with creamy roses tumbling over it. I hadn’t noticed it when Ginny drove in, for it was on the far side of the circular drive and I had been focusing on the house. Curious, I strode toward it.
As I got closer, I could see that it was a cemetery, probably a family burial plot. I opened the wrought-iron gate and stepped inside. Some of the gravestones were extremely old, round-shouldered, and leaning forward as if they were tired, their names and dates no longer readable.
There were new markers made of shiny granite and I walked over to look at them.
Thomas Barnes, I read. My mother’s father. I touched his stone lightly, then turned to the marker next to his. It was fancier, with roses carved into it. Avril Scarborough. The name echoed in my mind, as if someone had spoken it from the end of a very long hall. I read her dates, then drew back. I did the math again: She was just sixteen when she died-she was my age.
The grave gave me an eerie feeling. I didn’t want to touch her stone. I turned, suddenly compelled to get out of there.
As I left I glanced toward the house. The lowering sun flared off the panes of glass; still, I noticed it, the movement of someone stepping back from a second-floor window, as if trying not to be seen. After a moment I realized the person had been watching me from my bedroom. I walked quickly toward the house, but the reflected light made it impossible to see in.
A vague uneasiness seeped into me. Since my arrival, neither Grandmother nor Matt seemed interested in getting to know me. But obviously, someone was interested enough to keep an eye on me.
I returned to the house forty minutes later, feeling a million times better, full of the clear blue and gold light of the river and setting sun. I entered by way of the herb garden, walking up onto a covered porch and opening a door that led into the back hall. The small hall, which ran under the stairs, connected the back wing with the center hall of the main house. It had service doors to the dining room and library, and steps leading down to the back wing.
There I found Grandmother in a kitchen with a huge open hearth. An old stove sat halfway inside the blackened fireplace. She stood next to it, stirring something in a pot.
“So you found your way back,” she said.
“Yes. I saw the river. It’s awesome.”
“Then you must not have kept the house in sight,” Grandmother observed shrewdly. “You cannot see it from any place along the riverbank, not this time of year.
“I, uh, guess I did lose sight of the chimneys. But I have a pretty good sense of direction.”
She didn’t reply.
“Shall I set the table?” I offered.
“It’s set.”
So we were eating in the dining room with all those appetizing paintings of dying deer and fox.
“You may carry out the meat and biscuits. The rest will get cold if Matt- Well, it’s about time,” she told him as he came through the door.
“It’s three minutes to six,” he replied mildly, then joined her at the stove and began dishing out the greens. I may as well have been a kitchen stool he walked past.
I carried out the platter of meat, then biscuits. He and Grandmother brought the soup and green beans.
Grandmother sat at the head of the table with Matt at her right, which left me the seat across from him. As luck would have it, I was also across from the goriest deer of the hunting series.
“We always pray first,” Grandmother said as I pulled up my chair.
She folded her hands, resting them on the edge of the table, so I did the same. Matt stared down at his plate.
“Dear Lord,” Grandmother began, “forgive us our trespasses this day. Though we lie with our lips and our hearts, call us back to your truth, and grant us mercy rather than the justice we deserve. Amen.”
It was the gloomiest dinner prayer I’d ever heard. “Maybe we should give thanks, too,” I suggested, “as long as we’re praying before a meal.”
Matt glanced up.
“You may pray however you like on your own,” Grandmother replied, then handed me the ham. “I am relieved to see your parents didn’t bring you up to be a complete heathen, though, no doubt, they’ve passed on some kooky ideas.”
“No doubt,” I said cheerfully. She wasn’t going to drag me and them down. I took a little of the meat, more of the green beans, and one very hard biscuit. A bowl of thick soup was dished out for me.
What appeared to be ham was so salty I could hardly swallow it. It was as if someone had glued fake bacon bits together, then sliced them ultra thin. “What do you call this kind of meat?” I asked.
“Smithfield ham,” said Grandmother. “It’s a tradition.”
I took a long drink of water, ate another mouthful, then bit into a rock-hard biscuit.
“Those are beaten biscuits,” Grandmother told me.
“Another tradition.”
Some of that traditional airplane food I’d turned down was looking pretty good now. I sampled the green beans, then gobbled them up.
“Try your stew,” Grandmother ordered.
I pulled the bowl closer and spooned lumps of grayishwhite stuff.
“They’re not raw,” Matt said, “not when they’re in the stew.”
“What’s not raw?” I asked, setting down my spoon.
“The oysters.”
I ate one mouthful. It was the slimiest seafood I’d ever tasted, swimming in heavy cream. “May I have the green beans, please?”
“You’re not a vegetarian, are you?” Grandmother asked. “I refuse to feed you if you are.”
“I’m trying a little of everything, Grandmother,” I replied patiently, “but I have always liked green beans.” I used to like biscuits, I thought, taking another bite of the hard, flat thing.
“It would be just like her parents to raise her as an animal rights extremist,” Grandmother said to Matt. “The two of them have always had strange ideas.”
It annoyed me to be referred to in the third person, and it hurt to hear my parents put down, but I kept my cool.
“Dad doesn’t like hunting,” I admitted, “which isn’t real surprising since he’s a vet. But as you know, Grandmother, his father was an Eastern Shore farmer. Dad was raised on meat and still eats it.”
“It’s unnatural to avoid meat,” she went on.
“Look,” I exclaimed, frustrated, “1 am not a vegetarian!
Though the paintings in this room are pushing me in that direction.”
Matt’s eyes flicked around the room, then came back to me. His dark gaze was unreadable, but at least he’d given up the pretension of not seeing me.
“So what is your mother up in arms about these days?”
Grandmother asked. “Migrant workers, I bet.”
She knew Mom better than I thought. Two letters on migrant living conditions had been sent to senators last week.
To Matt, Grandmother said, “Carolyn marched for integration, raising taxes for education, luxury condos for chickens-for everything but common sense.”
“That’s an exaggeration,” I countered. “For the chickens she supported two-bedroom apartments.”
Matt’s mouth twitched, but he remained silent.
Grandmother grimly ate her ham and biscuits. Obviously, she had no sense of humor, which meant I wasn’t going to be able to joke my way out of an argument.
“College ruined her,” Grandmother went on. “It made her a sloppy thinker.”
“Mom says that when she arrived at college she found out how narrow-minded she was.”
Grandmother laid down her fork. “There was nothing narrow about Carolyn’s mind. When she left my house
