footfall leaving a dark circle in the coating of dust on the floor.
“I don’t know why I should be tiptoeing,” she said aloud, irritated at her own trepidation. For the rest of the summer, this was her house. She lowered her heel onto the floor, striding with purpose over to the latched doorway. It yielded to her touch after slight persuasion, and opened with a creak.
Behind the door, instead of the closet that she was expecting, Connie found a cramped kitchen, unceremoniously tacked onto the house sometime within the last hundred years. On the right side of the kitchen stood a deep porcelain sink watched over by another window, clogged with leaves and overgrowth. The room featured an iron woodstove, a low icebox, a floor covered in curling linoleum, and a cheap wooden door leading into the garden behind the house.
What Connie noticed in the room, however, were not these archaic appliances, but the shelves upon shelves of glass bottles and jars ranging over the walls, all of them containing unidentifiable powders, leaves, and syrups. Some of the jars bore illegible labels stained with dried paste. In the cornerstood propped an old-fashioned broom made of bunches of dried twigs fastened with twine to a long ash branch. The broom seemed roped in place by skeins of spiderweb.
Connie stood in the kitchen gaping at the bizarre assortment lining the shelves. Grace had always insisted that Granna was not one for cooking, and so Connie could not account for the bottles and jars. Maybe she had a canning phase at the end of her life, and they were all dried out and blackened because they were not sealed properly. Like Grace, Granna had been prone to phases, in her own way. The only Christmas with Granna that Connie could remember, Granna had appeared, just before she died, at the Concord farmhouse with hand-knitted sweaters for her and Grace, the same fisherman’s pattern in three different colors. Unfortunately Sophia’s command of shoulder-to-arm proportion had been idiosyncratic, the sleeves stopping halfway down the arm on the left and well over the knuckles on the right. Connie chuckled with affection at the memory.
The air in the kitchen was close and dry, with a palpable scent of decay, and the jars were all coated in a thick drapery of grime. As Connie stood, hands on her hips, her excitement at the undiscovered house tempered by vague disquiet, soft footsteps approached behind her, and she glanced over her shoulder, startled. She was met with the beaming face of Liz carrying a sweatshirt fashioned into a makeshift sack bulging with tomatoes and endives. At her feet sat Arlo, smug, a root protruding from his mouth. His tail brushed aside thick layers of dust on the floor behind him.
“We’ve been scavenging for dinner,” Liz announced. “Is this the kitchen?” She pushed around Connie, dumping the vegetables in the sink. She twisted the brass faucet handle, and the pipes released an echoing groan, shuddering and coughing dryly before spewing forth a brownish trickle of water. “I’m glad you packed Palmolive. Grace was right—this house is a pit.”
Liz rinsed the dust out of the kitchen sink and scrubbed the vegetables she had taken from the garden. “So I was thinking we start the cleaning inthe kitchen, since that’s where you’ll have to eat, and then we do the bedrooms after dinner, so we have a clean place to sleep. Also, how long do you think it’ll take us to reach the train station tomorrow? Twenty minutes? I just want to know when we need to get up in the morning. I think we can make some real headway tonight so you’re at least kind of sane for the coming week.”
Liz’s bright, efficient chatter shook Connie out of her reverie, reminding her that Granna’s house might feel like a gap, a stitch dropped in the fabric of time, but it was really just a house like any other—older, perhaps, in much worse shape, but still just a house. Connie rubbed her hands along her upper arms, turning
“I don’t know why I should be tiptoeing,” she said aloud, irritated at her own trepidation. For the rest of the summer, this was her house. She lowered her heel onto the floor, striding with purpose over to the latched doorway. It yielded to her touch after slight persuasion, and opened with a creak.
Behind the door, instead of the closet that she was expecting, Connie found a cramped kitchen, unceremoniously tacked onto the house sometime within the last hundred years. On the right side of the kitchen stood a deep porcelain sink watched over by another window, clogged with leaves and overgrowth. The room featured an iron woodstove, a low icebox, a floor covered in curling linoleum, and a cheap wooden door leading into the garden behind the house.
What Connie noticed in the room, however, were not these archaic appliances, but the shelves upon shelves of glass bottles and jars ranging over the walls, all of them containing unidentifiable powders, leaves, and syrups. Some of the jars bore illegible labels stained with dried paste. In the cornerstood propped an old-fashioned broom made of bunches of dried twigs fastened with twine to a long ash branch. The broom seemed roped in place by skeins of spiderweb.
Connie stood in the kitchen gaping at the bizarre assortment lining the shelves. Grace had always insisted that Granna was not one for cooking, and so Connie could not account for the bottles and jars. Maybe she had a canning phase at the end of her life, and they were all dried out and blackened because they were not sealed properly. Like Grace, Granna had been prone to phases, in her own way. The only Christmas with Granna that Connie could remember, Granna had appeared, just before she died, at the Concord farmhouse with hand-knitted sweaters for her and Grace, the same fisherman’s pattern in three different colors. Unfortunately Sophia’s command of shoulder-to-arm proportion had been idiosyncratic, the sleeves stopping halfway down the arm on the left and well over the knuckles on the right. Connie chuckled with affection at the memory.
The air in the kitchen was close and dry, with a palpable scent of decay, and the jars were all coated in a thick drapery of grime. As Connie stood, hands on her hips, her excitement at the undiscovered house tempered by vague disquiet, soft footsteps approached behind her, and she glanced over her shoulder, startled. She was met with the beaming face of Liz carrying a sweatshirt fashioned into a makeshift sack bulging with tomatoes and endives. At her feet sat Arlo, smug, a root protruding from his mouth. His tail brushed aside thick layers of dust on the floor behind him.
“We’ve been scavenging for dinner,” Liz announced. “Is this the kitchen?” She pushed around Connie, dumping the vegetables in the sink. She twisted the brass faucet handle, and the pipes released an echoing groan, shuddering and coughing dryly before spewing forth a brownish trickle of water. “I’m glad you packed Palmolive. Grace was right—this house is a pit.”
Liz rinsed the dust out of the kitchen sink and scrubbed the vegetables she had taken from the garden. “So I was thinking we start the cleaning inthe kitchen, since that’s where you’ll have to eat, and then we do the bedrooms after dinner, so we have a clean place to sleep. Also, how long do you think it’ll take us to reach the train station tomorrow? Twenty minutes? I just want to know when we need to get up in the morning. I think we can make some real headway tonight so you’re at least kind of sane for the coming week.”
Liz’s bright, efficient chatter shook Connie out of her reverie, reminding her that Granna’s house might feel like a gap, a stitch dropped in the fabric of time, but it was really just a house like any other—older, perhaps, in much worse shape, but still just a house. Connie rubbed her hands along her upper arms, turning
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