The Seeker A Novel (R. B. Chesterton) Read Online Free

dinner guests would be gone. I didn’t dislike the residents of the area, but they distracted me. They claimed Thoreau as if he were their own flesh and blood, even those who hadn’t a clue to his philosophy. They told their tired old stories as if they were truth.
    I found it annoying and a bit tedious. Most of the anecdotes were hogwash, because none included the mysterious woman who shared his life. Bonnie had been totally excised from his biography. It was as if Thoreau’s family had accomplished exactly what they’d set out to do. Not even in memory were they allowed to be together.
    My doctoral thesis, and the ensuing publicity I expected, would change that forever. Bonnie Cahill would get her due.
    Before I left, I tossed more logs on the fire. Patrick had left me well supplied. He was taken with me and made no secret of it, though it would come to nothing. To the dismay of the giggling teenage girls who took tea at the inn hoping to catch his eye, he ignored them but would sit for a moment and chat with me. I admit that I liked his bravado and his brash attempts to flirt. I was pleased that he tried. I was nothing more than a challenge, but it made me feel young and desirable.
    Stepping out onto my small porch, I paused. Snow blanketed everything, at least an inch thick in the short time I’d been writing. But it wasn’t the snow that stopped me, it was the set of little footprints, child-sized, that ended right at the porch. As if a child had come out of the woods and stood on the top step, watching me through the window while I worked.

3
    “No, dear, no children in the inn this week.” Dorothea dusted a tiger oak sideboard as she talked to me. Never one to waste a moment, she always did two or three things at once. It was a truly annoying habit. “Footprints? No right-minded mother would let her brood out in this weather. It’s a blue nor’easter headed right at us, if you can believe what Patrick has been spouting. He watches the weather channel back in the pantry. He says that bald-headed weatherman is headed our way because they’re predicting a record snowfall and a drop in the temperatures. Black ice. That’s what the highways are going to be. Good thing you’re tucked in for the holidays.”
    “The shoe prints were small.” I was concerned. “Maybe a young child. Nine or thereabouts.”
    She paused and the queerest expression shifted across her face. “Really.”
    It was a flat statement, not a question. “What’s wrong?” I asked.
    She stood up, wadding the dust cloth into a ball. “You wouldn’t recall, but a decade back there was another bad snowstorm and a local youngster, a little girl, went missing.”
    A chill climbed my spine. “Was she found?”
    Dorethea gazed into the distance, and I was aware of the clatter of plates and flatware, a bit of laughter from the bar where old Cooley Butler played some 1940s love songs on the piano.
    Dorothea spoke at last. “No. She was never found. The not knowing drove her mother insane. It broke Helen. Just broke her in two like a rotted stick. Can’t say it wouldn’t have done the same for me.”
    I leaned closer to the desk where Dorothea’s electric heater churned at full blast. “How old was the child?”
    “Third grade. A lovely child. A bonnie lass, as my dad would say.”
    “You knew her well.” It was written clearly on her face, the loss and the sadness.
    “Dig around at Henry David, but leave this alone. Bad memories. That child went into the woods and never came out.”
    The creepy sensation crawled along my back again. I didn’t care for it. “People don’t just disappear.”
    Dorothea’s lips thinned and straightened. “You’re welcome to use any of the books in the parlor. Just return them when you’re done. You might want to wait here for a bit. I’ll put in a call to the police chief. He should get over here before the snow covers everything. If there’s a child about, the authorities need to know.”
    “Do