VIII
T
his
new idea of mine took strong root and flourished as the months passed. I became convinced that Belcher was an evil influence on my brother, that Elijah must somehow throw off the friendship which carried within it the disaster that should surely come from association with the son of a murderer, for that is how I thought of Jack Belcher.
I do not think that I was a prying child then, at least not more so than most lonely little girls might be; but I suddenly became hypersensitively interested in my brother’s affairs even to the extent of trying to change him, to alter his ways, his goings out and his comings in, his very love for another. Perhaps I was genuinely concerned about the lad’s future; or perhaps I was beginning to become a woman. Perhaps I needed to mother someone
