“My stepmother had such a pretty amethyst ring her first husband gave her and she wore it on her right ring finger, a sparkling amethyst ring he picked up off the beach, as though it had been left there for him to discover. It was so long ago but it looked like the one upon your finger, young Ondine. It was a tradition in these parts for some women to have purple gemstones gathered from the shore, you know. Did your grandmother tell you that?”

Ondine touched the ring on her sweaty finger without looking down, her eyes fixed on the old lady’s impenetrable face.

“They say my stepmother’s first husband drowned in the bay, his face buried in a mound of seaweed when the tide washed his body in on the shore. It was common knowledge he was unfaithful, breaking her heart. They said he had gone out for a midnight rendezvous with some girl who lived down in the Valley. After he was buried, my stepmother was left alone on the big old farm and my daddy desired it. It had been a lot of years since our mother and Rose disappeared, and he finally wanted to get away from our place here and the sounds and voices he heard in the woods at night, sounds right inside this house.

“Daddy had no interest in our stepmother’s grey hair or the lines on her face, but he said the words he thought would charm her. They did, but not enough for her to put the land title in his name and that sent Daddy into a cold quiet rage. My stepmother wore his thin gold band on her ring finger, but even when they had their little marriage with the justice of the peace, she kept wearing that amethyst from her first husband on her other hand. My stepmother carried a bouquet of small white buds she’d cut from a rose bush my sister planted when she was young.”

Ondine wasn’t going to tell the old woman that the ring Ondine was wearing had been given to her by her grandmother, who had also told her it was a family heirloom she had inherited. But the old woman already seemed to know this. Ondine had no idea how it would have found its way to her grandmother. If the old woman knew, she wasn’t letting on.

“No one ever could discern what became of the ring, so it must have been still on her hand, the one that went missing along with her head. It made my daddy so angry she wouldn’t take it off, but they was both middle-aged when they got married and my stepmother said you couldn’t put the past behind you like that.

“Well, my father thought he was someone who could put anything behind him but he could not get away from what he was hearing in the yard and the farmhouse at night.”

She looked at Ondine and shrugged her shoulder toward the house and then pointed, in case Ondine was confused. “This house.”