Bury The Hatchet

The rain, she thought. How it washes everything clean. But never the soul. It can never reach the soul. Before the rain's bold invasion, she had been mesmerized by the Maple trees as if they held the answer to that which was gnawing at her conscience. The trees were wonderful things; she could feel them always. They lined the stately entrance to the thirteen room mansion, lending a grace and beauty to the name she herself gave it; Maplecroft. Behind its protective pillars she had lived for more than half of her sad and solitary life. More than a home, Maplecroft became her refuge from an unforgiving world and a sea of cruel, relentless whispers.

Lizzie Borden took an ax And gave her mother forty whacks And when she saw what she had done She gave her father forty-one. And was that voice that was now a part of the wind chanting that same horrible rhyme that had followed her all of her life? So it seemed as the storm increased in intensity, crashing through the leaves and branches of her beloved trees. Thunder shrieked through her ears and lightning stabbed, like a jagged, shiny knife, across the black sky. Beyond the million sounds of the rain she heard her name over and over.

Lizzie. Lizbeth. Lizzie. But I don't have to listen. It can't touch me if I don't really want it to. "Emma," she mouthed to the glass and the falling rain that now was as heavy as a curtain. It had been she who bought this lovely house for them both. But that was long ago, soon after the murders, when she and her sister, Emma were still good friends. The Oriental vase on the fireplace mantle still held the beautiful roses she had brought just this past afternoon as a peace offering to Lizzie.