Baby

in some sick evil way. So she acquiesced, silently wanting to kill him.
    Why, why, why me? What did I do wrong? Why did Mama not come to visit me? Did they turn her away at the door? Not knowing drove her crazy. If only she could get a message to her mama, she and Mr. Woods would rescue her.
    As much as a month passed since her ill-fated wedding and the household packing was finally completed. Netty carefully decided to bribe a young housemaid with one of the coins given to her by Mr. Woods at her wedding, a miracle Robert neglected to search her belongings and appropriate her purse. She painstakingly wrote a message to her mama in her childish block letters, hiding it in her apron pocket with the coin, planning to pass it along to her young accomplice, a kitchen wench she managed to discreetly befriend.
    Spinning around, Netty saw that Robert stood in the doorway. Did he observe me secreting the note ? His expression unreadable, she held her breath. Without a preamble, he casually sat her in a chair and delivered the awful news. The sheriff found her mama assaulted and murdered in their cabin. It appeared to have occurred several weeks ago. She need not plan a funeral; the body has already been interred. Netty screamed, pitifully slumping to the floor.
    Her cold silent tears brought Netty back to the present, sitting on the chilled floor of the lonely woods. Wiping away her useless tear drops, she continued on, not understanding the compulsion, her damaged feet continued to whimper their fruitless protest.
    The cleft in the rocky hillside led her to up the path that circled around a magnificent piece of granite, probably deposited as glaciers moved across the continent during one of the many ice ages starting in the Cryogenian period of the planet’s development. The rock, a beacon to any child, seduced her as well. It became her private sanctuary. The place she ran to for dreaming, praying and saying goodbye to her creatures as her efforts to help their sufferings failed.
    Every creature she lost withered her young heart and caused her to rail at God for his indifference to the suffering of the truly innocent. In particular, her worst moments with God came after receiving a maimed creature, often dropped on her family’s doorstop by a sympathetic neighbor, clearly intentionally harmed by someone. She knew instinctively that every creature was entitled to one thing—its own life. To steal it through abuse or indifference argued a crime against God. At her rock, she could cry or rail at God in private. As long as she was respectful to Him, she could exercise her frustration, vent and return home to her makeshift hospital, ready to soldier on.
    Sudden chattering from above drew her gaze. Two squirrels argued, probably over territory from the signals of their furious tail thumping. Brightening, she grasped the first handhold to climb the rock just as she used to before her marriage. She gingerly pulled herself up, her eyes skimming over a pile of loose rocks at the base of the granite, where it leaned into the hillside, something of a cairn that she did not recall seeing before. Further on, she spied a fat sunning rattlesnake coiled around the base of a young maple tree, frighteningly close to the pathway she must traverse back out of the woods. She remembered the knoll was not called Snake Hill for nothing.
    Reaching the top, she spotted the concave depression she used as a throne as a child. The seat was cold and sharp against her twenty-three year old rump. Suddenly, Netty saw in the periphery of her vision, another flash of color like the one that visited her at the cabin. Was she coming down with something? She could not afford to get sick now, just as she was starting her new life. Memory returned to the last days at the mansion.
    A truce of sorts developed between her and Robert. Thankfully, he no longer demanded her attentions in the bedroom. They still lived in their Renaissance Revival mansion in Norristown. Occasionally, she would wander the mansion at night while Robert was out late with his business partners. She loved admiring the high ceilings and beautiful carvings of their home, secretly investigating every nook and cranny.
    She was forbidden to be in her husband’s stunning library. The room was 38’ by 25’ with every inch of the oak walls carved in intricate designs, the massive fireplace dressed in an emerald green marble surround with an amazing carved mantle all the way to the ceiling. The