Free House of Reckoning by John Saul

looking at it from maybe a hundred yards from its southeast corner … She opened her eyes, blinked at thebright fluorescent lights, and picked a medium brown oil pastel crayon from the box on her table.
    Her hand moving quickly, she began to draw.
    A few minutes later she felt someone behind her, and twisted around to see the teacher looking down at what she was drawing. As if she sensed how difficult it was for Sarah to move in the chair, the woman crouched down so their heads were on the same level. “Hi,” she said quietly. “Welcome to the class. I’m Miss Philips.”
    Sarah found herself looking into a kindly pair of blue eyes in a face framed by light brown hair that flowed straight down her back. She was wearing exactly the kind of clothes an artist should wear: a long skirt, a brightly patterned blouse, and a purple velvet vest. Exactly the kind of thing she herself would have worn if she hadn’t grown up on a farm. “Hi,” she said, instinctively liking Bettina Philips.
    “You’re doing a good job there,” Miss Philips whispered, tapping a forefinger on Sarah’s paper. “Keep at it.” Then she stood up and continued making the rounds of the classroom, murmuring suggestions and encouragement as she moved from one student to another.
    Sarah looked back at her drawing, but suddenly couldn’t concentrate as she remembered the warmth in Miss Philips’s eyes. She tried visualizing the house again, tried to remember how the walkway went up from the circular drive to the double front doors, but somehow couldn’t quite bring back the image as clearly as she had seen it before the teacher stopped to talk with her. She looked up to see that Miss Philips was now bent over the drawing of one of the other students, but as if sensing her gaze, the teacher looked up and gave her a smile.
    Sarah’s face warmed, and she went back to her drawing, and the image of the old rock house was once again clear in her mind. It had big shutters on the front and the side, and she quickly sketched them onto the paper. As her hand transferred the image from her mind to the paper, she worked faster, quickly losing track of the time.
    When the bell rang, everyone around her scrambled to pick up their things and get out of the classroom as quickly as possible. “Don’t forget to put your name on your drawings,” Miss Philips told them, raising her voice above the rustling of the class. “And the pastels go back in the cabinet.”
    Sarah waited until everyone else was out the door before she hauledher backpack from the floor to the desk, then finally pulled herself to her feet, holding on to the table for support.
    “You’ve got a lot of talent,” Miss Philips said, seeming not even to notice how hard it had been for her to rise from the chair. “But then I’m sure you already know that, don’t you?” she added, grinning at Sarah without so much as a hint of pity.
    “I just like to draw,” Sarah said, signing her name and handing the sketch to the teacher. “Usually I draw people, but this was fun.”
    Bettina Philips laid the drawing flat on the table and looked at it. “Do you know this house?”
    “No,” Sarah said. “It just sort of came into my mind.”
    “Really? You just imagined this?”
    Sarah nodded, and struggled with her backpack.
    Miss Philips added the drawing to the stack of paper already on her desk, reached over and lifted up the bottom of Sarah’s backpack so she could slip the straps over her shoulders.
    “Thanks,” Sarah said, settling the weight evenly.
    “I’m glad you’re in this class,” Bettina said. “You’ll do very well.”
    She looked up at the teacher one more time and felt an easy warmth flow through her.
    Seventh period art had just become her favorite class of the day.

Chapter Six
    B ettina Philips turned her battered Mini Cooper onto the rutted driveway and through the ornate wrought-iron gates that hung rusted and crooked from two once-proud granite columns that were now