But something in me wanted me to take the hog. Violating this range with an automobile would have been somehow sacrilege. It seemed more appropriate to straddle the beast, clad in Jay's helmet, gloves and black leather jacket that, while too big, comforted me and gave me a sense of security as I traveled along the empty road. Her name, "Betty'', was painted in gold , cursive letters across the gas tank. He had always referred to her as his faithful steed, and as such she was my first choice for this journey into the domain of the past.

This had once been big cattle country. Ranchers had driven their herds down this very road a hundred plus years ago, but drought, disease and economic recession had crushed the California beef industry. The land had primarily been turned over to the plow, the rich, now irrigated valley devoted to the growing of fruits and vegetables. Not all of it, though. For a long time much of the old ranch laid fallow. The family, Vicky had told me, who continued to receive income from its crops, mining, shipping and logging concerns, had never quite given up the idea of eventually returning to raising cattle.

The dirt road was marred by deep narrow troughs that ran parallel to its course. It seemed unlikely that after one hundred years it should still bear the marks of the horse drawn wagons that once traveled this way to and from town, but I could not deny what my eyes and the tires of the motorcycle told me. I had seen the like the previous year when Jay and I took a summer trip retracing the Oregon Trail. Car tires left a very different sort of track. Occasionally, along a dip in the road where water no doubt collected when it would rain I would come across a set of what looked like fresh tracks in the mud.

After about ten minutes of treacherous riding I could just make out the white house buried under years of growth of creeping ivy. I shifted into neutral and idled for a while as I looked at the mansion.

It must have been a regular palace. Even now it was a thing of beauty, with white pillars out front and rose bushes still blooming after years of neglect. The many windows were boarded up to protect them from the weather and vandals.

I turned off the ignition; the rumble of the engine was out of place here. Dismounting I rolled the bike the last few yards to the porch. By rights, I figured "Betty'' should go in the stables, but not enough remained of that building to provide a suitable resting place, so I settled for what I guessed to be a hitching post. I set the kick stand and gave her a final pat on the saddle before pulling off my helmet and tucking it under my arm.

Boards squeaked under my feet as I climbed the porch steps and approached the door. I felt in my back pocket for the key Vicky had given me. It was still there after the bumpy ride along with the list of items she wished me to check up on. The key fit well enough into the lock, but it refused to turn, as if it sensed the threat my intrusion represented. The house had been in the family for five generations, and even though none had graced its halls for a couple of them, it still retained a possessiveness about it and none had ever before seriously considered selling the sacred monolith. Vicky could hardly stand the thought herself, but the line had ended, and when she died there would be none to care for it. At least the historical society would be kinder than the developers who were clamoring for the land it stood upon, or even the couple from Minnesota who wanted to purchase it and turn it into a bed and breakfast.

I pleaded with the house, promising I meant it no harm. I only wanted to ascertain its condition. If the historical society did acquire it they would see to it that all necessary repairs were made. They would, of course have to update the plumbing some, putting in handicapped accessible toilets etc. as well as redo the wiring, but they could be relied upon to do so in as unobtrusive a manner as was possible. They might even, I reflected, be able to do a better job of it than the people who did the original refitting, possibly restoring the original bathroom and moving restroom facilities to somewhere outside the building itself. As for the wiring, well redoing that would reduce the risk of fire.

As the word fire appeared in my mind, the lock suddenly released. Fire had been a real danger in these parts that got plenty of rain in one season and practically none in another. When summer dried the grass into brown tinder, one flash of lightening or stray spark from a campfire could send the whole valley up in smoke. The house had narrowly escaped going up in flames on more than one occasion, the most recent of which claimed the barn and stables. The volunteer fire department had managed to save only the mansion, though the paint had peeled and some of the windows were broken the building itself remained intact.

Once it had decided to let me in, the door swung open graciously on hinges that could have been oiled only yesterday. If I thought the house looked huge on the outside, it looked bigger still from the inside. With the windows boarded up it was very dark, but from the light that came in through the doorway I could appreciate the size of the huge foyer and parlor, and could just make out the pattern of the wallpaper. It appeared to be in pretty good shape, but I really needed to illuminate the place to get a good look. I ached to yank all the coverings from the windows and let sunlight fill the place as it had over a century ago, but the boards were up there for a reason. They protected the precious antique glass from vandals. Besides, I wasn't sure I could get them off without damaging the boards underneath. Instead I walked back to the hog. I opened up the saddle bags and retrieved the fluorescent lanterns I had brought expressly for this purpose. There was in addition a paper bag with my lunch in it, a tuna fish sandwich, peach and a can of diet Coke.

Once the lanterns were inside I turned them both on, setting one on the bare boards of the parlor and carrying the other with me. The first thing that struck me was a magnificent staircase. The base was very wide. An entire family of Mexican immigrants could have lived comfortably on the first group of steps that led up to a landing where there was a door on the right. After the landing the stairs curved and narrowed somewhat as they progressed to the upper level of the house. I was curious to climb the impressive structure, but the moment I put my hand on the railing I thought I heard something. A kind of a rasping noise as if someone were sawing beams. It stopped as suddenly as it started. Could it be termites? I had never heard termites before, but someone told me they sounded something like that. But then why did it stop? It must have been my imagination, I figured.

What would it have been like to be here while this place was being built? A lot of people must have been involved in the construction. I could almost see men working, and hear the buzz of them chatting to each other. Sawing here, hammering there, kicking up dirt all over the place. Did the couple who owned the ranch have children at the time? In my mind's eye came a picture of two black haired boys one perhaps nine or ten the other half that, running right past me, and the voice of a woman calling, "Boys, come out of there right now!''

The smaller one, who had been chasing the older, protested. "But he...'' he began.

"Now!'' the woman's voice insisted. "This is no place for you to be playing. Someone's liable to get hurt. Besides, you're interrupting the workmen.'' The little boy gave a resigned huff then walked back across the room, his feet actually somewhere beneath the level of the floor, and through the wall.

I blinked and shook my head. Was I seeing things? By the time I stopped, the children were gone as were the woman's voice and all the sounds of industry. Maybe the long, hot ride had gotten to my brain. I stared across the empty room. The floor was bare, and there was no furniture in the house. Vicky was afraid that with no one here it might get stolen, so years ago it had all been put into storage. She had given me another key and a combination for the facility where those things were kept. The historical society would certainly be interested in filling the house with its original furnishings, a treasure in antiques worth a king's ransom. I walked over to the great fireplace, number one on her list. The mantle was in beautiful shape, intricately carved with not a chip on it. Above it on the wall was a stain on the wallpaper, or rather an anti-stain. A large rectangle marked the place where some giant picture must have hung for a very long time. Next to the fireplace was an electrical switch. The screws were half way out and the switch plate slightly pushed out as if the very walls were rejecting the innovation. The lighting fixture was gone. Only a wire hung from the ceiling to mark where it had replaced the chandelier.

I progressed on through what must have been a dining room into the large kitchen. The floor was made up of large flagstones, and a smaller staircase, for the servants no doubt, led from there up to the second floor. The sink was still intact, but when I tried to turn on the tap I was rewarded only by a low moan of protest from the jiggling pipes. We definitely needed to get a plumber out here. I was amused to note that the small hand pump that would have been such a luxury when the house was built had not been removed. One hundred and fifty years ago it was better than state of the art in kitchen plumbing. There would be a cistern somewhere under the house, no doubt silted up by now. Just for kicks I tried the pump, fully expecting it to have seized up with age and disuse, but to my surprise the handle moved freely, and stranger yet, clear water flowed from the spigot. "Its wonderful, Tom,'' the woman's alto, so much like that of my dear elderly friend, flowed through my mind. "Now we won't have to lug pail after pail from the well when we want to heat up a bath. Imagine having water right in my own kitchen!"

It had to be an aftereffect of the sun. Or hunger. Or the musty air. Again I walked outside, closing the door after me as if to shut off the odd sounds that buzzed around my ears. Looking up in the sky I could see it was noon, so after fetching the crumpled paper bag from the back of the Harley I found a shady spot on the porch to eat my lunch. I quietly chewed my tuna sandwich as I smoothed Vicky's list on my knee. Fireplace-check. Lights-check minus. Downstairs plumbing-check minus. I scribbled in kitchen pump-check plus. I did not examine where the water I pumped flowed to; I would leave that for the plumber. In the olden days there would have been a bucket under the drain. Now there were pipes leading no doubt to a septic tank buried somewhere by the house in who knew what condition. At least the sink did not stink, and the water went down promptly which was a good sign. There were more things on the list: walls and wall coverings, window sills, window panes, stairs, banister, two bathrooms: one upstairs, one downstairs, fire places in the numerous rooms. She made a special note to check the fireplace in the bedroom Vicky had as a girl. It had been her great grandmother's as well, and it had a loose brick which when removed revealed a hiding place where she used to put her childhood treasures.

The upstairs would have to wait for later. I only had a limited amount of time to spend here today. I had office hours at the university that afternoon during which I had to be available to tutor freshman remedial mathematics in the last few days before finals. Algebra for history majors. That's where I had met Jay. Not that he had been a history major, but a grad student in the school of Fine Arts. He worked in jewelry and metal technologies, and was having some difficulty figuring out proportions for alloying precious metals. Math had never been his strong point. Eventually an instructor of his got sick of trying to hammer the knowledge into his thick skull and suggested he seek out one of the tutors. I was the lucky one.

"Miss Reilly?" he asked quietly knocking on the side of my cubicle. I looked up, and then up some more. He was without a doubt the handsomest man I had ever seen. He stood about six foot four and had hazel eyes and wavy blonde hair. He wore a black biker jacket and hobnailed boots. In his large, dirty, calloused and scarred hands he carried a pair of black leather gloves, and I remember thinking Good God, what is he doing here? He certainly didn't look like a student, not with those paws. He looked like a man who worked for a living.

"Can I help you?" I asked warily, trying to decide whether or not to call security. He sat down confidently on the desk next to mine.

"My name's Jason," he said. "I'm in the art department, and I need a tutor in math." He explained his predicament to me. Relieved that he was not some laborer who had come to tell me he'd backed his truck into my car, I sat down with him and together we tried to sort through the problems. Halfway through I could see he had stopped listening and was just looking at me. Flattered and somewhat embarrassed I looked away. "Do you have a first name?" he asked. "I feel kind of funny calling you Miss Reilly."

"People call me Ree," I answered. He lifted his eyebrows.

"That's an unusual name," he commented. "What's it short for? Rhea?"

"Actually," I confessed, "My name is Mary Rebeccah, but my Mary is my mother's name, and I have a step sister named Rebeccah, so they couldn't call me one thing or the other without getting me confused with someone else. The whole thing's pretty long so it just got shortened to Ree-ree which falls sort of in the middle." He smiled, amused with the construction. "As I got older we dropped the second 'ree'."

"So you're kind of half way in between," he surmised. "I like it. 'Neither flesh nor fowl nor good red herring."'

He had hit the nail on the head. I've always felt as if I were between things. Growing up in a broken home, being shuttled back and forth between my mother and father, never feeling like I belonged either place. Always being out of fashion in the clothes I wore and the music I listened to. I always loved my classes at school, but never seemed to connect with my fellow students. Even now as a grad student in mathematics I never hung around with the others in the department. Shy and quiet, I hovered around the edge of society like an outsider looking in. Right then he invited me to dinner with him. Too embarrassed to say no, I accepted his invitation.

We ate at a local university hangout whose walls and tables bore the graffiti of fifty years or more of students leaving their mark. As we ate our burgers and fries I couldn't fail to notice again his blackened hands. He saw me staring and apologized.

"They're actually pretty clean," he told me. "It's one of the hazards of the trade." Abrasives, metal filings and other such things deposited themselves in tiny cuts in his skin staining them so that no matter how many times he washed them they always looked dirty. While we munched away he told me a bit about himself. He took up model building as a kid, during one of the brief stints he spent in a foster home where the people actually seemed to give a damn about him. His foster mother would occasionally buy him one of those kits you could find in the drug stores for forty-nine cents. Unfortunately, like all his previous and subsequent similar situations, for some reason things just didn't work out. In the next home he had to scrounge around garbage cans and construction sites for materials from which he built his own creations. At the age of sixteen, however, the Department of Child and Family Services located a distant cousin who was willing to take on the often volatile youth. An elderly woman of independent means, she had never married and was glad to have someone to call family. She noticed his talents right off and encouraged him, providing him with tools, materials and workspace. His technique was flawless and his imagination fantastic. He rewarded her investment by producing large quantities of original creations of silver, copper, and gold which she found breathtaking and which failed utterly to appeal to any potential buyer.

He asked me if I was interested in seeing his work, and I told him I was, warning him ahead of time that as a grad student I could ill afford to buy and in general didn't wear jewelry. With a wide wolfish grin, he told me not to sweat it; all he he really wanted was to show off for a pretty girl, and he figured I was just the type to appreciate his particular bend. He was right. Many of his pieces were more sculpture than jewelry and would look out of place on anyone but a heavy metal musician. Others were ornate, almost Victorian in look with delicate stone settings. My favorite, however were a selection of very simple designs of sterling silver wire and sheet that were at once plain and emotive. I was impressed and moved. Within a week we had moved in together.

We were not, perhaps, the most perfect couple, our primary commonality being a feeling of alienation from our environment and a love for his artwork, but we provided an anchor for each other in a stormy sea on which neither of us was a very good sailor. And we loved each other.

A sudden gust of wind blew the empty paper bag out off the porch. Not wishing to be a litterbug I got up and chased after it, and when I caught it I stowed it back in the saddle bag. I had maybe half an hour before I would have to drive back, and plenty to look over.

Entering the house after lunch it had a different feeling to it, more comfortable and familiar. Having a light already on when I entered helped, I think. I continued to survey the premises taking notes as I went. A crack in a wall here, a warped windowsill there. A handle missing from a door. The downstairs bathroom was located off the kitchen, probably a converted pantry, and it was in sorry shape. Another job for the plumber. Coming back through the dining room I was once again filled with a peculiar feeling, and my eyes and ears began to play tricks on me again.

In the middle of the room I fancied I could see the outline of a huge table laden with food. Daylight streamed in through the window, and a family sat there saying grace, while a black man in a white coat stood to the side. I recognized the two from their run through the construction site, though they looked a little older. A petite woman, black haired like her sons and practically bursting with child sat at one end of the table. At the other end was a tall fair haired man leading them in prayer.

"Thank you, Lord, for all your gifts to us. For family and the fruits of your gracious bounty. May what we are about to receive nourish us in body and spirit, making us ever more fit to serve you all our days. Amen." The "amen" was chorused by the wife and two boys, and the food was served onto the plates. I watched amazed as the little family partook of their noonday meal.

"Just one, son," the father said as the younger boy strove to pile his plate with pieces of chicken. "If you're still hungry when you're done you may have another."

"Provided you've eaten all your vegetables, that is," the mother continued in that same phantom voice I thought I heard in the kitchen. The child made a face, and put some of the food back on the serving tray. The older boy across the table from him smirked.

"There's no need for you to make a pig out of yourself, Little Brother."

"That will be quite enough," the mother warned.

Chastened, the older boy looked down at his plate. "Yes, Mother," he replied contritely, but when the adults looked away he deliberately fixed the younger boy with a stare, puffed out his cheeks then delivered a swift kick under the table.

The younger boy's face grew red with anger and he banged his fist, fork in hand on the tablecloth.

"Nicholas! What has gotten into you?" his mother demanded.

"He kicked me!" he yelled.

The older boy let his jaw drop and his eyebrows rise as if in astonishment at being thus accused. "I did no such thing," he claimed, his face a mirror of cherubic innocence.

"Did so!" the assaulted party insisted.

The mother sighed and rubbed the bridge of her nose with her thumb and forefinger. The father looked at the elder son, familiar enough with his personality not to be taken in by his protestations.

"I might have swung my legs a little bit," the older boy was willing to calmly confess, "but I certainly didn't kick you. But if you happened to have your feet on my side of the table instead of where they belong I suppose its possible you might have brushed against me a bit."

"Hah!" the younger one eloquently retorted.

This had gone far enough. The young mother ordered both boys to get up and leave the table until they were ready to behave like gentlemen. The younger started to protest, but then seeing his mother's glare he thought the better of it and followed his older brother out of the room.

"Its just a stage, Victoria." the husband reassured his very tired, very pregnant wife. "They'll get over it. You'll see. By the time they're grown they'll be the best of friends. Jim and I were exactly the same way when we were boys." The woman did not look convinced. There was a faint sound of bickering coming from the distance.

"If only they would do it before the baby comes. I just don't know if I still have the strength to pull them off of each other anymore."

"Then don't" the man responded. "They need to learn to work out their differences themselves. Let them do it in their own way."

"I'm not sure I approve of their own way."

"They won't actually hurt each other," the man stated, "not badly at any rate. They do love each other, despite all appearances to the contrary. They just have to reestablish their pecking order every now and again. Now that Nick isn't a toddler anymore the lines have become a little fuzzy."

The woman smiled. "I'm sure you're right, Tom." She brightened. "You should have seen them this morning while you were meeting with Dugan and Walters in town. The two of them were helping me in the garden. Jarrod was disappointed about not being aloud to go with you, and started on Nick again, saying he wasn't digging the holes properly. You can just imagine Nick's reaction. I was almost certain they would start up again and end up in a wrestling match rolling over my lettuces when the next thing I knew Jarrod had suggested they make a game of it, taking turns with one digging the holes and the other putting in the seedlings and covering them. They switched places and tried it the other way around to see which way it would take the least amount of time and still be done properly. They ended up getting the work done in a quarter of the time it would have taken me and enjoying themselves and each other to boot."

As if on cue, the two youngsters appeared at the doorway again. "Did you boys have something you wanted to say?" the father demanded calmly of them.

"Sorry, Mother, Sir," the elder went first.

"Sorry."

The small black haired woman nodded at her sons and they resumed their places at the table.

Throughout the exchange I remained motionless, afraid that any move I made might ruin the scene. The longer I watched the more solid they appeared, until they seemed more real than I. Oiously they could not see me. If they could, I'm sure I would have seemed a stranger apparition to them than they did to me.

I must be going crazy, I thought to myself as they tucked in and chatted about their plans for the afternoon. These weren't real people. They were just the fruits of an overactive imagination. Of someone who hasn't had a full night's sleep in the past year. The scene faded in the face of my disbelief, and I found myself once again in the empty room lit only by the fluorescent lantern in my hand. With the illusory sun's warm rays gone I felt suddenly chilled. I needed to get out, fast, and as far away as possible. I ran out, tripping over the second lantern in the parlor and to the door. For a moment it refused to open, as if asking me to wait a moment, but I was scared and persistent, and it reluctantly opened to allow me to leave.

Outside all was just as I had left it. "Betty" stood waiting for me at the hitching post, and I wasted no time in mounting and riding away.

hapter 2      Office hours were uneventful. One student came by with a question on polar coordinate to rectangular coordinate conversion. I wasn't sure she understood my explanation, but after forty-five minutes of exercises she at least pretended she did, and I allowed her to. She only needed a C to fulfill her math requirement, and the last few days of the term were better spent studying for the classes in her major. Its not the way I like to work. I hate doing anything half hearted, but I found it so difficult to concentrate on where I was and what I was doing. My mind kept wandering back to the house. Part of me dreaded going back in case I had more odd visions, and yet another part wanted to go, to see what else the walls had to show me. That happy couple and their two rambunctious children were such a contrast to the people I had grown up with that they intrigued me. I wanted to know more of their life in the beautiful house that they built. And the house had stood empty for so many years, it seemed to long for company itself.

After the student left I spent some time on my research. I was working on a theorem involving boolean affine combinations in category theory, an obscure branch of mathematics that few people know or care about. I knew intuitively what it was I wanted to prove, but I just couldn't make it work imperically. With a sudden inspiration I picked up a dry erase marker and started to write. I filled up three of the four white boards in the room with diagrams, and really felt like I was getting somewhere when I realized I was writing in circles. I had merely come back to the point where I had started. Frustrated and agitated I grabbed an eraser and destroyed the last five hours industry, then sat down at my computer to empty my brain with a few hours of Tetris. The game was mesmerizing. Funny that such a silly program could have such a relaxing effect on me.

Embarrassed at the amount of time I was spending on a completely mindless activity, I turned to my other favorite time waster. My knight's tour program. The object is as follows: given a chess board and a knight, move your knight in such a way that you land on each square of the board exactly once. On the surface it looks like a simple problem, but it is complex enough that running a computer program to solve it via brute force on state of the art equipment would probably take at least one hundred and eighty years. A high school teacher had told me about the problem years before, and I had been messing around with it on and off just for fun ever since. A couple of times I got down to just two squares left uncovered, but I don't expect I'll ever solve it.

I sat for another hour perhaps, clicking on the red and black squares until my eyes grew heavy and everything started to fuse into a solid blur. I should go home, I thought. Go home and get some sleep. But with my head already filled with ghosts, my apartment was the last place I wanted to be. Most of Jay's things had been stowed away in boxes in a security cage in the basement. His tools, clothes, and some of his more disturbing sculptures were out of sight, but he was still very much present there. If HIS image decided to pop up at the dinner table I don't know if I could have taken it. In the end I crawled off to the staff lounge and lay down on the sofa for a nap.

I was awakened by the sound and smell of the coffee urn working its magic.

"Good morning, Sleeping Beauty!" came the voice of Professor Ellison, my advisor. "Had another busy night? Maybe you should just pack a suitcase and have all your mail forwarded here. I'm beginning to think you've moved in for the duration."

I stretched and yawned. "Hwah hime izh ih?" I asked.

"About a quarter to eight," he answered, pouring himself a cup. "Did you at least make any progress?"

I shook my head disgustedly, sitting up. "Nope. I'm beginning to wonder what I'm doing here." I had long ago given up the notion of being able to defend my dissertation that year. I had even reluctantly given up the prospect of even being able to finish writing the thing before spring commencement. But I had retained the slim hope of at least being able to finish the research on this year's loans. Now even that appeared to be an impossibility. I was falling deeper in debt and coming no closer to my goal. " What am I doing here, Mike?"

"Providing cheap labor and furthering the cause of independent thought."

"Right." I must have looked about as depressed as I felt, because the old man came over and put his hand on my shoulder to comfort me.

"You're a smart kid, Ree, and you have some good ideas. I really think you've got something with that theorem you're working on. Sometimes it just takes a little time to get it right."

"Six months is a little time. Six years..." I shook my head.

"...is nothing," the bald septuagenarian finished.

"Tell me again how old you were when you defended your thesis?" I challenged.

"We're different people from different worlds," he chuckled, giving my shoulder a friendly pat. "Don't go judging yourself by other people's accomplishments. Even if you never finish your dissertation you're still tops in my book."

I scowled, "Gee, that doesn't sound terribly encouraging. As my advisor aren't you supposed to chasten me into pushing forward instead of accepting defeat?"

"Oh, pardon me," he apologized, putting on a stern face. "Work! Work! Work! There. consider yourself chastened!" He smiled again. "But don't work too hard. You're bound to make yourself sick. It's not worth it slaving away if you're just going to be miserable. No piece of paper is worth sacrificing your health for. Why don't you take the summer off and make some time for the rest of your life? I think once you get your mind someplace comfortable it will all come out in proper order."

The rest of my life? What life? My life ended with a drunk driver and a phone call in the middle of the night. My work was all I had keeping me attached to this world. And Vicky, of course. I never would have been able to survive the last year without her kind shoulder and sense of humor.

Blast! That reminded me. I'd been in such a hurry to leave the house I'd left the key in the lock. I hoped it would be safe. Circumstances prevented me from returning to retrieve it for the next couple days. The list, however was still in my pocket. Good. I could go see her this afternoon and give her my first impressions regarding what work would need to be done.

In the end, she had come here to St. Agnes', an exclusive retirement home with a whole wing devoted to people who needed just that much more help. She was on the hairy edge of the physical challenges the facility was willing to deal with. No doubt her wealth contributed to their willingness to keep her on. It was likely only a matter of time before she would be forced to move on to a nursing home, but in the meanwhile she maintained a semblance of autonomy. She was able to enjoy the company of contemporaries who could still carry on coherent conversation and the attention of nurses who didn't treat her like a child. And, of course, I visited her often and ran errands for her.

Her bifocals were perched precariously on the tip of her nose, a gold chain drooping from one ear piece down to her shoulder, behind her neck where it was hidden under her thick mop of silver hair and back up to the other ear piece. She looked ancient and so fragile, her tiny birdlike frame nestled in the institutional chair. When she was awake her dynamic personality hid her frailty, and while I knew she would not object, watching her sleep I felt like an intruder viewing a moment of private weakness. I wanted her to know I was there, to wake and pick up her mantle of strength and share her vitality with me. And there were some questions that wanted answering.

Gently I touched her wrist, and for one brief horrifying moment she did not respond. Then she drew in a quick breath and fluttered her eyelids.

"Mary Rebeccah! How lovely to see you," Life immediately returned to her face, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

"Thank you, Vicky. I'm glad to see you, too. How are things going?"

She pushed her glasses back up her nose and began chatting about her morning's events. Her monologue touched on subjects ranging from the geranium arrangements in the dining hall to Mrs. Carlson's invitation to view the slides from her trip to the Bahamas to the possibility of a declaration of an independent Palestinian state. When she had finished her oration she asked me how my research was going.

"Not well," I confessed. "I'm not sure I'm cut out for academia."

"Nonsense, Dear," she told me playfully slapping my arm. "You're just going through a little slump. You've been through a lot lately. Its only to be expected." She looked at me concerned. "Have you heard from your father lately?"

"Dad?" I grunted. Presumably she meant in reference to his recent polemic regarding what he delicately referred to as my foolish waste of time and money. "Yes, I heard from Dad. He wanted me to tell Mom to stop sending his name to bulk junk mail warehouses."

The silver haired woman looked at me quizzically.

"Mom's latest harassment tactic. She fills out every customer satisfaction survey she comes across with his name and address. Often she'll fill out identical surveys with his name slightly different on each one so that he gets entered on their computer multiple times. They send him junk mail. They sell his name to other outfits who send him more junk mail. Last month Mom was on a plane to New Orleans on her book tour and found a magazine that caters to hotel owners. She filled out one of those survey cards with his name and ticked every box requesting further promotional materials. Now he's getting junk mail from paper goods suppliers, textile companies, food services, cleaning products distributors, the works. Friday the post office delivered over ten pounds of mail to his door."

"Oh dear."

"Quite."

"And what did your mother have to say?"

"I haven't been able to get a hold of her. Not that I've been trying all that hard," I admitted. "I'm not sure I have a current phone number for her."

"I'm sorry you're having such a difficult time with your parents, Mary Rebeccah," she frowned sympathetically, "I was raised to value ones family over everything else." I winced inwardly. This from a woman who had outlived all her own family. She must have sensed my discomfort over the topic. "But you know, don't you," she added squeezing my hand, "friends are the family one chooses for ones self."

All this talk of family reminded me of the reason for my visit. "Oh! I nearly forgot. I was able to make it out to Stockton yesterday afternoon." I reached into the back pocket of my second day jeans and drew out the list.

"That's wonderful, Dear!" she perked up excitedly. "Were you able to find the house?"

I nodded. "The directions you gave me were spot on. I got a little confused just west of town where you said that horse farm was? Its gone now. Replaced by a shopping center by the same name."

"That's too bad. My brother and I always enjoyed giving the ponies carrots from our lunches on our way to school. I hate to think of Starburst and Dancer's pasture being replaced by another Pick 'n Save."

"Actually, I think it was a Walmart," I reflected. She gave her hand a flick as if to say it was all the same to her. She motioned for me to go on. "But yes, I did find it."

"And?"

"And from what I saw it appears to be in pretty good condition. Very dusty. A few cracks in the walls from the last earthquake, but no structural damage I don't think. Whoever built the place did a very good job. There are some nasty plumbing problems on the first floor, though."

Vicky nodded. "Yes, we always did have problems with the toilets. They were a very new thing when they were installed. The family should probably have waited until the technology was more firmly established, but my great uncle Nick was always keen to be the first to embrace every new invention." I felt a cold shiver at the mention of the name 'Nick'. In my mind I saw the black haired five year old with the quick temper. "I remember the reaction of the neighbors," she went on. "They were all saying that the old man must have completely lost his mind. The ladies in the garden club were whispering amongst themselves that he was turning the most beautiful mansion in the valley into one big outhouse and that we would all be driven out by the smell. They were wrong, of course, but the plumbing did fail rather more often than the later models did.

"Dear, are you all right? You look pale. you didn't sleep at the university again last night, did you?"

"Vicky, did you say 'Nick'?"

"That's right. He was one of my grandmother's brothers. She had three. I never met Jarrod or Heath, but Nick was still running the ranch well into his seventies when I was just a little girl."

My head began to spin. Jarrod. The mother had referred to the elder boy by that name. "Your great-grandmother. Her name was Victoria?" I ventured, feeling queazy.

"Yes. I was named after her. But I'm sure I told you that before." Of course! That was it. The names must have been sitting in my subconscious. Relief swept over me. It WAS just an overactive imagination. "Did you find my secret hiding place?" Vicky asked eagerly.

"No," I apologized. "I needed to get back to do some work. I didn't have time to check out the upstairs. Next time I go I promise I'll have a look."

"Thank you. I would appreciate that, because I believe I left something very valuable there. Something that means a lot to me. Even if I do donate the house and furniture to the historical society I don't wish to part with this particular item."

"What is it?" I asked, my curiosity peaked.

The old woman smiled enigmatically. "You'll just have to go and find out, won't you?"

Reflecting on the dodgy plumbing, I girded myself and ventured down into the apartment building's basement. After a moment of fumbling with the padlock, I opened the cage full of Jay's belongings and dug around for the camping equipment. I tried to avoid looking directly at the sculptures that so perfectly expressed the loneliness I had felt this past year, but I couldn't quite escape the aura of grief. His work was so beautifully poignant. I gathered his unhappy childhood provided much of the manure that fertilized his magnificent talent. Was it worth it? If he had grown up in a family like the one I envisioned in the house, would he still have been able to produce such masterpieces? Finally, my hand lit upon the desired object, and I withdrew it, locking up the cage behind me with all the memories contained in it in the dark cellar.

The portable latrine would not fit in the saddle bags, so I lashed it to the seat behind me and rumbled down the road. I felt prepared to handle whatever the day threw at me. If I chanced to have any more visions, well, they seemed pretty harmless. There were worse things than hallucinating a happy family. Last Thanksgiving with my own family for instance. I will not go into the details. Suffice it to say that Nick and Jarrod's lunchtime spat was nothing compared to the vicious melees that took place every time three or more of the Reilly clan gathered. The older boy's taunting was designed merely to stir a reaction out of his excitable little brother. When people in my family fought they were out for blood.

I drove the fifty odd miles south to Stockton, and was about to turn at the Walmart when I remembered I had brought nothing to drink. The water from the kitchen pump looked fine, but not wanting to take my chances I pulled into the lot of the discount chain and went inside to buy a gallon of spring water. At the checkout counter I cursed myself when I realized I had brought no cash. The sign on the register plainly stated "No checks or credit cards accepted for purchases under five dollars." That ruled out my dollar eight jug. On a sudden inspiration I went to the cleaning supplies aisle and picked out some paper towels, cleaning rags, a broom, dust pan, furniture polish, sponges, latex gloves and oil soap specially formulated for cleaning fine woodwork. I slapped down my Visa card confident that I would eventually find a way to pay off the bill and rolled my purchases outside to the bike. It was quite a trick stowing all that stuff on the hog. I ended up squeezing most of it into the left saddlebag with only the water and the broom in the right one. The water was heavy enough that I didn't fear it flying out, what with the long broom handle preventing me from fastening the cover. The weight distribution was awkward, but not intractably so.

The house was exactly where I'd left it. I was horrified to find that not only had I left the key in the lock, I had not even closed the door in my haste to leave four days ago. I felt terrible, but it had not rained, and the house did not appear to have suffered any damage. If anything, it appeared in better condition than it had before. The ancient white paint seemed somehow less peeled, the ivy less choking, and the eastern sun shined through the open doorway like a welcome. I unloaded my supplies, leaving them in a pile on the porch while I dug out the camera. "Say cheese!" I said, snapping a photo from the front.

I hesitated a moment before crossing the threshold. "Here goes," I thought, and stepped inside. The house was quiet, and I breathed a sigh of relief. I walked through the foyer and into the parlor, looking all around. The lantern I had kicked over two days past lay on its side on the floor, its batteries burned out. No whispers of conversation stirred the air, no ghosts. It was just an empty old house, nothing more, I nodded to myself while biting my lip.

I stepped out again and brought in an armload of cleaning supplies. There was still the upstairs to survey, but I felt I owed the house a little tidying. To make up for leaving the door open like that. Besides, I had all day. The upstairs could wait. Not quite sure where to begin, I picked up the broom and started sweeping. The floor, in contrast to the wallpaper was very plain. I supposed it had been intended to be covered with rugs. If so, the rugs were probably rolled up in storage along with the furniture, assuming of course they were still intact.

As the straw brushed across the floor, the shadow of a floral pattern slowly appeared where the dust was swept away. "Here we go again," I thought, bristling. As if sensing my apprehension, the vision faded away. The house seemed to sigh an apology. I was almost disappointed. "That's OK." I said out load. "I suppose I don't really mind going crazy that badly. Just give me a little time to get used to the idea. Deal?" My voice echoed off the walls as I spoke, the leaving the word "deal" hanging in the air with the dust that had flown up from the broom. The pattern did not return to the floor, but the room did appear to brighten a little, as if some small amount of sunshine were filtering through the boarded up windows. That was a kind of hallucination I could deal with. I continued sweeping until a had a large pile of dirt in the middle of the floor. I loaded up the dust pan several times, tossing the waste out the front door.

The sweeping done I grabbed a cloth, the oil soap and polish and started on the woodwork. I could practically hear the wood gratefully slurping up the polish, and it rewarded me by gleaming a thanks as I drew the rag across its surface. "You're welcome!" I said, smiling, actually enjoying my work. This was better than Tetris. Jay was always praising the psychological benefits of physical labor, and I guessed there was something to it. It was so relaxing that I didn't even flinch when the hand I saw before me was not my own clumsy yellow gloved one but a fine fingered black hand attached to a white jacketed arm. I wondered dreamily if I had suddenly transformed into the servant I remembered seeing, but then the arm moved on while I stood still. It seemed the apparition had appeared right where I stood and continued on. He was quite good. His practiced arm worked much more efficiently and effectively than mine did, and while the woodwork he polished had been tended to more recently than mine, I could see the difference made by a master of the trade. I have heard people speak disparagingly of the work of housekeepers and the like, but as a person who has difficulty keeping up with my own dishes, I admire a man who can keep a house like this looking so good.

And it did look good. Every bit of crystal in the chandelier gleamed in the sunlight, painting refracted rainbows on the walls. The wallpaper itself had none of the fingerprints I would have expected in a house with young children. The banister in the foyer shone invitingly, promising an exciting ride to anyone daring enough to straddle it and slide down. It was sure tempting. Apparently I was not the only one who found it so, for as I stood at the base of the stairs wondering whether the one hundred years older railing would support my weight, a small black haired figure whooshed down and through me, landing with a loud "whump!" on the floor behind me.

"Mister Nick!" the black servant exclaimed. "You know better than to go sliding down that banister! Your father will tan your hide if he catches you doing that. 'Specially with you making that racket while your Momma's trying to rest. And your new little sister."

The little boy stood up and brushed himself off. "You ain't gonna tell on me, are you Silas?" the rascal asked, not terribly concerned.

"I won't have to tell on you, Mister Nick," the man scolded, "Not if you keep that up and wake the baby, I won't. Or if you get your neck broke neither. No, I 'spect your father will be able to figure that out all by himself. You best get on outside with your brother, now. Your father said he wanted you over in the stables." The little fellow bounded part way back up to grab his hat which had fallen off during the ride, then came down more slowly.

Baby? I thought. Wow. That must be Vicky's grandmother. Andrea was her name, I thought. No, not Andrea. Something a little more ethereal. Auburn? No, Audra. Yes, that was it. Having already surrendered to the illusion, I couldn't resist the temptation to run up the stairs to have a peek. Though I knew from experience I could pass right through him (or was it the other way around?) I made a point of skirting around the boy on the stairs. When I reached the top I found myself in a long hallway with doors on either side. Good Lord, there were a lot of rooms up here! What did a family of four--no, make that five now--need with so many bedrooms? And in which one was the mother and her new baby girl?

I decided to start at one end of the hall quietly opening the doors one door at a time to have a peek. There was only one problem: I could turn the knob and feel the door swing open, but in the phantom world the door remained shut. What a pain in the butt! I reached forward experimentally, and saw my hand go through the door until it looked like my arm stopped at the wrist. Then closing my eyes and taking a deep breath, I poked my head through what looked like a very solid piece of wood. Success! When I opened my eyes I saw a good sized room, very tidily kept. The bed was made with a dark green bedspread with gold tassels at the corners. Beside it stood a little table with a couple of books, a brush and a comb on it. Against the walls there were a dresser, a small desk, a wardrobe and a set of shelves crowded with more books and a carefully organized rock collection. One of the children's rooms I surmised.

The next door down led to a guest room. Lovely, but uninteresting. I went on to the next. This was the bathroom. No toilet yet, just a huge bathroom, divided into a sitting area with a wash stand and a little couch and a bathing area with a beautiful, huge, footed bathtub and a chair next to it. Not terribly practical, I reflected. Unless I was missing some fundamental fixture like the pump in the kitchen, someone would have to haul the hot water up every time a person wanted to draw a bath. "Let's hear it for servants!" I said aloud.

A tiny peek at the next room was enough to tell me this was not it either, but it was sufficiently interesting to draw me a little farther inside. The dresser was strewn with marbles, shells, a small knife, some kind of animal skull and a rattlesnake rattle. The messed burgundy bedspread showed evidence of having been jumped upon recently. Something gray and ratty poked out from under the pillow. Further examination led me to conclude it was a baby's blanket, much abused but obviously still loved, and carefully hidden away lest someone see it or, horror of horrors, throw it away. The thought of the tough little rogue, for I was sure this was the room of the younger boy, still cherishing a blankie brought a smile to my face for some reason. However, this still was not the room I wanted. I made my way back to the hallway and closed that door as well then thought for a moment before choosing another. Aha. That door on the other side of the hallway right at the end was a bit farther away from the other doors. This suggested a larger room. Most likely the master bedroom. Of course. How could I not have noticed before? I tiptoed over and cracked the door just a touch.

She lay on a large four poster bed covered only by a sheet and a light blanket. The curtains were drawn to keep the light from disturbing her rest or that of the infant in the bassinet. Seeing the lady of the house asleep reminded me momentarily of her namesake back in my real world. They were both small women, fine boned, but I suspected strong willed. I certainly knew MY Victoria was, and this one had all the markings of it too. Even in her sleep she exuded vitality and strength, just as Vicky had before the stroke.

I creeped over to the side of the bed in the hopes of getting a better look. I knew they could neither see nor hear me, but I kept perfectly silent. As quiet as a mouse, though I doubted any mouse would have the audacity to invade this palace. The woman snored quietly, her face a picture of bliss and pride in her accomplishment. I turned to the bassinet. How long ago? I wondered. I had been gone for four days. Was it four days here as well? If I had stayed just a little while longer, would I have seen her go into labor? Giving birth?

The baby certainly looked like a newborn. Her face was pink and squished, her head a little pointed on top, and her hair was surprisingly blonde. Of course Tom, the father, was blonde as well. I looked back at the sleeping mother. Her hair lay on her pillow in a long black braid. Who would have thought she could have a child so different from herself? Reflecting on Mom and myself, I supposed it was not so odd at that. The tiny girl slept, as oblivious to my presence as her mother was. Her eyelashless lids danced slightly open in infantile REM. What does a baby dream? I reached down as if to touch her, but my fingers passed right through her.

The baby's eyelids stopped fluttering and opened wide to reveal irises of the deepest blue. She threw her little arms out in a startled posture, and her whole eensy body tensed and became stiff. Her face grew red and contorted, her eyes squeezed tightly shut again, and her mouth opened wide drawing a preparatory breath. I snatched my hand back, but it was too late. Oh Jeez, I thought. Now I've done it. I've gone and woken the baby. "WAAAAAAAAA!" wailed tiny Audra, shaking.

The mother roused immediately at he daughter's distress, and a middle aged Mexican woman hurried into the room. "I am soooo sorry," I apologized, backing toward the fireplace. "I didn't mean to wake her. I was just having a look, that's all."

"It's all right, Rita," Victoria said lifting the yellow haired baby out of the bassinet. "I can take care of her." The baby continued to cry uncontrollably.

"Signora Barkley, you should not be out of bed so soon. The doctor said you needed more rest. Let me take her. I'll change her diaper and bring her back to you."

"Nonsense, I'm perfectly fine." She lay the tiny unhappy bundle on her shoulder so that the little head nestled right against her neck, and shifted her weight from foot to foot in a sort of bouncing, rocking rhythm. "There, there, Audra," she whispered, patting her back gently. "Don't cry. Mother's here." Gradually the baby settled, succumbing to the calming dance her mother performed.

"But the doctor said..."

"Doctor Baker has never given birth himself, Rita. I know my limits, and I'm nowhere near them. Why, when Jarrod was born by this time I was up and preparing dinner."

The servant woman was unconvinced. "Were not Mr. and Mrs. Miles looking after you then? I can hardly believe they would have allowed that."

The lady of the house did not care to be contradicted. A look of irritation briefly flashed across her face, but then her expression softened, remembering. She blinked a couple of times. "You're right, of course," she admitted. "And with Nick I had had such a difficult pregnancy I was glad for a week of rest, but not this time. The delivery was easy, and Audra has been a perfect angel. I'm sure I can cope, but I will let you know if I need some help." The perfect angel now rested calmly against her chest, her limbs once again limp and relaxed.

"Can I get you anything, Signora Barkley? Some warm milk, perhaps while you nurse the baby?"

"Thank you, that would be lovely." Excused, Rita left the room, and Victoria carried her now calm but awake daughter to a little table by the washstand. She set the baby down on a thick cloth and began to change her diaper. From my vantage point I could see that the baby was very new, indeed. Her umbilical cord was not yet even completely dried out. It stuck up like a dark bluish yellow worm from her belly, tied about a half inch up with a thick piece of dark thread. I tried to remember how old my stepsister's son had been when his blackened stump fell off. A week? Two? Audra could well have been born the day I ran out. Her mother certainly had looked as if she were about to explode.

Victoria washed the uncomplaining child and rediapered her, setting the soiled cloth on a silver tray. She picked Audra up again and walked over to a cushioned rocking chair. As she sat down to nurse, the light brown woman reappeared with the milk.

"Thank you, Rita. You can set it down right there." She indicated the little table between her and the bed. On her way out of the room she removed the tray containing Audra's parcel.

I decided to take one last look at the baby in the mother's lap. Surely I couldn't have actually wakened her. Babies wake suddenly all the time, or so I'd heard. Maybe there was a draft, or she just realized she was hungry. However, as soon as I entered the tiny girl's line of sight she began to scream again. Victoria tried to offer her the breast, but she pulled away and hollered all the louder, and I backed off. Rita reentered the room.

"Is something wrong?" the maid asked.

Perplexed, the black haired mother shook her head. "I don't understand it," she said. "I've never seen her act this way before. Up to now she's been so calm. I hope she's not sick..."

"Would you like me to ask Mr. Barkley to send for the doctor?"

"Not just yet, Rita," she shook her head. "I suppose it might just be a little gas," she frowned. The baby howled on, nearly drowning out her voice, and Victoria placed her over her shoulder again and began to pat her on the back.

I decided that now was probably a good time to leave, and scooted out the doorway walking right through Rita. Being a ghost in this house was kind of cool. The moment I had left the room, Audra quieted. "Well what do you know?" I could still hear the mother's voice through the door. "What a good girl you are, Audra. I certainly hope you aren't developing the colic the way Nick did. I don't know if I could take another five months of constant screaming."

I was relieved that the baby had stopped crying, but puzzled, too. Could she actually see me? And was I really all that frightening to look at? Or was it gas after all? Either way I figured it best to stay out of the infant's path for a while. Closing the door behind me, I remembered something else. This was Vicky's great-grandmother's room. The one with the secret little cubby in the fireplace. I whacked my palm against my forehead. Gaaaaah! Well, there was no way I was going back in there any time soon. Vicky would have to wait a little longer for her treasure. How I would explain the reason for the delay I hadn't a clue.

The downstairs areas were in much better condition, and I found more rooms that I had overlooked during my brief visit a few days before. Little visions came and went, showing me details of what they were for as I yo-yoed forward and backward through time. There were servants quarters, a library/drawing room with built in bookcases, an office, and off the foyer was what looked like a rec room with gun racks along the walls that had space for enough artillery to outfit a small cavalry unit. I dutifully took notes on all of these before sitting down on the dining room floor for a bite of lunch.

I mused over the contrast between my pb & j and the more elaborate meals that had been the norm in this lavish environment. I would have to make a point of bringing something more suitable to eat the next time I came. Next time? Well, why not? There was after all still the little hiding place to find, and it seemed a shame to leave the house in such a sad condition. I had already started cleaning up a bit, but there was much much more to do. I suppose it was rather futile. Restoration would add even more debris to the mess, but I couldn't see just letting it all go until the historical society got around to making repairs. Taking a couple of swigs from the jug of water, I considered all the work that I could possibly do. Plumbing, electricity and glazing (there were a couple of broken windows on the upper floor) were all things best left until later and to people who knew what they were doing. I could certainly clear up the fallen plaster and broken glass, and any care I took of the surviving woodwork would help protect it from abuse it might suffer at the hands of repair crews. The wallpaper looked more yellowed and less vibrant than it did in the visions. Was there some way to clean it somewhat without ruining it altogether? And the downstairs bathroom, yow! Even aside from the debacle of a toilet, the floor needed a lot of work.

Thinking of the bathrooms made me conscious of an urge that had been building up over the past hour. I left the remains of my sandwich, but brought the water along to wash my hands. Outside gray clouds were gathering overhead, and the air felt sticky and damp. Making sure the key was in my pocket, I closed the door behind me then went to untie the latrine from the back of the bike. Lightening flashed across the sky, followed closely by a crash of thunder. I hastily made use of the object, then moved the Harley up onto the porch. Getting the huge beast up the stairs was mighty tricky, but Jay would have appreciated me bringing his beloved Betty out of the rain. The skies opened just as I made the last step, and I rushed back inside.

Something was different.

What it was, I couldn't tell. Had the lighting changed? I walked back into the dining room. My lunch was still there on the floor. Distracted from my hunger, I stuffed the remainder back into the bag and listened carefully. There was a light hum that grew louder and louder. Pretty soon I could make out lots of voices. And music being played by string instruments, a chamber orchestra if I wasn't mistaken. Now that didn't make sense. Why would there be music and lots of visitors in a house with a brand new baby? People generally kept their newborns away from too many people in the first month or so, especially, I would have thought, in the days before modern medicine. And when did they all arrive? I hadn't been outside for more than a few minutes. The noise seemed to be coming mostly from the living room.

There were a lot of people milling about, nibbling canapés. There was some kind of party going on. In the middle of a crowd of people stood the woman of the house holding a baby that was considerably larger than the one I seemed to have woken earlier that day. From the mass of blond hair and amazingly blue eyes, however it was obviously Audra, only a good bit older. Now that was a bit of a shock. Up until that point time had seemed to flow at the normal rate, but for some reason it must have taken a jump of a couple months. Possibly more. The baby wore a long gown of white satin, and the people around were commenting on how beautiful and alert she was and how well she had behaved in church.

The little girl certainly was alert. She looked around at all her admirers positively beaming. One woman commented at how well she was holding her head up.

"Why she's taking everything in isn't she, the little darling!" the woman exclaimed as the baby craned her neck around. I panicked a moment as her eyes moved in my direction. That's all they needed, to have this lovely scene interrupted by another sudden unexplainable screaming fit, but the baby's gaze continued uninterrupted around the room. She did not appear to notice me any more than the other people there did. It must have just been a newborn thing, I reasoned.

More at ease, I milled around the room checking out the guests and listening to their conversations. They seemed to come from all walks of life. These Barkleys did not appear to choose their friends exclusively on the basis of wealth and social stature. There were other ranchers, shopkeepers, clergy and laborers alike all come to congratulate them on the occasion of the little girl's Christening. All were treated as honored guests in this house, with the possible exception of those who worked there, and even they were welcome to come in, express their best wishes and have a nibble and a sip before returning to their duties.

A man similar in looks to Tom Barkley, only a tad shorter and broader in the shoulder approached Mrs. B. He put his arm around her shoulders and gave her a kiss on the cheek.

"Jim!" the woman exclaimed, "I'm glad you've arrived! Tom said you had offered to drive the boys back from the church. Did you have any trouble on the way here?" Before allowing him to answer, she introduced him to her friends. "This is Jim Barkley, Audra's godfather, and Tom's brother. Jim, here are Robert and Ethel Walker, Wally and Jenny Miles, and Mrs. Edward Tuitt." All parties nodded a polite greeting, after which Jim addressed his sister-in-law's question.

"No, no trouble at all, and actually it was your eldest son who did the driving." Victoria raised her eyebrows in surprise and amusement. "He's getting to be a regular young man, that boy of ours." The man obviously took a possessive pride in his young nephew.

"Well I suppose that explains the delay," the woman mused. "Did he hit every bump on the road back?"

"Oh, I think he negotiated them quite well," the man smiled in response. "He anticipated all the trouble spots and approached them slowly and carefully."

"I'll say slowly!" huffed little Nick who had appeared with his brother out of nowhere. "I thought we'd never get home! If uncle Jim had let ME drive we would have been here HOURS ago," he exaggerated.

"Perhaps," Jarrod responded, "provided you didn't get us killed, but I think we would have left our breakfasts out on the road."

Victoria cleared her throat. "Jarrod, don't you think you might have chosen your words a little more carefully?"

"Yeah," his little brother chirped loudly. "It's not polite to talk about puking at a party!" Mother and brother glared at him.

"What?" Nick asked defensively wrinkling his brow.

Jim chuckled in response, putting his hand on the boy's neck. "Come on, Little Man! How about we wash up and get ourselves a little something to eat before lunch?" The boy brightened and turned to follow his uncle. The man looked back purposefully at Victoria. "Then I want to have a turn holding my god-daughter!"

The mother ruffled her older son's hair with her free hand. "So you impressed Uncle Jim with your driving skills?" she asked proudly.

"Yes, Mother," he said. Then he whispered confidentially, "I didn't tell him Father lets me do it all the time. You don't think that's deceitful, do you? He really thought he was giving me an extra treat letting me hold the reins"

"I think tactful is more the word."

Silas entered the room in his smart butler's livery tinging on a delicate silver triangle. The guests began milling into the dining room.

"Jarrod, why don't you..." Victoria began, motioning to the pitcher at the far end of the foyer.

"I know, Mother," the boy politely interrupted. "I'll go wash my hands before I sit down to eat."

While the guests enjoyed their sumptuous repast, I got down on my knees to scrub the wainscoting. I could almost smell the food on the tables, and my stomach growled, no longer content with the peanut butter I had provided it. I comforted myself by singing a bit from the Jute Mill Song, a tune on one of my many folk CDs. "Oh, dear me! The world is ill divide-d. Them that wo--rks the har-dest are the least provide-d!" Looking at the tall blonde man at the head of the main table I added, "No offense." I wasn't after all in a position to criticize. Tom Barkley's hands bore a good deal more sign of hard work then those of anyone I knew personally, with the possible exception of Jay, that is. Furthermore, despite my frugal fare I'm sure there were many who would have envied my lifestyle. Tutoring the mathematically hopeless and pushing equations about in my brain were not exactly physically taxing, despite the permanent lump I'd developed on my scalp from banging my head against the wall in frustration with both aspects of my occupation.

Don't get me wrong, I have as much respect for humanities types as for people in more numerically oriented fields. However, those who had not been able to accumulate enough mathematical background in high school to test into calculus or out of the math requirement entirely were particularly difficult to teach. Jay for instance. I have never met anyone so absolutely brilliant in some ways and yet so positively hopeless when it came to figures. Trying to teach him anything was like pulling teeth the old fashioned way. No novacaine, and nearly as dangerous for the dentist as for the patient. Especially when the patient outweighs you by nearly eighty pounds. He never actually struck out at me. I would not have tolerated that from any boyfriend, no matter how good looking, talented or otherwise kind. But he expressed himself in a very physical way. When he became excited, angry or frustrated, his normally wide, expansive gestures gained an added speed and force that sent me ducking for cover.

Emotional states only exaggerated what I'm convinced was some kind of underlying psychophysiologic deficit. He did not appear to have any notion of how much space he actually took up, seemingly having developed his body awareness by the age of five, and not altered it to accommodate his much larger adult stature. His fine motor control was fantastic, however. He had no difficulty setting tiny stones and making miniscule adjustments to perfect his artwork, yet on the dance floor he was downright dangerous.

Kind of like that little black haired guy running around, I observed. Once the luncheon had been cleared away, the dancing had started. Nick was not altogether keen on the idea of partnering up with a little girl who had been tailing after him like a puppy, preferring to grab hands with some other little boys his age and frolic in a more enthusiastic manner. Mrs. Barkley just managed to get a hold of him before he went careening into Mrs. Edward Tuitt, and sent him stomping off to a chair in the foyer until such time as he was able to contain himself.

"Mother," Jarrod asked, "could I dance with Audra?"

The woman smiled at her eldest son. "For a little while Jarrod, if you think you can hold her carefully enough. I think that would be very sweet."

"Oh, I'm sure I can manage." Victoria handed her little daughter over, helping her big brother position himself just right to provide maximum support. The boy gently cradled his sister in his arms with her cheek resting softly on his right shoulder. Although she was not a terribly large burden for an adult to carry, the ten year old was forced to lean backward slightly in order to see around her bulbous head.

"Are you sure you can handle her?" his mother asked mildly concerned.

The boy nodded, staggering only slightly. "She's as light as a feather." He made his way into the living room and fell into line at the dance. His mother followed close enough to be ready in case of emergency, but far enough behind to show confidence in her son. The boy stayed in perfect step as he twirled his tiny partner along with the music. After a little while, just as Audra was starting to squirm, Uncle Jim tapped him of the shoulder. The boy graciously surrendered his partner, and Victoria turned her attention to her younger son alone in the foyer.

Having spurned the more comfortable chair to which he had been banished, Nick sat on the bottom stair, elbows planted on his knees and fists squishing his fat cheeks into little mounds under his angry eyes. Slight changes in his posture, a shifting of weight, a hunching of the shoulders, indicated that he noticed his mother's approach, but he did not look up or in any way acknowledge her presence. She sat herself down on the steps next to her brooding son and put her hand on his shoulder. The boy stiffened, but did not jerk away.

"You were having a lot of fun with Carl and Adam, weren't you?" she stated rather than asked. The boy nodded his head, but did not say a word. "And you're disappointed that I won't let you play while everyone else is having such a good time." She waited for a response, but he merely took a deep breath and exhaled loudly through his nose. "Even when we don't have guests I won't have you running in the house, Nick. I suppose its very exciting for you to have all our neighbors here, and its only natural that you might feel a little swept away, but I can't have you running around and crashing into people. Do you understand?' The boy nodded into his fists. "I would like a verbal answer, Nick."

"Yes, Mother."

She smoothed the skirt of her dress across her lap, and arching her eyebrows she said in a softer tone, "Now, I was hoping to have at least one dance with one of the handsomest young boys in the Valley, however if you would like to go upstairs, change your clothes and go outside to play I think that would be all right." The boy's scowl split into a grin. He kissed his mother on the cheek, leaped to his feet, and started bounding up the stairs.

"Walking, please, Nick!" she called up after him, and his footsteps slowed ever so slightly. The woman closed her eyes and sighed as she patted back her black hair. She lifted herself to her feet and rejoined her guests.

She was not long amid the crowd before she felt a tugging at her skirt. There was Nick again, beaming widely, and still outfitted in his fine, though slightly rumpled Sunday clothes. He gave an elegant little bow, and his enchanted partner joined him in the five-year-old's approximation of the dance.

My friend was sitting birdlike and alert in her same over-stuffed institutional chair. Another woman, dough faced and about twenty years her junior sat on the corner of the bed fingering the floral brocade bed spread. It was one of the many compromises the retirement home had made with her. In the other parts of Saint Agnes' the residents furnished their rooms with their own belongings, but the acute care wing was designed as temporary accommodations for residents who became sick while living there.

They had strict rules regarding what belongings could be kept in these hospital clean rooms. Patients were encouraged to return to their regular apartments as soon as possible, and part of that encouragement meant making the facility less than homey. No one usually spent more than a week or so in the health care facility. One month, and the management got mighty antsy. Those who were not expected to improve within that time were gently requested to find accommodation at a more suitable institution.

Ms Victoria Chadwick was going on eleven months in acute care, but no one had dared suggest such a thing to her. In addition, her room was filled with all sorts of forbidden items: personal mementos, antique vases kept filled with fresh flowers, some pieces of sculpture, even an original Charles Russell oil painting depicting a cowboy riding a bronco that was probably worth about as much as the rest of the furnishings combined. There were definite benefits to being the sole heir of the Barkley fortune.

No doubt the administrators of Saint Agnes' expected the exclusive retirement community to be remembered in my friend's will, and they were probably right. I imagine Vicky intended to leave a tidy sum to the home, but probably with some conditions on how the money was meant to be spent that they would find less than appealing. Hosting art exhibitions comes to mind; Vicky was always complaining about the lack of cultural events that took place on the grounds. I could picture the management having a cow learning that she had left them one hundred thousand dollars on the condition that they use it exclusively to hold an annual Rhythm and Roots music festival or something else equally inane in their eyes and delightful in her own.

"Come in! Come in, Mary Rebeccah!" my friend greeted me. Her other guest eyed me and my motorcycle helmet contemptuously.

"Hello, Mrs. Carlson," I said politely. "How were the Bahamas?"

She was somewhat mollified by my interest in her most recent trip with the "Steam Trunk Trio" a group of nominally three, though sometimes as many as eight, senior traveling companions who liked to spend as much of their retirement overseas as possible while still maintaining a home where they could rest between trips and show off their souvenirs. "It was just lovely," she replied. "The weather was beautiful and we took a pirate tour of the caves around one of the islands. You're welcome to join us for the slide show tonight. I've just been trying to convince your aunt here to come. I'm sure you two will find it most entertaining. I got one picture of Delilah Hawthorne wearing an eye patch and holding a jeweled saber between her teeth. Its just too precious for words!" Gawd, no, I thought to myself.

It was quite usual for people here to refer to Vicky as my "aunt." Officially, only fellow residents, clergy, and family were allowed to visit people in the acute care wing. Most knew we weren't even distantly related, but they were happy to go along with the charade for the sake of the popular ninety-three year old woman.

"I appreciate your invitation, truly I do," Vicky protested, "but I'm afraid I've been very tired lately, and congested as well. I hope I'm not coming down with anything." She managed a worried look on her face, but she looked perfectly healthy to me.

Mrs. Carlson's response was immediate. "Oh I certainly hope not! Lance said he thought there might be a bug going around, and with our trip to Taipei coming up, catching a head cold would be positively horrible. Imagine all those takeoffs and landings with a my sinuses all congested!" She made haste to leave the room trying as discreetly as possible not to flinch as my friend delivered a deliberate sneeze in her general direction.

"You wicked girl!" I scolded, completely appalled, once the other woman was out of earshot.

Vicky waved it off, not in the least contrite. "I've been trying to get rid of that biddy for the last half hour," she answered. "It's a pity I didn't think of it sooner. Now, was I hearing things, or didn't you mention having something for me?"

"There are no flies on you, are there?"

"Not until I'm dead and they're lowering me to my grave," she answered proudly. "And even then I plan to be so packed with embalming fluid they won't be able to stand the taste of me! Now, Dear, out with it! What have you found?" The old woman's eager eyes burned right through me in anticipation.

I reached inside the bag I had been hiding behind my back and pulled out a black lacquer box delicately patterned with gold leaf. "Is this what you were hoping I'd find?" As she looked down at the box she drew her palms to her cheeks and nodded ever so slightly.

"That's it," she whispered. She reached out a tentative finger toward it, then snatched it back before daring to touch the treasured item.

"It's all right, Silly. It is yours after all." Not waiting for her to reach out again, I placed the box in her trembling hands. When she had steadied a bit she ventured to open the lid, and the air was filled with a sweet, tinkling little tune completely unfamiliar to me. Once I had realized the master bedroom was no longer closed to me I had ventured upstairs to look around the fireplace, but met with no success. I had nearly given it up for lost when it I realized that it made no sense for Vicky, at the age of ten or younger to be housed in that glorious suite. Perhaps Victoria and Tom had shifted to one of the smaller rooms when it became time for one of the younger set to take over the running of the ranch. I remembered hearing on a museum tour of a n old dairy farm in my native Illinois that in those days it was common for the dowager couple to work out a contract with the heir apparent, surrendering the master bedroom along with their lands and duties in exchange for retirement quarters and a life of relative ease. I spent the rest of the afternoon searching every fireplace on the second floor until I found the one with the loose brick and the hidden box. Knowing how special it was to my friend, I put curiosity and temptation aside and vowed to let her be the first to open it.

Vicky closed her eyes and drew her lips into a flat smile of a sort that I could not tell whether it came from grief or bliss. Little wet lines formed where her eyelids met. She sat for several minutes just listening, two small tears creeping slowly down the maze of her wrinkled cheeks, and ancient fingers caressing the box, tracing a hairline crack I had not noticed before.

I was horrified. Had the box been damaged on the ride here? I thought I had been very careful, wrapping it in layers of clean rags to protect it during the ride, but there was a definite crack that went nearly all the way around. Perhaps that one pothole....

The woman slowly found her voice, though she could not seem to open her eyes. "How?" she began haltingly, "How did you..." She found it difficult to keep going. I braced myself, cursing myself for failing to protect her greatest treasure, and dreading the words that would follow. She looked up at me with those deep blue eyes so like her grandmother's, so piercing they could see through someone's soul. "How did you manage to fix it?"

Fix it? "What do you mean, Vicky?" I asked puzzled. Perhaps she was a little confused. Younger women and men than her have suffered occasional lapses. "I'm so sorry about the crack. Perhaps it can be glued..."

The white haired woman shook her head. "No, that's been there since I found it in that same fireplace when I was eight years old. Everyone was so excited; it was a prized possession of my great-grandmother and had been missing for years and years. How did you get the music to play?"

"I didn't," I confessed. "I didn't even know it was a music box until you opened it. Why? What happened to it?"

Vicky closed the lid and set the box down on her lap. "This box had been a gift," she began, "from my great-grandfather to his wife. He had been out of town on business the day their first son was born ahead of schedule. He felt terrible for not having been there to help her, and ran off and spent half the money he had earned on that trip to buy her a present, even though at that time he had little more than a piece of land and a few head of cattle to his name. She had been holding it when she heard he had been killed, and dropped it. It hadn't played since." When who was killed? The father or the son?

"We kept meaning to send it off to a clock maker in San Francisco, but never quite got around to it. Then came the War to End All Wars, and we moved to Washington to be near my father while he tried to help develop a plan for a workable peace. I had accidentally left the box in the cubby hole, and eventually forgot about it in the midst of all the other things going on. Unfortunately, our government rejected all Father's ideas and those of like minded individuals, and the resulting sanctions against Germany brought on another war more horrible than the first. We never moved back to the house, and I've never been able to bring myself to visit." She looked sadly at the broken box in her hands. "There are too many memories in those old walls."

"Good memories," I insisted, not knowing what else to say.

"Good memories, many of them," she nodded in agreement, the tears still forming in her eyes. "Some of them bad. Sometimes its the good memories that hurt the most." I understood all too well. It was hard enough remembering identifying Jason's body at the hospital, perfectly intact but for the head injury that cost him his life. At the time, shock had frozen my emotions into a haze. Harder still was thinking about the fun times we had shared, like cracking each other up at the Museum of Modern Art as we took turns describing the pieces we viewed in the most technical, esoteric, bullshit terms we could come up with, a crowd of glassy eyed tourists nodding in agreement with everything we said. Skinny-dipping in the reservoir, moonlight dinners on the roof of the mathematics building, the feel of his arms around me as we huddled before a campfire, and the time he came that close to admitting that he loved me were all things much too painful for me to allow myself to relive.

It had not occurred to me that my discovery might upset her. I had been hoping that good news would soften the blow of the other. Oddly enough, she faced my report on the condition of the mansion with equanimity. "I had expected as much," she admitted, "what with having left it abandoned all these years." When I told her my idea of taking off the summer from working on my thesis to work on the house, she was more than receptive. "Why, that would be wonderful!" she exclaimed. "I'm sure a little break will help your research in the long run, and I would be most gratified if you could do anything possible to ready the house for renovation." I couldn't bring myself to tell her the real reason why I wanted to keep visiting the house, that is, to keep tabs on the little family. She'd always respected me as a sound thinker, and I feared revealing my less than logically explainable experiences to her might lower me some in her eyes. In retrospect, I doubt she would have cared a hoot if I had seen dancing elephants in the front lawn; she was thrilled to have me at the house. She even insisted upon paying me a small salary for my efforts.

As, with the aid of her walker, she roused herself out of the chair and prepared to toddle down to the dining hall for the evening meal and I prepared to leave, I apologized for the sadness my giving her the box had brought her. "Oh, don't be ridiculous, Dear!" she slapped me on the arm. "I cannot begin to tell you how happy I am that you found it." I was not convinced. The pain I had seen in her eyes was genuine. "A little pain is not a bad thing," she responded. "It helps you know you're still alive. Besides, without it you can have no idea what true joy is." A very philosophical person, my friend.

Luckily, the storm on my second day there was atypical for the season, and the last one before the clouds disappeared entirely for the summer, so I didn't need to worry about the damage any further rains would be doing for some time. I cleaned up the debris in the upstairs bedrooms, and placed buckets in obvious trouble spots in the attic just in case.

Once I got used to the idea, I became quite confident moving around the characters in this ongoing drama. Confident enough to occasionally utter my own commentary on a particular situation. Sometimes I would stop my work and walk right up to one of them as he or she sat still reading or sipping coffee or going over papers in the office. I could put my head right up close and watch Jarrod's eyeballs move side to side as he read right through me. Were I so inclined I could have literally looked up his nose. I knew exactly where the black tar began behind Nick's ears even when he believed himself too far from his mother's side to be subject to such scrutiny. I did, however, have principles. While I do confess to being present for some rather personal moments, I tried to leave them as much privacy as any frequent welcome visitor would have afforded them. The marital bedroom in particular was sacrosanct, and I steered clear of the bathroom when it was in use. I tried not to stare when someone, thinking he was alone, picked his nose and hid the evidence on the underside of the table. The house appeared to appreciate my discretion, although at times it seemed to invite me to take a closer look at things than politeness would allow even a close relative under everyday conditions.

I was a bit confused at first by the occasional odd temporal jumps until I figured out the basic rule of time progression. As long as I was in the house, time progressed at the normal rate. Likewise, if I stepped outside for any length of time but left the door open there would be no change in the reference frame. However, once I stepped outside and shut the door, any amount of time could have been lost before I next opened it, even if it had just been shut for a brief moment. Only on rare occasions did I actually dare to spend the night in the house when the events of the day extended well into the dark hours, something that didn't happen all that often in the days before electricity. These people rose early in the morning and went to bed pretty much with the sun. Not once did I sleep there; my hold on reality was tenuous enough that I didn't trust I would be able to distinguish it from a dream, so I made a point of leaving the house when I became fatigued no matter what was going on at the time. There were however, times when I could not bring myself to shut the door completely when I left. On such occasions I would leave it slightly ajar with a couple rags keeping it slightly open then tie the knob to reduce the risk of anything coming in.

One such instance was the day the family received a telegram from Jarrod saying he was leaving college to serve in the Union Army. Tom and Victoria had stayed up well into the night discussing whether to try to talk him out of it. By this time, the family was influential enough to be able to pull the proper strings to keep their oldest son out of the war. The question was whether or not it was morally acceptable to pull them. In the end they decided that if it was truly Jarrod's will to serve there was little in all practicality they could do about it, save arrange to have him kidnaped and kept under lock and key until the war was over. Victoria somewhat reluctantly discarded that option, and the two spent another hour formulating their response: OUR PRAYERS ARE WITH YOU STOP... FOLLOW YOUR CONSCIENCE STOP...LOVE MOTHER FATHER NICK AND AUDRA STOP, although in all truth the latter two were not involved in the telegram's composition. The now ten year old Audra had skipped off to bed at the normal hour, unaware of the day's shocking news. Nick, who had also been sent to bed, stood uncharacteristically quiet and unnoticed behind the curtain which draped from the door post at the entrance to the living room, hanging on every word of their conversation.

It had been a long, hot day for me. I had spent all that morning forcing open the fireplace flues. A number of small animals had made their homes in the maze of chimneys, and I wanted to get them out so as to reduce the fire hazard. The temperature had gotten up into the mid nineties and I was not dressed for it. Already pooped out when the telegram arrived, I had forced myself to stay there until Tom and Victoria had gone to bed, and seeing the purposeful look on the younger brother's face I had a hard time tearing myself away. I ended up taking a room in Stockton for the night rather than risking an accident driving all the way back to Sacramento in my state.

When I arrived early the next morning, the house was in turmoil. Audra was crying, Rita was running up the stairs and there were doors slamming all over the place. Victoria was consulting with Silas at the base of the stairs.

"What time was it when you saw him?" she asked trying her mightiest to hold back the panic in her voice.

The servant shook his head "'Round about three in the morning I think it was when I heard Mr. Nick come down the back stairs." Silas was obviously distressed as well. "That's just a guess, Mrs. Barkley. I don't know right 'xac'ly when, only it felt like I'd slept a good while, but it wasn't near time to get up yet. He looked real startled when I came out of my room, then told me he'd got up for a bite to eat. I offered to make him something, but he said he'd just fix himself a sandwich from last night's roast and I should go back to bed. I'm so sorry, Mrs. Barkley. If I had any notion what he was up to I would have come and woke you and Mr. Barkley right away." The man was on the verge of tears.

"I know you would have, Silas," she responded, putting her arm around his shoulder, trying to comfort him.

"I should have stayed up and fixed him that sandwich myself. I just knew he was gonna leave crumbs on the table..." he started to choke up and couldn't go on.

"And I should have known he would have tried something like this. There's no use beating ourselves over the head. The important thing now is to find him before he gets too far."

One of the hands showed up at the open door as Mr. Barkley was coming down the stairs. "I've just checked the stables, Tom. Coco's gone and that new saddle you got Nick for his birthday."

The tall blond man scowled, but did not look surprised. "I'd suspected as much, Sam. Go ahead and get Diablo for me, and I want every able man ready to ride ready in five minutes time."

"We're already on it. Logan is saddling up the black as we speak."

Tom stopped to embrace his wife before heading out the door. "Don't worry, Victoria. We'll catch up to him." He managed a half smile. "That horse of his is still half green. Chances are Coco's thrown him by now and he's walking home rubbing his backside."

She hugged him back, squeezing with all her might, as if her very life depended on absorbing the optimism he professed.

It was a long day.

Like Silas, I found myself dusting and polishing the same things over and over again, wanting to stay occupied, but at the same time not wanting to miss a moment should the boy return. Audra finally calmed down some, and spent the day in her room playing quietly with her dolls. At lunch time no one was hungry, and the black servant did not seem the least bit insulted when the dishes came back to the kitchen untouched.

Finally, just at dusk, the front door flew open and in stumbled the tall, black haired youth, muddy and soaking wet, followed by his father.

"Oh! Thank Heaven!" cried Victoria rushing to embrace her gangly son. "Silas!" she called, "Go prepare a bath for Nick!"

"Yes Ma'am!" the old man responded with enthusiasm, his white teeth positively gleaming from within his wide smile.

"What was the meaning of you running off like that?!" the mother's relief was riven with anger. "You had us all terrified!"

"I left a note..."

"Don't tell me about notes!" She held up a crumpled piece of paper. "I would have expected you to have the guts to come to me and your father about this."

"I didn't think you would approve."

"And you were right! War is not some kind of game, Nick, filled with pomp and glory. It's men--living, breathing, thinking, feeling men-- killing each other. Its dysentery and frostbite, fear and hunger, blood and death."

"I've seen death before, Mother." The youth's eyes were dark. "Those cattle rustlers..." his voice trailed off.

"And I cannot tell you how sorry I am for that." Tom picked up. "A boy your age should never have to witness such a thing. I sincerely regret having allowed you to come with when we sat guard that night."

Nick turned from him, and placed his hands on his mother's shoulders. He was already tall enough to have to tilt his head downward slightly to look her in the eye." I'm going, Mother."

"Nicholas do not be absurd!" she responded, furiously shaking herself free then grabbing him by the forearm. "You are NOT joining the army. I will not hear of it!"

"But Jarrod..."

"Jarrod is twenty years old and legally old enough and responsible enough to make that decision for himself. You, on the other hand are only fifteen. A child! They," she faltered momentarily and swallowed. "They wouldn't even take you."

"I could pass for sixteen," he protested between his teeth, his jaw having set at having been referred to as a child. It was true. The boy was tall for his age and he had a confidence and sureness of purpose well beyond his years. Furthermore, with the growing "butcher bill" both Union and Confederate forces were accepting recruits far below the legal minimum age. "Besides, you yourself said you hated to think of him out on his own, facing death far from all the people who care about him. I want to be with him. To stand by him."

"And just how did you intend to go about finding him?" I blurted out. "Do you have any idea just how big the Union Army is?"

His father was thinking along similar lines. "The chances of you ending up in the same unit as Jarrod are miniscule. And even if you did manage it somehow, your brother will have enough to do without having to look after you as well," he said to the youth's back.

"I can take care of myself," he flatly insisted, not turning around.

"And how do you think he would feel if you got yourself shot full of holes, knowing that HE was the reason you were there to begin with?"

Nick had no answer for that. He cast his eyes down to the floor.

His father walked up behind him and laid his hands on the boy's soggy shoulders. "I know you love your brother, and I'm proud of you for wanting to be there for him, but you can't go, Nick." The boy bristled, but he did not respond. "Besides," his father continued, "the calving is going to start any time now, and I'm going to need you here. We've got a lot of young heifers who are likely to need some help, and we're short handed as is."

Eventually they were able to elicit a promise from him not to take off again without consulting them.

"I don't know how long we'll be able to keep him here without tying him down," Victoria sighed to her husband after Nick had ascended the stairs to his bath. "But at least he's safe for now."

A couple of years later Nick did join the army. Jarrod's education and the recommendation from his connections at Harvard were enough to insure him a commission leading Buffalo Soldiers, but true to his father's warnings Nick ended up far from his side. Despite his youth, his bravery and natural leadership combined with the influence of the Barkley name earned him the rank of Lieutenant. Both sons wrote as often as possible, but wartime made the mails slow, and letters often arrived months after they were sent. The war was a difficult time for the family. Tom had grown to rely on the assistance of his younger son in working the ranch, and his presence was sorely missed. The house was quiet without his booming voice shaking the rafters and his heavy boots banging up and down the stairs.

No less missed was the older son, Jarrod. He hadn't been a fixture on the ranch since he left for Harvard at the age of eighteen, but he was securely lodged in every heart. Many times, when Victoria was feeling particularly melancholy she brought out the little black box and sat, listening to the music tinkling in the air. Vicky told me that Audra's oldest brother became a very successful lawyer after the war, so he must have survived, but every time I heard the music play it sent a shiver down my spine. "She had been holding it when she heard he had been killed, and dropped it. It hadn't played since."

Vicky had certainly been right about one thing. After the pain of being separated from their two eldest offspring, the joy in the house when the two arrived at the door arm in arm was greater than I had ever witnessed in my life. They literally killed the fatted calf, and feasted for a week.

It was during the war that I began to wonder about something else. Vicky had said that her grandmother had three brothers, but Jarrod and Nick together only made two. Where was the Heath she had mentioned? I had watched Victoria expectantly, but her belly did not rise again after Audra's birth. Jarrod was now in his twenties, and I assumed his mother was in her forties. She was running out of time if she was going to produce another Barkley heir, and at a time when she was worried over the well-being of her other boys, it certainly seemed like a natural thing to consider having another child.

But she either would not or could not, and in either case did not get pregnant.

This seemed mighty peculiar to me in that even if this was some hallucination that existed only in my own twisted imagination, except for this detail everything I saw matched Vicky's descriptions exactly. Why would my fantasy have omitted the third son? And if this was an actual spiritual manifestation of events gone past where was he? An adopted war orphan, maybe? That seemed the most likely, although that would have been more likely still had they lived in a part of the country that had actually seen some military action.

Sometime after the boys had returned from war, when Jarrod had returned to law school and Nick had become a full partner with his father in running the ranch, Vicky took ill.

More precisely, she had been slightly ill for a while--that sneeze she had cast at the dreadful Mrs. Carlson had apparently been genuine--but her insolent head cold had defied her age weakened immune system and traveled down her body into her chest. More often when I visited her she was lying in the hospital-type bed rather than sitting in her chair, and the newspapers piled up unread on the night table. The words "nursing home" were heard in soft whispers for the first time in the vicinity of her door.

I left the house to fend for itself for a while, making sure the buckets were still in place, the boards over the windows were secure and the door was properly closed and locked. My friend needed me more now than the building did, and all appeared to be right with the family.

I spent my days now by her side, reading to her and talking with her about her early childhood in the beautiful mansion. She was very pleased with the photos I took, and correctly identified the room in which I found the music box. Some of the photos appeared to be overexposed for some unexplainable reason. Naturally, none of the pictures I took of the family came out. I expected to see just the background, but in most cases the whole frame was ruined, and in others half the image would simply be gone. Vicky chalked it up to the age of the film I was using, and there could have been something to that. These were the leftover unused rolls from Jay's and my Oregon trail trip.

On a whim, I asked her which room belonged to Heath. She thought about it for a while, then said she thought it was the one that was two doors down from the master bedroom. It was one of the ones I had pegged as a guest room, smaller than those of the other Barkley siblings. Pushing on, I asked her, "How much younger was Heath than the rest of them?"

"Let me see," she responded looking up at the ceiling. "Heath was a couple years younger than Nick, I believe. They were very close in age and everything else until their falling out."

"Really?" I said, trying not to look as surprised as I felt. "Was he adopted?" I blurted out.

"Adopted? Heavens no!" she replied. "What made you think that?"

I toyed with the idea of telling her, but instead I held my tongue. "Oh, I don't know. Just him having the smaller room and all..." I trailed off.

"Well, from what I heard about him he was a very understated kind of person. He didn't need much space, not like my great-uncle Nick. HE could fill up a room just walking into it. Anyway, all you would have to do is take a look at a photograph of him and my great-grandfather together and you would know he was most definitely a Barkley. Of all the boys he was the one who resembled their father the most."

"What happened to him?" I asked timidly.

"What do you mean?"

"You told me that Nick was still living at the ranch when you were born, but you never met Heath or Jarrod. What happened to them?"

"Nick and Heath got into a fight over a woman named Eloise Tanner. When Nick married her, Heath packed his bags, took half the herd and moved to Montana. He never married. For the rest of her life, my great-grandmother shuttled back and forth between the two ranches, refusing to take sides."

"That's terrible!" I said.

"Worse still, two years later, when drought and Texas Fever reduced the herd to only a few hundred scraggly head Nick fell into a deep depression, and Eloise left him, taking their infant son with her. He never saw either of them again. My grandmother believed eventually he and Heath would have reconciled their differences if Jarrod had only been around. He was a skillful negotiator and devoted peace-maker."

"And where was Jarrod?"

Vicky did not respond, but instead turned to look at the cracked black music box on her night stand and started to cough. That night she was taken by ambulance to the hospital. Her chest cold had turned into pneumonia.