Free The Evidence Against Her by Robb Forman Dew Page B

her upstairs window at the bare, intricate, curly black branches of the old trees traced with snow that had accrued overnight without her knowledge, it astonished her.
    But Catherine Claytor hated the snow, and she would mutter through the house, personally affronted, so Agnes kept quiet. Nevertheless, and in spite of herself, Agnes never failed to be elated to find she had gone to sleep when the earth was camouflaged in subtle shades of gold and beige and brown, and had awakened in a world that shimmered silver. Agnes would stand and gaze out of her window as long as possible while the sun rose and the temperature warmed enough to liberate the snow-burdened evergreen branches, so that all around the yard they sprang free one by one, sending glistening sprays of snow dazzling across the air.
    It never occurred to Agnes to dislike one season or another. She didn’t mind the deep and treacherous mud of early spring, miring machinery in the fields, sucking at the heels of her sturdy boots. And unlike poor Catherine, Agnes never dreaded the summer onslaught of brutal weather. She was stirred by the first peppery scent of an oncoming storm; she even relished the storm itself, coming in so fast that once she had had to dismount her horse and flatten herself in a ditch as lightning struck all around her. She had lain facedown with her hands clasped over the back of her skull, her elbows cradling her temples as though she were waiting out enemy bombardment. She had been terrified, her mind filled with nothing else but one long plea— Dear God Please Dear God Please Dear God—as she felt the concussion of thunder and closed her eyes against lightning so pervasive that it was a constant, flickering white illumination. But later, dripping wet, traipsing after her horse, her hair and skirt trailing weedy grasses, and still shuddering from shock, she had also been deeply thrilled.
    By the time she was fourteen, Agnes had sometimes been so unhappy that there had been moments she had wished that she did not exist at all. Sometimes she had been sad enough to let her thoughts wander tentatively over the possibility of giving up altogether, but also by the time she was fourteen and fifteen she had become fairly fascinated by the drama of her own self. And, too, she had invested a good part of herself in the world beyond her own household, so by and large she was glad to draw another breath. If she had considered it one way or another, she would have conceded that even at the worst of times she would choose to continue to occupy a place on the earth. And therefore she was necessarily devoted to the place where she lived. It was where she was as she shaped her expectations of the world, and it was a landscape she embraced because it inescapably defined and contained her, heart and soul.
    None of the Claytor children, however, was entirely immune to Catherine’s contempt for Washburn, Ohio—a contempt that in some way conferred upon her children a little superiority. Agnes sometimes said to her friends, unaware that she had taken on a certain air of condescension, that it was too bad to be stuck in a place of so little distinction. A town as little known as Washburn. And then it was her good friends who brooded privately over such an insult to the place their families had chosen, for whatever reason, to live. To the place where they were becoming who they were to become. And then any one of those friends—Lucille Drummond, say, or Sally Trenholm—at home and vexed by some request denied or desire made light of, might blurt out some remark to her own parents. Sally or Lucille might say something along the lines of how could her parents possibly understand the need for something finer than plain cotton serge for a new dress, given that—as Agnes Claytor said—they lived in such a backwater.
    But by 1917, Agnes was old enough to be healthily self-involved, and Howie and Richard had each other as a protective frame of reference. It was only