Free A Coming Evil by Vivian Vande Velde

asked.
    Aunt Josephine shook her head. "No."
    Before she could say anything else, Cecile said, "We shouldn't have taken them in. They'll get us all killed."
    "Cecile!" Aunt Josephine sounded genuinely shocked. "I don't think he suspects anything. I think
he's just interested—" She stopped, as though Lisette and Cecile were too young to understand. But Lisette had seen the look that officer had given her, and she suspected she knew exactly what he was interested in.
    Cecile didn't look convinced.
    "You come upstairs," Aunt Josephine told Cecile. To Lisette she said, "You entertain Monsieur Maurice."
    In the kitchen, Lisette saw that Cecile had set out cups, napkins, a bowl with a tiny bit of sugar and another with milk, and even a plate of biscuits, everything ready so that there was nothing for Lisette to do except sit there and wait, with nothing to say to Maurice.
    After a while, Maurice said, "So, how do you like Sibourne?"
    "Very much, thank you," Lisette lied.
    "You must be looking forward to school—next week, isn't it?"
    Obviously Maurice knew nothing about being thirteen. Lisette just smiled politely.
    After another while, Maurice said, "That cousin of yours, she's a very lively girl."
    "Yes," Lisette said.
    "My wife and I, we've watched her grow up every summer since she was born."
    Lisette continued to smile.
    "Seen the ghost, have you?"
    "Excuse me?" Lisette said.
    "Your cousin, she mentioned the ghost. I thought he'd gone away, but apparently he's come back."
    "Gone away?" Lisette asked. "Come back?"
    "I've lived here all my life," Maurice said. "As you can imagine, that's quite a long time."
    Lisette found her polite smile again.
    "As a boy, I used to climb all over these hills. Got myself lost in the woods more than once. Came nearer to drowning than my mother ever suspected. But that hill by the new bam, between my property and your uncle's—this was when the land belonged to the Martinage family, before your family ever moved in..." Maurice nodded, having either lost track of his sentence or getting caught up in his memories of the former owners.
    "What about the hill?" Lisette asked. Maurice was obviously the kind of person who was not particular and would talk to anybody on any subject.
    "Haunted. By a ghost my own age."
    "Parage?" Lisette asked.
    Maurice chuckled. "My age back when I first was old enough to be on my own—five, six years old."
    Personally, Lisette didn't think that five or six was old enough to be on your own in the country, but she didn't say so.
    "We grew up together," Maurice said, "that ghost and me. Not that we ever talked, mind you. But I'd catch glimpses of him. Oh, sometimes I wouldn't go up that particular way for a year or two at a time. And
sometimes I'd go up there and wouldn't see him. But when I did, it always turned out he'd kept apace of me. Ten, twelve years old. Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, twenty."
    "But then he went away?" Lisette asked.
    "About the time I was in my mid-twenties, I didn't see him anymore." Maurice winked at her. "Probably because I finally reached the age of reason. Finally realized I was too old to believe in ghosts." He winked again.
    Aunt Josephine came down then, wearing a dry dress, fussing about pouring the coffee. Cecile passed the plate of biscuits after taking two for herself.
    Lisette nibbled on a biscuit and tried to keep a polite look on her face as though she were listening while Aunt Josephine and Maurice talked about neighbors and weather and food prices. Mid-twenties, Maurice had said. Maurice thought the ghost had disappeared because Maurice had stopped believing in him.
    Lisette wondered if Gerard had really disappeared because he'd reached the age at which he'd died.

12.
Tuesday, September 3, 1940
    By the time Maurice left and the children were back upstairs, Lisette was determined to see Gerard after all, to learn if she was right. The rain had finally stopped, but the grass and trees were dripping. Mud glistened on the side of