonially passed down from generation to generation.
    The story of Hazard Flint and his wife, Viviane, was the closest thing Coal River had to a local legend. Viviane, the sole heir to the Bleak Mountain Mining Company, had married Hazard Flint in an arranged marriage when she was barely sixteen. Two months later, her parents died in a train wreck on their way to Chicago, and Hazard took over everything. According to the mansion help, he was mean-tempered and crass, controlling his pretty young wife along with the mining company. After their son, Levi, was born, Viviane insisted on separate bedrooms. Five years later, when she gave