Free Susannah Morrow by Megan Chance

Walcott. It could have been habit, I suppose, but the
     truth was that I had always felt drawn to her. Mary had a way about her, a disarm, perhaps, or maybe it was just the way she
     opened up and listened as if you spoke God’s pure word and she was thirsting for the sound. It had taken me years to learn
     that she gathered the things I said close and never forgot them, that she doled out my secrets like treasures to the others,
     that she led me places I did not want to go simply for the sake of having something to talk about. She had held me tight as
     Job held his conviction, and when I’d finally realized it, ’twas hard to get loose from her.
    Now I gnawed on the hard crust of bread I’d taken from our table and pretended to listen to other conversations, to smile
     at other people. But when Betty Hubbard looked up and motioned me over, I barely hesitated. I glanced behind me to see my
     father embroiled in discussion with Francis Nurse, and my aunt listening intently to Goody Sibley. Only Jude was watching
     me, and I did not worry about her.
    I told myself I would stay only a moment, not even long enough to answer their questions, and I went over to the table. Mary
     Walcott looked up with that sly look, while plain-faced Mary Warren only nodded hello, and Mercy Lewis raised her thin dark
     brow as if she were surprised to see me here.
    “Charity,” Betty said as she spread butter thickly on her bread, “tell us what you think. Do you not find it strange that
     Mistress Parris looks so pale all the time? Why, today I hardly thought she could walk herself down to her pew.”
    “She’s sickly.” I shrugged. “’Tis nothing new.”
    “My uncle says she’s not as sickly as she seems.” Betty was Dr. Griggs’s niece, and she often went with him on his visits.
     “He says ’tis something strange going on there.”
    “She’s weakening day by day,” Mercy Lewis threw in. She leaned forward so her bony elbow rested on the table, and her dark
     eyes looked huge in her gaunt face. “Withering away, they say. Perhaps she’s being poisoned.”
    “Poisoned?” I was shocked by the suggestion. “Surely not! Why, she’s the preacher’s wife.”
    The others giggled. Mary Walcott hid her smile behind her hand. There was something else here, something they all knew and
     I did not, and I wondered what it was. But Mary was mischievous, and the rest had nothing better to do than stir up trouble.
     ’Twould be better for me to be far away from it.
    I started to turn away. I heard Mary whisper in that goading way, “Ssshhh! Don’t tell her! She’ll go running to tell her papa.
     She doesn’t like to keep things from him, do you, Charity?”
    Across the room, my aunt laughed. I saw my father look at her, and I saw something in his face, something that was gone so
     fast I had no time to know what it was, to even guess, though it left behind this little flutter in my stomach that I didn’t
     like, that made me nervous.
    I heard myself say in a dull voice, “What secrets do you keep now, Mary?”
    “Ooh, she doesn’t approve,” Betty said.
    “I suppose she can’t help it.” Mercy’s tease was mean and low. “Her father’s pious as a minister.”
    “Not any minister I know,” Mary Walcott said.
    Here, they all laughed as if it were another joke they shared. Their cackling made my skin feel too tender, as if the slightest
     touch might bruise me. I had grown used to my life without them these last months. I had grown used to spending my days with
     my mother, catering to her as she ran the household from her bed. It had been like a signal from God, Mama had told me, her
     needing me just at this time, just when I needed to turn from my friends.
    But if God had been watching out for me, then why had He taken my mother? Why allow the Devil to send Susannah to tempt me?
     It had been hard to leave Mary and the others. If my mother had not taken so ill, I am not sure I would have been able to
     keep myself