OCR Text |
Show 7?£ poised for reconstruction. Someone had said that the farm would be turned into a condominium styled after the white house, with the big old structure as a recreation area and central office. For now, the houses retained their semi-tacky, semi-ornate faces. Chintz curtains - perhaps the same Gerda ones Aunt A hung there -- bunched around window frames that bore the mars and paint drips I remembered from childhood. The plaster-crack above the east entrance of the white house had widened a little. The pump still leaked, and ducks and w geese stillAaddled and splattered through its mud puddle. An old car was parked in the yawning doors of the barn, ith no sign of hay or large animals. I slowly stepped out of the car and crooked Janelle against my hip. The hair on the back of my neck stirred, and I shuddered. "There are ghosts here today," I murmured involuntarily. Clare raised an eyebrow. I laughed, to drive away the. feeling and to offset the crazy tone of my words. But my skin was gooseflesh and I shuddered again. "Really," I said to Clare, although I didn't know her well enough to talk about metaphysics. "I can feel them. They're all over the compound. I don't want to stay very long, ok?" We toured the grounds quickly but didn't go to the houses. Clare snapped a few photographs, and I walked toward the south pasture behind the swimming pool. .. T whiq-nered to my daughter, but "Mommy was happy here," I whispereu T -Foit I might see something couldn't recapture the feeling. I felt 1 ^ 6 • T-a -noinfnl at any second, dead or remember something terribly paimux I had visited the grounds before with my children, pointing |