The Emerald Comb (36 page)
Authors: Kathleen McGurl
If I was right, I was descended from a murderer. But one who had covered his crime. It seemed no matter how hard you try, if an ancestor really wanted to hide something, then you wouldn’t be able to find the truth. Once past, the truth could be buried, and often was. Future generations could never know everything about what had happened before their time – not if their ancestors had really wanted to hide something. You could research all you liked but you would never find out everything that happened to them, or why they made the choices they did.
It was time to lay Agnes to rest at last. I left the churchyard, walked up the lane and across the fields to Irish Hill. There was a light wind blowing at the top, and the clouds were beginning to lift and thin. The day might turn out sunny yet.
At the top I sat on one of the benches, and took out the box of ashes once again. Should I say some words? Amy had suggested holding a little ceremony, but that felt awkward and forced. After all, I hadn’t known this woman. I wasn’t descended from her. I gazed across the landscape in the direction of our house, which I could pick out quite easily now. Had this woman stood in Thomas’s or Lauren’s bedroom at the back of the house, and looked across to this hill, I wondered? She may never have walked up here, but she would surely have raised her eyes from her work and noticed it. It was as good a place as any for the end of her story.
I opened the pot, tipped it and walked slowly around the quartet of benches, allowing the fine-grained ash to gradually trickle out onto the ground. Some was blown away by the breeze. I liked that. Agnes Cutter, or whoever she was, scattered on the winds. Her remains were no longer buried, even if the truth about her was, and would remain so, for ever.
CARINA™
ISBN: 978 1 474 00750 4
The Emerald Comb
Copyright © 2014 Kathleen McGurl
Published in Great Britain (2014)
by Carina, an imprint of Harlequin (UK) Limited, Eton House, 18-24 Paradise Road, Richmond, Surrey TW9 1SR
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