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+{"text":" \nThey're not alone in the house.\n\nWith a baby on the way and a brand new house, it seems Ginny and her husband, Sean, are on their way to a fresh start. But strange occurrences and financial strain seem determined to keep Ginny and Sean stuck in the past. Ginny begins to believe the house may be haunted...or that her husband might be trying to trick her into thinking so. As Ginny researches the house's former owner and the tragedy that happened there, it becomes clearer than ever that something is in the house with them. The question is, who...or what...is it?\nLittle Secrets\n\nMegan Hart\nDedication\n\nThis book is for the ventriloquist dummy sitting on my office shelf. Please don't come to life and kill me in my sleep.\nChapter One\n\nA fresh start.\n\nThat's what they needed. A new house, new jobs, new hobbies, new friends. Even her haircut was new, shorn to the shoulders instead of hanging halfway down her back. And her body was certainly getting newer all the time.\n\nGinny Bohn stepped out of her old car into her new driveway. She put her hand on the roof for a minute, the metal chilly under her fingertips, and looked at the house. Brick with black shutters. There'd been a garage at one time, according to the realtor who'd sold them the house, but a fire had destroyed it years ago, and the previous owner had never rebuilt. It had been replaced with a small fenced garden, bare now, but Ginny could easily imagine it filled with flowers\u2014assuming she became the sort of woman who took the time to plant seeds and make things grow.\n\n\"Honey, just got a call from the movers. They'll be here in about half an hour.\" Sean had pulled up next to her and was out of his car. He stretched, cracking his back and neck in the way that always made her cringe. He came around the front of his car to hold out his hand to her. \"Careful. The walk's a little wet. It could be slippery.\"\n\nIt was sweet, his hesitation, his desire to make her something fragile. It almost made Ginny want to grab his arm and have him guide her along the slightly buckled sidewalk as though she were somehow incapable of navigating it without his help. Almost.\n\nShe did take his hand, though, linking their fingers. They kissed matter-of-factly. That's how it had always been with them. Matter-of-fact, familiar kisses they shared almost every time they were close enough for their lips to meet. This time, she put her arms around his waist when he tried to get away and hooked her fingertips into his belt loops. Ginny held her husband closer, just for a moment, her head tipped back so he could kiss her more thoroughly, though Sean was too busy laughing to really do justice to the smooch.\n\n\"You want to give the neighbors a show, huh?\"\n\nGinny smiled, not giving a damn about the neighbors, just wanting to feel the pressure of his mouth on hers again. Taste him. Feel his breath on her face and maybe the beat of his heart against her. She stroked the fringes of hair that always fell in front of his ears, no matter how he had it cut. His bangs were longer now too, but she kept herself from ruffling them because she knew it irritated him when she messed with his hair. \"I love you.\"\n\n\"Love you too.\" His kiss lingered this time, not as long as she'd have liked, but with a little more heat. His hands fit against her hips. He nuzzled her nose with his, a gesture she'd told him a hundred times she hated, but that he never seemed to remember.\n\nFrom the backseat came a sudden, irritated yowl. Sean ducked to look through the back window. \"Noodles sounds pissed.\"\n\nGinny sighed. \"She doesn't like the carrier. Can you grab the litter pan and stuff? I'm going to put her in the upstairs bathroom until we can get everything settled.\"\n\nSean nodded and got them from the trunk as Ginny pulled out the carrier and looked at Noodles's furious, furry face. \"Shhh. You act like you're getting killed in there.\"\n\nNoodles, unimpressed with Ginny's scolding and Ginny in general, yowled again. Ginny balanced the carrier, which rocked in her arms as Noodles shifted, and followed Sean up the curving brick path to the cute-as-a-button front porch with its white-painted railing and double swing hung on chains from the roof. The front door was black, sober, the gold handle surprisingly ornate and old-fashioned, compared to the rest of the outside decor. It was the kind of handle that looked as though it used a fancy skeleton-type key, not the small and freshly cut generic silver sort they'd copied from the equally small but tarnished key the realtor had given them.\n\nA fresh key for their fresh start.\n\nIt slipped into the lock with a faint clinking sound, and Sean glanced at her over his shoulder before he twisted his wrist. The click was louder this time, but the door didn't open. Sean took the key out. Blew on it, which made Ginny laugh. Tried again. Waiting, the carrier too heavy, she set it down and held out her hand. Noodles yowled from inside, then went quiet.\n\n\"Want me to try?\"\n\nSean handed her the key, which slipped into the lock without effort. The handle creaked when she turned it, and then the door was opening with a squeal of hinges. Before she could step inside, Sean put out an arm to stop her.\n\nGinny had no time to protest or even prepare herself before Sean bent to sweep her into his arms, one beneath her legs and the other around her back. She let out a startled squeak and clung to him. He took two normal steps over the threshold before his foot hit a throw rug that had been placed a little too far away from the threshold. It started to skid out from under him.\n\nFor a sickening moment, Ginny was sure they were going to fall. Her body tensed, muscles going tight in anticipation of the pain. She bit her tongue and let out a yelp. Her hands slipped on Sean's back as he grappled and kept her from toppling onto the floor...just barely. He put her down, stepping on her foot as the pair of them stumbled forward another few steps, dancing to some routine neither had practiced.\n\nHeart pounding, breath catching sharp in the back of her throat, Ginny ended up straddling the errant throw rug, one of her hands on the wall and the other still clutching at the back of Sean's shirt. Her nails dug so deeply into the plaster they'd have broken if she still kept them long, but she'd given up her manicures months ago. It was the first time she'd looked at her hands with clipped nails and been grateful for it.\n\n\"You okay?\" Sean laughed nervously. His hand shifted on her waist, and he looked over his shoulder at the rug. \"We should throw that away. It could be dangerous.\"\n\nGinny took a slow, calming breath and rubbed the toe of her ballet flat along the polished wood floor. She found her balance, caught her breath. \"It's ugly anyway.\"\n\nIt was. Hideous, in fact. Fluffy yarn of alternating green and brown and orange stripes, with a contrasting flowery border. Nothing like she'd ever have chosen. Now that she looked around the hall, she saw a lot of things she didn't recognize, including an ugly telephone table. \"I thought Bonnie said she was going to have someone come and get rid of all this stuff, except what we specifically requested to be left in the contract.\"\n\nGeorge Miller, the former owner, had died\u2014in the hospital, thank God. Ginny didn't consider herself superstitious, but she wasn't sure she'd have been able to get past the idea of someone actually expiring in her house. They'd never met his son, Brendan, who'd inherited the house but whose lawyer had handled all the details. Brendan Miller had offered to let them take anything they wanted. Everything in the house, as a matter of fact. She'd asked only to keep the ugly but still serviceable barstools in the kitchen, a few of the lighting fixtures and the custom-made drapes in all the rooms, which were as hideous as the throw rug but better than the nothing she owned to replace them with.\n\n\"Yeah...she was supposed to.\"\n\nThe rug and the telephone table hadn't been on the list, Ginny knew that for sure. She tugged the small handle on a drawer meant to hold a pen and paper or a phone book and found instead a jumble of junk. Coins, paper clips, a bunch of old buttons, some tiny carved wooden figures. She lifted one, a thick wooden peg in a vaguely female shape without a face or limbs, the hash marks from the whittling knife still cutting deep into the wood. George Miller had been a carpenter. She tossed the peg back into the drawer. Cell phones and cordless handsets made tables like this irrelevant and unnecessary, though Ginny could vividly remember one similar to this that had been in her grandparents' front hallway. Different phones over the years, but that same table. With her finger, she pushed against the wood and the table rocked, one leg slightly shorter than the others.\n\n\"You okay?\"\n\nGinny looked up at Sean. Found a smile that quirked her lips without much true humor. \"Fine. Just a little shaky.\"\n\nMaybe it was from almost being squished within the first five minutes of entering her new home. More likely it was because she hadn't eaten in a few hours. Low blood sugar. She couldn't decide if she was hungry or on the verge of nausea.\n\n\"Do you feel sick? Should I get you something to eat? Some saltines? Shit. I don't think we have any.\"\n\nThere was that sweet concern again. In the first weeks of her pregnancy she'd spent more time hunched over the toilet than anywhere else, and Sean had been right there with her, holding her hair. Rubbing her back. Bringing her flat ginger ale and crackers and wet cloths to press along the back of her neck. He'd meant his concern as comfort, though she'd told him over and over that she hated any kind of attention on her when she was sick, and had suffered it only because it had taken too much energy to keep asking him to leave her alone.\n\n\"No.\" She shook her head. The dizziness wasn't fading, and the thick, throat-closing nausea was rising. \"I just need to sit down. Get a drink and something to eat. I'll be fine.\"\n\nHe hovered over her all the way down the hall and into the kitchen, where she let him ease her onto one of the barstools she had wanted to keep. She let him chafe her hands too. But beyond that, there wasn't much Sean could do to help her since the brand-new fridge they'd already had delivered was empty and so were the cupboards.\n\nSean opened one anyway and pulled out a vintage Looney Tunes glass adorned with Tweety Bird. \"Hey. Look at this? You want some ice water, honey? I think the fridge's hooked up.\"\n\nTheir old fridge had an ice maker but not one that dispensed through the door. The new one had both cubed and crushed ice, and also filtered water. They'd really splurged. Sean rinsed the glass at the sink, then pressed it against the dispenser. Nothing happened.\n\n\"Shit.\" He opened the fridge to reveal an empty interior, shadowed without the automatic light to illuminate it. \"Damn it.\"\n\nHe flicked the switch on the wall on and off a couple times, then looked at her. \"I thought you said you'd handled the electricity.\"\n\nIf her head hadn't been spinning, Ginny would've shaken it. As it was, all she could do was blink. \"I did. I called and told them we'd be moving in today, and that everything should be turned on.\"\n\nHe flicked the switch again, then once more. \"Well. They didn't. Are you sure you talked to the right person?\"\n\nShe could argue with him about it, or she could keep her lunch in her stomach. Ginny chose the latter. She breathed slowly in through her nose and out through her mouth, closing her eyes to push away the dizziness. She heard running water and looked up to see Sean at the sink.\n\nHe gave her a triumphant look, then offered the glass with a flourish. \"At least we have running water. Walla.\"\n\nThe term was actually voil\u00e0, but Ginny didn't point that out. She just took the glass of water and sipped it, grateful for the way the liquid slipped down the back of her throat, nice and cool. This house had a well and septic system, not like the city water and sewer at their old place, and the water actually had a flavor.\n\nSean rubbed her shoulder briefly. \"Be right back. I'll grab you a snack from the car.\"\n\n\"Oh! Bring Noodles too!\"\n\nShe was a lucky woman. Sean was a good husband. She breathed slowly, fighting another wave of sickness. She should get up, call the electric company and figure out what happened with the power. But for now, all Ginny could manage was to sit and sip the water her husband had poured for her.\n\nSean came in again with a handful of granola bars and the cat carrier. \"Where do you want her?\"\n\nShe took one of the snacks from him and tore it open, eyeing the carrier in which the cat was now growling. \"Oh Lord. She's going to pee on everything. Can you put her in the upstairs bathroom, with the litter box, and the door closed? And oh, put a sign on it so nobody opens it. I'll take care of getting her set up later.\"\n\nGinny heard the sound of a big vehicle in the drive. The movers must've arrived early. She'd have to get up in a minute to greet them herself, direct them where to put the boxes and furniture. \"I hear a truck, good. I was thinking we wouldn't be finished before it got dark, and I really want to at least get our bedroom set up before night.\"\n\n\"Yeah,\" he said. \"Especially since we won't have any lights.\"\n\nIt wasn't her fault, Ginny wanted to say. She'd spoken to the power company and made the arrangements for the electricity to be turned on today. Cable television, phone and Internet too. Trash next week. She had all the information in a folder still in the car, with the dates and times she'd called, the names of the customer service reps she'd spoken to. It was not her fault that someone, somewhere, had forgotten to do their job and flip a switch.\n\nShe said nothing, biting her tongue and hiding her grimace with another sip of water.\n\nSean started toward the stairs with the carrier. \"I'll get them started. You sit.\"\n\nShe did for another few minutes, not out of laziness or some sort of Lady of the Manor attitude, but simply because pushing herself off the barstool still required more of an effort than she felt capable of making. Her head still threatened to keep spinning if she didn't take some deep breaths, and she wasn't certain she wouldn't puke. And no wonder, she thought as she nodded and smiled at the first of the movers who brought in a box of dishes and settled it on the counter before heading back out for another load. She was exhausted, operating on little to no sleep over the past few days as she'd fretted over the final details of the sale that had seemed too good to be true. She'd stayed up late packing and making lists, paying bills, making sure everything in their new life was going as smoothly as possible. No sleep, not enough to eat... Her hands went protectively to her belly for a minute.\n\nThe doctor had assured her that a history of miscarriage didn't necessarily mean she couldn't carry to term. That everything about this pregnancy looked healthy and normal, no cause for alarm. Still, Ginny thought of the almost fall and the subsequent dizziness, and she forced herself to nibble away on the granola bar and sip water until it passed.\n\nBy five o'clock the truck was unloaded, the movers paid and tipped and sent on their way. The electricity had been restored, the culprit a blown circuit breaker, as it turned out, which Ginny discovered when she called the power company and was told that, indeed, their house was supposed to be fully supplied. Sean hadn't apologized for doubting her, but he had gone into the basement to fiddle with the fuse box, and the fact they had lights was enough to make it easy for Ginny to forget that she'd been angry. Noodles had been petted and loved up and generally soothed with a can of fancy cat food and fresh litter, though she was still confined to the bathroom until Ginny could get more of the house arranged and find a place to put the litter box.\n\nPizza was ordered and delivered. Ginny flipped open the cardboard box and breathed in the pepperoni-scented steam as Sean popped the top on a can of caffeine-free cola for her, a beer for him. She'd found a candelabra that had been a wedding gift, never used, along with a set of semi-melted red candles and a half-dozen votive holders. They were eating on paper plates since she hadn't yet unpacked the dishes, but Sean had discovered another couple of those Looney Tunes glasses in the cupboard.\n\n\"Cheers.\" Sean tipped his glass to hers. \"To our first, but not last, romantic dinner in our new house.\"\n\n\"Salut.\" Ginny sipped bubbly cola, relishing the sting of the carbonation in the back of her throat and the sweetly spreading glow of sugar. It would've been even better with caffeine, but Sean had read an article that said pregnant women shouldn't touch it.\n\nEven with the candles, it was far from the most elegant dinner they'd ever had. No flowers in crystal vases, no glittering silverware or gold-rimmed china. But he was right, it was romantic. Ginny downed a third slice of pizza without guilt over calories and listened to Sean wax philosophical on the benefits of hiring a landscaping service in the spring versus trying to get the yard in decent shape all by themselves. He was making plans for the future, she thought. And that was good.\n\nAll of this was good.\nChapter Two\n\nAll of this was bad.\n\nGinny woke, eyes wide, heart pounding, coughing at the sting of bile in her throat. She swallowed hard and pressed a fist between her breasts in a futile attempt to relieve some of the pressure as she sat up against the headboard. She'd gone to bed in a soft flannel granny gown, the house chilly enough to warrant the heavier pajamas since she'd been unable to find the boxes containing either the extra blanket or the flannel sheets. Slick sweat coated her now. She tossed back the comforter and let the cool air cover her instead.\n\nHeartburn. Nobody to blame but herself since she'd been the one to shove that third slice of pizza down her gullet. Ginny pressed her fist harder against her chest. Beside her, Sean slept the sleep of the guiltless, arms akimbo and one leg hooked outside the blankets. Despite the sweat still running rivers between her breasts and down her spine, Ginny was now cold. Her teeth chattered a few times as she forced herself to swallow, then again, hoping to at least get rid of some of the burning taste at the back of her throat.\n\nWhat had woken her? The heartburn, yes, but before that she'd been happily dreaming. Perhaps not so happily, considering the content of her dreams\u2014they'd been full of running and searching. Lots of losing, but not so much finding. Sometimes Ginny clung to dreams, but tonight she was more than happy to have been pulled from them.\n\nBut there. There it was again, the faint scritch-scratch of something in the ceiling. She strained, listening, but didn't hear it again. Shit. Mice. It wasn't entirely unexpected. They lived in an old house in an old neighborhood that backed up onto a farmer's field. There could easily be mice in the house.\n\nThis sounded much bigger than a mouse.\n\nThere were squirrels in the backyard, she'd seen them. They made a weird chittering sound she'd thought at first was birds. The scritch-scratch came again, softer and farther away.\n\nThe home inspector hadn't turned up any evidence of rodent infestation, but as she'd discovered when she tried to shower before bed, the guy had also completely somehow missed that the hot-water heater wasn't capable of providing enough water for a quick shower, much less a luxurious one. Forget about filling the old clawfoot tub in the master bathroom. He'd also passed the fuse box, which was obviously not operating up to standards since the power had gone out once more during the move. Ginny supposed she wouldn't be surprised if the entire house turned out to be overrun with Mickey and his buddies.\n\nThe noise didn't come again, but between it and the heartburn and the lingering dreams, Ginny was in no way going to return to slumberland. She stuck a tentative bare toe off the bed and felt for the edge of the vent in the floor, hoping for a tickle of hot air. Nothing. The house had been empty long enough that the heat had probably been set at a minimum, and because the temperature had been fine during the day, Ginny hadn't touched the thermostat before coming to bed. Sean probably hadn't either. It would've been fine if she were still snuggled up under the comforter, but not wide awake with the pizza sitting like a stone in her gut and reflux climbing her throat.\n\nGinny got out of the bed, which was placed much closer to the wall in this house. Their old bedroom had been bigger, laid out differently, though it lacked the attached master bath and dressing room that had sold her on this house. This room had more windows, one of them a cute dormer she intended to somehow transform into a reading nook or something equally as interesting, if only she could figure out how. Now her hand tapped along the wall and hit open space\u2014the dormer. She peeked into it but saw only darkness and felt an even cooler puff of air on her cheeks. Maybe the window at the end of the narrow space was open or needed some better insulation. She eased past the opening until her hand found the wall on the other side and oriented herself toward the door to the hall, blinking rapidly as though that would make her see better in the blackness.\n\nShe hadn't slept with a night-light since childhood, but wished for one now. All the small details of this house that she hadn't yet learned threatened to trip her worse than the slippery throw rug. She moved blindly, hands outstretched and feet shuffling along the wooden floor. The hardwood had seemed so appealing in the light of day, easy to keep clean and giving the house such a classic feeling. In the middle of the night, with cold bare feet, all she could think of was putting a rug big enough for the bedroom at the top of her mental \"gotta get\" list.\n\nShe bumped into a tall cardboard box, hitting with both her hand and foot at the same time. It moved when she hit it, lightweight. The wardrobe box, then, one of the few she'd managed to completely empty since the closet here was bigger than their old one and far better equipped with built-in shelving and rods. Sean let out a series of snuffling snorts and shifted, making the bed creak, but didn't wake. If she remembered correctly, the box was in front of the still-open closet door, which was between the bathroom door and the bedroom door, both of which should also be open.\n\nShe'd remembered wrong, obviously, because though she took a couple cautious steps, hands out, she found nothing but air. One more step and her fingertips grazed the wall, found the doorframe. She oriented herself again and discovered she'd also been wrong about the bedroom door being open, when she rammed into it with her face. She'd reached with both her hands, so the muffled thud of her nose hitting the wood wasn't loud, and she managed to bite back her cry of pain so neither noise woke Sean.\n\nWith her palms flat on the wood, Ginny pressed her forehead to the door, eyes watering. Cautiously, she felt her nose, but there was no blood and the pain faded rapidly. Her hand slid down the cool wood to the knob\u2014this one, like the one on the front door, was elaborately constructed of an ornate metal plate, a crystal knob and a real keyhole the realtor had promised was for show, since the door actually locked with a small button on the inside of the handle. Her fingers toyed with it as she twisted the knob, the hinges stuttering.\n\nSean muttered and snorted again, rolling around and probably tearing all the blankets up from the foot of the bed. Ginny froze, waiting to see if he'd woken. She really didn't want to wake him. Sean had to work in the morning, which felt like it could be a million or only a few hours in the future, she had no idea since she hadn't looked at the clock. And more than that, if she woke him, he'd want to make sure she was all right. He'd want her to stay in bed while he went downstairs and checked the thermostat, or brought her some water, or rubbed her feet, or rummaged around in the boxes in the bathroom to find her some antacid.\n\nThe last thing in the world Ginny wanted right now was to have Sean hovering over her, no matter how good his intentions.\n\nMore cool air washed over her as she eased herself into the hall. She took a second or two just to relish the fact they had an upstairs with a hallway\u2014their townhouse had been two-story but the second floor had been completely made up of their bedroom, a tiny guest room and shared bathroom. This house was so much bigger, so much a real house, not some rinky-dink starter home. Ginny took the time to savor this, until her teeth chattered harder and she had to wrap her arms around herself to keep warm.\n\nIt seemed they'd been looking at houses forever, unable to make the leap, until the housing market made it impossible not to go for it. They'd looked at this house four times before making their offer. The seller had accepted immediately without haggling, though they'd come in low the way the realtor had suggested. Four times Ginny had toured it, making sure she could imagine herself in just this spot, before she felt she could commit to it for what she knew didn't have to be the rest of her life, but surely felt like it.\n\nStanding outside her bedroom door now, Ginny could imagine the placement of every other door. Six of them\u2014four other bedrooms, empty because they didn't have enough furniture to fill them. A bathroom, inside which she could still hear Noodles's faint, annoyed meowing. A linen closet. In front of her, the railing surrounded the open space around the stairs, with the entrance an equidistant walk to the left or the right of her, depending on which way she felt like going. The movers hadn't closed the doors after putting the labeled boxes in them, and some light filtered in through the one directly to her left. That would be the nursery, and like the master, faced the street as well as the yard on the other side of the house. Blinking, her eyes adjusted to the dark. She could make out the faint shapes of open doors, a window at the other end of the hall.\n\nAnd something else.\n\nOn the far side of the hall, something in the shadows moved. She was sure of it. Something low to the ground, but not Noodles, because not only was the cat still locked up, this was bigger than a cat. Which meant it was bigger than a mouse. Bigger than a squirrel too. Way bigger. Oh God. What if it was a raccoon or something, come in from the attic? Didn't raccoons carry rabies? Ginny reached for the railing, smooth and cool beneath her fingers. The wood creaked as she squeezed. Whatever it was, whatever she'd seen, didn't move again.\n\nShe blinked hard, then again, eyes straining against the darkness. Something took shape in the place where she'd seen movement. A box, a pile of sheets and towels on top of it. She remembered it then. The movers had asked her if she wanted the box in one of the empty bedrooms, but she hadn't wanted to move it again. They'd left it by the linen closet, right there\u2014that's all it was. A stack of linens that probably hid her flannel sheets and the extra blanket she was missing.\n\nGinny had been holding her breath but let it out now on a long, low hiss that became a self-conscious laugh. Silly. Seeing things. New house, new life, all of it new, and of course she wasn't used to getting up in the night and seeing things move that should be still. And she was still cold, no heat sifting up from the registers.\n\nGinny went to the left, past the nursery and toward the linen closet, her hand on the railing to keep her from stumbling. Shuffling, one foot sliding in front of the other, bare toes on bare wood, without ever really lifting fully. She didn't want to bump into anything or step on something unexpected.\n\nJust before she got to the stairs, her sliding foot encountered what felt like a splinter. A faint, small sting had her pause and hop to rub it, her toes cold against equally chilled fingers. She couldn't find the splinter in her sole, and when she put her foot down gingerly the sting seemed to have gone.\n\nShe added a hall runner to the \"gotta get.\"\n\nThe thermostat was in the front hall, just at the bottom of the stairs. Unlike most of the house's fixtures, the thermostat was brand-new. Electronic. It had been replaced, along with the furnace, shortly before the previous owner passed away. It lit when she flipped up the cover to get at the buttons, and the green light that would be barely visible in the daytime was like a beacon to her night-sensitive eyes.\n\nGinny squinted against the sudden glow and leaned forward to push the button once, twice, again. The digital numbers changed from sixty-two\u2014way too cold, to sixty-five. That wasn't that much better. She pushed it a few more times, bringing the temperature to sixty-eight. Sean would grumble about the heating costs, but, dammit, she was cold. At least until they had some sort of idea how much this house would cost to heat she could claim ignorance in her desire for comfort.\n\nShe'd changed the temperature, but there was no rumble from the basement of the furnace kicking on, no welcome burst of warmth from the vents. To the left of the front door, she went through an archway and into what the realtor had called the \"front room.\" It connected to one of equal size through a set of pocket doors. Both rooms had fireplaces, as did the small parlor across the hall, though only the fireplace in the front room still worked. In the months leading up to this night, Ginny had imagined a hundred different ways she'd furnish this place, but for now the movers had simply put their old furniture and all the boxes marked \"Living Room\" into the front room.\n\nMost of the rooms had no overhead fixtures, just switches that operated certain outlets, and she hadn't yet figured out exactly where she wanted the lamps or which outlets worked from the switch. There was enough light from the front windows to direct her to the leather couch pushed up near the front window. She wove around the boxes and chairs to snag the afghan thrown over the back and wrap herself in it, then took a minute to peer through the front windows hung with lace curtains she'd never have chosen but had asked to keep anyway. Those curtains were hers now.\n\nThis place was hers.\n\nShe ran her fingers along the leather couch. The back of the overstuffed armchair. The cardboard boxes still crammed full and taped shut, guarding everything they owned. This house, this brand-new place, this fresh start...it began in chaos and confusion but would settle. It would. Ginny stood for a minute in the middle of the room, eyes closed, breathing in the smell of this new place. Her nose was cold. Her toes were cold. She hugged the afghan tighter around herself and waited to get tired. Waited to be warm.\n\nWell, the afghan was helping with the latter, but though every muscle ached, weighted with exhaustion, she was very far from sleepy. Mindful of her splinter-stuck foot, this time she didn't slide her feet while walking. So of course, two steps away from the couch, she stepped on something hard enough to make her gasp and hop with pain. The heavy thud of whatever it was moved along the floor as she kicked it, and though she tried to see what it was, shadows consumed it.\n\nDamn, it hurt, her sole bruised. Ginny added a pair of slippers to that ever-growing mental list\u2014clearly, she couldn't be shuffling around in her bare feet until everything had been unpacked and cleaned up. Instead of traversing the maze of boxes and possibly stubbing her toes or stepping on some other bit of moving detritus, Ginny decided to head for the kitchen via the hallway.\n\nFrom behind her, when she got to the doorway, came another sound of something clinking on the wood floor, so faint that though she turned her head toward it, she could easily convince herself that she'd imagined it. Or maybe that it had been her rings clicking on the wall as she gripped it to pause.\n\nShe listened.\n\nNothing. Only the sounds of an old house settling; sadly, still no huff and puff of hot air from the furnace vents. She felt a little warmer, though, under the blanket like a cape. Ginny's gran hadn't crocheted it. She wasn't the sort to spend her time in what she called \"handicrafts.\" But the blanket reminded Ginny of her. Gran had been a late-night wanderer, often with a blanket wrapped around her just like this. Checking the doors and windows to make sure they were locked. The stove to make certain all the burners were off. Gran had been one to bend over her sleeping children and grandchildren, holding her fingers under their nostrils to make sure they were still breathing. Ginny had woken many times in the night to see the shadowy figure looming over her, to hear the sharp pant of breath or Gran's grunt of approval when she figured out Ginny was still alive.\n\nGinny shivered at the memory, more from emotion than the chill. Gran's house had been similar to this one, full of nooks and crannies and delightful built-ins. A great place for kids to play hide and seek. A wonderful house for parties with neighbors, family and friends gathered around to eat, drink and be merry. Gran's Christmas Eve parties had been legendary, but only those closest to her knew how much effort and frustration she'd had in the planning and execution of even the simplest bits of the planning, how she'd worked herself into a frenzy with the preparations and how hard she'd crashed after. Those manic highs and lows had been the reason why Ginny's own mom had never thrown any parties, not even for birthdays. Maybe it was why her mom had never crept into her bedroom at night either, to make sure her children hadn't died in their sleep. Ginny couldn't say she minded that bit, but she had always loved helping Gran get ready for the Christmas Eve celebration.\n\nMaybe she'd have her own Christmas Eve party, Ginny thought as she moved through the dark hall past the small parlor. It didn't matter that she and Sean had always celebrated the holiday with no more fuss than a tabletop tree, a few gifts and dinner at the Chinese buffet\u2014unless they went to his mother's house. They'd get a real tree, floor to ceiling. Garland and tinsel and twinkling lights, with mistletoe in all the doorways. Gran's eggnog in the big crystal punch bowl she'd given Ginny when she moved into the nursing home and had distributed all of her \"treasures.\" It would be a lot of work, but Christmas was a couple months away and, besides, after that, the baby would be here. There'd be no time for parties after that, at least not for a while.\n\nAnd as for the other...would she be the sort of mother to creep around at night on cat-soft feet, always afraid? Or the other sort, so determined to let her kids go she didn't cling to them fiercely enough? Only time would tell.\n\nGinny made a pit stop in the powder room, her five-months-pregnant bladder reminding her that even without heartburn, sleeping through the night had become a thing of the past. She had to squint from the bright-white glare of the single, hideous fluorescent fixture. A new bathroom light went on the list. She peed forever, the jingle of urine splashing in the bowl sounding extra loud in the tiny room.\n\nFrom her spot in the light, the hall seemed extra dark, the shadows even thicker. There was an alcove beneath the rise of the stairs and in it, something moved. No flash of light to indicate eyes, no pale glimpse of a face, but nevertheless, the shape moved with a purpose. No random shift of light and dark, nor a mimic of her movements spilling into the hall and making the illusion of something else there.\n\nIn the dark, something moved.\n\nGinny froze, a crumpled wad of toilet paper in her fist, her bladder already loose and now looser with fear. She wouldn't have been able to stop the flow even if she wanted to, but the mortifying horror of being found dead on the toilet, with her faded and stretched-out panties around her ankles, forced a sudden startled laugh out of her. It also sounded extra loud. She cut off the noise by closing her mouth tight; in the next moment she finished peeing and that noise stopped too.\n\nShe waited, listening, trying to see what would loom up out of the shadows to get her. Of course, nothing did. She waited another thirty seconds before finishing on the toilet, pulling up her underpants and washing her hands while she stared hard into the mirror to make sure nothing came up behind her. And of course, nothing did.\n\nIn the doorway she put a hand out into the hall, searching for a light switch. None to the left. None to the right. There was one in the kitchen, she knew that. And one by the front door. But none here. She could stand here in the light forever, or she could venture out and face her fears.\n\nIt would be another box, she thought. A pile of something in the shape of a person, maybe a slowly toppling pile of curtains or tablecloths that had finally given in to gravity just when she happened to be looking at them. She stepped forward, into the hall, the alcove just a step or two in front of her and slightly to the left.\n\n\"It's just a jump to the left,\" she murmured and laughed again. \"And then a step to the right.\"\n\nShe didn't need a time warp. Two or three more steps in the direction would take her to the kitchen and the light switch, but for now she just blinked to let her eyes adjust again to the darkness. And then...she remembered. When they'd looked at this house, the alcove had been used to store the broom, a mop with its bucket and the vacuum cleaner. The basement door was there too.\n\nJust a leaning mop that had probably lost its precarious balance from her thundering weight as she walked. That was all. Nothing else.\n\nStill, that was twice in one night that Ginny'd let herself be scared into seeing things that weren't there. Understandable, she guessed. New house, still so unfamiliar. Everything in her life had been turned upside down. Nothing was the same. She let her hand rest on the slight bump beneath her nightgown. Nothing would ever be the same.\n\nBut this house was their new start, hers and Sean's. This was where they'd raise a family. God willing, they'd grow old together, still interested in sitting on the fabulous front porch in rocking chairs, holding hands. They'd make every clich\u00e9 and stereotype of a happy family come true, she thought with grim determination as she stared fiercely into the alcove, daring the shadows to shift in front of her again.\n\nOf course, nothing did.\n\nIn the kitchen, Ginny shuffled across the linoleum to open the fridge, squinting again as she pulled out a carton of orange juice they'd picked up from the convenience store. She really wanted a cup of hot tea but had no clue where either the kettle or the mugs were. Or the tea bags, for that matter. She poured a paper cup of juice and sipped at it as she looked around the humped shapes of stacked boxes on counters and the floor. They had put their old dining room table in here. In the townhouse, the table had seemed immense, but here the kitchen dwarfed it. She ran a finger along the clean modern edge, thinking maybe she'd hunt for something antique for the new dining room. Or at least something that looked antique, not another sleek but flimsy thing Sean would have to put together using one of those little wrenches that came in the box.\n\nSean had made some noise about turning at least one of the bedrooms into an office, but so far anything that might someday go into such a thing as a home office was still packed up in boxes that had been distributed to other rooms. However, her laptop was plugged in and charging on the table, she knew that for sure, because earlier she'd gone online to make sure the Internet was working and to check her email. She'd never had a desk. She'd always done all of her computer work at this very table in their minuscule dining room in the townhouse.\n\nInvestigating insurance fraud was never as exciting as most people would imagine, but there had been some occasional physical stress to it. Sometimes a stakeout, watching the man who'd claimed his back hurt too much to stack boxes do the tango with his wife in a backyard they hadn't secured from every line of sight. Or asking that seemingly innocent young woman to help her reach something on the top shelf of the grocery store, when the woman had claimed her injuries kept her from doing her job as a retail clerk. But most of Ginny's job was spent writing reports and making sure her facts were straight, that she had proof of the fraud that couldn't be disputed, that all her t's were crossed and i's dotted. She'd spent lots of late nights bathed in the glow of the laptop, a mug of hot tea and a plate of cheese and crackers next to her if she was being good, a piece of cake or some cookies or a bowl of ice cream if she wasn't.\n\nMost of those late nights, she wasn't being good. But that was all over now, and though she let her fingers drift across the laptop's polished-metal lid, detecting the smoother outline of the sticker she'd applied\u2014a zombie Snow White with her hands posed to hold the Apple logo\u2014Ginny didn't open the lid. She didn't check her email or surf the gossip sites or buy things she wanted but didn't need and couldn't really afford. She didn't log on to her Connex account, and she had no reason any longer to snoop around figuring out what other people tried to keep hidden. She was finished with that. This was their new start, and she wasn't going to ruin it by old habits.\n\nGinny climbed the stairs in the dark, one hand on the railing to ensure she didn't trip or fall and plummet to her sprawling, awkward death. She moved through the upstairs hall, also in the dark, found her bedroom door and crept into her bed, all without turning on the lights, all without anything jumping out at her. By the time she wiggled under the blankets and curled onto her side, the first edges of morning light were beginning to peek through the windows. When Sean's alarm went off, she sighed, dreaming, and snuggled back down beneath the comforter, finally able to sleep.\nChapter Three\n\nThe screams of children woke her. Ginny's eyes flew open and she clawed out at the air, her fingertips not close enough to skim the curtains but moving them a bit in the breeze her startled motion left behind. She gasped.\n\nKids playing outside, that was all. She could hear the shush-shush of feet rustling in leaves and the singsongy chant of some childhood rhyme she'd recognize when she woke up a little more, or it would drive her crazy until she could remember it. Like the night before, she was coated in sweat, her nightshirt sticking to her back. Her mouth tasted sour.\n\nShe didn't force herself to get up right away. She rolled onto her back for a minute or so, remembering with a bit of melancholy how once, not so long ago, she'd spent every night flat on her back with her hands crossed over her chest. Vampira, Sean sometimes called her, but that had been her favorite sleeping position since childhood. She missed it. Though her belly was barely bumped, her muscles and joints had already started going loose, and she needed a complicated arrangement of pillows and positions to keep her back from hurting. Her inevitable aches eased briefly when she switched positions, but in another few minutes they'd start up again and worse, if she didn't move. For now, she let herself relax into the mattress as she stared up at the ceiling.\n\nWatermarks, faint beneath a coat of paint, but still there. Some cracks in the plaster. This wasn't a new house, so she shouldn't be surprised, but after the townhouse's smooth, pristine and flawless ceiling, this view was far more interesting. Ginny thought again of her gran's house. For all her eccentricities, Gran had loved having her grandchildren come to stay, and Ginny and her female cousins had always bunked up in the \"rose room.\" Floral-patterned wallpaper and sheets, two double beds along one wall and a twin tucked under the eaves. It had been Ginny's aunt Patty's room growing up and still bore the marks inside the closet door where she'd used a pen to keep track of how tall she and her siblings had grown. The ceiling in the rose room had been plastered in swirls that made faces if you looked just right, and Ginny's cousin Dana had been the queen of telling stories about them.\n\nThis ceiling didn't have those swirls, but Ginny looked for faces anyway. One pattern of cracks and shadow made a man with a walrus mustache. Another a lady in a floppy hat. A smaller configuration looked more like letters, though she couldn't quite make out what word they spelled. Staring, she started to doze before another series of childish shrieks slammed her awake again.\n\n\"Brats,\" she muttered, without real anger, just before a patter of something like gravel pinged the window over the bed. Then she scowled and rolled herself upright to pull back the curtain and stare down into the front yard.\n\nA little boy and a little girl, both blond and in matching red coats, stared up at the window. When the curtain twitched, the boy screamed again, backing away so fast he tripped himself up and landed on his butt. The girl's mouth opened wide, her eyes wider, but she didn't move. Frozen by fear, maybe, Ginny thought as she shook a finger at them. The glass had cracked, cold air seeping in, but remembering the chill from the night before, she wasn't sure she could blame the kids for breaking it. It looked old, if it were possible to tell how old a window crack was, but the lines of it were dirty. Still, why the hell were they tossing pebbles at her window in the first place? She shook her finger again, shooing them, and the girl reached down to pull the boy by the hand. The pair of them ran off across the yard and disappeared around the right-hand corner, leaving behind an assortment of toys. A wagon, some sort of trike. A ball.\n\nGinny sighed. \"Great.\"\n\nShe didn't exactly hate kids. She liked her nieces and nephews well enough, and her cousins' kids. And she'd love her own child, of course, she thought as she cradled her belly for a moment. More than love. She'd cherish her own child.\n\nBut random kids? Random, ill-behaved, screaming, rock-throwing and trespassing kids? Not a fan. Besides, what were they doing in her yard anyway? The house they'd run toward was bigger than this one, with a matching yard that looked manicured and maintained. She thought she remembered a swing set in the back too.\n\nHer own childhood hadn't been so long ago that she couldn't remember how exciting it was to do the very things your parents didn't want you doing. The house next door might have a swing set and perfectly mown grass, but Ginny's backyard had a giant tree with a rope that probably had once been a tire swing hanging from it. It had a gentle slope in the back, just right for rolling down, and the creek that edged their property took a sharp bend away from that other house. Ginny's backyard had knee-high grass that would need to be mowed sooner rather than later and a big collection of leaves perfect for jumping in, if anyone bothered to rake them. The appeal of her backyard wasn't so strange after all. But they hadn't been in the back, they'd been in the front, and even so, she didn't want strange children carousing on her property, especially if they were prone to screaming and throwing stones at her house.\n\nIn the hall bath, she took some time to give Noodles more food and fresh water, though she didn't scoop the box. Sean had read an article about how cat poop could be toxic to fetuses, and while Ginny was more than happy to give up the chore to him, he had to be reminded to do it on a daily basis. It was already starting to stink, worse than usual since she was keeping the bathroom door closed.\n\nThe cat had calmed, at least a little, though she nipped at Ginny's fingertips when Ginny tried to scratch behind her ears. Not that Ginny blamed her, at least not too much. She'd be cranky too if she'd been locked up for two days. Then again, if Ginny peed all over everything, she wouldn't blame anyone who locked her in the bathroom.\n\n\"You stay,\" she told the cat who tried to sneak out after her. \"Just another day or so, boo-boo, so I can get everything set up for you. So you don't pee on stuff.\"\n\nThe cat gave her a bland look that somehow also managed to convey how supremely insulting she found the insinuation that she ever voided her bladder inappropriately. Then she shook herself so the bell on her collar jingled. She turned and blatantly gave Ginny her back.\n\n\"Well,\" Ginny said as she got up, joints creaking, \"don't look at me like that. You know you do.\"\n\nIn the kitchen, she found a surprise\u2014a counter and floor sticky with juice dried into a gluey puddle. Her jaw clenched, and the giveaway throb in her temple told her that her blood pressure had spiked.\n\nGinny took a few calming breaths that did nothing to calm her. Muttering a few choice curse words made her feel better as she stood with her hands on her hips, staring down at the spill any reasonable adult would've cleaned up...but she knew what Sean would say if she confronted him about it. He was busy. Late for work. Didn't mean to do it.\n\n\"Whatever,\" she said aloud.\n\nGetting onto her hands and knees to scrub the spill was far easier than getting up. In fact, for a few strained minutes Ginny was sure she wasn't going to get up at all\u2014she tried to stand too fast and the world began to spin. She had to crawl to the table and push herself up on one of the chairs, where she let her head drop onto her hands. She breathed slowly in, slowly out. The dizziness abated, but then her stomach lurched and she barely made it to the sink in time to heave out a mouthful of bitter bile. Ginny clung to the sink for a minute, with the water running to wash away the sick. When she felt a little better, she bent to take a long, slow drink, letting the water fill and overflow her mouth to rinse it before she swallowed.\n\nShe lifted her head at the sound of childish laughter, but could see nothing through the window over the sink. By the time she managed to get herself to the back door to look out into the yard, they were gone. Maybe they'd run around to the front of the house again to collect what they'd left behind. Maybe she should go out and give them a scare, be the mean old lady from next door who shouted \"get off my lawn!\" and shook a broom. The one who gave out pennies and apples for trick or treat, instead of candy.\n\nShe laughed aloud at that thought and settled for opening the back door to lean out a little farther. Unlike the front of the house with its gorgeous porch, the back had only a set of cracked and crumbling concrete stairs and a crooked metal railing. The flagstone patio had been long overgrown with weeds, the stones themselves sunken into the dirt and covered with moss, but Sean had already announced plans for a big deck that would take advantage of the sloping yard and view of the creek, what there was of it. She'd only looked at it the first time they saw the house, and the summer had been dry enough to make it rather unimpressive. Enough to dip your toes in, maybe, no more than that. All she'd cared about was how far the water was from the house, and if the basement had a sump pump\u2014which it did. Also, according to the realtor, that creek hadn't flooded in over twenty years, and only then after an unusual inland hurricane.\n\n\"You'll never need to worry about water from that creek,\" Bonnie had said. \"But you have the sump pump downstairs in the basement, just in case.\"\n\nGinny took one step onto the concrete stairs before deciding she wasn't about to go tumbling down into the yard just to chase after a few noisy kids. If it kept up, she'd have to go over and talk to their parents, and \"bitchy\" wouldn't be the best introduction to the neighborhood. She listened for the sound of rustling leaves and the screaming laughter, but all she caught was the scamper of a squirrel in the tree and the sound of a truck in the street out front.\n\nShe lifted her face to the fresh autumn air. Took a long, deep sniff. This was her favorite time of year. Sean always said he didn't like fall, when the days got shorter. He said there was never enough time to do everything you wanted to in a day when the winter came, but Ginny'd always liked the sorts of things you did in the dark anyway.\n\nHer cell phone rang from her pocket, the ringtone telling her without even looking that it was Sean. She debated for half a second about not answering\u2014the call reminded her of the juice spill, which annoyed her all over again. But if she didn't answer, he'd call back or send a text, and if she didn't answer those... Well, she didn't want to find out what her husband would do if he couldn't get in touch with her at once. If there was any worse introduction to the neighbors than bitching to them about their wayward spawn, a police car, fire truck and\/or ambulance screeching up to the front of the house would be it.\n\nShe went back into the kitchen as she thumbed the screen to answer the call. \"Hi.\"\n\n\"Hey, it's me. What're you up to?\"\n\n\"Nothing. What's up?\"\n\nShe glanced at the clock. Nearly noon, and she hadn't yet eaten. That was no good, even if she had woken just past eleven. Typically, the nausea had passed and she was ravenous. The problem was, did they have any food? Pizza, after the heartburn of the night before, was completely unappealing. She tried to remember the few groceries she'd brought along and drew a blank. Baby brain, her sister had called it. The inability of a pregnant woman to retain information of current importance.\n\n\"...so do you need me to get you anything?\" This was Sean, who'd been talking for a good few minutes while Ginny stared into the fridge and mentally checked off everything inside it as unappealing.\n\nHer stomach rumbled. She reached for a string cheese and tore the plastic. Took a bite. \"We're out of everything. As soon as I get something to eat and clean up the kitchen, I'll run to the store.\"\n\n\"Don't work too hard,\" Sean warned. \"You should take it easy.\"\n\nMaybe if he hadn't spilled the juice and left it for her to clean, she wouldn't have been so immediately irritated by his admonition, but as it was, Ginny had to count to five before saying, \"All this stuff won't unpack itself, Sean.\"\n\n\"But, honey, you know you need to be careful.\"\n\n\"I'm careful.\"\n\n\"When we talked about you not going back to work, I didn't mean you had to take on everything at home, that's all.\"\n\nShe heard the concern in his voice, knew he was being sincere and not trying to be overbearing or patronizing. Just like she knew that if she didn't organize the house, it would not only take him forever to even get started, but once he did, he'd put everything in all the wrong places.\n\nGinny tried to keep her voice light. \"What am I supposed to do, Sean? Sit around all day eating bonbons and watching the soaps? Do they even have soaps on anymore?\"\n\nSilence ticked between them. She'd probably hurt his feelings. She tried again. \"I have to do something, okay? I'll go slow; I won't lift anything heavy. But if nothing else, I need to be able to get the kitchen organized so I can go to the store and buy us some food. We can't survive on takeout.\"\n\nWell. They could. Their budget was another story. Even as she thought about the grocery store, she remembered the fast-food burger joint in the parking lot. She could just about murder a burger, fries and milkshake. The worst food always made her feel the best.\n\n\"You could get your studio set up,\" Sean said after another half a minute. \"That's not too strenuous.\"\n\nGinny laughed softly. \"Not physically, no. Mentally...\"\n\n\"You're a great painter.\"\n\n\"Sure. Of walls.\" She looked around the kitchen. \"Speaking of which...\"\n\n\"No,\" Sean said. \"No way. Don't even think about it.\"\n\n\"I could just stop at the paint store...look at colors.\"\n\n\"I told you we could go this weekend.\" Now he sounded as irritable as she felt, which in turn only made her all the more annoyed. \"I don't want you lifting heavy paint cans, and besides, Ginny, I know you. You'll go to pick out colors and come back with all the stuff, and I'll find you up on a ladder when I get home.\"\n\nShe couldn't really argue with him, since that was true. Still, it didn't sit well with her to be lectured that way, even if he had good intentions. \"You worry too much.\"\n\nMore silence. Now she'd hurt his feelings for sure. He always clammed up when he was upset, and she stifled a sigh. She settled for a halfhearted apology instead. \"I'm sorry.\"\n\n\"I worry. Of course I do. Am I not allowed?\"\n\nShe rubbed the space between her eyes with the tip of her finger. \"Of course you are. But\u2014\"\n\n\"I'll stop and pick up something for dinner on the way home,\" he told her. \"It's Friday. We can just relax tonight, and tomorrow we'll hit the grocery store, the mall, the paint store, whatever you want. Okay? I'll be there to do the heavy lifting, and you can pick out the colors. I can paint Sunday, before anything gets unpacked. Easier that way, we won't have to cover the furniture or anything.\"\n\nWhen he put it that way, made it sound so reasonable she couldn't argue, there was no way for her to reply with anything but a murmured \"fine.\"\n\nIt was far from fine, but as usual, Sean didn't appear to hear the frustration in her voice. \"Good. What do you want for dinner?\"\n\n\"If you're going to pick it up,\" Ginny said in a clipped tone, \"you should just decide.\"\n\n\"Okay, good idea. I'll surprise you. I'll be home a little later than usual, then. Are you good for now, though? Should I have my mom\u2014\"\n\n\"No. If I need anything, I'll tell my sister to bring it over.\" She couldn't tell him enough times that she didn't need his mother to help her do the things she could do on her own, or with the help of her own mother or siblings. Or friends. Sean's mother meant well, but she was an easily flustered, flighty and sort of useless kind of woman with whom Ginny had never really connected. It was going to be bad enough that she had to tippy-toe around the mess in her house while she waited for her big, strong man to help her with tasks she could so easily accomplish twice as fast and perfectly well on her own. She didn't need a hovering, cooing mother-in-law there to second-guess and wring her hands fretfully over every choice.\n\n\"I gotta go. Lunch meeting. Paul's picking up Chinese.\"\n\n\"Well,\" Ginny said drily, because how could she stay angry in the face of Sean's clear delight, \"I guess I know what you won't be bringing home for dinner then.\"\n\nHe laughed, and after a moment she did too. They exchanged I-love-yous, his coming first but hers at least sincere, and she disconnected. It wasn't so much that she wasn't angry anymore as it was that she was making a deliberate effort\u2014a choice, if you will\u2014to tuck that annoyance away and focus on the positives. She didn't have to cook dinner. That was a plus. Her husband loved her. Another plus. They'd just bought a new house, and she could be a lady of leisure in it. No more job. Didn't have to unpack. Bonus, bonus, bonus. Everything she listed eased her irritation into a smaller, tighter package, until she was able to get rid of it altogether.\n\nThat was until she wanted to drink some juice and it was all gone, and when her stomach growled because she still hadn't eaten, and when she wanted to at least have a peanut butter sandwich and there was no bread, only saltines, and she had to use a spoon because she couldn't find a knife to spread it with.\n\n\"Fuck this,\" Ginny said aloud. Then again, just because she could, as loud as she wanted, no neighbors with their ears pressed against the walls to hear her. Or at least she presumed so, unless she screamed at the top of her lungs or those kids were hanging around on the porch, nobody would hear her. \"Fuck this with something hard and sandpapery.\"\n\nIt felt good to have let off just that little bit of steam, but when she had to resort to eating her saltine crackers over the sink because the table was too crowded to set down a plate, Ginny knew there was no way she could wait until the weekend to at least get some part of the kitchen unpacked and organized. She finished her lunch and dusted her hands free of crumbs, then lifted the lid of her laptop to turn the music on since, of course, she hadn't yet found either her iPod or the speakers that went with it.\n\nShe'd learned to be fastidious about shutting down her browsers, cleaning her cache, signing out of her email and social media sites. Sean had his own computer, but that never stopped him from \"just hopping\" on to hers if it was more accessible or faster or just plain nicer than his older model desktop\u2014and the laptop almost always was all of those things. No matter how many times she'd tried to explain that the entirety of her job was contained on that laptop, that not only was all the information she gathered confidential\u2014legally\u2014but that when he went in and tried to fiddle around, closing tabs she'd left open on purpose or signing her out of whatever she'd been doing, he was potentially screwing her investigations. She'd thought about setting up a user account for him, except she knew he'd never use it because he only ever intended to do something \"real quick\" and would see no point. And now, she supposed, since she was no longer working, it wouldn't matter. He'd been on here this morning though; she could tell because though the laptop powered up to the login screen, the lid itself was slightly sticky. Like from juice. Frowning, she ran her fingers over the metal.\n\nSticky.\n\nNot like someone had spilled juice right on it. More like someone with juice-coated fingers had touched it. She tried the keys, but they all seemed fine. The screen too, which was a good thing, because if Sean had not only spilled juice and left it for her to clean up, but also had gotten it all over her computer, paying hell would be less expensive than totaling up Ginny's expense report.\n\nMoments ago she'd been on fire to get something done, but the inertia of pregnancy settled her more firmly into her chair as she opened iTunes and clicked Shuffle to play through her entire music library. She didn't have to check her email or anything else...but she was going to. Why not? Sean had said she was supposed to take it easy, and fooling around on the Internet, not even pretending it was for work, was as easy as it got.\n\nShe checked her messages, answered one from her mom, marked one from her brother as unread so she'd remember to answer it later, deleted a slew of fluffy kitten glitter angels and urban legend warning forwards from Sean's mom, who obviously never visited Snopes.com. Ginny logged in to Connex and skimmed the updates, wished an old college friend a happy birthday and thought about resisting the allure of starting up a word challenge game with some random strangers, but didn't. She loved and hated those games because despite her large and eclectic vocabulary, she sucked spectacularly at the sort of strategizing necessary to make the most of the double-word and letter tiles. This time, she started off with a seventy-six point word that made her whoop aloud with glee.\n\nWith half the day already gone, her stomach momentarily at least sated if not full and a house full of boxes silently cajoling her into opening them, Ginny moved to log out of everything but the music program. And then...the way it always happens, a song shuffled up. At the first note she froze, fingers on the trackpad twitching so the cursor flew around the screen.\n\nThis song.\n\nOh, this song.\n\nShe hadn't let herself listen to it in months, though there'd been a time when she'd played it over and over again on Repeat, barely a break in between. On her laptop, in the car, through her headphones as she exercised or shopped or sat on the beach and pretended to read. That song had been a punch in the gut every single time, and yet she'd done that to herself on purpose. She'd let it cut her open so she had to sew herself back up again, over and over and over, and gained some sort of sick satisfaction from it. Some measure of...relief, she guessed.\n\nSome closure.\n\nThe problem with doing something you don't want anyone to know about is that when it all goes wrong and you sit at your kitchen table and put your face in your hands and cry because you're hurting even though you have no right to ache...you can't talk to anyone about your pain.\n\nThis pain was hers to carry alone, and that was all right. She deserved it to be that way. Heavy, with nobody to help her carry it. Sharp enough to cut.\n\nShe ought to have deleted the song from her music library entirely instead of just taking it off her playlists, but the fact was that even now, months later, a year later, maybe a fucking lifetime later, this song would always have the ability to cut her open. She would always find a way to sew herself up; that was who she was. It was what she did. So now when it started and she sat at her old table in its new place and stared all around her at the unfamiliar patterns of light streaming through the windows, all Ginny could do was sit and listen.\n\nAnd when the song ended, though she knew she needed to get up and get to work, Ginny hit Replay.\nChapter Four\n\n\"It's cold in here.\" Sean set the paper bags of takeout food on the table. \"Has it been this cold all day?\"\n\nGinny didn't turn from the sink where she was washing her hands. She'd spent the rest of her day wiping out the cabinets and cleaning the counters and cupboards so that when Sean unpacked the dishes he could put them on clean shelves. She'd given the floor a good mopping too. For a house that hadn't been lived in for a long time, there'd been a lot of dust. Now she ran the water as hot as it would go, scrubbing under her nails to get them clean of grime.\n\n\"I don't know. I guess so.\" She shrugged, still not looking at him, still a little tender from her earlier self-indulgent, emotional binge. \"It wasn't that cold out today, was it? Turn up the thermostat.\"\n\nSean disappeared into the hall and came back a few minutes later. \"It was already set at seventy. That's warm enough. Doesn't feel like seventy in here.\"\n\nHer hands clean, she crossed the kitchen to greet him with a kiss. Pushed all the residual emo down, way down, made it invisible. \"Mmmm. Your nose is cold.\"\n\nHe laughed, but his brow remained creased. \"Aren't you cold?\"\n\n\"I was busy working today. Want a sweatshirt?\"\n\n\"Yeah,\" he said, finally focusing on her face. When she tried to pull away, he kept her close with his hands on her hips. \"Hey, you. I thought you were going to take it easy.\"\n\n\"Sean...\"\n\nHis smile tipped the corners of his lips but left his eyes uncrinkled. \"I just want you to be careful. That's all.\"\n\nGinny sighed but didn't try to pull away from him. \"I know. And I was. I took my time. I didn't overdo anything. And look how nice the kitchen looks, you didn't even notice.\"\n\nSean didn't look around. He kissed her instead. \"You could've let me help.\"\n\nEnough. It was too much. With a sigh, Ginny pushed out of his embrace. \"It was fine. Let's eat.\"\n\nHe didn't move from behind her as she went to the cupboard to pull out a couple of plates. \"I don't like it when you walk away from me like that.\"\n\n\"Yeah, well, I don't like it when you lecture me.\" She turned. \"I couldn't wait for you to get home to help me clean the kitchen, Sean. Okay? It had to be done, especially since there was juice all over the place. You think I should've just, what, walked over it all day? C'mon. That's crazy.\"\n\nHe tilted his head just a little. \"What happened with the juice?\"\n\n\"What do you mean, what happened with the juice?\" She put the plates on the table, then went to the drawer for forks and knives. \"You spilled it all over the floor.\"\n\n\"I didn't spill it.\"\n\nShe paused, silverware in hand. She'd expected excuses, not outright denial. \"Well, I sure didn't.\"\n\n\"I didn't even come in here this morning, I was running late. Had to stop at the Green Bean for coffee.\" He glanced at the fridge, then her. \"What juice?\"\n\n\"Certainly not the juice I bought at the grocery store today, since I was forbidden from going.\" He gave her a blank look. Ginny sighed. She put the forks and knives on the table next to the plates, then her hands on her hips. \"The orange juice we picked up from the convenience store. I woke up in the night and came downstairs and had some juice...\"\n\nGinny trailed off, trying to remember if she'd put the juice back in the fridge. Sean smiled just a little. She frowned. \"I didn't spill it. I'd remember that.\"\n\n\"Like you remembered leaving your purse on top of the car? Or when you put your phone in the fridge and the butter in your tote bag?\"\n\n\"Totally different,\" Ginny said crossly.\n\nSean said nothing, but this time his smile did crinkle the corners of his eyes in that way she loved so much. It made her want to trace his eyebrows, so finely arched she sometimes teased him that he had a secret waxing habit. It made her want to pull him close and open his mouth with hers and taste him, and if nothing else, she was grateful for that sudden, trip-trapping beat of her heart. There'd been a long, long period of time when she feared she'd forgotten what it was like to want him that way.\n\n\"Maybe I left the juice on the counter,\" she conceded. \"But I didn't spill it.\"\n\n\"It was probably Noodles.\"\n\nGinny frowned. \"She doesn't jump up on the counters.\"\n\n\"So you say,\" Sean told her. \"She just doesn't do it when we're around.\"\n\n\"She's locked in the bathroom,\" Ginny pointed out just as a familiar, plaintive cry meeped out from under the door to the pantry.\n\nSean went to the door and turned the knob. Noodles slipped out nonchalantly, wound around his legs a few times and then sat to lick her paw. Sean looked at Ginny, who frowned.\n\n\"I didn't let her out,\" Ginny said. \"And I sure didn't lock her in there.\"\n\n\"Maybe she snuck in there while you were cleaning, and you closed the door.\" He opened it wider and looked inside.\n\nThe narrow space, about four feet wide but easily eight feet deep, had floor-to-ceiling wire shelving Ginny hadn't even touched. She peered around his shoulder at the inside, but aside from a few dust balls matching the dirt caught in Noodles's whiskers, she saw nothing. At least the cat hadn't crapped or peed on the floor. Sean was talking, but Ginny ignored him to push into the small room. She looked up, down, side to side. At last, admitting defeat, she turned.\n\n\"...just tired,\" Sean was saying. \"You know she's an escape artist. Remember when she got behind the furnace and wouldn't come out?\"\n\nThis was true. Since kittenhood, Noodles had found her way in and out of places where she wasn't supposed to be. But this time, it didn't feel right. Ginny had shut the bathroom door firmly behind her this morning, and she hadn't gone into the pantry at all...had she? She looked again. It was dirty. She hadn't cleaned it. But it was possible the door had been open, even the smallest amount, enough for a nimble and mischievous cat to slip inside and hide before Ginny pulled it shut during her kitchen makeover.\n\n\"Sure,\" Ginny said and bent to lift Noodles. She stroked the soft fur as the cat butted her head against Ginny's chin. She smelled musty, and the white patches of her calico coat were smudged with grime.\n\nThe cat let out a warning growl and struggled to get down, and Ginny let her go. Noodles ran out of the kitchen through the arched doorway into the dining room. Ginny thought about chasing her, but sighed, figuring she'd just open up the hall bathroom door until she could get the litter box into the basement. And, of course, convince the cat to use it there.\n\n\"I'm going to set up the TV and stuff so we can watch something. I think we're behind on a few episodes of Runner.\" Sean pulled her close to kiss the top of her head, and before she could protest, followed the cat into the dining room.\n\nGinny looked around the mess in the kitchen\u2014dirty dishes, rice and beans left over from the Mexican takeout spilled on the table. So much for not having to take care of everything around the house, she thought and went to the doorway to peek through to the living room, where Sean had started pulling open one of the boxes and had his hands full of wires. So much for not unpacking anything until they painted the walls.\n\nSo much, she thought, for all of that.\nChapter Five\n\nGinny runs.\n\nOne foot in front of the other, never faltering, she runs and runs, dodging and weaving through a landscape that looks like something out of The Terminator. Scorched earth. Dark skies.\n\nHer heart pounds, her fists pump, but this feeling is not harsh or bad. It's glorious, working her body this way, like she never does in her real life. Ginny runs. She jumps. She stretches her arms; she grows wings.\n\nShe flies.\n\nAnd she falls.\n\n* * * * *\n\nGasping, Ginny woke again coated in sweat, again with her throat burning from reflux. Mexican food. She'd stayed up too late trying to make sure she didn't go to bed with her stomach too full, and she'd even managed a long, relaxing bath, which was a pleasant surprise considering the water heater's sporadic offerings. Yet still her body rebelled against the spicy food and here she was, sitting straight up in bed with her eyes wide and the dream of all her bones breaking still vivid enough to keep her from wanting to go back to sleep.\n\n\"You okay?\"\n\n\"Yeah. Go back to sleep.\"\n\n\"What time is it?\" Sean pressed the button on his clock radio and bathed the room in cold white light. \"Shit. Late.\"\n\nIt felt like she'd gone to bed hours ago, but it had only been about forty-five minutes since she'd slipped under the covers beside him. Ginny yawned with her hand over her mouth, hoping nothing else came up and out. The light from Sean's clock dimmed, then went out, but not before she caught a flash of something in the hall. Something bright, reflective. Something like eyes.\n\n\"Turn that light on,\" she whispered.\n\nSean had already fallen back to sleep, or mostly, and he let out a muffled \"hmmph?\"\n\nGinny rolled over to turn her bedside light on, which made Sean grunt and throw an arm over his face. \"I saw something in the hallway.\"\n\nSean sat up at once. \"What?\"\n\nHer pumped-up heartbeat wasn't helping the reflux. \"I saw something like...eyes.\"\n\n\"The cat.\"\n\n\"No,\" she said. \"Unless Noodles is now the size of a Great Dane and standing on her back legs on a box.\"\n\nSean got up and went to the half-open door and pulled it all the way to show the empty hallway. \"Nothing there. Probably something reflecting off of something. Or the window at the end of the hall. Or the night-light, maybe it was that.\"\n\nShe knew he was right, of course he was. The quick, bright flash might've even been her imagination or a quirk of the shadows. It could've been some light coming in through the window, splitting shadows she hadn't yet come to know.\n\nSean's warm hand on her back reminded her of how chilly she was, and Ginny turned off her light to snuggle back under the blankets. The reflux was fading with every swallow, just like the memories of her dream. She rolled to face her husband, who was sprawled on his back with one arm flung over his head. His slow, even breaths soothed her. She put a hand on his belly, first on top of the soft T-shirt, then slipped her fingers underneath to lay them on the warm skin beneath. Then, lower.\n\n\"Oh yeah?\" Sean sounded sleepy, but amused. Beneath her fingers, he responded.\n\n\"Yeah,\" Ginny said. \"Definitely.\"\n\nShe moved to pull him on top of her, but Sean resisted, rolling her on top of him instead. \"Don't want to squish...you.\"\n\nThe baby. He meant the baby. Ginny sighed, straddling him. It felt awkward now. Unwieldy, when she'd simply wanted him to move inside her, but now she had to do some sort of gymnastics routine to get things going. She kissed him when he pulled her down to his mouth, but all at once she couldn't stop thinking about the landscape from her dream and the inconsistent amount of hot water and the errands they needed to do the next day, which would come way too early the longer they were awake.\n\n\"No?\" Sean murmured into her ear, his breath warm. He pushed a hand between them, but the position wasn't quite right and the pressure against her was more pain than pleasure. \"I thought you wanted to.\"\n\nBut it was lost, and she didn't want to tell him so because she'd been the one to start this. It would be unfair to back out now. So she took him in her hand and shifted to slide him inside her, and she moved the way she knew he liked her to move.\n\nAnd when it was over, in the dark, she listened to the sound of his breathing slow and deepen beside her. She listened to Noodles's rhythmic purring. She listened to the soft scritch-scratch of something inside the walls of her house, and it was that sound that finally soothed her into sleep.\nChapter Six\n\nThe exterminator was much cuter than he had any right to be. Over six feet tall, dark hair, ice-blue eyes. Dimples in both cheeks when he grinned, which he did the second Ginny opened the door and wished she'd put on something nicer than a pair of yoga pants and one of Sean's old college sweatshirts.\n\n\"Mrs. Murphy?\"\n\nTechnically, she was not Mrs. Murphy since she'd kept her maiden name, but it was easier to nod than explain. She stepped aside to let him in. \"Yeah. Come on in. Thanks for getting here so fast.\"\n\n\"No problem. It's my job, right?\" He turned in a slow half circle, looking up at the ceiling before focusing on her. \"I'm Danny.\"\n\nHe held out a hand for her to shake, surprising her. Ginny's hand was engulfed inside his fingers. \"Ginny.\"\n\n\"You have mice?\" Danny asked as he let go. He set down the tool bag in his other hand and put both hands on his hips. He wore a dark-blue coverall with his name on a patch over his heart. Big black boots.\n\n\"I think so.\" Ginny tried not to ogle his ass when he turned again to look up, but didn't manage very well. It was a pretty stellar butt, hard to ignore even in the baggy coveralls. \"I've heard things in the walls and ceiling. We just moved in\u2014\"\n\n\"Yeah, I thought you must be new. I've been doing this neighborhood for a few years now, but this is the first time I've been called to this house.\"\n\nSomething in the way he said \"doing this neighborhood\" made her think of housewives clad in leopard-print robes, martini glasses in hand, standing on top of chairs and screaming while cartoon mice ran around them. \"We've been in for not quite a week.\"\n\n\"Guy who owned this place before never had a contract with us, not even just the standard maintenance. Your husband signed you up for that, so I can take care of that for you today too. If you want.\" Danny's grin made Ginny think he'd take care of lots of things she wanted.\n\nShe shoved that idea away as absurd. She was easily at least ten years older than him, face bare of makeup and inadequately showered. And pregnant. And married, she reminded herself. Still, looking wasn't touching, and she admired Danny's dimples again.\n\n\"Did he?\" she remembered to say. \"What does that mean?\"\n\n\"Means I'll come out every three months to treat your place for spiders, bees, wasps, check for termites. Whatever you need. And if you have any other problems, I'm your guy to take of that too. Like mice.\" Danny winked.\n\nGinny blinked.\n\nDanny pulled a flashlight from the tool bag and shone it along the crown molding. \"Termites usually aren't a problem in this neighborhood, but you get a lot of spiders and silverfish. Being so close to the creek, you can get millipedes and stuff in your basement too.\"\n\n\"But...you'll take care of all that. Right?\"\n\nDanny clicked off the flashlight and gave her another of those grins. Ginny wondered if he practiced them. \"Yep. All of it. If you want to show me into the basement first, I can take care of you from the ground up.\"\n\nOh, I bet you could, Ginny thought. Top to toe too. She bit the inside of her cheek to keep a straight face and pointed down the hall. \"Basement door's to the right there, in that alcove. I have a cat. You won't put anything down that's poisonous to animals, right?\"\n\nDanny shook his head. \"No, ma'am.\"\n\nJesus. Ma'am. It should've made her feel old and possibly respected, but instead made her flash on a vision of herself in librarian glasses and a pencil skirt, with her hair in a bun and a ruler in her hand.\n\nShe pointed the way toward the basement, but didn't follow him down. She was in the middle of not only a cutthroat game of online Scrabble, but also finishing up some final files she needed to send in to the company she no longer worked for. The word game was winning her attention, because while the files were important, they were also the last link she had to her job. As soon as she turned them in, she'd have no more reasons to think of herself as a working woman.\n\nShe got so engrossed in trying to figure out where to use her Q, U and Z tiles for the best results that she didn't hear Danny until he appeared in the kitchen suddenly enough to make her scream. \"You scared me,\" Ginny said unnecessarily, one hand on her heart. \"God.\"\n\n\"Sorry.\" Danny looked serious. \"I need to talk to you about your basement.\"\n\nThat sounded bad. Ginny hadn't actually been in the basement since they'd moved in. She remembered it as being unfinished and dry, the only thing she'd really cared about. Sean had talked about making it into a rumpus room, a place for a home theater. Sean talked about a lot of things.\n\n\"My husband has big plans for it,\" she said. \"Aside from that, what's the problem?\"\n\n\"It's your ductwork. Oh hey, puss.\" Danny crouched to offer a hand to Noodles, who sniffed it with disdain but let him pet her. He stroked the cat's fur, then looked up at Ginny. \"It's all over the place down there.\"\n\n\"Umm...?\" Ginny had no idea what ductwork was supposed to look like.\n\n\"Plenty of places for rodents and pests to hide. Basically, like a little superhighway for mice. But it's okay. I put some glue traps in there, and I'll add some bait traps in the attic. That's where you heard them, right? But you'll have to be sure your cat doesn't go up there.\"\n\nGinny looked at Noodles, busy licking her paw, and then at him. \"She doesn't go in the attic. Hell, right now she doesn't even go into the basement. The door's always closed.\"\n\nDanny frowned. \"You'll have to check the glue traps, which, honestly, I don't love. Bait traps are more effective, for sure. But you do risk the chance then that they might not go all the way outside to...\"\n\n\"Die?\"\n\nHe nodded. For an exterminator, Danny seemed awfully delicate.\n\nGinny sighed. \"So what, then? They'd get stuck inside the wall someplace and...rot?\"\n\nDanny nodded again. \"But, you know, mice. They're small. It would only stink for a little while. If you had a squirrel or something bigger, a raccoon, say...\"\n\n\"Jesus,\" Ginny muttered. \"Do you think we might?\"\n\n\"I won't know until I go up and check. This close to the creek, you might get rats.\" Danny made a pow-pow gesture with his fingers. \"But it's probably just mice. You heard noises in the walls?\"\n\n\"And ceiling. Yeah.\" For a moment she thought about mentioning the shape she thought she'd seen that first night here. The eyes. \"Rats...they can get pretty big?\"\n\nDanny smiled. \"Sure. Huge, some of them. When I was working in the city, I'm not even kidding you, I once saw a rat that was bigger than a Chihuahua.\"\n\n\"Jesus.\"\n\n\"Yeah.\" Danny nodded, eyes wide and serious for a moment before the grin was back. \"But around here? Nah. You'll get field mice and squirrels, sure. Sometimes a raccoon. Sometimes bats. But even if you do get rats, they're probably not that big.\"\n\nNot Great Dane size anyway. That was only in the movies. Ginny frowned. \"But you'll put out enough poison to take care of whatever it might be?\"\n\n\"Yep. If you'll show me the attic, I can get up there and take a look around. Do I need a ladder?\"\n\n\"No. There's a pulldown.\"\n\nUpstairs, she showed him the door in the ceiling and he pulled the cord, dropping the stairs. Ginny had left Sean to inspect the attic, but watching Danny's feet disappear into her ceiling, she decided to follow him. She stayed on the stairs, and stuck only her head through the hole. There was no floor up there, just a few boards placed across the beams, and the steeply pitched roof made it impossible for anyone but a child\u2014or a super tiny adult\u2014to stand upright except in the center.\n\n\"I thought it would be bigger,\" Ginny said. \"Like the size of the house.\"\n\n\"You have those gables and dormer things.\" Danny shone his flashlight into the corners, but didn't move more than a step or two from the hole in the floor. The beams creaked under his boots. \"Crawl spaces, right?\"\n\n\"Oh. Yeah. But still...\" Ginny gestured, though he wasn't looking, \"...I guess this isn't what I was expecting.\"\n\nHe grinned at her over his shoulder. \"Could be worse, right? You could've come up here and found something really creepy.\"\n\n\"Yeah, like Gary Busey.\"\n\nDanny obviously missed the reference to the 80s horror classic Hider in the House. Busey had played a crazy guy who built a secret room in Mimi Rogers's attic, then stalked her. Ginny had meant it as a joke, and if her brother, Billy, were here he'd have laughed. He'd watched that movie with her so many times they could both quote the dialogue back and forth. Ginny thought briefly of explaining, but couldn't muster the effort. Danny shone his light around the room, pausing to spotlight a round vent at one end. Then one on the other side, identical except for the mesh covering.\n\n\"There's part of your problem. That vent should have the same protection on it. That's how stuff can get in.\"\n\nGinny had a hard time believing mice would climb up the side of the house and in through a vent, but she supposed squirrels could. Or bats. She grimaced. A bat had flown into her college apartment once. All she could remember was some drunken frat boy her roommate was screwing going after it with a tennis racket.\n\n\"Can you fix that?\"\n\nDanny shook his head and pointed the light at the beams under his feet. \"Sorry. I can only spray for bugs and put down bait traps. But I'll do that up here. I see some droppings, not a huge amount, looks like mice. Kinda old, but, still, definitely some evidence that you have something going on. I'll put some glue traps in here too, along with the bait, okay?\"\n\n\"Sure. Yes. Perfect, thanks.\" Ginny backed down the rickety stairs carefully.\n\nDanny was there for about another hour, during which time Ginny managed a crushing win in her word game, but also completed all her final files and sent them off to where they needed to go. All done. All gone. She was officially unemployed for the first time since she was fifteen years old.\n\nWhen he came in one more time, Danny found her at the kitchen table, staring at her laptop's blank screen. A tiny bouncing icon alerted her to her sister Peg's instant message, but Ginny was ignoring it for now. She had her hands folded in front of her, not touching the keyboard or even the mouse she used because the laptop's small trackpad drove her crazy.\n\n\"Ma'am?\"\n\nGinny turned. \"Finished?\"\n\n\"I put the traps out. I found a few places out here your husband will want to check out too. Your house has a brick front, but the rest is aluminum siding. The places in the corners of the house where the siding comes together, those are open on the bottom. Sometimes they're capped, but the caps fall off. Rodents climb up in there, that's how they get in the walls. Just have him shove some steel wool up there. That should solve it.\"\n\nGinny pushed her chair back with a long screech on the linoleum. \"Thanks.\"\n\n\"You writing a book or something?\"\n\nTaken aback, she looked at the laptop. \"Huh? Oh. No. I'm not a writer.\"\n\n\"Oh. So you're the painter?\"\n\nThis took her even more aback, literally, as she stepped back. Her calves hit the chair. \"What?\"\n\n\"The easel and stuff, I saw it upstairs when I was putting some traps in your crawl space. You sure your cat won't get into them, right?\" Danny, bless his pretty face, looked worried. \"Even if she gets into the crawl space, she shouldn't be able to get into the bait, but...\"\n\n\"It'll be fine.\" Ginny wasn't sure how to feel about him not only helping himself to her crawl space, which, honestly, was what he was there to do, but also noticing her...stuff.\n\n\"My girlfriend took a couple art classes this summer. She's really into watercolors. What do you paint?\"\n\n\"Nothing,\" Ginny said too fast. \"Well. Nothing lately.\"\n\n\"Did you do the ones in the basement?\"\n\nThis stunned her so much she sat down. \"What?\"\n\n\"There were a bunch of canvases in the basement. Mostly flowers and stuff, big flowers.\" Danny demonstrated by holding his hands apart, shoulder width.\n\n\"Yes,\" Ginny said after a moment. \"Yes. Those are mine.\"\n\n\"They're pretty good. You ever think about showing them in a gallery or something?\"\n\n\"No. They were just for fun.\"\n\nDanny nodded like this made total sense, then paused to look at her more solemnly. \"So...it's not fun for you anymore, or...?\"\n\n\"I just haven't had time. That's all. I'll get back to it,\" Ginny told him, but from his look she thought he didn't believe her, any more than she did herself.\n\nAs soon as she closed the front door behind him, cutting off his cheerful reminder that he'd be back in three months to \"squirt for bugs,\" Ginny went to the basement door. Noodles was suddenly at her feet, winding around her ankles and meowing plaintively\u2014the cat had put on too much weight when they let her eat at her leisure, and she was reminding Ginny it was overdue time for her to be fed now. Ginny bent to pick her up and scratch her under the chin, then tossed her gently toward the kitchen and opened the basement door to squeeze through it. Noodles managed to run after her anyway, barely missing getting the tip of her tail caught. Bell collar jingling, she rocketed down the stairs in front of Ginny, who at least wanted to wait until she'd turned on the light.\n\nShe didn't have to go far to see the paintings. Someone had stacked them up against the wall closest to the foot of the basement stairs. Carelessly, without so much as a single sheet of bubble wrap or anything between them to protect the canvases from getting scratched. The movers must've done it, she thought, since she surely wouldn't have packed them that way. She hadn't packed them at all.\n\nFor a moment, Ginny saw herself crossing the short distance and flipping through those paintings, which represented not only hours of her time, but an entire rainbow of memories in every single shade of gray. She saw it so clearly\u2014how her hands would shift and move them, separating them into chronological order or by color scheme or theme. She closed her eyes and saw every single painting she'd ever done that had been worth saving.\n\nThe problem was, just like she hadn't packed them, Ginny hadn't saved them, either.\nChapter Seven\n\nDon't forget, I have class tonight.\n\nSean had sent the text that morning, but though once not so long ago Ginny'd carried her phone around with her like it was attached by an umbilical cord, she'd gotten out of the habit now that she wasn't working and also home full time, where she could be reached on the landline. She'd have remembered about his class when six o'clock arrived and he didn't come through the door, but it was good he'd reminded her. She could have a dinner of leftovers while she watched TV and tried to ignore the mess in the living room. At least the boxes made it easy for her to find a place to put her plate.\n\nPasta with roasted red peppers, hearts of palm and a sprinkling of olive oil and grated parmesan cheese. That was her dinner, along with a couple of crusty French rolls. Her craving for a nice glass of red wine was like a physical punch, but Ginny didn't even give the bottle a longing glance. Her previous doctor had told her a glass of wine a day was perfectly fine; this time around, she hadn't asked the ob-gyn's opinion. Better to just avoid it, the way she avoided caffeine and secondhand smoke, and baths that were too hot or showers that were too cold, artificial sweeteners and caustic chemicals. She cleaned with organic products or old home remedies like vinegar and baking soda. She looked both ways at least twice before crossing the street.\n\n\"Because I'm not taking any chances,\" Ginny told the cat, who couldn't be bothered to even glance her way. \"Nope. Not a single one.\"\n\nHer eyes had been bigger than her stomach, no small feat these days. With only half her dinner finished, Ginny took her plate to the kitchen and set it on the counter, intending to scrape it before putting it in the dishwasher, but discovering instead that once again, Sean had taken out the trash without replacing the garbage bag.\n\nA quick search of the cupboard beneath the sink turned up no box of trash bags, and she'd already learned from sad experience that this older-model dishwasher couldn't handle dishes that weren't already mostly clean. But Ginny, mindful that anger raised her blood pressure, didn't fume. Instead, she took her daily dose of vitamins, minerals, anti-nausea remedies and a potent cocktail of homeopathic tinctures that were supposed to guarantee her optimum health and that of her unborn child. Some went down easier than others, no doubt about that, but she forced herself to take each pill or liquid slowly.\n\nShe wasn't taking any chances.\n\nNoodles's bell collar jingled, and Ginny turned to greet that cat. \"What do you think, Noodles? Should I have that...chocolate cake... Noodles?\"\n\nGinny scanned the doorway to the hall, then the arched one leading to the dining room, expecting to see the cat sitting there, giving her the normal bored look. She'd heard the collar, the jingle of bells she suspected Noodles, should she ever find a voice, would disdain in favor of a collar with spikes. Yet...no cat.\n\n\"Noodles?\"\n\nSlowly, Ginny moved toward the hall, ears cocked for any sound of the bell. There it was, but far away and faint now. Upstairs. Ginny heard the sound of something rattling against the still-bare wooden floors up there, and the soft patter of paws. She climbed the stairs, one at a time, her hand there to pull her along like she was eighty years old and a hundred pounds overweight, which was sort of how she felt most of the time. At the top, she psh-pshed for the cat and listened again for the sound of the bell.\n\nNothing.\n\nShe called the cat's name again, but unlike a dog or even a cat with a pleasant personality, Noodles had never come when called. The sound of a can of food opening would bring her running as fast as her legs could carry her too-tubby body, but to the sound of her own name she was deliberately deaf.\n\nFrom the room Sean liked to call the office but Ginny thought of as the library came another faint jingle and the rattle of something on the wood floor. Ginny peeked in the doorway, but the cat was gone. The room was warm, though\u2014that was a bonus. Inside it on the floor, she found what the cat had been playing with. Bending to pick it up made her head spin a little, dammit, so she made sure to stand very, very carefully.\n\nIt was a small wooden figure. A lady. The paint had worn off, but her carved features were pretty. She wore forties fashion, an animal stole and peplum jacket. She was the size of Ginny's pinky and matched the ones she'd found that first day in the telephone table drawer. Ginny looked her over. The wood was warm in her palm.\n\nThis room had a fireplace that matched the one in the parlor below it, though like the one in the dining room, it had been blocked off, unusable. It also had a set of beautiful, floor-to-ceiling built-in bookcases that went from the fireplace to the opposite wall and around the corner. Gorgeous crown molding. On the other side of the fireplace was a dormer window like the one in her bedroom, but much larger. Inside the dormer area, one of those crawl-space doors.\n\nHer easel leaned against the wall in that dormer, surrounded by the boxes of her painting supplies. She hadn't put it there. Like the paintings in the basement, Ginny hadn't even packed any of this stuff. The last she'd seen it all was in their garage in the townhouse after not even looking at it for months before that.\n\nGinny rolled the figure in her palms, back and forth. Whoever had carved it was an artist, of sorts. How long had it taken him to create this tiny figure? To carve the details in the fox stole, the dress, the expression on the woman's face that, the longer Ginny looked at it, seemed to be a smirk? Had he loved this work, or had he spent the time on it because it was better than facing something else?\n\nGinny put the figure on one of the shelves. \"Noodles?\"\n\nStricken by the thought that the cat had somehow wormed her way into the crawl space and found the bait Ginny had promised exterminator Danny she'd keep her away from, Ginny moved toward the small door. It was a little ajar, cold air blowing in around the edges. Ginny swore she heard Noodles's bell jingling. With a low cry, she tugged the door open to find...\n\nNothing.\n\nWell, not totally nothing. She found some mouse turds and a few of those glue traps, along with a black bait box. Tattered pink insulation. Some weathered cardboard boxes she didn't recognize and refused to open. Oh, and a shit ton of frigid air wafting up from the open spaces under the eaves.\n\n\"Shit.\" If the cat got in there, she could easily get hurt. Ginny shoved the door closed extra tight and made a mental note to ask Sean about weather stripping around the door. Maybe even putting a lock on it to make sure it didn't blow open again.\n\nIn the kitchen, she found a smug-looking Noodles on top of the kitchen table and shooed her off, then thought better of it and picked up the protesting cat to give her a snuggle. Noodles might be a bit of a bitch, but they'd had her since she was a kitten.\n\n\"If something happened to you...\" Ginny kissed the cat's head, ignoring for a minute the way Noodles squirmed. At least until the cat made that low, warning growl that meant she was going to bite. Then Ginny put her down fast.\n\nAffection turned to annoyance quickly enough when she went to put her plate in the dishwasher, though. The cat had helped herself to all of Ginny's leftovers, even licking the plate clean in wide stripes. Great. Now she not only would pee on stuff they left lying around, she'd probably puke too. And in just the right spot for Ginny to find it with her bare feet in the middle of the night.\n\n\"Brat cat,\" Ginny said aloud, but Noodles had once more disappeared.\nChapter Eight\n\nGinny had fallen in love three and a half times in her life. Well, two half times, so maybe that counted as one whole time? So. Four times. She'd fallen in love four times, with five different men, one of whom she'd married.\n\nAs soon as she saw the crimson-upholstered fainting couch with carved wooden legs and accents of gold thread, she knew she had to have it. She'd never wanted anything so much at first glance, not ever.\n\nWell. Maybe once before, but that had been a man and not a piece of furniture.\n\nThis was the first time an inanimate object had moved her to such instant, almost-feral desire. She touched it with reverent fingers, testing the upholstery. It was old, not in the best shape. It didn't even look comfortable, really, unless maybe you were a Victorian lady used to corsets and sitting stiffly upright. It was definitely not the sort of couch you were supposed to loll upon.\n\n\"I want it,\" she said.\n\nSean turned from where he'd been looking at a display of old Looney Tunes glasses in a locked cabinet. \"Hey, look. Like the ones we found in the house. Jesus, they're like five bucks apiece. My mom had the whole set of these. I bet we could get them from her.\"\n\n\"Good luck with that.\" Sean's mom had lots of things tucked away in her cupboards, on shelves, stored in boxes. She wasn't apt to give anything up, though she was fond of making lists about who was going to get what when she inevitably passed away. Which, according to his mother, could be at any moment.\n\nIgnoring the sign that said Please Do NOT Sit, Ginny lowered herself onto the couch, testing the firmness. The legs didn't wobble. A puff of dust came out, tickling her nose. She looked at him. \"I want it.\"\n\nSean's mouth pursed. \"That? Why?\"\n\n\"It's perfect,\" Ginny said simply. There was no other answer. This couch was perfect, she wanted it. It didn't matter the cost or how they were supposed to get it home.\n\nSean scratched his head and cupped the back of his neck with a hand while he gave her a squint-eyed look. \"Where would you put it?\"\n\n\"The library.\" Already she could imagine just how she'd angle it in front of the bookshelves. The pendent lamp from the living room, an end table, a warm and cozy throw. She stroked a hand over the upholstery. \"It'll be my Christmas present.\"\n\nHer husband held out a hand to help her up. He pulled her into his arms, held her close and nuzzled her nose before kissing her lightly. \"It's old. Since when do you like old furniture?\"\n\n\"Newsflash,\" she said. \"We live in an old house now. The kind that antiques look good in. And it's good for the environment. You know. Reduce, reuse, recycle and all that.\"\n\nSean looked dubious. \"Okay. If you really want it.\"\n\n\"I do. I want it. It's so gorgeous, and it will be perfect in the library.\" She ran a hand over the fabric again.\n\n* * * * *\n\n\"I thought you were going to use it as a studio,\" he said in the car after they'd made arrangements for the couch to be delivered.\n\nGinny'd been staring out the window, thinking about telling him she wanted to stop someplace for an early dinner even though she'd just blown their budget, and something in his tone of voice kept her looking through the glass instead of at his face. \"I never said that.\"\n\n\"I thought, when we looked at the house, you said what great light that room had, how it would make a great place to paint.\"\n\n\"I don't remember saying that.\"\n\n\"I do,\" Sean said.\n\nGinny looked at him. \"It's not like I couldn't paint in a library, if I wanted to. What difference does it make what we call it? It's got all those bookshelves, it seems like a library. There's room for a desk in there for you, if you want to make it an office, which is what I thought you wanted it to be.\"\n\n\"No. The little room is going to be the office.\"\n\nShe distinctly remembered him calling the room with the bookshelves the office. She supposed it was too late to convince him to take her out for dinner too, since they were pulling up the street to the house. Sean parked, then peered upward through the windshield.\n\n\"Wish we had a garage.\" He pointed, frowning. \"Wonder why he never rebuilt it after the fire.\"\n\nGinny also looked through the glass toward the empty space where Sean's coveted garage had once stood. It was strange to see a house bare of a garage in a suburban neighborhood like this. Every other house on the block had one. Even their townhouse, tiny as it was, had had one. Here there was plenty of room in the driveway for at least four cars, but the trip from the car to the house wasn't even sheltered by a breezeway. It was on the ten-year plan, along with landscaping and finishing the basement.\n\n\"Who knows. Money, probably. Isn't everything always about money?\"\n\n\"Not everything,\" her husband said.\n\nGinny got out of the car. She went to the house and straight to the fridge to get a snack. She'd been looking forward to something ooey-gooey\u2014cheese sticks or chili fries, something like that. Instead, she had a choice of organic yogurt and granola or a handful of almonds. Totally not satisfactory. She found some ice cream in the freezer, contemplated a bowl, decided to eat it straight from the carton. Because she was only going to have a bite or two...right?\n\nSean must've had the same idea, because the carton was almost empty. Ginny frowned but scraped the cardboard sides with her spoon. So, she'd have to finish all of it; that was no big deal. She had the spoon in her mouth when Sean came into the kitchen behind her.\n\n\"What's for dinner?\"\n\nGinny, metal still tucked against her tongue, looked at him for a long half a minute before she slowly removed the spoon. \"I don't know. What is for dinner?\"\n\n\"I don't know.\" Sean opened the fridge. Looked inside. Looked at her. Closed the fridge. \"Are you going to make something or...?\"\n\n\"There's plenty of lunchmeat and deli rolls in there. Macaroni salad.\" Ginny scraped the last bit of ice cream and licked the spoon clean, then went to the trash to dump the carton. Through the back door, she caught a glimpse of two red coats. Blond hair. Those kids from next door were in her yard again.\n\n\"I thought you'd cook something.\"\n\n\"Did you?\" she said absently, trying to see exactly what the kids were doing.\n\nSean was quiet for another minute. \"No.\"\n\n\"Have a sandwich,\" Ginny told him and went out the back door.\n\n\"Where are you going?\"\n\n\"I'm going to chase those kids out of our yard,\" she told him and let the door close behind her.\n\nIn the side yard she found a soft-foam football on the grass and a battered wooden wagon half-hidden in the leaves. No kids, though. They must've ducked through the hedge. The yard itself was a mess even without the abandoned toys. Their yard had only the two big trees, but both had completely shed their leaves and none of them had blown away. The grass was also ankle high, brown and dead instead of lush and green, but overgrown just the same. Ginny scuffed through the piles made by the wind shoving the leaves against the hedge and the house, kicking her feet the way she had as a kid.\n\nThis was the side of the house with windows into the basement, and lined up along the window well, Ginny found a set of carved wooden figures. Like the lady in the fur stole, the figures wore clothes of past fashions, and their sizes ranged from the length of her pinky to match the rest of her fingers too. The weather had worn some of these harder than the ones she'd already found. How long had they been here? Ginny bent as best she could to peek into the window, but could see only dirty glass until she reached to rub a circle clean. Then, still nothing. She stood without moving the figures, wondering what sort of game the kids next door had been playing.\n\nIn the yard under the big tree, she tugged the rope that had once been a tire swing. It needed to come down. The tree itself needed a good pruning. And the leaves... Oh God. All the leaves.\n\nGinny looked toward the house. Sean had promised her he'd take care of the yard. Just like inside the house, he'd made her promise not to unpack the boxes, not to move the furniture, not to exert herself with all the tasks he was going to do. Yes, they'd had a lot of rain that made it hard to work outside. Yes, he worked long hours and had the responsibilities of school too. But he'd not only promised, he'd insisted that she promise him she wouldn't rake or mow or put stuff away. And now what? They were living out of boxes, never able to find anything when they needed it. The yard was a trash heap.\n\nShe would not be angry.\n\nShe would not lose her temper.\n\nShe would not say things that could not be taken back.\n\nInstead, she went to the shed and found a rake and the box of garbage bags she'd bought especially for the leaves. She took them into the yard and started raking. It would be dark soon, and her hands were cold, but so far Sean hadn't bothered to come out and see what she was doing, so she was going to keep doing it. It wasn't hard work, not even for a pregnant lady. Holding the bag open while she put the leaves inside and fought the frigid wind that had sprung up proved to be a lot harder. Frustrated, she looked toward the house, the windows in the parlor glowing faintly golden. Upstairs, the light in the master bedroom was on, and also the one in the hall, which touched the windows in the library\u2014it was a library, she thought fiercely.\n\nGinny's nose had begun to run with clear snot she didn't want to wipe with her bare hands. She dug in her pocket for a tissue and found only a few crumpled receipts. The dark had truly fallen by this time, and the temperature had dropped. She had no mittens or scarf, and the wind bit at her. This suddenly seemed a fool's task. She'd half filled one bag.\n\nLeaning on the rake, Ginny looked toward the house. Sean stood in the library, silhouetted in the window. How long had he been watching? Ginny waved, certain it was too dark now for him to see her, but after a moment he returned the gesture.\n\nScrew this, she thought. Tomorrow she'd remind him again about the yard and insist he let her help him, even if was just to hold the bag open for him. They'd halve the job and would be spending time together. Two birds, one stone, all that.\n\nShe did want to put the rest of this small pile into the bag, though, if only so the wind wouldn't scatter the leaves she'd already taken the time to gather. Ginny leaned the rake against a tree and bent to scoop the leaves, shoving them into the bag as fast as she could with numbed fingers. Her teeth chattered, more snot ran, and she was just about to give it up entirely when her fingers sank into something soft.\n\nThe leaves had been crunchy, rustling, brittle, but whatever this was clutched and clung to her fingers. Ginny yanked her hand back, shaking it, but it was coated in...something. She screamed and scraped her hand along the grass. When she turned, her shadow turned with her, no longer blocking the light. She didn't have a clear view of what she'd just grabbed, but it was clear enough.\n\nTemperatures were cold, but not yet freezing. The past few weeks had seen rain, a lot of it. The squirrel into which she'd just sunk her fingers was both mushy and saturated, its belly bloated. It stunk. Its eyes were gone, she could see that much, and its little mouth gaped with teeth that were too long. Ginny backpedaled with her hands out in front of her, her shriek locked in her throat.\n\nIn the kitchen, Sean sat at the table with a towering Dagwood sandwich in front of him. She pushed past him to the sink, where she ran the hot water aggressively and scrubbed at her hands. More soap. More scrubbing. Oh God, so gross. So gross.\n\n\"What the hell are you doing?\"\n\n\"I was bagging up leaves, and guess what I found. A dead squirrel. A rotten dead squirrel. And guess what I found it with, Sean? My hands!\" She shuddered, repulsed, but laughed too at the absurdity of it. \"It must've gotten into the bait and gone outside to die, just like the exterminator said.\"\n\nSean crossed to the sink to grab her hands. \"What? Jesus Christ, Ginny, what the hell were you thinking? Are you okay?\"\n\n\"I didn't puke, so yes, I guess so.\" She shuddered again, but the disgust was fading as the hot water and soap washed her clean. She tried to tug her hands from Sean's grip, but he held her tight.\n\n\"Get something,\" he said.\n\n\"Something like what?\"\n\n\"Hand sanitizer. Alcohol. Something! No, I'll get it.\" Incredibly, he grabbed a bottle of whiskey from the lower cabinet and spun the lid.\n\nGinny stared. \"What are you going to do with that? Light my hands on fire?\"\n\nSean looked at the bottle, sighed, put the cap back on. \"Maybe I should drink it.\"\n\n\"Sean...\" Ginny turned off the water and dried her hands on a towel. In the yard, knuckle deep in rotting squirrel, she'd screamed. Here in the bright kitchen with her hands clean, she didn't want him to keep fretting. \"It's not that big a deal. Really. It was gross and startling, but that's all.\"\n\n\"You shouldn't have been out there at all. Raking leaves? In the dark?\"\n\n\"I didn't start when it was dark,\" she pointed out. \"And the leaves needed raking. It's not a big deal.\"\n\nExcept that it sort of was.\n\n\"I thought I heard you go upstairs,\" Sean muttered. \"I didn't know you were still out there, I'd have come out and helped you.\"\n\nGinny pulled a bottle of hand lotion from the cupboard and rubbed it carefully into her skin. \"What do you mean, you didn't know I was out there? You saw me go out the back door.\"\n\n\"I thought maybe you came in the front.\"\n\n\"You thought I came in the front door,\" Ginny said. \"How on earth could you think I came in the front door? You saw me from the window upstairs.\"\n\n\"I didn't see you.\" Sean went back to the table and scraped his chair back to sit again in front of the sandwich.\n\nGinny's fingers curled so tight into her palm her fingernails dented the skin. Not quite painful\u2014not yet. But the potential was there. \"I saw you. In the window upstairs. I waved. You waved.\"\n\n\"I was in here making myself something to eat since you weren't cooking dinner.\"\n\nOh. No. He. Didn't.\n\n\"Yeah well, I was outside raking the leaves since you weren't doing that.\" She eyed the table. \"I notice you didn't make me a sandwich.\"\n\n\"How was I supposed to know you wanted one? You were upstairs. I figured you were pissed off at me, so you went upstairs to...you know. Be pissed.\"\n\nIncredulity kept her speechless for a minute as her mouth worked without finding words. And, ah yes, there was the bright sting of pain in her palms. Ginny focused, eased her grip. \"Sean. Seriously? You are kidding, right?\"\n\nHe looked at her, eyes narrowed. She couldn't tell if he was challenging her or genuinely oblivious. \"No.\"\n\n\"I saw you,\" Ginny said. \"Upstairs. In the window.\"\n\n\"I wasn't up there.\" He bit into the sandwich, spoke around a mouthful of sloppy lettuce and mayo. \"You want some of mine?\"\n\nShe didn't want any of his. She'd starve before she ate any piece of that dripping mess. Plunging her hands into a dead and bloated squirrel hadn't made her vomit, but that sandwich might.\n\nIn times past, she'd have raged at him until he turned his back and gave her the silent treatment, but this was supposed to be a fresh start. Right? All of this, everything new and fresh and different than it had been before. Every fucking piece of it.\n\nSean cut off a piece of the sandwich and held it aloft, ignoring the slide of tomato seeds and mayonnaise over his hand. \"Here. It's good. Eat some.\"\n\nGinny sat at the table across from him. \"Yes, okay,\" she said. \"Thanks.\"\nChapter Nine\n\nThis would be the baby's room.\n\nGinny had never wanted to know the gender of her child in advance. So few surprises in life were truly wonderful, and she'd always imagined the moment of birth to be the perfect time to discover if she was the mother of a daughter or a son. Because of her previous problems, this time around she'd been subjected to every possible test and what felt like an insane number of ultrasounds. You could get them in 3-D now, a scarily vivid image of your unborn child's face presented to you on a piece of photo paper or on disc to upload to the Internet and show off to all your friends. It was hard to make sure the techs didn't slip up and give away the baby's sex, even though most of them were genuinely eager to help keep the secret. Ginny thought Sean knew, though. She'd heard him murmuring to the tech once when she was getting dressed. Something about \"if you could make a guess.\"\n\nShe thought it was a boy.\n\nThat didn't mean she was decorating this room in any shade of blue, though. Both her sister Peg and sister-in-law, Jeannie, had done up their nurseries in pastels, with babycentric designs, and then complained when the kids got older and the rooms needed to be redecorated. Ginny had decided to go with a fun jungle theme, using vinyl stickers against brightly painted walls. The stickers could be pulled off later and replaced. The bedding could be changed as a child of either gender graduated from a crib to a bed, and the colors she'd chosen would work for even an older child. Two walls lime green, two a rich chocolate brown. This room also had a dormer. She envisioned benches with cushions, a cozy place to read and play. Maybe some curtains to make a cave or castle, depending on the kid's personality.\n\nFor now, it needed a thorough cleaning and all of the fixtures and trim taped off. Sean had forbidden her from doing any painting, but he hadn't been able to argue too strenuously against her taping things. At least so long as she promised not to get up on a ladder.\n\nThis pregnancy had been hard on her physically, but mentally Ginny had taught herself to feel better than she ever had. Less worried, for one thing. The more she'd learned about the possibilities of mental and physical defects, the less frightening having a child with special needs seemed.\n\nFor Sean, on the other hand, the more he knew, the more uneasy he became. The facts and statistics she devoured unsettled him. Sean didn't think he could balance a checkbook or clean a strange stain off a shirt or organize a surprise weekend away, and in the fourteen years they'd been married, Ginny'd never been able to convince him otherwise. There was no way she could convince him he could be a good father to a baby with problems. All she could do was not take chances. Reassure him. Let him fuss over her. Ginny had learned not to tell him what she discovered from her online research.\n\nShe'd learned not to tell him lots of things.\n\nWith her music playing, this time from a carefully chosen playlist that contained nothing to sneak-attack her emotions, Ginny gathered her bucket of supplies, all organic or nonchemical based because Sean had insisted he didn't want her breathing in toxic fumes. They'd had a cleaning service come through the house before they moved in, but she hadn't been particularly impressed with the job they'd done. It was bad enough that more of the former owner's belongings had been left behind than they'd wanted, but knowing the dust balls and finger smudges were someone else's grime...gross.\n\nSean's mom, Barb, had offered to come over and help, but that would've been more of a nightmare than trying to get water stains out of a tub without using bleach. Besides, Ginny had been looking forward to cleaning. Maybe it was all that time spent with Gran, who'd not only had a \"hired woman\" for most of her life but also spent more hours on her knees scrubbing the floors than she ever had in church.\n\nGinny's mom had been a terrible housekeeper, in direct response to her upbringing. Just like she'd never host a party, Christmas or otherwise, Ginny's mother also had never done more than the bare minimum when it came to keeping them from living in squalor. Beds unmade, dishes in the sink, dust everywhere\u2014that was Ginny's house growing up. It wasn't exactly like living in the pigsty Gran called it, but it wasn't quite as tidy as most of her friends' houses either, with moms who stayed home and presumably spent their days making use of old toothbrushes to keep their grout from going gray.\n\n\"I have better things to do with my time,\" Ginny's mom always said, and as a working woman herself, Ginny had often found that to be true. The kind of clean Gran had demanded took a lot of time and\/or money to maintain, and though Ginny always made sure to make the bed in the morning and put dirty dishes in the dishwasher, she also sometimes left her laundry in the basket for days on end before folding it and putting it away.\n\nNow, of course, she wasn't working and had nothing but time, and the combined clutter of a just-moved-into house with her being home all the time to actually see the mess...well, she understood now what her gran had meant when her fingers itched to \"get to fixing things.\"\n\nThis room wasn't in terrible shape. Mostly it bore the touches of time and disuse. Cobwebs in the corners of the ceiling\u2014she got those down easily enough with a broom. Something that looked like shavings in a couple of the corners, possibly from the insects Danny was supposed to have taken care of. She swept the room quickly, then drew a bucket of hot water from the bathroom and mopped the wood floor. They hadn't yet shopped for furniture, though she'd gone through a couple catalogs and picked out what she wanted. They'd need a carpet in here too, or maybe a couple fun throw rugs.\n\nShe looked around the room, envisioning it painted and furnished. There in the corner, a rocking chair. Her sister swore by a glider, but Ginny had seen a bent-cane rocker at one of the Amish markets a few summers ago. When she pictured herself with a baby in her arms, it was always in that chair. The crib could go here, she thought, away from the windows and the drafty cubbyhole door. The dresser, there. A bookcase in that corner, because her child would certainly be a reader. And in the closet...\n\n\"Ugh.\" She stopped, nose wrinkling when she opened up the double wooden doors. The dust in there was palpable, along with the acrid tang of mouse droppings. Old mouse shit was still shit, she thought with a grimace, and grabbed the broom.\n\nIn the closet, when it was clean, she planned to install a set of wire shelves and hangers to store toys and clothes. Like most of the others in the house, including hers, the one in this room was deep but narrow. Not really a walk-in. Almost like an afterthought. This one had nothing but a single bar running from front to back and a shallow wooden shelf above it. Lots of functional space made useless by that old-fashioned setup. She'd make it better.\n\nFor now, Ginny concentrated on sweeping out the dust bunnies and mouse poop and dead beetle shells. It was a good thing Barb wasn't here to help her out. Sean's mom would've screamed and tossed up her hands at even the hint of a little poop, no matter how ancient. Ginny laughed a little guiltily at the image. Barb meant well; it wasn't her fault Ginny found her mother-in-law as useless as the shelf in this closet.\n\nHer broom bumped that shelf as she worked, rattling the wood on the pegs holding it up. As it turned out, the shelf wasn't one long piece of wood, but three or four foot-long sections. She figured that out when she bumped it again and only part of it lifted, sending down a drift of more dust and pellets.\n\nGross.\n\nShe'd promised Sean she wouldn't exert herself or climb on ladders or lift heavy paint cans, but there was no way she could leave the filth. From downstairs, she brought the pantry step stool and set it up. That was only two steps; surely he wouldn't get on her case about that. Armed with a roll of paper towels and squirt bottle of vinegar and water, Ginny stepped onto the bottom step. Then the next. The ceilings in this house, including the closet, were a luxurious nine feet, but that meant that even with the stool, she wasn't quite tall enough to see all the way to the back of the shelf, or all the way to the end.\n\n\"A little at a time, baby, just a little at a time.\" Gran's words again, used for all manner of tasks that had seemed too daunting. One jar at a time while canning the endless supply of tomatoes from her garden, one pan of cookies at a time when she got to baking for the Christmas party, one stitch at a time when she was working on her embroidery. Ginny supposed the same held true for cleaning dirty closets. One wipe at a time.\n\nThe first paper towel she swiped across the top came away black with dirt and speckled with dead ants. Her swipe also brought along a couple ant traps. That explained the shavings in the corners. She dropped the paper towel. Spritzed more cleanser. Wiped again. This time was better.\n\nGinny used six paper towels to clean that section of the shelf, another four for the next. Then she had to get down and move the stool over a few inches. As she did, above her, the wood creaked. She straightened, looking, but saw nothing. Heard nothing. She looked around the closet and saw nothing there, either.\n\nGinny took a step back, looking upward again. Set into the ceiling was an attic access panel similar to the one in the hallway, though in here there was no room for a pull-down ladder. Ginny held her breath, listening, but the sound didn't repeat.\n\n\"Right,\" she said aloud, slapping her dirty hands against each other and wishing she'd thought to grab some rubber gloves. \"Come out, Gary Busey, wherever you are.\"\n\nThe joke didn't seem so funny when she herself had just moved into an old house with a sort of creepy crawl-space attic. And she was alone. And she'd heard a weird noise.\n\nGinny wasn't in the habit of talking to herself, at least not out loud, but more words slipped from her lips as though speaking them instead of just thinking them gave them the power to be true. \"It was nothing. Just like the nothing you saw in the hallway. Just like the nothing you saw in a window. Shadows, that's it. And old houses creaking. That's it, Virginia Eloise.\"\n\nThat's what her gran had called her, ever so formally. Nicknames, she said, were for people who didn't have beautiful names. She'd never referred to Ginny's mom by her name, always calling her honey or darling or sweetheart, affectionate terms that had curled Ginny's mom's lip because she said they weren't meant fondly but as a way of pointing out how unbeautiful her name was. Gertrude, named after Gran's mother-in-law. Ginny's mom went by Trudy and had been careful not to name her own daughters after any relatives.\n\nSaying it aloud that way settled something inside Ginny. Almost like Gran had said it herself, which was impossible, both because Gran wasn't here, and also because Gran had been incapable of saying much of anything that made sense for the past few years. She didn't talk much at all, in fact. She mostly sat and stared out the windows of the nursing home, even when Ginny came and brought her special treats that she wasn't supposed to have on her diet.\n\nFor the second time since moving into this house, emotion blindsided her. Ginny put a hand on her heart, mindless of the dirt on her white shirt, although it left a smudge she'd have to fuss with later and which would never quite come entirely clean. She closed her eyes, her other hand on the back of the stool for balance as she bent over with the force of her sorrow. Gran was old and had always been a little wacky, but to see her losing her mind...to watch her actually lose all sense of not just the people around her and where she was, but of herself...\n\nGinny'd been ignoring it for a long time. Her monthly visits were filled with forced cheer and lots of bright, one-sided conversation, and she pretended the headaches that always came home with her were from the stink of the cleaning chemicals in the home, not from the stress of smiling so hard her face hurt. She hadn't allowed herself to think fully on Gran's condition, or how it made her feel, and now it all swung up and hit her in the face like a stepped-on rake.\n\nBam. Slam. Right between the eyes, the pain sudden and fierce enough to make her gasp as she fought against tears and lost. Heat slipped down her cheeks and clogged her throat. She pressed her eyes closed tighter and shook her head, muttering aloud.\n\nNo, she wouldn't do this. She wouldn't let this happen again, this slip-slide into melancholy for which there was no cure. Hormones, circumstances, her own choices, the vagaries of fate\u2014whatever it was, she wasn't going to let herself give in to this burst of anxiety again. She just. Would. Not.\n\nBlinking rapidly, Ginny used a clean paper towel to scrub at her face. She drew in a few sharp breaths until the dust made her sneeze. She blew her nose, cleared her throat, got herself under control. She had a closet to clean and lots of other things this house needed. No time to break down over what she couldn't change.\n\nBolstered, determined, she got back up on the stool and gave the shelf a swift sweep with a handful of paper towels. Something skidded along the wood with her hand, but she was moving too fast, had been too hasty. More than dust and a few dead ants or some dried turds tipped over the edge of the shelf this time.\n\nThis time, a dead mouse hit her in the face.\n\nShe knew what it was at once, the desiccated corpse with its remnants of fur and dried worm of a tail. She was already crying out in revulsion, not fear, as it bounced off her mouth\u2014oh God, her mouth!\u2014and hit the floor without a noise. Ginny flailed and clutched first at the shelf for support, but the section she grabbed shifted and moved, tipping under the sudden weight of her fist. Something deeper toward the back moved and shifted too, but she lost sight of it as the section slid off its supports and cracked against the light fixture, first blotting the light into shadow and then distinguishing it entirely when the filaments in the bulb broke.\n\nShe fell.\n\nGinny braced herself for the pain of hitting the floor with her ass but managed to save herself, just a little, by stepping backwards and landing on one foot. Her ankle twisted, and she'd have gone all the way down except that the closet was too narrow to allow her the space. She hit the wall with her shoulder instead and left a small dent in the plaster.\n\nWith another shuddering cry of disgust, Ginny pushed backwards out of the closet. Panting, she spat the taste, real or imagined, of dead mouse and didn't dare lick her lips or scrub at her mouth with her bare hands. She got to her feet and went to the hall bathroom, where she washed her hands several times under the hottest water she could stand, then scrubbed her mouth.\n\nMouth dripping, face still twisted from the gross-out, Ginny caught sight of her reflection. Her throat worked\u2014she wasn't sure if she meant to cry again until a deep, low and grinding clutch of laughter pushed past her lips.\n\nOh God. Oh gross.\n\nNow she was even more happy Barb hadn't come over to help, because if she'd come across a dead mouse in any form, especially one that had touched her face, she'd have gone catatonic and had to be sedated. As it was, Ginny half thought she might puke, but a few sips of water settled her. So did some breathing.\n\nIt wasn't the mouse itself, since it was harmless and sad, a caricature of a rodent that had been squashed flat by some chasing tomcat's mallet. It must've died in the closet and dehydrated or mummified. No, it was the fact it had landed on her mouth, her lips... Ginny shuddered and washed her face again.\n\nOf all the gross things that had ever happened to her, including the dead squirrel, she thought this might be the worst. And as far as unexpected contact with deceased rodents went, Ginny'd had her lifetime allotment. Still, the trauma was fading by the time she finished in the bathroom and went back to the baby's room to gather up the poor thing and dispose of it along with all the dirty paper towels.\n\nThat task finished, it would've been easy enough for her to abandon the rest of the closet cleaning for another day. Her ankle hurt, though it didn't seem to be swelling, and her heart was still beating a little too fast. Her head felt a little spinny. But if she didn't finish now, she wasn't sure who would.\n\nPlus...something had moved when the shelf shifted. A box, she thought. Or a suitcase. Something solid, definitely not any kind of dead thing. At least she hoped not.\n\nThe light bulb in the fixture hadn't shattered, thank God, so she didn't have to clean up or explain broken glass. But she had no idea where to get another one in the mess of boxes downstairs. She'd have to take one from another fixture, though they too were burned out, she discovered when she pulled the chain in the other two bedroom closets, wondering what might be lurking on their shelves. Finally, she took the one from her bedroom closet, mentally adding light bulbs to the list that never seemed to get any shorter.\n\nFinally, light bulb replaced, stool settled firmly on the floor so it wouldn't tip, Ginny climbed up again to look at what was on the shelf. It was a suitcase, what her gran had called a \"train case.\" Her mom had used one as a makeup case when Ginny was small. Hers had a mirror inside and a removable shelf to separate the top from the bottom. It was blue and bore the initials of some dead aunt.\n\nThis case was of a similar size. Olive green, though the dust on it meant the color might indeed be brighter. Ginny pulled it gingerly toward her, careful not to tip this section of shelf in case it was as unsecured as its neighbor had been. The bulb she'd replaced was brighter than its predecessor, bright enough to chase away all the shadows even in the farthest depths of the closet. Even so, she was so focused on the case that she didn't notice the bones until she'd taken it by the handle and was half-turned to step down from the stool.\n\nTiny piles of bones, at least three, with some random bones scattered in between. Tiny skulls with long teeth. Beside the piles, tucked a little farther back on the shelf and on the opposite side of where she'd found the mouse, the light glinted off several plastic sandwich bags with misshapen forms inside them. Fur, bones, the spread of what must've once been the goo of blood and other fluids but which time had dried.\n\nThe smell, she thought, must've been atrocious.\n\nCarefully, she got down to set the case in the middle of the bedroom. Then, armed with the garbage bag and paper towels, the bottle of cleanser close by, she scraped the first pile of bones toward her. She had to stand on her tiptoes to get to the last set. Again, she wished for rubber gloves when her fingertips touched the plastic, and she half expected it to stick to the shelf, but the bags slid without resistance. Hamsters, she thought with a glance inside. Orange and white fur.\n\nShe put everything in the garbage bag and went back to the bathroom to scrub her hands. Then she took the garbage bag outside and stuffed it in the can. Back upstairs, she finished cleaning the shelf until the entire length of it, every section, gleamed with the cleanser and the closet smelled of nothing but vinegar.\nChapter Ten\n\nGinny told Sean about the case, though not about the bones or the dead mouse, or falling off the step stool. She did tell him about the light bulb, since he was sure to notice the one missing in their closet, though all she said was that it had burned out, not that it had broken. She tempered her disclosure over a full dinner of roast beef she'd done in the Crock-Pot with some onion-soup mix and a little red wine, baked potatoes, a nice salad decorated with dried cranberries and almonds and a sprinkling of bleu cheese. Plus, she waited until his mouth was full before she told him she'd found something while cleaning, so by the time he'd chewed and swallowed she could focus the conversation on the discovery and not her actions during it.\n\n\"It was there for a long time,\" she told him, picking at her own salad. It had seemed like a good idea to make it with all the extras, but she'd become so sensitive to smells and flavors that everything was jumbling together in a sensory overload. \"It's a girl's case, though. So I don't think it belonged to the owner or his son.\"\n\n\"How do you know it belonged to a girl?\" Sean speared another fork of meat. He sighed as he chewed, closing his eyes briefly in an almost-sexual expression of delight.\n\nIt amused her, that expression. She knew him so well, after all this time, it felt almost unfair to be so manipulative at keeping his attention directed on something else. But only almost.\n\n\"Because,\" she said with a point of her fork toward him, \"it just is. Boys don't use train cases. The kind with a liner and a mirror and stuff inside.\"\n\nHe drank slowly from his glass of wine, savoring it with another of those sighs. Despite an occasional craving, Ginny wasn't a big wine drinker, but he made it seem so delicious her mouth watered in envy. Of course that was her way, wanting what she couldn't have, even though she knew she wouldn't like it if she got it.\n\n\"They could,\" he said.\n\nShe laughed a little, though it faded quickly when she thought of the tiny skeletons, corpses that had been kept in baggies. That seemed more like a boy thing, if you were going to go by stereotypes. Puppy-dog tails and all that. \"I guess so. But I doubt it. It's a girl's case, I know it.\"\n\n\"What's in it?\"\n\n\"I don't know.\"\n\nSean paused with a crescent roll halfway to his mouth. Both brows lifted. \"Why not? You find this grand, secret treasure and you don't open it?\"\n\n\"I don't know; it didn't seem right.\" Ginny shrugged and reached for the bread basket. The crescent rolls, at least, seemed appealing, which made sense since of all the food she'd made, they were the only thing she hadn't made from scratch. Full of preservatives, she thought and buttered one anyway, before tucking it into her mouth. Just as she'd thought, delicious.\n\n\"After dinner.\"\n\n\"No.\" She shook her head. \"I told you, it doesn't seem right. It's not ours.\"\n\n\"Everything in this house is ours. Bought and paid for.\" Sean gestured with his fork, looking around the dining room, where Ginny had set up a card table with a fancy cloth and the good dishes, since she'd finally found them in an unmarked box.\n\nShe studied him around the wedding-gift candelabra. They'd never used it in their townhouse and here they were, using it again. \"Yeah, even the things we didn't want.\"\n\nHe laughed and drank more wine. He wiped his mouth with a cloth napkin that had also been a wedding gift. All these things they'd never really used before, yet seemed so right now. Wine made Sean horny, she remembered that now. She poured him another glass.\n\n\"C'mon. It's not that many. The telephone table, that throw rug. The case. That's not so much, when you think about how much stuff was in here when we looked at it, remember?\"\n\nShe did. The house had been fully furnished, top to bottom, though just the one old man lived in it. He'd had some nice pieces she sort of wished she'd thought to ask for, now that she knew how accommodating the son had been about unloading everything, but at the time her mind had still been awash with modern lines and small rooms. She hadn't been able to think ahead to what it would be like to actually live here and fill all the spaces that cried out for an ornate hand.\n\n\"Well. Who knows what else we might find?\" she pointed out, meaning that the cleaning service had done a woeful job.\n\nAs wasn't uncommon, her husband wasn't on the same track. He woo-wooed with his fingers and made the accompanying sound. \"Yessss, we might find something scarrrrry...like bonesssss...\"\n\n\"What?\" Startled, Ginny's fingers twitched and knocked her fork off the table. \"Why would you say that?\"\n\nSean gave her a curious glance. \"Like in that movie you and Billy are always quoting.\"\n\n\"There weren't any bones in that movie. He killed people and buried them in the backyard.\"\n\n\"But they found bones.\"\n\nGinny had to remind herself that Sean had never seen the movie; he knew of it only from what she and Billy said. Still, she hated the way he talked about it like he knew it and she didn't, like she was wrong and he was right. \"No. I don't think so.\" Dammit, now she couldn't really remember if there'd been bones in the movie. Maybe from the dog... Shit, she couldn't remember.\n\n\"Anyway,\" Sean said dismissively, \"you knew what I meant. So if we have Gary Sinise living in our attic...\"\n\n\"Jesus, Sean,\" she snapped, irrationally annoyed now. He'd listened to her and Billy talk about the movie for years. \"Gary Busey. It's Gary fucking Busey.\"\n\nSilence fell between them as she bit back her anger. He gave her that look she also hated. The one that said she was being an irrational bitch, but he forgave her. He always forgave her.\n\n\"Sorry.\" She sipped from her glass of lemonade, the taste sour enough to pucker her lips but still not as bad as the taste of her anger.\n\nAt first he said nothing, but then he shrugged. \"If you're not going to open it, what are you going to do with it?\"\n\n\"Throw it away.\"\n\nHe looked shocked. \"You can't just throw it away! What if there's something important in it?\"\n\n\"Like what? Money?\"\n\n\"There could be. That would be awesome.\" Sean grinned.\n\nGinny's mouth pursed, not quite an answering smile but easing toward one. \"A treasure map?\"\n\n\"Yeah!\"\n\n\"A winning lottery ticket, never cashed in. Keys to a safe deposit box in Switzerland? Oh, I know.\" She snapped her fingers. \"The Hope Diamond.\"\n\n\"That's in a museum somewhere, and, besides, it's supposed to be cursed.\"\n\n\"Okay, just some other big-ass diamond, then.\"\n\nHe laughed again. \"That would be good, huh? C'mon, babe, you can't just throw it away. At the very least, if you're not going to see what's inside, you should see if the son wants it.\"\n\nHe was right, she couldn't pretend otherwise.\n\nBut they were both wrong about what was inside the case. No money, no jewels, no map leading to a trove of buried treasure. There was a key, though, the tiny kind that was meant to fit into a diary. Ginny'd had one of those as a kid, the cover powder blue and fake leather. Her brother had broken the lock with one sharp tug, and she'd never written in it after that.\n\nThe diary itself was tucked beneath a sheaf of photos, most of them Polaroids yellowed with age. Some had scrawled descriptions in the white space along the bottom, but most were unidentified. There were a few more of those carved wooden figures, a whole set. There were also a number of childish drawings of typical things: a girl with a pony, a princess, a family, a tree, a rainbow. None of them were signed.\n\n\"Hey, look.\" Sean pulled the diary out and tugged the cover, but the lock held. \"Give me the key.\"\n\nGinny snatched it up before he could get it. \"No! You can't... Jesus, Sean. You can't read it. This belonged to someone.\"\n\nHis puppy eyes did nothing for her. \"I told you, it's ours now.\"\n\n\"You obviously never kept a diary.\" She scowled and curled her fingers tight around the key.\n\n\"No. Did you?\" He paused, gave her a head tilt, an up-and-down glance. \"Do you?\"\n\n\"I don't now.\"\n\nHe gave up on the diary and sifted through more of the stuff. \"Nothing in here looks very interesting.\"\n\n\"Don't sound so disappointed.\" The key warmed in her palm, and Ginny put it in her pocket, thinking she would have to remind herself to take it out or it would end up getting caught in the washing machine filter. \"You know if it really had been money, we'd have felt compelled to give it back to the rightful owner.\"\n\nSean reached to tug her onto his lap. He nuzzled her neck, and she let him. \"And I told you, babe, we are the rightful owners.\"\n\n\"Pffft.\" His hands on her hips felt good. So did the brush of his slightly scratchy beard on her throat. She arched into his touch.\n\n\"Look. If something happens with the roof or the heating system...\" his brows lifted when she pulled away to look at him, \"...yeah, I know, don't jinx it. But if something does happen, if that tree out there falls in the yard, we have to cut it up, right? That's our responsibility now.\"\n\n\"Well...\"\n\nHe settled his mouth back against her, teeth pressing gently as he spoke, \"So, I say, whatever we find is ours to keep. If we take the bad, we have to take the good too.\"\n\n\"Isn't it usually the other way around?\" She'd said it lightly, meaning nothing, but Sean was silent for a few seconds too long.\n\nThen he said, \"Yeah. Usually.\"\n\nHis hands drifted up her back. Pulled her a little closer. He kissed her throat and her slightly exposed collarbones. His breath was warm but made her shiver. When he shifted against her, the bulge of his erection pressing her hip, a flare of unexpectedly strong desire made her draw in a breath.\n\nGinny looked down at him, her hands caught in his hair as she tipped his face to hers. She kissed him long and slow, before pulling away a little. \"Come upstairs with me.\"\n\nHis gaze flickered, the corners of his mouth dipping low. Once more she was both a little sad and a little annoyed that after all this time and all these years, she knew him so well he hardly had to say a word, but he barely knew her at all, even when she was spelling it out.\n\n\"I will. Later. I have some homework I need to finish up.\"\n\nShe looked at the clock. \"Now?\"\n\n\"Yeah.\" He nuzzled against her throat again, but Ginny pulled away.\n\nShe got off his lap and started clearing the table. Sean got up and went into the living room. She watched him from the dining room as he rummaged in his bag. He pulled out the leather-bound notebook she'd bought for his birthday the year he started his coursework, and a handful of pens. She watched him tuck his phone into his pocket. When he straightened he threw her a smile she had to force herself to return.\n\n\"Hey, beautiful,\" her husband said.\n\nGinny cleared the table by herself again.\nChapter Eleven\n\nGinny didn't tell Sean about the bones in the closet, but that didn't mean she'd forgotten them. For the first week after her discovery, as she puttered around the house and barely managed to accomplish anything, since her husband still insisted she wait for him to \"help\" her, Ginny kept imagining opening another closet, a drawer, a cupboard, and finding another pile of dead-rodent remains. As she worked slowly, cleaning each cupboard with wet cloths and the baking soda and vinegar mixture that never seemed to clean as well as bleach, she never let her fingers trace the deep places, full of shadow, without thoroughly checking them first with a flashlight.\n\nShe hadn't forgotten the case or the diary within. Long ago, before she met Sean, Ginny'd had a college boyfriend. They'd met at a party in the first few months of their sophomore year, and it had been instant love. Well, lust. With the maturity of time behind her, she was willing to amend it to that. At any rate, she'd fallen hard and deep, her feelings for Joseph an abyss with walls so high she could barely see the sky. And with this love came the ever-present knowledge that she loved him more than he loved her. That she wanted him more than he wanted her. That somewhere, someday there would be something that would take him from her, whether it was a sports game, a drunken night out with his buddies...a girl.\n\nGinny'd become adept at sifting through his drawers without Joseph knowing. In the days before email and texting or even Connex, all she had was the shoebox full of love letters she found on his top closet shelf. The ones from Ginny, and the ones from someone else. Her discovery had led to an argument, the vehemence of which seemed to surprise him, and though it broke her heart to do it, Ginny was the one to end the relationship.\n\nNow, in the life she'd come to after leaving Joseph, Ginny didn't regret the breakup. She never wanted to feel that way about anyone, ever again, that lost and sinking feeling, that drowning. She never wanted love to be a prison. But some part of her did regret, for a very long time, the fact that she'd snooped.\n\nThat was probably what had led her to her job of investigating people who lied. Her work had confirmed how easily caught most people are, how little they suspect their secrets will ever see the light of day. It had taught her an unforgettable lesson about the importance of keeping secrets.\n\nGinny didn't know the owner of the suitcase or the diary or the pictures within it. There was no reason to think that reading the diary would affect her life in any way beyond satisfying her curiosity. Yet even though she'd put the case on one of the built-in bookcases in the dining room and passed it several times a day as she wove through the maze of boxes she wasn't allowed to lift, and though she stopped sometimes to look at it, to touch it with one fingertip, Ginny didn't open the case again.\n\nSean seemed to have forgotten it, at any rate. He got up in the morning and was off to work just as the light was hitting the sky. In their old place, their morning interaction had been limited to a mumbled \"morning\" as she stumbled past him on the way to the shower. Here, without a job to force her to wake up, she should've lounged in bed at least until the sun rose, but guilt forced her to head downstairs while her husband shaved and dressed. She made coffee. She made eggs. She made toast and bacon, even waffles, sometimes with a slightly curled slice of orange on the side he never ate and she rescued before the plate hit the trash, tucked away into a plastic storage container and saved in the fridge for the next morning. He never noticed if it started looking a little wilted. Frankly, she doubted Sean noticed much of anything that early in the morning, even with the mug of strong coffee she didn't drink herself yet had perfected the art of brewing.\n\nHe noticed her, though. His gaze followed her as she served him his food, sometimes at a place at the table, sometimes pressed into his hand along with a packed lunch as he rushed toward the door. He always took the time to kiss her in the morning, no matter how late he was running.\n\n\"How do you do it?\" Sean asked, his hands on her hips pulling her closer to press her belly between them.\n\n\"A little vanilla in the batter.\"\n\nHe shook his head. \"No. Not the waffles, well, I mean, not just the waffles. How do you know what I want to eat, or if I'll have time? You always have it ready just in time.\"\n\nGinny smiled and kissed him lightly, pushing up on her toes. The truth was, she had no idea what her husband wanted for breakfast, any more than she had a clue what she should make him for lunch. She guessed, that was all, and figured if it wasn't right he'd tell her. But then Sean had never been the one to press for decisions, happy to go along with whatever pushed him. If she made waffles, he'd eat waffles. If she made an egg sandwich, he'd eat that just as happily.\n\n\"I pay attention,\" she said.\n\n\"To what?\"\n\n\"To everything,\" Ginny said, and saw this wasn't an answer Sean totally understood. \"To what time you get out of bed, and how long you spend in the shower. I can tell if you're on time or not.\"\n\n\"I can barely tell if I'm on time.\" Sean kissed her again, slower this time, though it was one of the days when he'd lingered with his pillow through at least two snooze cycles. He pressed his forehead to hers, eyes closed for a second before he looked at her. \"You're amazing, you know that?\"\n\n\"Ah. But am I awesomazing? That's the question.\" She could taste the hint of coffee on his lips. The cream and sugar. Coffee had never appealed to her, ever, but now the flavor sent a tingle through her taste buds. Pregnancy made her crave strange things.\n\n\"You are awesomazing,\" he agreed. \"My awesomazing wife.\"\n\n\"You'd better go, or you'll be awesomazingly late.\"\n\nSean made a face, but backed away from her. \"Remember, I have class tonight.\"\n\nShe'd forgotten, but nodded as though she hadn't. \"Oh. Right.\"\n\n\"Need me to pick anything up on the way home?\"\n\n\"No. I need to get out today anyway. Do you want anything special from the grocery store?\"\n\nShe could see by the way his brows started to knit that he was going to protest, so she shut him up with another kiss. \"There'll be plenty of time for me to be stuck at home, Sean. I can still drive. I can still push a cart.\"\n\n\"Have someone load the groceries for you.\"\n\nShe sighed, but nodded again. \"Yes. Yes, I'll go to the fancy-pants grocery store that's twenty extra minutes away, so I can have a bag boy carry my shit for me. Oh, and spend twice as much money.\"\n\nHe laughed, but just a little. \"They'll all be fighting over who gets to carry your bags.\"\n\n\"Riiiiight. 'Cuz this is some hot piece of action going on here.\" She rolled her eyes and stepped back to show him the growing expanse of her abdomen.\n\nHer foot came down on something that would've dug hard into her sole had she not learned her lesson and started wearing hard-bottomed slippers. Instead, her foot slipped forward as her ungainly balance tipped her back, hands flailing. She'd have fallen if he hadn't grabbed her.\n\nHeart pounding, blinking fast as the slight red haze filtered around her vision, Ginny gripped Sean tight as he set her upright. Then the counter, thankfully, was solid under her touch. She shifted her feet cautiously, making sure the floor was solid too.\n\n\"Be careful,\" Sean said like a lecture. \"Christ, Ginny!\"\n\nAs if she'd done it on purpose. Frowning, she looked to see what she'd stepped on. Something metal gleamed. Small and round. She bent to get it before he could stop her, though regretted when she stood too fast and had to again grip the counter to keep herself from wobbling.\n\n\"What is it?\"\n\nShe opened her palm to show him. \"It's a button.\"\n\n\"Not one of mine.\"\n\nAs if she'd accused him of dropping it, she thought with a slight curl of her lip. \"Not unless you've started wearing things with flowers on them.\"\n\nOf course he hadn't. This was a girl's button. It looked vintage, tarnished metal with a raised flower design and a small hasp in the back where the thread attached it to the garment. Too small for a coat. A sweater maybe, or a blouse.\n\nShe closed her fingers around it. \"I'm fine, Sean. I wish you'd go. You're going to be late.\"\n\n\"You should stay home today, take it easy.\"\n\n\"All I've done since we moved in is take it easy,\" she reminded him with a gesture at the kitchen, still a mess with various boxes full of things he didn't want her to put away but hadn't done himself.\n\n\"I have to go.\"\n\n\"Have a good day,\" she called out after him from the doorway, with a wave he returned from the rolled-down car window.\n\nShe thought he was going to say he loved her, but instead he shouted, \"Buy organic!\"\n\nShe watched until the car pulled out of the drive and had disappeared down the street before she shut the front door on a swirl of cold wind. The hall had turned chilly, even through the bulky knit of the sweater she wore over her nightgown, but there'd be little sense in turning up the thermostat since she was going to leave for the store soon anyway.\n\nUpstairs, she stopped in the library and settled the button next to the tiny wooden lady in the fur stole on the otherwise empty bookshelf. In her bathroom, she ran the water hot until steam filled the room, thicker than she expected.\n\nNaked, she stood in front of the mirror and cupped her breasts. Ginny's sister Peg had taken after their mother and been blessed with what she called \"an abundancy of bosoms,\" but Ginny'd drawn the tiny-titty card. At least until now. She'd gone up two cup sizes. Her areolas, always a pale and almost-translucent pink, had darkened to a deep rose that still startled her when she saw it.\n\nHer belly too was a constant surprise. Rounded and firm, still hidable under baggy shirts but straining at the waistband of her \"fat\" jeans, crosshatched with the first faint silvering of stretch marks she rubbed faithfully with expensive cream but had no hope of avoiding entirely. Her body was changing, and there was nothing she could do about it. No way to stop it. And it would never be the same.\nChapter Twelve\n\n\"Ginny?\"\n\nGinny turned with an out-of-season cantaloupe in her hands. She'd been feeling for soft spots and debating if she should put the melon in her basket; she hated the smell of them and always had, but even more so now that she was pregnant. Sean liked them, though, and sometimes that seemed what marriage was all about. Buying things you didn't like for the sake of someone who did.\n\n\"Louisa. Hi.\" Ginny's smile felt a little forced, though it shouldn't. Louisa'd never been anything but kind. \"How are you?\"\n\n\"I'm grand, just grand, doll. But you...look at you.\" Louisa tilted her head to look her up and down. \"My goodness, I guess it's been a long time, hasn't it?\"\n\nGinny could count how long it had been since she'd seen Louisa, down to the day. She let the melon fall gently back amongst its brothers, and her hands went automatically to the mound of her stomach. \"Yeah. I guess it has.\"\n\n\"We've missed you. But I see you've been busy.\"\n\nGinny's fingers twitched on the front of her coat, thinking she must look gargantuan for Louisa to have noticed. Unless she hadn't, of course, and had meant nothing by her comment. Making small talk. Or she thought Ginny had just gained some weight, maybe, though it wasn't like she'd been skinny before.\n\n\"I'm pregnant.\"\n\nLouisa laughed. \"Yes, doll, I see that.\"\n\nGinny let out a slow breath that ended in a rueful chuckle as she shook her head. There was no reason for her to avoid Louisa's eyes, but she found herself cutting her gaze anyway. \"So. Yeah. I have been busy.\"\n\n\"You know, I still have a few of your pieces left from the show. I've been storing the ones that didn't sell, along with some others, but I'll be happy to get them back to you. They're lovely work. You could think about putting them in the next show, if you want.\" Louisa looked again at Ginny's belly, then her face. \"Though of course it might not be that easy for you, huh?\"\n\nGinny smiled faintly. \"No. It wouldn't be. You could just get rid of them, I guess.\"\n\n\"You don't want them?\" Louisa looked shocked, like Ginny'd talked about giving away a baby instead of a couple of self-indulgent oil paintings.\n\n\"Not really. I could always paint more. If I wanted to, I mean.\"\n\nLouisa chewed her bottom lip for a moment. \"Well...I hope you do. You made lovely pieces, Ginny. You had a real gift for quirky, fun things. And such great color choices.\"\n\n\"Yeah. Well...\" Ginny shrugged, trying to remember what it had been like back in those days when she'd stand in front of a blank canvas and imagine it into a picture, \"...it was only ever a hobby.\"\n\n\"We all need hobbies, and if yours is making something beautiful...\" Louisa shrugged carelessly and let her fingers flutter in the air. \"Nobody said you had to try to make a living at it\u2014\"\n\n\"Good thing, since I doubt I'd be able to.\"\n\n\"\u2014but you can make beauty, Ginny,\" Louisa continued. \"I hate to see you give it up. You should stop by the shop sometime, pick them up. Or I could bring them to your house. You're over by the high school, right? In that darling little townhouse community. It looks like a European village.\"\n\n\"We've moved.\" The words sounded too sharp. Biting. Ginny softened them with a smile. \"And sure, I'll stop by the shop sometime after we get settled in. Okay?\"\n\nShe had no intention of doing that. She didn't want the paintings Sean had stashed in the basement; she sure didn't want those other ones back. She didn't care about the pieces she'd spent so much time on. They'd only remind her of disappointment.\n\n\"That would be great. Come take a few classes again, if you want. On the house. Before your life changes forever,\" Louisa advised, with another knowing look and a grin that said she knew just how it would be. \"After that baby comes, you won't have much time for hobbies.\"\n\n\"No,\" Ginny told her. \"But I will have created something beautiful.\"\n\nLouisa looked faintly surprised before she nodded again, more solemnly this time. \"Yes. Amen to that. Well, listen, doll, you take care, okay? Stop by the shop. Like I said, we've missed you.\"\n\nGinny didn't doubt that was true. The people who hung around the Inkpot were mostly the sort to drink fancy coffee and wear sandals with socks and necklaces of beads they'd made themselves. Ren Faire types, Sean had called them. In to clean living and role-playing games, that sort, though of course there were a few like her, who were totally different. It didn't matter. The only rule in Louisa's classes was that every effort be praised. She encouraged the more talented members to help those less blessed, and even the people who couldn't learn to throw a pot that didn't collapse on the wheel, or sketch anything that looked like what it was supposed to be, discovered they were able to make something by the end of the four-week sessions. People came back to Louisa's classes for more than the instruction\u2014it was a social affair, with everyone often stopping by the coffee shop next door after class to spend another hour hanging out.\n\nGinny hadn't missed them at all.\n\nSuddenly, she felt worse about that than anything else. Impulsively, she reached for Louisa's hand and squeezed the cold fingers. \"I will. Okay? I will.\"\n\nLouisa squeezed back. \"I hope so, doll.\"\n\nAfter a few more minutes of chitchat, Louisa pushed off with her cart and Ginny checked her watch. She was in no rush. Sean would be late from class. But it would be getting dark soon, and she didn't want to carry groceries into the house in the dark.\n\n* * * * *\n\nBy the time she got home, the sun had dipped low enough that her driveway was cloaked in shadows when she pulled in. In the too-cold house she checked the thermostat, which was, as it had been every other time she checked, set to the right temperature. She bumped it up a few degrees anyway. Scarlett O'Hara refused to be hungry? Well, Ginny Bohn had a bug up her ass about being cold.\n\nShe hadn't bought much at the store, but, thinking of Sean's command she not carry her own bags, she'd asked the bagger to parcel out her items into all six of her reusable totes, when three would've sufficed. Unloading the car took twice as long as normal that way but left her only a little winded, so grudgingly she had to admit that maybe he'd been at least a little right.\n\nBy the time she got everything inside, the house had warmed up, but only a little, and only in weird places. The front hall was cold but the kitchen stifling, and so was the powder room. The living room had a few warm spots but the other rooms were still chilly\u2014probably because there were still boxes and junk heaped over the floor vents, she discovered. Instead of actually unpacking things, they'd been taking what they needed out of the boxes and shifting them around.\n\nThere was definitely something wrong with their \"almost brand-new\" heating system, and it was pissing her off. Not that her moods were the best anyway. Up and down, up and down. Seeing Louisa hadn't helped that much; now Ginny was thinking of things she'd rather have pushed aside.\n\nTea might help, both with the chill and the mood swings, but as she leaned over the sink to fill the kettle, Ginny caught a flash of motion out in the yard. Something white fluttered just below the edge of the window, or so she thought. With the light inside reflecting, all she could really see was her own face. It caught her attention for a second or two, her eyes wide and looking like dark hollows in her skull, her dark hair loosing from the pony tail and falling around her face. The pale slash of her lips.\n\nShe looked like a ghost.\n\nDisturbed, she turned off the faucet and set the kettle on the stove, but didn't turn on the burner. The high-pitched giggling screams of children wafted to her ears, along with the rattle and rustle of something alongside the house. She looked again out the window and saw nothing, but, dammit, those kids were messing around in the yard again, and it was getting dark. What in the hell were they doing anyway?\n\nShe went to the back door and strained to see them, but the only thing within eyesight was that wagon, overturned in the grass. When she opened the door, she meant only to ask them what the heck they thought they were doing\u2014in a nice way, though, not trying to be mean. However, at the first creak of the hinges, they took off in a rustle of leaves and a few dozen whispered giggles and shrieks.\n\n\"Hey...!\" She let her cry trail off, defeated.\n\nKids.\n\nShe thought of her nieces and nephews, those delightful little hellions who'd turned Peg's hair gray and were going to send Billy, according to him, to the poor house. She put her hands on her belly and rubbed in slow circles against the kick of tiny feet and punch of little fists. She let her fingers press a little harder against the lumps and bumps of her body. She imagined a little bum, the curve of a head or an elbow.\n\nWith a sigh, Ginny went out to confront them, but again found nothing but the remnants of childish games instead of the children themselves. The figures that had been lined up along the window well were still there, and she couldn't tell if they were in the same order or not. Something had been added, though. A plastic baggie of Goldfish crackers and an unopened juice box. Kids' snacks, but they didn't look like they'd been lost. They looked like they'd been set there deliberately. Frowning, Ginny took them in the house and tossed them in the trash, thinking again of her gran.\n\nGran had always been a woman of superstitions, even as at the same time she was utterly derisive of what she called \"flights of fancy.\" In her high phases Gran had left a bowl of milk out on the counter for the Brownies, who were something like leprechauns, from what Ginny remembered, and who'd make mischief in your house if you didn't feed them. Sometimes that bowl of milk went sour and chunky in the bowl, but woe to anyone who touched it. Other times it stayed empty on the counter, a reminder that Gran could be as stingy as she was generous. Ginny's mom had hated that tradition and the story that went along with it, but Ginny had a fondness for the memory.\n\nShe had no milk and wouldn't have left a bowl of it on the counter anyway, but something about the way the crackers and juice had been left reminded her of Gran's offering to the Brownies. It seemed like the sort of thing Ginny would like to pass down to her child, one of those weird family things that outsiders might not understand but that meant a lot to the people who did it.\n\nThe cat bumping around her ankles was a good reminder that whatever she left had to be more symbolic than nutritious, or at least not tempting to a cat on a diet, with a bad attitude. Ginny bent to scratch behind Noodles's ears, then lifted her. She wasn't any thinner. If anything, Noodles felt even heavier. Ginny rubbed the soft fur under the cat's chin. Usually this jingled the bell collar, but today her fingers found nothing but fur.\n\n\"Oh, you bad kitty, what did you do with it?\" Ginny sighed and set her down. \"Noodles, why are you so much trouble?\"\n\nThe cat meowed implacably, wound herself around Ginny's ankles some more, and when it became obvious that no food was forthcoming, sauntered away with her tail in the air. Ginny shook her head. In the townhouse, Noodles had always been around, but this house was so much bigger the cat was forever disappearing and showing up again unexpectedly, usually under someone's feet. The bell collar had kept her from getting stepped on more than a dozen times in the past few days alone. Without it, she was likely to get more than her feelings hurt.\n\nAdding a new collar to her ever-present mental shopping list, Ginny pulled a small crystal candy bowl from the cupboard. Also a wedding gift they'd never used, it of course had been one of the first things she pulled out from the packing boxes. Couldn't have been something practical, she thought, like her measuring cups and spoons. Nope, she had to find all the gaudy, expensive things they should've sold at a yard sale instead of bringing along. Well, it had a use now.\n\nShe filled it with peanuts, a snack Noodles would leave alone, for sure, and also wouldn't spoil. She added some chocolate-covered raisins too after a moment's thought, because although she was a sucker for most things chocolate, this particular treat was a present from Barb, probably purchased from a fundraising schoolkid. They had left a sour taste in Ginny's mouth, and she had no intentions of finishing them. As a symbolic offering to a mythical group of tiny, sometimes-vengeful creatures, it seemed perfect.\n\nUpstairs in the library, she looked at the boxes shoved against the wall and at her easel propped next to them. Her paints were in those boxes. Brushes, palette, some of the smaller canvases she'd bought months and months ago. Carefully wrapped and packaged solvents and brush cleaners. The paints would surely be dried up by now. The canvases stained, maybe. She remembered packing these boxes months ago, not for the move. Just to put them away. She'd emphatically labeled them not \"Studio\" but \"Art Supplies.\" She didn't need to open them to find out what was inside, and, really...she didn't want to.\n\nInstead, Ginny threw them all away.\nChapter Thirteen\n\nThe kettle screamed.\n\nGinny got up from the kitchen table to bring it back so she could pour her mug full of hot water. Peg had already helped herself to a mug of Sean's coffee and was setting out the platter of homemade cinnamon buns she'd brought. Ginny chose a tea bag from the box on the table and dunked it in the water, eyed the buns and ran a finger through the thick goo of icing on the bottom of the plate.\n\n\"God,\" she said as she sucked the sweetness, \"so good. Why didn't Gran ever teach me how to make these?\"\n\n\"I was the only lucky one, I guess.\" Peg rolled her eyes, but fondly. \"You know Dana asked her a hundred times for the recipe. Gran never let her have it.\"\n\n\"Has Dana asked you for it?\"\n\n\"Nope.\" Peg grinned. \"Should I give it to her?\"\n\n\"I guess if she asks you. I mean, there's no real reason to keep it to yourself, right? Unless you like being the only one who can make them.\" Ginny shrugged and stirred a spoonful of sugar into her tea.\n\n\"I don't. It's not that. It's just that Gran gave it to me, only me, and I feel like it would maybe be dishonoring her or something. I mean, maybe she had a reason for not giving it to Dana, right?\"\n\nGinny snorted softly and blew on her tea. \"Yeah, spite.\"\n\n\"Cold.\" Peg shook her head but laughed softly. \"Speaking of cold...why is it so freaking hot in here?\"\n\n\"I know. I know!\" Ginny tossed up her hands. \"The thermostat's set to seventy. I don't even want to imagine our next power bill.\"\n\n\"Seventy! Good heavens, Ginny. Why so hot?\"\n\n\"Because if I don't set it that high,\" Ginny said, \"the rest of the house is freezing.\"\n\n\"Have you checked the vents? Maybe something's blocking them.\"\n\nGinny gave her sister a look. \"Have you seen my house? Of course stuff is blocking them. I hope once I get everything put away...\"\n\nShe trailed off with a sigh. They'd been in the house for a month and it still looked like they'd just moved in yesterday.\n\n\"You know I told you I'd help you.\" Peg cut one of the buns in half, then again, to put just a quarter of it on her plate.\n\n\"I know. But you're busy; you have your own stuff to do.\" Ginny broke hers into smaller pieces but intended to eat them all. She watched her sister stir artificial sweetener in her coffee and add a splash of skim milk. \"Diet?\"\n\nPeg looked up, a little startled. \"I can't fit into my jeans. Unlike you, I'm not eating for two. It just looks like I've been.\"\n\nPeg's youngest, Luke, was eighteen. Her oldest, Jennifer, was twenty-eight. It had indeed been a long time since Peg was in Ginny's condition, but she was far from overweight. Ginny watched her sister pluck at the pieces of cinnamon bun without actually eating them. She studied the lines around Peg's eyes. The corners of her mouth. If she looked in a mirror, she'd see those same lines, just a little fainter but unmistakable. When had they started getting so old?\n\n\"What's going on?\"\n\nPeg sighed. \"I'm not supposed to say anything about it...\"\n\nGinny reached to put a hand on Peg's to keep her from further worrying the bun into scraps. \"About what? What's going on? Is Dale okay? The kids?\"\n\n\"He's fine. It's Billy.\"\n\n\"What's wrong with him?\" Ginny hadn't spoken to her brother in a few weeks, her move and his work keeping them from connecting. This wasn't unusual, since though she loved her brother, they didn't keep in touch as often as she did with Peg. \"Is he okay? Is he sick?\"\n\n\"No. It's Jeannie.\"\n\nGinny frowned. \"Spit it out, Peg, I'm not a mind reader.\"\n\n\"Jeannie's going to leave him.\"\n\nThis set Ginny back in her chair. She blinked rapidly, processing this. \"What? Why?\"\n\nPeg sighed and wiped her fingers with a paper napkin before cupping her mug. She lifted it to let the steam from the hot coffee bathe her face for a few seconds before answering, \"She's met someone else.\"\n\nGinny's stomach lurched into her throat. She took a bit of bun, too big, and it lodged in her throat so she had to gulp too-hot tea to swallow it. The tea burned her tongue.\n\n\"I asked how long it had been going on,\" Peg went on. \"I mean, my God, we just went to the beach with them this past summer, and things seemed fine. I mean, if anything, she was nicer than I'd ever seen her. And, you know, it's not that I don't like Jeannie,\" Peg added hastily, like she had to explain to Ginny, who knew very well the sort of woman her sister-in-law was.\n\nGinny stayed quiet for a moment. She and Sean hadn't gone to the beach this summer because all their vacation time and resources had been taken up with buying the house. She hadn't seen Jeannie since the spring, months and months ago. \"What does Mom say about it?\"\n\n\"Oh...I don't think she knows. Billy didn't even want me to tell you, because of...you know.\" Peg gestured vaguely at Ginny's belly, hidden by the table.\n\n\"Oh, for fuck's sake, I wish everyone would stop tiptoeing around me with stuff because I'm pregnant.\" Ginny tore another bite of cinnamon bun. This one went down much easier.\n\nPeg nibbled at a bite of her own, more daintily. \"Sorry. I think he was just being, you know. A good brother.\"\n\n\"Why'd he tell you, if not Mom? Or me?\"\n\n\"I...\" Peg looked caught, eyes shining, glittery.\n\n\"You what?\"\n\n\"I saw her. With him. The other guy.\"\n\nGinny paused with her mug halfway to her mouth, then set it down gently. \"Oh. God. Peg...you're the one who told him?\"\n\n\"Well, what would you have done?\" Peg frowned. \"I saw her out, bold as brass, with some other man. It was clear as anything what they were up to\u2014\"\n\n\"Why? Were they holding hands or making out or what? Were they dry humping in the middle of the grocery store?\" Ginny got up from the table on the unspoken pretense of washing her hands clean of sticky icing, but the real reason was so she could get her reaction under control. At the sink she turned on the hot water and ran it hard, letting it burn her hands while she drew in breath after shaky breath.\n\n\"They were at the movies together, in a matinee. Sitting close. I could tell, Ginny. I mean, anyone could've.\"\n\nGinny turned from the sink to look at her sister. Peg, the oldest, had always been a little mother to her siblings. It had annoyed the ever-loving shit out of her and Billy when they were younger, and sometimes still did, even though Ginny had come to appreciate her sister's concern, especially since their own mother so infrequently seemed to have any. Still...this...she shook her head slightly. She rubbed her burnt tongue on the roof of her mouth, the pain better than trying to find words. Safer.\n\n\"Did you talk to her first?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\nGinny rubbed at her mouth with the back of one hand. \"You just went to Billy and told him.\"\n\n\"He's my brother!\"\n\nAnd Jeannie, as much as Peg might protest she liked their sister-in-law \"just fine,\" had always been a little standoffish. A little...not snotty, exactly, but she'd definitely never tried to ingratiate herself with Peg\u2014or Ginny, who'd decided long ago she didn't care. She didn't need Jeannie for a bestie, or even a sister. However, Peg had always felt a little snubbed.\n\n\"But it's not your business.\"\n\n\"How can you say that?\" Peg frowned again. \"What would you have done?\"\n\nGinny took a cloth from the sink and feigned an intense interest in wiping down the countertops, though she'd done a complete kitchen tidy in anticipation of Peg coming over.\n\n\"You're telling me you'd have just let her go on with it? Not told Billy at all? I don't believe you, Ginny.\"\n\n\"You don't know what was really going on, that's all I'm saying. And now, by telling him, Billy knows and Jeannie's leaving him, and maybe if you'd just left it alone...\" Ginny bit back her words. Her sore tongue ached as she rubbed it firmly against the back of her teeth. \"Forget it. How's Billy?\"\n\n\"How do you think he is? He's devastated.\"\n\n\"Yeah. I bet he is.\" Ginny sagged a little, then turned to say something placid, vapid, to turn her sister's attention away from an argument, but found she had nothing to say. Instead, she took her now-cool mug and popped it into the microwave and hit the button to warm it for a minute.\n\nThe overhead light flickered rapidly. The clocks on the microwave and stove beeped. The light went out. Came back on. Went out again while Peg looked up goggle-eyed and Ginny sighed a curse. At four thirty, there was just enough late afternoon sunshine to keep the kitchen from being totally dark, but in another ten minutes or so they'd be in complete shadow.\n\nPeg made a face. \"What's up with that?\"\n\n\"Circuit breaker.\" Ginny glanced at the coffeemaker, still on. \"There's something funky with the wiring in the kitchen. Or something. I guess it's the coffeemaker and the microwave together, I don't know. It was blown the day we moved in and has happened a bunch of times since then; we haven't been able to figure out exactly what trips it.\"\n\n\"You should have it looked at. And the furnace too.\"\n\n\"Yes, Mother.\" Ginny said it with a roll of her eyes, a familiar tease.\n\n\"Where's the fuse box? Are you going to go take care of it?\"\n\n\"Well. Sure. Of course. It's in the basement.\" Ginny paused. \"It will be dark down there.\"\n\n\"You have a flashlight?\"\n\n\"Oh sure. Somewhere.\" Ginny laughed and waved a hand toward the dining room, the living room beyond, overflowing with boxes. \"Probably ten of 'em.\"\n\n\"Candles?\"\n\n\"Sure, I have a candle.\" Ginny opened the drawer but found nothing, no candles, not even the mostly melted stubs of the ones she'd used in the candelabra. \"Here, I know. I have one of those lighter things. We'll use that.\" She found it in the drawer and went with her sister to the basement door.\n\nIt opened with a spine-tingling creak. Ginny paused and flicked the light switch on and off a few times, just in case. Of course, nothing. She held the lighter high, but the light didn't shine more than a few feet. The steps, she noticed, were dirty, the wood splintered on the sides. Rubber matting had been stapled to the center of each riser, presumably to keep people from slipping, and dust had collected in all the threads.\n\nPeg clutched at Ginny's shirt. \"You should let me go first.\"\n\n\"Because I'm heavy with child?\"\n\n\"Sarcasm suits you so nicely, sister dear. No. Because I'm older.\" But Peg didn't move, just peeked around Ginny's shoulder.\n\nEven as kids, Ginny had always been the one who had to go first in the haunted houses at Halloween time. Everyone had always strung behind her while she felt her way in the dark, hands out, ready to be the first in line for the monster leaping out. If she could do that, she should be able to go into her own basement where there was no masked creature waiting to grab her.\n\nProbably.\n\nShe had to let the lighter go out for a second to give her finger a rest from holding the trigger. Peg gasped when the alcove went dark. There was still light coming in from the hall behind her, but the stairs were pitch black.\n\n\"No windows in the basement?\"\n\n\"A couple,\" Ginny said. \"Not near the stairs, though.\"\n\nShe lit the lighter again. The shadows withdrew. She put her free hand on the railing, her foot on the top stair. Peg shuffled along behind her until Ginny sighed and stopped three stairs down.\n\n\"You're going to knock me down the stairs if you're not careful. Jesus, Peg. It's a basement. It's not quite five o'clock in the afternoon. Serial killers don't come out until at least five thirty.\"\n\n\"Funny.\" Peg backed up a step. \"It's still dark. Be careful! Do you know where the fuse box is?\"\n\nShe didn't, actually, since Sean had always been the one to go down and fix things. \"How hard can it be to find?\"\n\nThey found out in the next few minutes when they got to the bottom of the stairs and the lighter's glow didn't extend more than a foot or so beyond them. The paintings were gone, Ginny saw that at once. Sean had moved them. She waved the lighter around and caught sight of some of the empty boxes he'd brought down. Too few of them, of course. She had to look away, or be annoyed.\n\n\"It's got to be along a wall.\" Ginny moved toward the wall directly across from her.\n\nConcrete blocks, pale gray. One of the walls, the one on the side that had once been the garage, had been plastered over, probably after the fire. Otherwise, it was nothing special. The walls looked like any other basement she'd ever been in, long and bare and strung with cobwebs along the ceiling, which was open to the beams and hung with wires, tubes and ducts. She understood what Danny the exterminator had meant\u2014the ducts went everywhere.\n\nNo fuse box, though. Ginny, Peg shuffling behind, still clinging to her shirt, moved to the left. This wall, the one facing the backyard, also had no windows and no fuse box. The one to the left of that had two windows set deep into wells, through which only the faintest glimpse of failing daylight crept. One of them was the one where she'd found the figurines.\n\nBy this time they'd gone around to the back of the stairs, which had been walled off to make a sort of closet beneath them. Another short wall jutted out a few feet, not long enough to reach the far wall. Beyond this, at last, Ginny spotted the fuse box.\n\n\"Of course it's on the wall farthest away from where we started. I have to let the light go out again, hold on a second.\" Her finger had cramped from holding the trigger, and she let it go with a sigh of relief.\n\nPeg let out a squeak as the room went dark.\n\nGinny laughed and let out a low, groaning ghost noise.\n\n\"Stop it, Ginny.\"\n\n\"Where's my golden arrrrrrm?\" Ginny moaned, bringing back the old ghost story that always ended with screams. \"Where's my\u2014\"\n\n\"You're a jerk!\"\n\nStill laughing, Ginny squeezed the lighter's trigger and headed for the fuse box. Inside, a flash of orange showed her exactly which switch had been tripped. She clicked it over to the right position.\n\nThree things happened at the same time.\n\nOne, the furnace kicked on with a whoosh and a flash of blue light. Two, a hulking figure loomed up from around the wall at the bottom of the stairs. And three, Ginny dropped the lighter and plunged them into blackness.\nChapter Fourteen\n\nPeg shrieked; Ginny did too, more in response to her sister's scream than her own fear. In the dark, something shuffled in front of them. The shadows shifted. Ginny reacted instantly, hands fisting, then pistoning out as the dark shape got within reach.\n\nShe connected with something soft and felt the familiar skid of corduroy against her hand, but too late\u2014her other fist was striking like she thought she was some sort of Muhammad Ali. Only the sting like a bee part, though, no floating like a butterfly. She'd punched her husband in the face, and he went down to the concrete floor with a muffled shout.\n\nShe knew it was Sean because of the jacket and the sound of his muffled grunt, and because, who else would have come down the stairs to find her? With Peg still hollering and Sean letting out a few choice words of his own, Ginny tried to think about how far she was from the dangling light cord and if she dared risk trying to find it.\n\n\"Shut up, everyone!\" she shouted. \"Peg, it's Sean. Sean, honey, are you okay?\"\n\n\"You busted me in the eye!\"\n\n\"I'm sorry.\" She bit back a laugh, her hands still out, still blind, though now she could make out things a little better in the faint blue light from the furnace pilot light. \"Baby, I'm so sorry.\"\n\nSean got to his feet, more of a felt presence than seen. \"What happened to the light?\"\n\n\"I dropped it. Can you find the cord?\" Ginny didn't dare move.\n\nPeg had stopped screaming but her breath was shuddery and she was clutching Ginny's arm so hard she was going to leave a bruise. Peg was lucky Ginny hadn't punched her in the face with that roundhouse strike, and the thought of it made Ginny laugh all the harder. It was terrible, and her laughter definitely had a sobbing edge to it, but there it was.\n\n\"Hold on. Don't move,\" Sean said.\n\nIn the next minute, the light from the bare bulb blinded them. Ginny winced. Peg let out a mutter of gratitude. Sean put his hands on his hips and glared at them both.\n\n\"The fuck were you doing down here?\"\n\n\"The circuit breaker popped again,\" Ginny said.\n\n\"You should've waited for me to fix it.\"\n\n\"Uh...look, I really need to get going,\" Peg said.\n\nSilence. Ginny's sister hugged her and patted Sean's shoulder. She gave Ginny a sympathetic look but ducked away, up the stairs, leaving her alone. Ginny couldn't blame her, really. The temperature in the basement had dropped by about fifty degrees at Sean's statement, and it had nothing to do with the furnace.\n\nHe waited until the sound of Peg's footsteps upstairs went out the front door. \"You can't be coming down here in the dark, Ginny.\"\n\n\"What was I supposed to do, sit and wait for you to get home? I thought you had class tonight anyway.\"\n\n\"It was cancelled.\"\n\nShe made a face. \"And...you told me that? I was supposed to just somehow intuit it? I should've just waited upstairs in the dark and the cold for you to get home?\"\n\n\"You could've sent Peg down here\u2014\"\n\nGinny pushed past him, heading for the stairs. \"It's my house, not hers. I wasn't going to ask my sister to fix my circuit breaker. Besides, it's not like I'm stupid.\"\n\n\"I never said you were stupid,\" he told her in the kitchen when he caught up to her. \"Hey. Stop. Look at me.\"\n\nShe did, glaring.\n\n\"I was worried when I got home and you weren't here. That's all. I worry.\"\n\nShe softened a little toward him. Just a little. \"I was fine. If you hadn't come down just then, it would've been even better.\"\n\nHis smile quirked. \"I really scared the shit out of Peg, huh?\"\n\n\"No kidding. I'm surprised she didn't pee herself.\" Ginny smiled too.\n\n\"Why didn't you use a flashlight, at least?\"\n\n\"Why didn't you?\" she pointed out and waited for him to get it.\n\n\"I didn't have... Ah.\"\n\nGinny lifted a brow and made a show of peering around the arched doorway into the dining room. \"Yeah. We have one, huh? Right?\"\n\n\"I think so.\" Sean sighed. \"You want me to unpack those boxes.\"\n\n\"It would be nice. C'mon, we can do it together. You can lift all the heavy things. I'll tell you where they go.\" She smiled again, watching his face work as he tried to think of a way to get out of the task.\n\n\"Fine.\" He sighed again. \"Fine, fine, fine.\"\n\nBut though they unpacked four or five boxes and even managed to shift the furniture around at least sort of the way she wanted it to stay permanently, they found no flashlights. She did convince Sean he needed to run the vacuum cleaner, though, to get up all the bits and pieces of packing paper and dust that had been inevitably kicked up.\n\n\"It's way too strenuous,\" she told him with a very wicked grin as she plopped onto the couch with a book in her hand. \"You really should do it.\"\n\nGrumbling, Sean looked like he meant to argue, but wisely thought better of it. He plugged in the vacuum, a pricey model he'd given her as a gift one year for her birthday\u2014her birthday, for the love of all things holy! Which she'd never really let him live down.\n\nThe instant he toed the On switch, the lights went out.\n\n\"Shit,\" Sean said.\n\nIn the dark, Ginny laughed.\nChapter Fifteen\n\n\"Let me go first. You're gonna love it, I know it. Happy anniversary.\" Sean pressed a square package into Ginny's hands and stepped back with a grin. \"Go on. Open it.\"\n\nShe studied the wrapping carefully. She loved surprises. Loved getting presents. And though they'd both agreed that this year they wouldn't spend any money on each other for their anniversary since they'd just moved into the house, she'd been unable to help herself from buying him something she knew, absolutely knew he wanted. This package in her hands was just the right size for an iPad, which she'd been none too subtly hinting she wanted since her last birthday, when he'd presented her with a vacuum cleaner instead.\n\nGinny smoothed her fingers over the paper, enjoying the anticipation but feigning concern. \"I thought we said we weren't going to do anything for each other.\"\n\n\"I know, I know, but I saw this and knew you had to have it. Go on,\" Sean said. \"Open it up. Let's see.\"\n\nSo she did, sliding her fingers beneath the tape and pretending she meant to fold back the paper in one piece, the way she knew drove him crazy, because Sean liked to tear into gifts and leave the wrapping strewn all over in shreds. She laughed when he danced forward to take it from her, holding it back and away.\n\n\"Mine,\" she told him, and ripped the paper while holding her breath with excitement.\n\nShe had to stare at what was inside for a full minute before she remembered to let out the breath. Then another, her eyes not quite connecting with her brain. The paper slipped from her suddenly nerveless fingers and drifted to the floor where Sean crunched it under his feet as he shifted to lean over her shoulder.\n\n\"See? You plug it in and it charges up automatically. You can set it to act like a night-light or just when the power goes out, it will come on. And it's a two-pack, so we can put one down here and one upstairs.\"\n\nHe looked so proud, so gleeful all she could do was nod and smile like this two-pack of flashlights from the warehouse club was indeed the very best anniversary gift she'd ever received. \"Wow. Yeah. It's...wow.\"\n\nSean, clearly pleased with himself, took the package from her to open it, demonstrating how she could plug it into any outlet, how the light-sensitive function worked. How the flashlight itself fit neatly into the holder in any direction, not needing to be lined up any special way.\n\n\"It's great,\" Ginny said around her disappointment. She reminded herself they had said they weren't going to buy each other gifts. And that would've been better, she thought. To get nothing because they'd said they were doing nothing, than to get...\n\n\"I just want to make sure you're never left in the dark again,\" Sean said.\n\nOnly a selfish shrew could be angry or disappointed when he said something like that. And only a vindictive bitch could take pleasure in seeing his face when she took him down the hall and pulled the sheet off the present she'd had to be so careful to keep a surprise. Ginny guessed she must be both, because she was still a little bitter when she gave Sean his gift.\n\n\"What the...\" He stared at it. Then her. Jaw dropped. Then he grinned and went to his knees in front of it like a little kid. \"Holy shit. How did you do this?\"\n\n\"I had it delivered. Do you like it?\"\n\nHe put a hand on the 42-inch flat screen's box and looked down with a marveling shake of his head. \"Like it? I fucking love it.\"\n\nOf course she'd known he'd love it\u2014he'd talked with longing about replacing their ancient television for at least a few years. Sort of the way she'd been talking about wanting an iPad. But hearing the joy in his voice, Ginny could no longer be upset that she'd made such an effort when he hadn't made one of equal size...or expense, she admitted to herself, thinking of his reasons for choosing the flashlights. And when it came right down to it, money should be no measure of someone's affection.\n\n\"I'm glad,\" she said, and meant it. \"Let's get it set up, okay?\"\n\n\"Yeah, yeah.\" He looked up at her, eyes alight, then got to his feet to hug her hard. \"You're the best.\"\n\nShe was far from that, and nobody knew that better than she did. \"I'll go clean up in the kitchen. Then we can watch a movie or something?\"\n\n\"Yeah.\" Sean was already turning to the TV stand, unhooking all the cords and wires from the old set. \"That would be great.\"\n\nThe best. She was the best. Ginny cleaned off the table and loaded the dishwasher. She refilled the Brownies' bowl with wrapped mini candy bars this time, since Sean had seen fit to eat the peanuts and chocolate-covered raisins. She took the fine-linen cloth off the cheap card table and tossed it in the washer, and she set the candelabra back on the old dresser she used as a buffet. She put away the leftovers, making sure to package them in lunch-sized portions for Sean to take to work, because she was the best wife.\n\nThe best wife.\nChapter Sixteen\n\nThere's a lot of music at this party. Steady thumping. Lots of bass. Someone's strung up colored lights, orange and purple and green. Some are hung with pumpkins or ghosts. Some blink, though not in time with the music.\n\nGinny knows this place. This party. If she catches a glimpse of herself in a mirror, she'll see she's wearing a Little Red Riding Hood outfit. Blue-checkered dress, short, with a flouncy skirt and petticoat. White anklet socks. Red cape with a hood. She wore it because her roommate, Tina, convinced her that dressing slutty was the only way to attend a college Halloween party. Ginny'd planned to go dressed as a baseball player, in her brother's old uniform.\n\n\"Not cool,\" Tina says when Ginny tells her. \"Baseball players are only fuckable by gay dudes.\"\n\nGinny sees the logic in this, although the truth is she's not necessarily looking to get laid. She dated Roy, her last boyfriend, from her senior year in high school and all through her freshman year of college, but they broke up over the summer. She slept with another guy after that, just once or twice, to get over Roy, but the truth was that sex had always been something messy, kind of awkward, never the big deal it was all cracked up to be.\n\nStill, it's always better to be fuckable and have the choice of turning a guy down than be the girl at the party, standing alone by the punch bowl. Not that a party like this would have a punch bowl, necessarily, more like a keg, along with various bottles of cheap liquor that are mostly used for shots instead of fancy mixed cocktails, although there are a couple jugs of orange juice and cola on the makeshift bar.\n\nSo there she stands in her short, slutty dress and shoes that are pinching her toes. She has an empty basket over one arm, and it keeps getting in the way. Before the night's over she'll lose the basket and never see it again, which is terrible because she borrowed it from Tina, whose grandmother had bought it for her. Tina will always say she doesn't care, but some part of Ginny understands that Tina really does.\n\n\"Let me guess,\" says the frat boy. He's dressed like a baseball player, and now Ginny totally gets why Tina was right. Baseball player as a Halloween costume? Not fuckable. Or maybe it's the guy's beer belly or the rash of pimples across his forehead or the drunken, bleary way he's stroking his gaze all over her cleavage. \"Dorothy? There's no place home, right? If I get you wet, are you gonna melt?\"\n\n\"I'm Little Red Riding Hood, and that was the wicked witch, you asshole,\" this Ginny says, because this one is dreaming about that long-ago night when she wasn't quick enough with the comeback and had to fend off this loser's pawing grasp for another twenty minutes.\n\nThat's the beauty of dreams. If you know what you're doing, you can control them. Ginny's in charge of this dream now, so she can walk away from the horny baseball player and make her way right into the best part of things.\n\nShe sees him across the room, like the crowd parted just for her. Just so she can get to him without having to elbow her way past the plethora of tits and ass on display. Instead, she glides. Her shoes don't pinch because her feet don't touch the ground. She floats or maybe swims through the air, thick as water; she pushes it out of the way, scooping it with her hands.\n\nHe's the most beautiful man she's ever seen.\n\nHe wears a dark suit, a blue- and white-striped shirt, a red tie. He wears a clear-plastic raincoat, and his hair's slicked back. He carries an ax.\n\n\"Who's that guy?\" Tina says. \"Some huntsman.\"\n\n\"It's Patrick Bateman.\"\n\nPatrick Bateman, played by Christian Bale in the movie version that Ginny's seen, oh, about a dozen times. He's a serial killer, murderer of whores and vapid trust-fund bitches and dudes who get more expensive haircuts than his. He's dangerous.\n\nHe's perfect.\n\nHe's leaning against the wall with his ax at his side. As she gets closer, Ginny sees it's a real one, though with some sort of shiny metal tape over the edges, presumably to keep it from actually chopping anyone apart. He has no drink in his hand, and his fingers just barely tap his thigh in time to the music. He scans the room like he's looking for someone.\n\nThen, he finds her.\n\n\"Do you like Huey Lewis and the News?\" Patrick Bateman asks Ginny when she walks up to him in her suddenly ridiculous costume.\n\nThe real-world Ginny sputtered an answer to him, trying to be coy, trying to get him to laugh. And he had, the flash of interest in his eyes clear when she bent to set down her basket.\n\nBut this is a dream, this is different. Though in the real world his name had turned out to be Joseph and he was nowhere near as smooth...or rich...as the fictional Patrick Bateman, in the dream he stares at her assessingly before he gives her a faint, supercilious smile that widens into a broad, smarmy grin when she says, \"Their early work was a little too New Wave for my tastes, but when Sports came out in eighty-three...\"\n\nHe takes her, the way he did then, away from the party. They walk down dark alleys, past stumbling revelers. Drunken, groping couples. One or two sour-faced townies with the bad luck to be out and about in a college town on Halloween night. And then, back to his place. It's nicer in the dream than it had been in real life. Modern. Expensive. He feeds her frozen yogurt from the carton and when she moves to put the spoon on the table, he chastises her quickly.\n\nThe dream is jumbled now between real life and American Psycho and her own psyche. Patrick Bateman kisses her hard enough to bruise her mouth. She tastes blood. He strips her out of the costume and leaves it on the floor, then takes her up against the white wall in front of a mirror big enough to show the entire room. She can see over his shoulder, his firm ass pumping as he thrusts inside her, the skin of his back marked with swirling lines of black and green. A tattoo. Definitely a product of the dream.\n\nHe bites her shoulder.\n\nGinny stiffens with pleasure, her eyes closing as the room tips and spins. Climax bursts through her. Then again when he pulls away to show his mouth, teeth and lips dripping red with her blood and when he holds up a hand to show off the still-beating heart clutched in his fingers. Her heart.\n\n* * * * *\n\nGinny woke, panting, the aftermath of her orgasm still rippling through her. She lay on her side with her body pillow tucked between her legs, and though her mind still whirled from the strange, disturbing turn the dream had taken and from her climax, the only evidence of her reaction was the fast beat of her heart. She sipped in some air, slowly, letting her heartbeat slow.\n\nWow.\n\nYes, it was weird at the end. Definitely gross and a little scary. But also incredibly sexy. She hadn't been turned on like that since...well. A long time. She shifted under the blankets, suddenly more aware of Sean's light snores. Suddenly aware of the pressure in her bladder and how cold her nose was, how the faint ticking of the air from the vent that had soothed her to sleep was no longer there.\n\nGod dammit, the room was cold again. She'd had Sean set and reset the thermostat, even change the batteries. Now her face was like ice. Her toes too, way down at the bottom of the bed. Blinking, Ginny tried to see what time it was, but she'd turned the light completely off on her alarm clock. The clock had a design flaw that set the light from its brightest to dimmest levels, instead of the other way around, which meant hitting the button now would bathe the entire room in an eye-searing arc of blue-white light.\n\nWithout the time, all she could do was convince her body to ignore the insistent need to urinate, or risk getting out of bed to pee and discover that the alarm would be going off in about five minutes. Ginny shifted again, pulling her knees up as far as she could to tuck her feet together and try to warm them. This didn't help her bladder at all, and eventually with a small groan she flipped off the covers and eased herself out of bed.\n\nAt least in the bathroom the night-light had a clock on it. Even though she felt like she'd been sleeping for hours, it was still only just past midnight. Another six hours before Sean would get up and she'd be up too, making his breakfast and pretending she had important things to occupy her time. She peed forever. The bathroom floor was, if it was possible, colder than the bedroom. Her teeth chattered.\n\nShe heard the cries just as she pushed the handle to flush. They were lost immediately in the rush of water, which seemed to echo even more loudly in the dark. Ginny's head went up, eyes wide. She imagined herself as a gazelle, nostrils flaring at the scent of a cheetah in the grass. Ridiculous, and yet she strained to hear as the noise eased.\n\nNothing.\n\nBut she had heard it, she was sure. The faint but audible and unmistakable sound of sobs. Now all that reached her were Sean's snuffling snores and then the welcome rumble of the furnace kicking on...except that the air pushing up from the vent next to her wasn't hot. It was far from cold, the way air-conditioning would be, but it was barely tepid.\n\nShe was wide awake now. Even with the promise of a few more hours of sleep, even knowing she ought to relish this time before the baby came and interrupted nights would become her life for the next, oh, twenty years or something like that, there was no way she could get back to sleep. Only out in the hall did Ginny remember she hadn't put on her slippers, and winced in advance of whatever it was that she would eventually step on.\n\nGinny's mom had been a huge fan of warm milk to aid sleep, usually with a liberal dose of cocoa and vanilla sugar added to it. Of course the sugar and caffeine negated any benefit of the milk itself, but that homemade sleep remedy had always been a treat. Ginny made hers the way her mom had, stirring it slowly on the stove so the milk didn't burn or get a skin on the top. A perfect, creamy blend of sweetness and warmth. In her kitchen the light over the stove did little to chase away the dark, and she turned it off as soon as she'd finished making the cocoa.\n\nMaybe she ought to be scared in the dark, she thought with her hands wrapped around the mug as she let the heat from it bathe her face. It was still too hot to drink. She listened to the creaks and groans that were starting to become familiar. She listened for the faint sounds of sorrow, and convinced herself she'd imagined it. Maybe she should be afraid, but there was something comforting instead about standing with her back against the counter, sipping sweetness while the wind rustled the bushes outside.\n\nThe brush of soft fur on her ankles made her jump a little, scraping the legs of her chair on the floor. Then, the jingle of Noodles's collar. Sean must've found it, wherever the cat had lost it, and put it back on.\n\n\"Hey, puss. C'mere.\" Ginny reached to pet the cat but got only a waft of air as Noodles ducked out of reach. Her belly made bending under the table too awkward, and, besides, if she grabbed out in the dark, Noodles was just as likely to nip Ginny's fingers as she was to accept the caress. \"Fine. Be that way.\"\n\nShe took the mug upstairs with her, but instead of going into the master bedroom, she ducked into the library. Someday, after the garage and the landscaping and the dozens of other things they'd planned, she wanted to add bookshelves to the other two walls to match the built-ins already there. Get some comfy chairs with footstools that matched the Victorian sofa, and good lamps for reading. Maybe they could fix the fireplace in here. She imagined building a crackling fire, the smell of wood burning. Or even a gas insert, Ginny thought as she stood in the center of the room and made a slow circle. That would be cool too.\n\nOr hot, which would be even better, she thought with a shiver before realizing that this room, at least, was much warmer than the hall had been. Or her own room. She moved toward the window next to the fireplace and pressed her fingers to the glass. Definitely cold. But on the other side of the fireplace, the bookcase had warm air puffing out around the edges. Not just warm. Tropical. It felt so good she pressed her palm to the back of the bookcase and let the wood warm her.\n\nBut why was it so warm? That was the question. This room didn't face the street, but light from the streetlamps did cut across the side yard here, so with night-adjusted eyes she could make out the hardwood floor. It was also bare, with no rugs, and all the boxes had been stacked along the opposite wall. She found the floor vents easily enough, one on the left side of the fireplace beneath the window. And the other one...\n\n\"Here,\" she murmured and nudged the bookcase with her toe. The other one should be there, but they'd built the bookcase over top of it.\n\nShe set her mug on the fireplace mantle to explore. Yep, there was a notch there in the molding along the bottom shelf. When she put her hand there, the air was so hot it almost burned her fingers. She wanted to get down on her hands and knees and bask in it. She wanted to put down a beach towel and pretend she was in the hot summer sunshine, wearing a bikini and tanning oil, frying herself on some beach someplace, instead of getting up to pee at midnight and standing in the dark, freezing, with her belly big and round and full of child.\n\nInstead, she contented herself with sticking one foot against the notch and warming her toes until it felt like they might start to sizzle like bacon. Then the other. Back and forth she shifted with her hands on the bookshelf to help support her weight, and her eyelids grew heavier. Like she was slow dancing, she thought sleepily. Slow dancing with the bookcase.\n\nRidiculous...\n\nGinny snapped awake, trying to remember if she'd heard another set of those sobbing cries or if something else had woken her. It took her a good half a minute to realize it was just her body's way of protecting her from falling over, because she'd dozed on her feet, which were toasty warm at least. Stifling a yawn, she shuffled toward the doorway where her foot connected firmly with something furry and angry.\n\n\"Noodles,\" she scolded as the cat ran on silent feet down the hall, making shadows in front of the night-light. \"Don't you know better...\"\n\nGinny paused. She'd kicked Noodles because she was sitting, quiet. But when she ran, the telltale jingle of her collar had once again been silenced.\n\nHuh.\n\nBack in bed and coordinated around her multiple pillows, Ginny's lovely sleepiness had vanished. Every time she thought she might actually be able to fall back to sleep, Sean let out another grunt or a snuffle, or he shifted in the bed and pulled the covers off her and made her cold again. He'd always been a restless sleeper, but it seemed to be worse now. Or maybe she was just more sensitive to it. At any rate, at last Ginny had to resort to her old trick of counting backwards from a hundred in order to see if she could trick her brain into shutting down.\n\nShe got to eighteen before Sean coughed and her eyes flew open.\n\nStarting over, she got to thirty-seven before he let out a long, ripping fart that had her gritting her teeth.\n\nThis time, she got to fifty before he rolled onto his back and started snoring in earnest. Ginny sat up. She leaned over and poked him. Hard.\n\n\"Honey,\" she said, her tone making the endearment a lie. \"Roll over.\"\n\nHe did with another snort and snuffle, and she lay back and stared at the ceiling, even though she knew sleeping on her back was going to be impossible and she could only last a few minutes before she'd have to move. When she rolled onto her side to look out the windows, something like the first gleam of sunrise teased her.\n\nShe was still awake when the alarm went off.\nChapter Seventeen\n\nWith Sean's hands over her eyes, all Ginny could do was laugh as he guided her. \"What's the surprise?\"\n\n\"If I just told you, it wouldn't be much of a surprise, would it?\" His breath, warm against her cheek, made her want to nuzzle against him. \"Okay. Hold on a second. Don't look until I tell you. Okay?\"\n\n\"Okay, okay.\"\n\nShe heard shuffling. The scrape of wood against wood. She knew they were in the library because he'd brought her upstairs before making her close her eyes. But what on earth could he be about?\n\n\"Open them.\"\n\nShe did, expecting maybe a chair to match the sofa. Instead, Ginny faced her easel\u2014which had been set up in the dormer, with a fresh new canvas in the size she liked best. Beside it was the ugly telephone table. On it rested a new palette. Tubes of paint. A cup bristling with brand-new brushes.\n\n\"I know you threw all your old stuff away. I figured you needed some new things.\"\n\n\"Sean...\"\n\n\"Look, the light's great right there. I mean, I'm not an artist or anything, but the sun shines in that dormer almost all day long.\"\n\nShe knew it did. She'd noticed. Ginny moved forward to look at the setup, then at him. \"You didn't need to do this.\"\n\n\"Sure I did. Consider it a late anniversary present.\" Sean smiled. \"Since what I got you was lame, I know.\"\n\nShe didn't want him to feel like he had to make anything up to her. She especially hadn't wanted him to feel like he had to do it by buying her art supplies. Yet, faced with all of this new equipment, the pretty colors, the fresh and untainted brushes, Ginny's fingers did twitch. Just a little.\n\n\"I got you special paints and some nontoxic brush cleaner.\" He sounded so proud. \"Natural pigments and stuff. So...you don't have to worry about the chemicals.\"\n\nIt was too much. She should weep, but no tears sparked her eyes. Ginny stroked her fingertips over the canvas gently. Then she kissed him. \"Thank you.\"\n\n\"You like it?\"\n\n\"It's...so nice.\" The lie hardly tasted bitter at all. \"So unexpected.\"\n\n\"Now you can paint again,\" Sean said. \"I know you've been missing it. I can tell. You want to get started on something now?\"\n\n\"Later,\" Ginny said. \"I'll do it later.\"\nChapter Eighteen\n\n\"I know I have it. I know I have it in a box of things I packed specifically for the house.\" Ginny put her hands on her hips and looked around the smallest of the rooms on the second floor. No more than a closet really, it would be just big enough to hold a desk and a chair, maybe a set of shelves. Sean's office. If they ever moved everything out of it anyway.\n\nSean sighed and rubbed at his hair, that bad habit that always left him looking rumpled. She wanted to smooth it, to stroke down the sleek bits that always fell just in front of his ears and stroke it away from his forehead. Too many boxes blocked her.\n\n\"What kind of a box?\"\n\n\"A file box.\" She indicated the size with her hands, then pointed. \"Like one of those. Like any of those, but it's not one of those. I labeled all of them. It should be marked \"Linwood.\" Anything we got from Bonnie would be in there.\"\n\n\"Do we even know if we have anything about the furnace?\"\n\nShe shook her head and bit her lip. \"No. I don't know. Bonnie gave us that entire accordion file of stuff, warranties and receipts and all that. I'd imagine if there was something, it would be in there.\"\n\n\"Dammit, Ginny, the furnace guy needs to know this stuff.\"\n\nShe frowned at his tone. \"He can't figure out what's wrong on his own? I mean, isn't that supposed to be what he does? Figure out what's wrong?\"\n\n\"He says he needs a ductwork schematic so he can compare it to the rooms that aren't getting hot air. He thinks we might have a blockage somewhere.\" Sean cocked his head and leaned out of the doorway to listen. \"I think he's hollering for me, let me go check.\"\n\n\"What kind of blockage?\" she asked with a grimace, thinking of the sounds in the walls and imagining some sort of nest.\n\nBut Sean was already gone, leaving her among the mess of boxes he'd made when he started tearing things apart. If he'd just looked at the labels, she thought with a sigh, bending to put back a handful of manila envelopes filled with tax returns. But of course he hadn't. He'd expected her to magically hand him what he needed, and when she couldn't, he'd gone willy-nilly trying to find it. And couldn't be bothered to clean any of it up, either, she thought as she put the lid back on the file box.\n\nIt didn't solve the mystery of where the box had gone, though. She couldn't even remember seeing it, to be honest, but then why would she have looked for it? The real estate agent had presented them with an enormous, in Ginny's opinion, amount of trash related to the house. Ginny never looked at instruction manuals for any appliances she ever bought, so the chances of her ever reading through those for ones she'd inherited was equally as unlikely.\n\nThe repairman had been there for an hour already. Ginny tried not to think about the cost as she went downstairs to the kitchen to finish the brownies she'd been baking before Sean interrupted her for the wild-goose hunt for the schematics. The company charged by the hour, plus for parts, so even if he couldn't find and fix the problem, they were still going to be out some cash.\n\n\"Let me just pull it out of the air,\" she muttered, stirring the batter. Beating it, actually, though the recipe didn't call for such abuse. She slowed her motion, moving the thick, gooey liquid with the wooden spoon.\n\nThe kitchen, as usual, was blistering. She tasted sweat on her upper lip. She poured the batter into a baking pan and settled it in the oven, then set the timer. It took her only a few minutes to clean the mess she'd made, and she finished just as Sean and the repairman came up the basement stairs.\n\nGrunting.\n\nWhy were they grunting?\n\nGinny leaned out the kitchen doorway, astounded at the sight of her husband and some stranger wrestling with a table that looked too big to get around the sharp corner. In the way of men, they huffed and puffed commands at each other. \"Turn it...tilt it...tip it...yeah, that's it.\" It sort of sounded dirty, which might've made her giggle if she weren't so astonished.\n\n\"What the...what are you doing?\"\n\n\"Take it down the hall,\" Sean said to the repairman. With a grin over his shoulder at her, he said, \"I got you a dining room table.\"\n\n\"From the basement?\" Unable to make the angle in this direction, the men had taken the table down the hall and through the living room, but Ginny ducked into the dining room through the other doorway. \"Sean?\"\n\nThey settled the table in the middle of the room, under the stained-glass light fixture. Her husband looked at her proudly while the repairman-cum-furniture hauler dusted his hands on his coveralls. Ginny could only stare.\n\n\"That's a nice piece,\" the repairman said. \"Looks like cherry.\"\n\nSean, still grinning like he'd brought her a diamond ring wrapped in a rainbow shat from a unicorn, slapped a hand on it. \"Totally solid. Look at it. It was down in a corner, under a tarp.\"\n\n\"I remember seeing it when we looked at the house.\" It was not one of the pieces Ginny'd asked to keep. She bit her tongue in the presence of the repairman, who looked like he might be easily scandalized by a string of inventive invectives.\n\n\"Thanks for the help,\" Sean told him.\n\nThe other guy nodded. \"No problem. So, like I was saying, the rooms that are too hot are going to stay too hot so long as you've got your thermostat set so high. That's the furnace doing what it's meant to do.\"\n\nSean stepped aside to let the guy pass, heading for the front door, and Ginny peeked around the doorway to watch them. \"We set the thermostat so high to keep the other rooms, the cold rooms, at least bearable.\"\n\n\"I hear ya, fella. I hear ya. But these old houses, you know, sometimes the heat just goes right out the windows. Through chinks in the insulation, whatever. But I tuned it up and reset the system. You've got a good unit there.\" The repairman paused at the front door to look at Sean. \"It would've been better if I knew who installed it or had a better idea about where some of those ducts went, if they installed all new ducts or if they used the old ones, or maybe piggybacked...whatever. I mean, some of those ducts look like they're not even functioning to me, like maybe they were put in with the old unit or something. If I could tell if they put in new ducts with the new unit, that would help. But you should see an improvement anyway.\"\n\n\"Thanks.\" Sean shook the guy's hand and closed the door behind him, then turned to the thermostat and fiddled with it before looking down the hall at her. \"Hey. He says it should be fixed.\"\n\n\"I hope so.\" The smell of brownies had begun to permeate the air. She'd been careful not to lick the batter, no matter how tempting it had been, because of the raw eggs. Her stomach rumbled now.\n\n\"If it doesn't, we'll have him come back out,\" Sean said. \"Hey. Brownies?\"\n\n\"They'll be done in a few minutes.\"\n\n\"We can eat them on our new table.\"\n\nShe looked at the new-old dining room table, which was both exactly and nothing like what she'd wanted. \"It's filthy.\"\n\n\"You don't like it? I thought you'd love it. You wanted an antique table, you said.\"\n\nShe had mentioned it, yes. After they'd bought the fainting couch she'd looked at a few of the dining room sets in the same antique shop. They'd been sleek, Art Deco, with designs of inlaid wood and matching buffets that had beautiful and ornate drawer handles. Nothing like this square, sharp-edged, utilitarian wooden monstrosity. This table wasn't an antique, really. It was just...old. And well used, she thought, noticing the carved initials along one short side. CMM. Someone had been naughty.\n\n\"From the basement, Sean? Really?\"\n\nHe looked at it. \"You can polish it up, it'll be great. But if you don't like it\u2014\"\n\n\"No,\" she interrupted him. \"No. It's fine. We need a dining room table, and this way I can take my time looking for something. Someday.\"\n\nUntil then, they could use this table, even if it was ugly. Even if it wasn't what she wanted. She could make the best of things.\n\nHe settled his hands on her hips to pull her close for a kiss. \"Have I told you how awesome you are?\"\n\nHe had, many times, which only made her feel worse about hating the table he'd so obviously been happy to bring her. Ginny pushed onto her tiptoes, just a little, to kiss him back. \"Hmm. Because I ply you with sweets?\"\n\n\"You'll make me fat.\"\n\n\"Then I won't have to worry about any sexy, young chicks chasing after you,\" she teased, patting his flat, hard stomach. Sean never had to work out.\n\nHe looked at her seriously. \"You never have to worry about that, Ginny.\"\n\nShe'd meant it only as a joke, but his reply was so solemn it set her back. She cupped his face in her hands and kissed him again. \"I love you.\"\n\nHe nodded, eyes searching hers. \"You do?\"\n\n\"Of course I do,\" she told him, uneasy with the intensity of his expression. \"Of course.\"\n\n\"Good,\" Sean said. \"Let's eat brownies.\"\nChapter Nineteen\n\nThe smell. It was repulsive. Thick and cloying, the unmistakable stink of rot.\n\nGinny sniffed the air, then again. \"Ugh. God. Sean, you need to check the glue traps.\"\n\n\"I did, yesterday. Nothing.\" He rattled the paper instructions for the TV stand with a growl. \"Insert rod A into slot B. What the hell? There is no slot B.\"\n\nGinny sniffed again, walking slowly around the living room, which was still cluttered with a few boxes, even though it felt like they'd been unpacking forever. Sean had decided this was the weekend to put together the new television stand he'd insisted they needed for the new flat screen. He'd been cursing at it for the past hour and a half.\n\n\"Can't you smell that?\"\n\nHe sifted through a bag of small metal parts and plucked out a screw, then cursed some more when it didn't fit into the right hole. \"No. Smell what?\"\n\n\"I smell it.\" She sniffed again, nosing along the wall and over the vent. \"I can't believe you can't smell it. Something died in the walls, Sean. I'm sure of it.\"\n\n\"I thought you told me the exterminator said mice wouldn't smell that bad.\"\n\n\"I know what he said, but I'm telling you, I smell something disgusting. It's...\" She leaned over the vent blowing warm air that was nowhere near hot, and grimaced. She pulled her sweatshirt sleeve over her fingers and held it over her mouth and nose. \"It's stronger when the heat's on.\"\n\n\"Could be something in the ductwork.\" Sean shrugged, clearly unconcerned as he struggled with the TV stand's legs. \"God dammit. Why do they have to make these things so hard to build.\"\n\n\"We could've paid someone to put it together in the store,\" she reminded him, and wished she hadn't when she saw the set of his shoulders.\n\n\"They wanted to charge a hundred bucks for set-up and delivery.\"\n\n\"I know they did.\" But if they'd done that, they could now be watching a movie together or doing something else instead of this.\n\n\"I can do it anyway.\"\n\nShe sighed. \"I know you can.\"\n\nThe smell, thank God, had faded. Or she'd become immune to the stench. Either way, she could breathe with the filter of her sweatshirt. She watched him for a few more minutes, but knew better than to offer her help.\n\nThe next time the heat kicked on, though, the smell was back. She coughed from it, and Sean gave her a curious look. Ginny waved a hand in front of her face.\n\n\"You really don't smell that?\"\n\nSean stood and took a long, deep breath. \"Yeah. I smell something. It's faint, though.\"\n\n\"Please check those glue boards again. I'm sure something's dead on one!\"\n\nHe sighed. \"Sure, babe. Can I finish this first?\"\n\nHer look must've been answer enough, because Sean let out another sigh and hung his head. Without another word, he left the living room. She heard the slow tread of his feet on the stairs, in the hall, and finally into the nursery. She heard the creak of the cubbyhole door opening. More footsteps in the hall, then in their bedroom. She couldn't hear the cubbyhole door in their closet opening or closing. He came down a few minutes later with empty hands.\n\n\"I told you. Nothing. I mean, the guy said he didn't see any signs of anything, right?\"\n\n\"I still hear things,\" Ginny said stubbornly. \"In the walls. I told you.\"\n\nSean sighed and came closer, rubbing her upper arms to soothe her. \"I'm sure you do...\"\n\n\"I just heard it the other night,\" she pointed out. She did not add that she'd heard it while she was wakeful, unable to sleep, and he was snoring away.\n\nHe hugged her, stroking her hair. His shirt was damp. He smelled of sweat; she had to turn her head.\n\n\"All I can say is, I checked the traps. He said he'd be back to check the bait boxes. Right?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"So,\" Sean said, \"the next time he comes, ask him if he can smell it.\"\n\n\"Fine,\" she said, though it wasn't fine at all.\n\nHe worked in silence while she flipped through a couple of magazines. When he'd finished, he stood and waved at it. \"All done.\"\n\n\"Looks good.\"\n\nShit, now they'd been reduced to single syllables. Ginny sighed. \"You want some help hooking up the TV and stuff?\"\n\n\"No. I got it.\"\n\nShe went to the kitchen while he worked and made him an ice-cream sundae as a peace offering. She took it to him in the living room, then stood and shivered while he ate it. He offered her some, but she shook her head.\n\n\"I'm freezing.\" Ginny rubbed her arms and went to the vent in the floor, feeling a waft of lukewarm air. \"The kitchen's sweltering. I don't get it.\"\n\nSean sighed and handed her the empty ice-cream bowl. \"I'll call the repairman again tomorrow. Okay?\"\n\nGinny looked at the bowl, then at him. \"Yeah. That would be great.\"\n\nSometimes, he did get it. Sean got to his feet and hugged her, acting like he didn't notice that she'd turned her face when he tried to kiss her. \"Can't have my honey being cold, can I?\"\n\n\"It's just that it should work,\" Ginny said. \"It's supposed to be an almost-brand-new system, right? We just had the guy out here to check it out. It should just work.\"\n\n\"Lots of things should just work, but they don't.\" Sean looked at the TV stand.\n\nGinny knew that was certainly true. Marriage was one of them. Or maybe it was the other way around; marriage shouldn't work but did.\n\nShe looked toward the kitchen, then the bowl. \"You want anything else?\"\n\nSean, engrossed in his task, just grunted.\n\nGinny took the bowl into the kitchen and put it into the dishwasher. She stretched, slowly, droplets of sweat pearling on her forehead. The kitchen was still so stinking hot. The clock on the microwave blinked from their last power outage, and as she set it to the correct time, she noticed two things. The first, that it was getting late and she was getting tired. Second, Noodles had not yet been fed.\n\nThe reason she hadn't noticed was because the cat, who normally made her demands well known with a variety of vocal yowlings, had not seen fit to demand Ginny's services as head can opener. This was definitely not normal, but not entirely unheard of. Noodles could be cranky and sometimes suspicious, and Ginny was convinced the cat could also hold a grudge. If being shooed off Ginny's pillow this morning had sufficiently put her little pink nose out of joint, it was possible she was still hiding upstairs, even at the expense of her empty belly.\n\nOpening the can would bring her running, at least it usually did. Not this time. Ginny opened the can and scraped the gloopy, stinky contents into a bowl and set it on the special mat by the back door. No Noodles.\n\n\"Noodles! Ssss, ssss, sss!\"\n\nNo cat. In the sweltering kitchen, Ginny licked the sweat from her lip and fought off a wave of unease. She went through the dining room to the living room, where Sean still fought with the TV stand. She didn't bother asking him if he'd seen the cat. She went past him, into the front hall, up the stairs, into the bedroom. She got on her hands and knees and looked under the bed.\n\nNothing.\n\nGinny sat up, her breath coming a little too short in her lungs. She closed her eyes, trying to remember the last time she'd seen Noodles. This morning. The cat had been making herself at home, not just on Ginny's side of the bed, but on her pillow, and Ginny had clapped her hands and shouted to chase her away. She hadn't seen her since.\n\n\"Shit. Shit, shit...\" Ginny rubbed her face, got up and went downstairs.\n\n\"Sean. Have you seen Noodles?\"\n\nHe looked up at her, the building instructions crumpled in his fist. \"Huh? No.\"\n\nGinny sat slowly on the couch, which was still nowhere near where she wanted it to be. \"She's missing.\"\n\n\"What do you mean, missing?\" Sean wasn't paying attention to her, his focus still on the TV stand, which now at least looked as though it could hold the TV. \"I'm sure she's around. Did you call her?\"\n\n\"Yes. Of course. I opened her food, she didn't come running. I'm worried she got out of the house, maybe when I went out to get the mail.\"\n\n\"I'm sure she'll turn up.\" Sean turned back to fussing with cords and wires.\n\nThis answer didn't suit Ginny, who went through the house, calling the cat's name over and over with an increasing amount of desperation. Ginny looked in every closet, every crawl space, under every piece of furniture, behind every door. No Noodles. She opened the front door and called out into the night, thinking that if the cat had run out, she'd be more than eager to run back inside to her safe, warm house, but the only answer was a car passing by, splashing up a puddle from the day's earlier rain.\n\n\"She's gone,\" she told Sean in the living room, where he'd finally finished his project. \"I can't find her anywhere.\"\n\nHe looked up with a frown. \"She'll turn up. Even if she ran outside\u2014\"\n\n\"I called for her outside. She didn't come.\"\n\n\"Someone will find her.\" Sean looked at the TV, then at her. She could see the struggle on his face, the desire to finish getting his new toy set up and the knowledge he should somehow comfort her.\n\nAt least he thought he should. Ginny wasn't interested in being comforted. She backed up a step when it looked like her husband meant to come and hold her. She wanted to find her cat. Not be woo-wooed and petted.\n\n\"She'll come home,\" Sean said. \"If she's outside, someone will find her, or she'll come home.\"\n\nThe floor vibrated beneath Ginny's bare toes as the furnace kicked on. The curtains blew gently. Ginny took a breath, her hormone-enhanced sense of smell working hard. The faint scent of rot swirled around her, and she clapped a hand over her mouth and nose.\n\n\"What if she's not outside?\"\n\n\"Then she's fine,\" Sean soothed. He moved toward her but the cords tangled on his foot, and the television leashed him in place.\n\n\"No, no. I mean, what if she's in the house, but...trapped somewhere? Don't you smell that?\" Ginny cried, shuddering. \"Christ, Sean. Tell me you smell it.\"\n\nHe took a long, deep breath. \"I smell it. But it's hardly anything, honey. It's a mouse, like the guy said. Got stuck in the walls. It's not Noodles.\"\n\nSean dropped the cords. This time, Ginny didn't move away when he came to hold her. She pressed herself against him, her eyes closed, as he rubbed her back. Her belly made a bigger distance between them than she was used to, really noticeable for the first time.\n\n\"We'll find her. I promise.\"\n\nShe knew he couldn't promise anything of the sort, but she let him anyway.\nChapter Twenty\n\nGinny's gran might not always be completely locked in the present day, but she never looked anything less than her best. Compared to Ginny's mom, who wore a sweatshirt with a stain on it, her hair frowzy, her jeans out of style, Gran was the epitome of a classy lady. From her carefully coiffed perm to the shoes that matched her bag that matched her belt, Gran looked like she'd just stepped out of a salon run by fashion elves slaving to dress her. There was no such thing, of course. Ginny's mom had been the one to make sure Gran had everything she needed, and she wasn't afraid to make sure Ginny and everyone else knew it.\n\n\"Hours,\" she said. \"Hours it took us to get ready.\"\n\n\"Well, Gertrude, if you took some care with your own appearance, perhaps mine might not be such an offense,\" Gran said with a sniff and held her hand out for Sean to take as she hobbled through the front door.\n\nHe looked at it as though he wasn't sure if she meant for him to kiss it, and Ginny stifled a laugh. Gran had never approved of Sean, who'd shown up to his first family function wearing a black-leather jacket and a week's worth of beard scruff, riding a Harley-Davidson motorcycle. That he'd sold the bike and kept the jacket in the back of a closet now wouldn't make a difference. Gran could forget what she had for breakfast that morning, but she'd never forget that Ginny's \"boy\" was of the bad sort.\n\n\"Virginia. You're looking fat.\"\n\n\"Thanks, Gran.\" Ginny stepped aside so Sean and her mom could ease Gran into the living room and onto the couch, which stuck out awkwardly in the middle of the room because they'd stacked up all the still-unpacked boxes behind it.\n\n\"Mother, Ginny's not fat. She's pregnant,\" Ginny's mom said too loudly. \"Remember? We're here for Ginny's baby shower!\"\n\n\"And I'm old, not deaf,\" Gran retorted. She gave Sean an up-and-down look before turning back to Ginny. \"Virginia, have your boy bring me something to drink. Two fingers of Scotch, no ice.\"\n\n\"Mother,\" Ginny's mom began, but Ginny waved her quiet.\n\nSean backed up a step. \"I'll get it.\"\n\nHe already knew to make the drink only half the alcohol Gran requested, the other half water. She complained it was too strong the other way and wouldn't finish more than a few sips.\n\nGinny gestured for her mom to sit in the armchair while she took the other. They both looked at Gran, who stared back.\n\n\"Are you going to give me food, or what?\" Gran asked suddenly. \"It's mashed-potatoes-and-meat-loaf night at home. What are you going to feed me?\"\n\n\"There's plenty of food, Gran.\" Ginny smoothed her shirt over her belly, feeling self-conscious though she wasn't any fatter now than she'd been this morning when she got dressed.\n\nGran snorted as Sean brought the drink and pressed it into her hand. She stared up at him. \"You look much better clean-shaven.\"\n\nSean passed a hand over his cheeks and chin, then gave Ginny a brow-raised glance and a quick smile. \"Thanks.\"\n\n\"I liked his scruff,\" Ginny blurted. \"I liked it when he looked a little ragged.\"\n\nSean looked surprised. Then pleased. Gran, however, sniffed and daintily sipped from her glass before making a face and holding it out for him to take.\n\n\"This drink tastes like a ruffian made it.\"\n\n\"Can I be a ruffian if I'm clean-shaven?\" Sean said it with a straight face but a twinkle in his eyes.\n\nBefore Gran could reply, the doorbell rang and Sean went to answer it. Soon the living room overflowed with guests, and Ginny wished, hard, she'd been more demanding about unpacking the boxes Sean had insisted would be fine shoved up along the wall under the windows. She cringed as Billy's daughter Kristen, running after her brother, ran into a box that made a definite jingling sound when bumped.\n\nThat made her think of Noodles and the bell on her collar, and how the cat would've hated this crowd, and how they'd have had to lock her in a room to keep her from darting out the front door. How she'd probably have peed on something out of spite. Maybe, Ginny thought suddenly, with the door opening so often, Noodles would make her way back home, reappearing underfoot like the triumphant small queen the cat had always been.\n\nShe didn't, though, and playing hostess gave Ginny little time to think about it further. The present opening was an extravaganza of paper and ribbon, onesies and booties and diapers and plush toys. Such generosity moved Ginny to tears more than once, but it seemed quite acceptable for the expectant mother to cry when she opened a handmade and embroidered quilt it must've taken her mother more than a year to make. Ginny didn't point out what that meant, not when they were all there to celebrate. But she knew.\n\nIt was a big party, bigger than Ginny wanted, but her mom and Peg had insisted on inviting everyone who could possibly be invited, plus some people Ginny wasn't even sure she knew. Sean's mother hovered around making sure the food was all set up and drinks poured, which was nice but gave Ginny nothing to do but sit and hold court. Barb had also brought along all the paper products and baked a cake with plastic babies riding carrots on the top that looked like something out of a horror movie. Now she nursed a glass of white zinfandel and laughed too loudly at whatever Ginny's mom was saying to her.\n\nGinny had filled a plate with beef barbecue on a roll, macaroni salad, red beet eggs. The same food that had been served at every baby shower she'd ever been to. She'd been starving and ate too fast; now her stomach rumbled and ached, and she wondered if it would be bad form to ask everyone to leave so she could take a nap. She leaned in the parlor doorway, looking at the stacks of gifts she'd opened. Babies needed so many things.\n\n\"Look at all the loot.\" Sean appeared beside her.\n\n\"Yeah, I know.\" She leaned against him. \"Don't be a ruffian and run off with all of it.\"\n\nHe put an arm around her shoulders and kissed her temple. \"That's me, hooligan to the core. Maybe I should grow my beard again, you think?\"\n\n\"Beard. Ha. You never had a beard.\" She turned to face him. \"You only ever had that three days' worth of stubble. I could never figure out if you thought it made you look like a badass, or you were just too lazy to shave.\"\n\n\"Now you know, huh?\"\n\n\"Yeah. Too lazy,\" she teased, and kissed his mouth.\n\nHe tasted of Scotch and, more faintly, of cigarettes, but that had to be her imagination because Sean had quit smoking a few years ago. The first time she got pregnant. She kissed him again and slid her hands, flat, up the soft corduroy of his jacket to cup his shoulders.\n\n\"Were you...smoking?\"\n\nHe looked briefly guilty, then...not defiant. More like daring. \"I was out back with your brother, showing him where I wanted to put the shed.\"\n\nSurely the size or expense of a shed wasn't that important or stressful that a discussion necessitated cigarettes. \"Sean.\"\n\n\"Yeah. We were smoking. Drinking a little too. It's a party, baby.\" He nuzzled her, his mouth finding the sensitive spots on her neck and below her ear, making her shiver. \"Can't a guy get a little happy at his wife's baby shower?\"\n\nGinny had never been the one to tell Sean he had to quit smoking, he'd done that on his own. Of course she'd been glad he quit. Of course she had. But now, his kisses flavored with liquor and smoke, his hands sliding up her hips to cup her waist, Ginny had a flashback to the first night they'd fucked. You couldn't even have called it making love. No bed, no soft music or candles or slow, sweet undressing.\n\nThe first time she'd had him inside her, they'd been at a party thrown by someone she didn't know. A house she'd never been inside before. There'd been loud music, a table laden with food, the air thick with smoke and even the tang of marijuana. Sean had introduced her to all his friends as \"his girl,\" though they'd only been seeing each other for a week or so and Ginny wasn't even sure she meant to keep going out with him. His fingers had linked with hers, his other hand free to hold his cigarette, but he was so careful to never blow the smoke at her. Considerate that way, and also in how he made sure she always had a fresh drink, a plate full of goodies if that's what she wanted. He remembered that she liked pepperoni and not shrimp, that she preferred her drinks without ice. He'd paid attention to her back then.\n\nThe revelation had hit her, watching him laugh with a guy whose name she still didn't know. Sean's hand in hers, his focus on someone else, the sheen of colored lights from the Christmas tree making pretty patterns on his face and against the soft fringes of the hair he always, always, always wore in front of his ears. She'd tugged his hand and he'd turned to her at once, making her the most important person in the room to him.\n\nThey'd fucked in a tiny powder room, her ass slipping on cold porcelain, his jeans around his ankles. His hand over her mouth when she started to cry out. She could still taste his skin.\n\n\"Come with me,\" she whispered now and took his hand, but when she tugged him toward their powder room, Sean hung back.\n\n\"Ginny. What are you doing?\"\n\nNo, she wanted to say. Don't speak. Don't refuse me. Just come into the bathroom with me and shut the door, and put yourself inside me and put your hand over my mouth so nobody hears me cry out your name.\n\nShe laughed instead, shaky and self-conscious, her humor insincere. \"Nothing. Just playing.\"\n\n\"Later,\" he told her. He kissed her temple.\n\nBut there would be no later, because it wouldn't be the same. And that was the problem, wasn't it, Ginny thought as she watched her husband walk away from her. Things changed. Nothing stayed the same.\n\n\"Time for caaaake,\" Barb trilled, appearing in the arched doorway between the kitchen and dining room. \"Everyone, come and have some cake!\"\n\nGinny put on a smile. Sean's mom, for all her useless fluttering, did make a mean red velvet cake, with icing to die for, and Ginny fully intended to take advantage of her eating-for-two status. Despite the weird plastic babies\u2014riding carrots, of all things\u2014the cake was pretty, all white and red and presented on the special cake platter Barb used for every special occasion.\n\n\"You cut it,\" Barb said. \"I tried something new, a special recipe, because I know how much you like cherry pie, Ginny.\"\n\nThey had a cake knife, but of course it was still in a box somewhere, so Ginny took the cleaver Sean handed her. Someone made a joke about never getting between a pregnant woman and cake. Everyone laughed. Ginny pressed the blade slowly through the white icing, the dense red cake...and into something else.\n\nAs she lifted the first piece of cake, the insides oozed and dripped with sticky red goo. Thick clots of it clung to the cleaver. One plopped onto the table. Ginny recoiled.\n\nBlood.\n\nSo much blood.\n\n\"It's a cherrvelvet!\" Barb clapped her hands. \"A cherry pie inside a red velvet cake! I thought if it worked out, I'd make a cherrpumple for Thanksgiving. That's a cherry pie inside a pumpkin pie inside an apple pie.\"\n\nGinny swallowed against a thin sting of bile. \"It's...great.\"\n\n\"Looks like something that got squashed on the road,\" Gran said. \"And why do those cherubs have such gigantic private bits?\"\n\nGod bless Gran for distracting the crowd. Ginny handed the knife to Sean. She backed away from the oozing, dripping cake.\n\n\"We'll need some more plates,\" she said faintly. \"I'll get some.\"\n\nIn the still-unorganized pantry, Ginny let the spring-loaded door close behind her. The small room was blisteringly hot, and the stench that had so plagued the rest of the house earlier still lingered here. She put a hand over her mouth and nose and gripped the shelving with the other as she sagged.\n\n* * * * *\n\nBlood.\n\nThere's so much blood.\n\nShe goes to the toilet, her back aching, her belly cramping. Ginny knows what this means. She's always known. She could tell from the beginning. Something didn't feel right, it never had. She never told Sean. She didn't want him to worry. He's been so excited.\n\nWhen she goes to the toilet and puts her hand down between her legs, her fingers come away covered in blood. Dark, thick blood. Clots of it cling to her skin. Another rush of cramping squeezes her, and Ginny cries out. There's a woman in the next stall, so Ginny bites her lip against another cry.\n\nThe pain is worse than it was the other times. Like her insides are tearing. Shredding. Which...they are, she thinks as another wave of pain washes over her.\n\nShe is losing her baby.\n\nEverything inside her goes tight, tangled, twisted; her belly tenses. Hard like a rock. She's not even in maternity clothes yet, just wearing a size larger, and she lifts the hem of her T-shirt to press her hands against her bare skin. The blood smears on her pale skin. There is so much of it, it's everywhere.\n\nShe needs to find her phone. She needs to call for help. She needs to have this not be happening, but it is. Even as she fumbles for the phone and presses the emergency number, another series of contractions push through her. She can't speak through gritted teeth. She can only groan.\n\n\"Are you...okay?\" Someone outside the stall raps softly.\n\n\"No,\" Ginny manages to say. \"I'm losing my baby. Please call for help.\"\n\nThe sound of running feet. The slamming of the restroom door. Oh, how she wishes she'd stayed home today instead of going to the grocery store. Then she would be at home, in her own bathroom. But she's not, she's here, and the blood keeps coming.\n\nSomething soft and loose happens between her legs. Something tries to slip out of her, and Ginny holds it back with one hand while she leans to unlock the stall door with the other. There are paramedics there on the other side, one young man, one older woman.\n\n\"We're here, hon,\" says the woman and locks her gaze with Ginny's. \"We're here now. You can let go.\"\n\nAnd Ginny does.\n\nShe lets her daughter go, and there is more blood. Always more blood. And they take her away to the hospital, where Sean doesn't show up for hours and hours. When he does, his face is pale, his hair is mussed, he stinks of cigarettes and alcohol, maybe even the faintest hint of perfume. Ginny doesn't even care. She can't look at him when he's there at last, because he'd been so convinced it would all be okay, and she'd known it wouldn't, but she'd let him believe it.\n\n* * * * *\n\nHours have passed in her memory, but only minutes in the pantry. She needed to hurry before someone who meant well came in here after her and she had to blow off her tears as more sentimentality. Ginny scanned the shelves for paper plates and napkins and found a plastic bag she remembered buying at the store. The paper goods were inside.\n\nAs she moved to pull the bag from the shelf, her toe nudged against a bulk bag of rice she'd brought from the townhouse and dropped in the pantry without using once since they'd moved. The bag shifted, revealing the vent it had been covering, and fell on its side with the contents spilling. With a curse, Ginny bent to sweep up the grains with her fingers, too aware of the party noises from outside and expecting Sean's mom to poke her head inside at any minute.\n\nSome of the rice skittered across the floor and into the vent pulsing hot air. More spilled as she tried to lift the bag and close it. Ginny grabbed a handful, debating about just tossing it back in the bag and throwing the whole thing away\u2014the chances of them ever eating any of it seemed pretty slim at this point.\n\nSomething moved in her hand.\n\nStartled, Ginny looked down at her palm. Some of the white grains of rice were...moving. Wiggling. Too stunned to even drop it at first, the low, angry buzz of something else distracted her. As she watched, a fly forced its way out of the vent. Bobbing on the currents of hot air, it tumbled drunkenly toward her.\n\nGinny dropped the rice and maggots to swat at it, but the fly dive-bombed her. Disgusted, she backed up, still crouching. More flies came out of the vent, at first one by one, then in twos and threes. Twenty flies circled her. Then more.\n\nGinny scrambled backwards and hit the door, which opened inward and made it impossible for anyone to open, though by now she'd started screaming. Covering her face against the flies' assault, she tried to find the doorknob with her other hand, but her fingers skidded on the wood and missed the metal handle. She heard muffled shouts. The door bumped behind her, moving her toward the flies. She had to move forward into the thick of the buzzing swarm still pouring out of the vent so the door could open, but in her terror found it almost impossible to do it.\n\n\"Ginny!\" Sean hollered, pounding then shoving on the door hard enough to force her forward a few steps.\n\nThe flies swept past her and into the kitchen, where the much larger space dispersed them from a thick black cloud to a more widespread swarm. Party guests screamed and ducked, running. Someone ran into the table, shaking it hard enough to topple the cake stand onto its side, spattering red velvet cake and cherry pie all over. Billy, always a quick thinker, grabbed a swatter from the hook on the side of the cabinet, and started flailing.\n\n\"You okay?\" Sean looked into her eyes, holding her upright.\n\nGinny nodded, swallowing her disgust. \"Yes. Gross. What the hell?\"\n\nHe looked past her into the pantry. \"They must've been breeding in that bag of rice or something. You sure you're okay?\"\n\nGinny nodded again, straightening. \"Yes. Go help my brother. Get rid of them.\"\n\nGinny's mom opened the back door, letting in a swirl of icy wind, but allowing the men to shoo the flies toward it. Some fell dead under Billy's swatter and the rolled-up catalog Sean grabbed from the counter. Others flew off into the house, God only knows where, the thought of finding them later making her shudder.\n\nIn just a few minutes, everything had calmed down, except for Sean's mom, who sobbed over the broken cake like she'd given birth to it instead of her son. Peg and Dale made their goodbyes, while Billy wrangled his kids into the powder room to get them clean from eating the cake with their bare hands. Ginny's mom took Barb to the living room so she could get herself under control. Sean went to the alcove to find the mop and bucket, leaving Ginny and her gran standing in the middle of the now-empty, but at least flyless, kitchen.\n\nGran still clutched her glass of Scotch. Her lipstick had smudged, her carefully styled hair a little rumpled. She looked smaller than she ever had, her shoulders and back hunched. She lifted her glass in Ginny's direction, and Ginny waited for the scolding or the accusation that Ginny had a filthy house.\n\n\"That girl did it,\" Gran said.\n\n\"What girl? Kristen?\"\n\n\"Who's Kristen?\"\n\nGinny sighed. \"Billy's daughter, Gran. You know Kristen. She's ten? Blonde?\"\n\n\"Looks like her mother, oh that one.\" Gran nodded. \"Same sour face.\"\n\n\"Oh, Gran.\" Ginny bit the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing.\n\n\"Not that one. The other girl. The one with the dark hair. Like yours when you were small. I saw her upstairs.\" Gran sipped from her glass with a grimace and shuffled to the sink to pour away the liquid. \"Nobody knows how to make a decent drink anymore.\"\n\nAll of Billy's kids were as blond as Kristen, all taking after their mother, as Gran had pointed out. Peg's daughter Maria had dark hair, but she was away at college, not at the party. Ginny moved to take the empty glass before Gran could drop it.\n\n\"You saw a picture of Maria? Upstairs?\"\n\nGran looked contemptuous. \"Not a picture, Virginia. Listen to me. That girl. Upstairs.\"\n\nGran stabbed a gnarled finger, the nail painted bright red, at Ginny. \"That girl looked like a hobo. Hair a mess. Wearing rags. Shameful, really. A girl like that would bring filth with her.\"\n\n\"I don't understand.\" Unease dried Ginny's throat, so she filled Gran's glass with water from the tap and drank it, tasting a hint of Scotch. \"There was no girl, Gran.\"\n\nGran sighed. \"I saw her, just like I'm seeing you right now. You mark my words, Virginia. She's trouble.\"\n\n\"Who's trouble, Mother?\" Ginny's mom came into the kitchen and gave Ginny a sympathetic glance. \"I came to get Barb a cold compress.\"\n\n\"Oh. God.\" Ginny grimaced and moved aside so her mom could pull a clean dishcloth from the drawer. \"She's that bad, huh?\"\n\nGinny's mom lowered her voice. \"I swear she almost passed out.\"\n\nAgain, Ginny bit the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing as Sean reappeared with the cleaning supplies. He held them aloft triumphantly, then caught sight of her. His brows raised.\n\n\"What? They weren't where I thought they'd be.\" He looked from Ginny to Gran, to her mom. \"Where's my mom?\"\n\n\"She's calming down in the living room,\" Ginny's mom said.\n\nSean sighed, shoulders slumping, and set the mop and bucket down. \"Right. Okay. I'll be back to take care of this.\"\n\n\"You never mind,\" Gran said firmly. \"The day a man can clean a kitchen floor better than a woman can is the day we all get taken up to heaven on the back of a unicorn farting rainbows.\"\n\n\"Mom.\" Ginny's mom sighed and shook her head. \"For God's sake.\"\n\n\"No, Gran. You're not cleaning my floor. It's time for Mom to take you home anyway. You go.\" Ginny shooed her. \"I'll take care of this.\"\n\nAt first, Gran didn't move, but then she nodded and allowed Ginny's mom to shuffle her toward the front door. There she hung back to look askance into the living room and mutter something about \"ridiculous biddies,\" before Ginny's mom helped her into her coat and tied the scarf around her throat.\n\nIn the doorway, the cold air making Ginny shiver, Gran paused and wouldn't be moved along, even by her daughter's arm-tugging. \"You listen to me, Virginia. Get yourself a priest.\"\n\n\"Mom. What does Ginny want a priest for?\"\n\n\"That girl is trouble, Virginia. You get yourself a priest and get her out of your house.\"\n\nThen Ginny's mom was moving Gran off the porch and along the sidewalk toward the car, Sean's mom was up and in the kitchen, insisting on getting on her hands and knees to take care of the mess, and Sean was pouring himself a full glass of Scotch.\n\n\"What the hell was your grandmother talking about?\" he said in an aside as Ginny tried her best to just stay the hell out of Barb's way.\n\n\"I have no idea. Can you get rid of that rice?\"\n\n\"Sure.\" He drained the glass and set it in the sink. Then he took Ginny in his arms. \"Hey. You okay? You look pale.\"\n\n\"I feel a little woozy,\" Ginny told him. \"I'm going upstairs to lie down, okay?\"\n\n* * * * *\n\nThe nursery was still bare, though soon enough all the gifts they'd received today would be brought up to fill it. Ginny stood in the empty room, remembering how she'd imagined what it would look like when it was finished. When they had a baby cooing and crying in the crib Sean had not yet put together. When she would rock her child in the chair they'd not yet bought. She put her hands on her belly.\n\n\"A girl...with dark hair...like yours when you were small.\"\n\nGinny closed her eyes and whispered, \"Baby, are you here?\"\n\nBut when she opened them, the room was still as empty as it had always been.\nChapter Twenty-One\n\n\"Have you seen my mug?\"\n\nSean didn't even look up from his iPhone, where he was busy tapping away at some zombie game he'd become obsessed with. \"No.\"\n\nGinny looked again into the cupboard. She ran her fingers along the collection of mugs. None of them matched, which had never bothered her before but suddenly irritated her. Their plates matched. Their silverware matched. Their glasses even matched, a full set of tumblers, drinking glasses and wineglasses in a pattern she'd picked out for their wedding registry and sometimes regretted because it had been the most expensive one. They'd had to spend a fortune to finish the set after getting only a few pieces, and the cost to replace any that broke was ridiculous.\n\nGinny started pulling out the motley collection of freebies from banks and charities, lining them up on the counter until Sean finally bothered to look up and ask what she was doing. \"I'm looking for my mug. I told you. Have you seen it?\" A sudden uncharitable thought made her eyes narrow. \"Did you take it to work and leave it there?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Think hard.\" She kept her tone as pleasant as she could, as nonconfrontational, but she couldn't keep it entirely sweet. \"Did you take my mug?\"\n\n\"I don't even know which mug you're talking about.\" Sean stood. \"I gotta run.\"\n\nAnd run he tried, without bothering to put his dish in the dishwasher. Or even the sink, which would still have been an affront, but would've at least been something of an effort. Ginny stared at the plate, the fork still soaking in the mess of fried eggs and last bit of jelly toast he hadn't eaten.\n\nShe'd be damned if she cleaned it up. She'd cooked him that breakfast when the very smell of frying eggs still made her want to heave. She'd even spread that toast with jelly, grape, which she also loathed, because he'd been running late in the shower and she didn't want him to have to rush. And now he not only got up without bothering to pretend he intended to clean up after himself, like any adult would, but to add another insult, he was ducking away from her inquiries about her mug.\n\n\"Hey!\" she cried, stopping him at the front door. The cold swirled in, but she didn't care just then. The house was going to be too damned cold anyway. A few minutes of wintery air pummeling her hardly mattered. \"My mug.\"\n\nSean sighed and turned. \"Which one?\"\n\n\"The one with the pink skull and crossbones on it. The one my sister bought for my birthday.\" She eyed him, still suspicious. \"You know, the tall, skinny one?\"\n\nShe saw a flicker of recognition in his eyes. It made her frown. She liked that mug because her sister had picked it out for her on a weekend trip away a few years ago. They'd gone to a bed-and-breakfast and done some outlet shopping, eaten in nice restaurants that weren't kid friendly. It had been the last time they'd done anything like that\u2014life had gotten in the way. Ginny had spent her next birthday in the hospital, miscarrying.\n\nShe liked it because it reminded her of good times. Sean liked it because the tapered bottom fit neatly into his cup holder. She'd bought him a travel mug, but he still took hers. He didn't see the problem, after all. There were plenty of mugs for her to use, and of course her insistence that he leave \"hers\" alone made her out as some unreasonable shrew.\n\n\"I didn't leave it at work.\"\n\n\"Did you use it?\" The accusation rang out, too loud, too harsh for this early in the morning and the enormity of the offense. Or lack of.\n\nHis gaze skittered from hers. \"I...if I did, I put it in the dishwasher. Look, I have to go. I'm going to be late.\"\n\n\"Fine. Go.\" She flapped a hand at him, already turning to swallow her anger, to shove it down deep so it couldn't come out in another outburst.\n\n\"Maybe you left it somewhere,\" he said from the doorway, but was gone before she could reply.\n\nLeft it somewhere?\n\nIt could've been a dig. At least, in the mood she was in, Ginny wanted to take it that way. It was true; she was more apt to be the one leaving her belongings strewn about. Her shoes, car keys, a sweater draped over the railing instead of hung in the closet. It was a flaw, she knew it, but because she knew how it irritated him to find her stuff all over the place, she'd been trying harder to make sure she was better about it.\n\nBecause she listened to him, she thought bitterly as she yanked open the dishwasher. The mug wasn't in there, and she wasn't surprised. She hadn't used the fucking thing. Yesterday she hadn't made tea because even the decaf seemed to be wreaking havoc with her sleep. She'd been up every night for the past three. Counting backwards from one hundred did nothing. Neither did lavender on her pillow, though it did give her varied vivid and intriguing dreams during the few hours she did manage to sleep.\n\nGinny closed the dishwasher and moved again to the cupboards to search them all in case someone had put it away in the wrong place. Nothing. Anger simmering, she drew in a slow breath and let it out, reminding herself to keep her blood pressure from rising. She could drink her herbal, decaf tea from a different mug. No big deal.\n\nExcept that it was, and she wanted to cry when she filled another mug with hot water and let the tea bag steep. Even as she swiped her tears with the back of her hand, Ginny knew she was being ridiculous. But that was the deal with pregnancy and lack of sleep, wasn't it? Emotions running high and close to the surface, ready to spill over.\n\nTonight if she didn't sleep she'd think about making an appointment with the doctor, she decided when she took her tea into the living room to look through the old issues of her magazine subscriptions that had finally caught up to the address change and arrived in bulk. She'd suffered this before. Not quite insomnia. She had no trouble getting to sleep when she went up to bed. Hell, there were some nights that if she hadn't had to wait for Sean to get home from class so they could have dinner and spend some time together, she'd have put her pj's on and hit the sheets by eight. No, her trouble wasn't falling asleep, but staying asleep, then getting back to sleep once she woke up. Every night between midnight and 2:00 a.m. She told herself her body was preparing for the baby. It didn't make the mornings come any later.\n\nIn the living room, the slick pile of magazines slipped from her fingers and the tea scalded her when she tried to keep from dropping them. She stubbed her toe on a box that had been nudged out of place, even though she'd specifically shoved it up against the wall, hard, last night. Ginny let out a muttered curse and set her mug down on the end table that should've been an inch or so to the left but instead had also been shifted so the mug toppled to the floor and soaked the magazines. It didn't break, at least there was that.\n\n\"God damn it,\" she said, then louder, \"son of a bitch.\"\n\nShe yanked a roll of paper towels from the cupboard and got on her hands and knees to blot up the mess. Her magazines were salvageable. She could make more tea. But, damn it, Ginny thought as she looked around the chaos of her living room, when the hell was Sean going to finish unpacking all these boxes the way he'd promised he would weeks ago? Months, now. It had been more like a couple of months.\n\n\"Screw this,\" Ginny muttered as she got to her feet. Her knees hurt, and so did her hand from the hot tea. For the first time in weeks, she'd been planning on just sitting with her feet up, the way her husband insisted, now that she had something to do while she sat, since everything else she might've occupied her time with was mostly still packed away in boxes. All she'd wanted was to read through the accumulated weeks of gossip from the celebrity magazines and maybe check out a few new recipes. Hell, learn a few things from Popular Science or the news magazines she'd ordered from her nephew's school fundraiser.\n\nBut nope. Instead, she looked around at the mess and could no longer ignore it. Couldn't avoid it. She was done waiting for him to \"get around to it.\"\n\nBy lunchtime, Ginny'd managed to unpack every box in the living room and move the ones that still needed to go upstairs into the hall. She'd been ruthless. If she took something out of the box, it either found a place in the living room or was designated for some other specific place in the house...or put into the trash. She'd hauled two full trash bags out to the curb and half filled another.\n\nShe even moved the furniture. Slowly, a little bit at a time, but she did it. It helped that they didn't have much. The furniture that had filled the living room in the townhouse left plenty of space when divided between the living room and dining room, and she wasn't quite sure that everything was placed exactly where she wanted it, but it would do. At least they could freaking use the room, she thought as she took a few minutes' breather by settling on the couch, her feet on the ottoman, the now-dry magazines on her lap and a fresh mug of tea on the end table.\n\nYes. This. She looked around the room with satisfaction, ignoring for the moment the boxes in the hall that would need to be carried upstairs and her rumbling stomach, which would be soothed only for so long by the liquid. For now, she was going to sit and enjoy the results of her hard work.\n\nShe woke up an hour later, her neck stiff, the magazine article only three-quarters read and the tea long cold. Blinking, wincing, Ginny stretched and rubbed her furry tongue on the roof of her mouth. She looked outside, where the skies had gone gray enough to make it seem later than it was.\n\nShe'd needed the rest, that was for sure, but it would've been nicer to take a nap in her bed. Or at the very least, lying down on the couch instead of sitting up. Now everything ached, joints popped, and she didn't feel very rested at all. She was hungry, though. Starving, in fact, which was a nice change from the intermittent nausea that had plagued her with enough frequency that even when she didn't feel sick to her stomach, she worried enough about feeling sick that she kept herself from eating too much.\n\nNow she felt like she could down an entire twelve-inch hoagie, a whole pizza, a couple of cheeseburgers with an order of fries and a thick, creamy milkshake. Chocolate, she thought as moved through her now completely uncluttered living and dining rooms toward the kitchen. No, mint chocolate chip. Yes. Maybe there was some ice cream in the freezer, and she'd treat herself to a scoop. Or two.\n\nShe hadn't felt this good, aside from the creaking joints, in ages. Even the nagging loss of Noodles wasn't weighing on her. She actually hummed under her breath as she pulled out the makings for a sandwich and lined it up on the kitchen table. Bread, turkey, roast beef, lettuce, pickles, mayo. She sliced some tomatoes and added them to the growing tower of lunchy goodness. No true Dagwood sandwich would be complete without some good spicy mustard\u2014her mouth watered at the thought\u2014and a few slices of Swiss cheese.\n\nExcept that when she looked for the mustard, the spot where it should be on the fridge door was ostentatiously empty.\n\nHuh.\n\nGinny looked again. Then at the other shelves. Then at last she found it, shoved way to the back behind the bottle of lemon juice and an expired carton of half-and-half she took out to toss in the trash. She pulled out the deli package of cheese too, frowning. Sean didn't use mustard. He liked mayo or, shudder, margarine on his sandwiches. She'd even known him to spread white bread with ketchup before adding bologna, a combination that had made her gorge rise even when she wasn't fighting the pregnancy nausea. He didn't use mustard, so she couldn't blame him for putting it away in the wrong place, because how hard was it, exactly, to put things back in the place where they'd been found. Right? Even Ginny, who admittedly sometimes left her shoes by the front door until she had more pairs there than in her bedroom closet, knew enough to replace the mustard in its slot on the door. Next to the ketchup and mayo and salad dressings, that's where the mustard went, and since it wasn't there, she had to assume she'd been the one who hadn't put it back.\n\nUneasily, thinking of her lost mug, Ginny opened the mustard jar and found it so empty she could barely scrape enough out of it to spread on her bread. This was annoying, but not tragic. What she found when she pulled the cheese out of the package, though, was enough to make her throw it down on the table with a low cry of outrage.\n\nIt was bitten.\n\nSomeone, and it could only have been Sean, because who else would've done it? Someone had taken a bite out of the entire block of sliced Swiss cheese and put it back in the package. The tooth marks were clear, rippled around the edge of one of the larger natural holes in the cheese. The entire package was ruined, and why? To what freaking purpose?\n\n\"He doesn't even like Swiss cheese!\" Ginny cried aloud.\n\nWhich probably explained why he'd taken only one bite, though it didn't come close to making sense of why he'd bitten it in the first place. Grumbling, Ginny threw the cheese and the half-and-half into the garbage, then finished her sandwich. Sans cheese it was still good, but her appetite had been cut in half. She finished only part of the sandwich and wrapped up the rest for later, tucking it back into the deeper realms of the fridge so Sean wouldn't accidentally take it for his lunch tomorrow.\n\n\"He'd take it and complain about how it had mustard on it,\" she groused to her sister when she called a few minutes later while Ginny was cleaning her mess. \"Gah. Peg, I'm so annoyed.\"\n\n\"I hear that.\" Peg's sigh filled up the phone. \"It's like a war zone in my house right now. Between indoor lacrosse, Dale's triathlon training and work, oh yeah. Work, 'cuz everything else we do is 'leisure.' We barely have time to breathe.\"\n\nGinny's hands drifted over the mound of her belly. \"It was different when I worked. I didn't notice the mess or care about it as much, I guess. Or maybe he was just more in to helping out, we both pitched in. But now that I'm home full time...\"\n\nPeg snorted a chuckle. \"Oh, just wait until the sprout arrives. You'll look back on this time as your glory days.\"\n\n\"You're not helping.\"\n\n\"Sorry.\" Peg sounded anything but contrite, but she did try again. \"I guess my best big-sister advice to you is to take it easy. Let Sean do the unpacking, like he wants to.\"\n\n\"Like he says he wants to. But then never does. I understand he's tired when he gets home from work, and school's been harder than he thought it would be. I get that too. But, Jesus Christ, I'm the one who has to maneuver around everything in boxes, try to find stuff...\" She trailed off.\n\n\"You need to take care of yourself. Should I have Dale talk to him?\"\n\n\"No,\" Ginny said, thinking of how little Sean would appreciate a lecture from his brother-in-law. \"You guys are busy enough. Anyway, I did it all down here, and he won't be home for a few more hours. I'll do some more and it won't even be an issue.\"\n\n\"It sounds like it is an issue, though. And, Gin, you need to be careful...\"\n\nIrritation flared. \"Sean says the same thing. You're supposed to be on my side.\"\n\nMore silence.\n\nGinny sighed. \"I had an appointment just last week. The doctor said everything was fine. I'm not on any restrictions. I'm not high risk. There's absolutely no indication of any problems. At. All. I'm not running a marathon or lifting barbells, for crying out loud, Peg. I'm just putting away books and knickknacks.\"\n\nShe didn't mention the huffing and puffing of pushing the couch and chairs into place, or the boxes of books that were meant to be taken upstairs. Her sister's pregnancies, all six of them, had gone off without a hitch. By the last one, she gave birth at home in her bed, with all the kids around her, cheering on the birth of their new baby brother, and it was over before the midwife even arrived.\n\nHer sister didn't have any real idea what it was like to know that the life inside her had died and was decaying, or what it was like to crouch in a public restroom, knowing there was nothing she could do to stop her body from rejecting it. Her sister understood grief and could probably understand the loss of a child more fully than Ginny could yet grasp, but she couldn't really understand what it was like to lose one in the womb.\n\nPeg also couldn't understand how important it was to Ginny that her loss did not define her. Not her life, and not this pregnancy. This child was still clinging to life inside her and had not yet shown any indication of giving up, and Ginny refused to surround herself and this baby with fear.\n\n\"I'm not overdoing it,\" she told her sister. \"Trust me.\"\n\n\"I just worry for you. That's all. I remember how devastated you were\u2014\"\n\n\"I'm fine.\" Ginny cut her sister off. \"Really. But I have to go. I've got to defrost some things for dinner and stuff.\"\n\n\"I guess you won't be serving any Swiss cheese,\" Peg said, and Ginny found some laughter at what just a short time ago had made her so angry.\n\n\"I should serve only Swiss cheese,\" she said. \"And mustard.\"\n\nThey said their goodbyes the way sisters do, without a lot of mush and gush, but a lot of love nevertheless.\n\nThen Ginny went back to the task she'd set herself.\nChapter Twenty-Two\n\nBy the time Sean got home that night, bringing flowers for no reason he'd admit to but which Ginny suspected had something to do with her missing mug, she'd carried all the books upstairs and put them away in the bookcases. She'd cleaned them all first, of course, and swept the floors. Dusted the mantel, that sort of thing. But what had transformed the room was the addition of her collection of hardcovers and paperbacks, many she'd owned since childhood, all arranged and displayed. Those books adorned the shelves like they'd been meant for them.\n\nShe took him by the hand after feeding him a slow-cooker beef bourguignon and homemade biscuits. When she led him upstairs, his confusion was obvious. And when she pushed him gently forward, inside, to show off her efforts, his face first fell. Then he scowled.\n\n\"What the hell is this? I thought maybe you were going to show me something you painted.\"\n\n\"It's my library,\" Ginny said calmly. \"I know you said you wanted it to be a studio, but I can paint in here just as well this way...\"\n\n\"That's not what I meant.\"\n\nShe crossed her arms, aware of how they rested now on the shelf of her belly in a way they hadn't even a few weeks ago. \"What did you mean, then?\"\n\nHe gestured. \"This. The books. Where are the boxes? How did you get them all up here?\"\n\n\"I carried them.\" The flavor of sarcasm was bittersweet. She didn't tell him that she'd done it a few at a time rather than lifting each heavy box. It had been easier to make many trips with lighter loads. It had taken her most of the rest of the day and left her sweaty, but satisfied.\n\n\"Christ, Ginny. I told you I'd do this.\"\n\nFrustration boiled out of her. About the books and the boxes, the unkept promises. The mug. The mustard. The cheese. And other things, months and years of things that had eaten away at her and been shoved down or pushed aside because it was always easier that way, because she owed him something greater than her anger.\n\n\"But you didn't, did you, Sean? You didn't do it! You promised and promised and promised, but every night you come home and you eat dinner, and then you disappear conveniently into the bathroom for your nightly dump while I take care of the cleanup, and then you have to read the mail, and watch some TV or do your homework, and by then it's time for bed, so you never get around to it.\"\n\n\"I'm tired when I get home! What do you think, I work all day and then can just come home and have all this energy left over to do your projects for you?\"\n\nShe seethed, her fists clenched. \"They're not my projects, Sean. They're part of living in this house, together, which I could easily do by myself, as you can see, because I did. And the only reason I didn't before was because you insisted that you'd do it. But you didn't. So I did. Why are we even fighting about this?\"\n\nBefore he could answer, she turned on her heel to leave the room, relentless in her desire to get away from him before she said something she regretted. She'd done it before, used her tongue to cut him, and he didn't forget. Sean might forgive, but he never, ever forgot.\n\nShe thought he wouldn't follow her. He didn't like confrontation, which was why they hardly ever fought, why whenever they did argue it was because of something she said, she did, her choice. She was the one who fought, never Sean.\n\nSo when he reached out to tap her shoulder, she whirled, startled. \"What?\"\n\n\"Don't walk away from me,\" he said.\n\nHer back stiffened. \"I'm tired, Sean. I want to take a hot shower and go to bed.\"\n\nFor another second or two, she thought he was really going to keep up with it, but he just shook his head.\n\nWhen she came out of the shower, though, he'd already turned down the sheets and sat on the edge of the bed, still fully dressed. He looked up at her when she came in, her skin still damp and flushed from the heat, her hair pulled on top of her head.\n\n\"I just don't want anything to happen to you, Ginny. That's all.\"\n\nShe sat beside him and thought about taking his hand, but the effort at that moment was too great. She couldn't tell what was raw between them, just that something was, and she didn't have the energy to deal with it.\n\n\"I can't sit around here doing nothing all day long.\"\n\n\"You could paint.\"\n\nShe sighed and rubbed at her eyes. \"It's not that easy, you know. Besides, painting was just a hobby.\"\n\nPainting had only ever been an excuse, something she'd taken up to fill in the long and lonely hours she'd wanted to spend with a husband consumed with work and school and things he wouldn't talk to her about. That she'd discovered she loved it was a bonus, something unexpected but lovely. But it hadn't started out that way. It hadn't been something she'd dreamed of doing as a kid. To see that she had some small talent for it had never pushed it beyond anything but a hobby. It had never quite become a passion.\n\n\"You could work on the baby's room.\"\n\nGinny said nothing.\n\n\"We could get a kitten,\" he said suddenly.\n\nGinny flinched. \"What? No? The last thing I want is another kitten, right before...I mean...you can't just replace Noodles! You can't just get another one because the one we had ran away.\"\n\nSilence, this time from him. Her words hung in the air between them, uncomfortable. Awkward. Bad memories threatened, of similar but more horrible conversations, and she pushed them away.\n\nSean looked at his hands, clasped lightly in his lap. \"You should take advantage of this time to rest and relax. Because you won't have this free time in a few months. If we're lucky.\"\n\nBile scratched at her throat and a burning pressed in her chest. Heartburn. Stress. The taste of long-simmering anger.\n\n\"If we're lucky,\" she repeated in a low voice. Then, louder, \"Lucky? Don't you think we'll be lucky? You think I'm going to lose this baby.\"\n\n\"Don't you think...\" he hushed himself, then turned to look at her, \"...don't you think I have a right to worry? Even the doctor said\u2014\"\n\n\"The doctor said there was no way to know if anything I did would've made a difference. She said that the body knows what's necessary, even if the mind and heart don't agree, do you remember that?\"\n\nHe huffed. \"Yes. She was a jerk.\"\n\n\"She was maybe a little brusque.\" Ginny had appreciated the obstetrician's assessment of her miscarriage, better than if she'd joined them in the hand wringing and breast beating. \"She also said that there's no reason to think this time is the same, or that we'll have any problems. We haven't, Sean. This baby is healthy. I'm healthy. I'm seven months along, and there are no signs of any problems like the last time.\"\n\nThere'd been genetic abnormalities. Ginny'd had every test possible this time through and been given the all clear for Down's, spina bifida, everything else. She and Sean had been poked and pinched and prodded, their DNA scanned, the probabilities of their conceiving a child with abnormalities factored, and the results had all come up the same, just like the doctor had said.\n\n\"Is that why you won't decorate the nursery, then?\" he challenged her suddenly. \"Because you're so convinced there's nothing wrong, that it will all be all right? Is that why you've left every single thing we got in the wrapping with the receipts attached...just in case?\"\n\nGinny got up, looked with longing at her pillow and the warm blankets, then at her husband. She lifted her chin. \"I'm going to read,\" she shot at him before he could say a word. \"With my feet up. I'm not tired now.\"\n\nWhich was a lie. She was exhausted. She was melting with it, the desire to sink into her bed and pull the blankets up, to lose herself in vivid dreams of old flames and movie actors. She wanted to sleep and end this fight, erase the knowledge that her husband did not believe in this child. That he didn't believe in her.\n\n\"Ginny. Wait.\"\n\nIn the doorway, Ginny paused. \"We have no reason to think there will be any problems, Sean.\"\n\n\"We have every reason,\" he said in a hard, low voice totally unlike his normal tone. \"Don't you get that? We have every reason.\"\n\nThe terrible thing was, no matter how hard she tried to convince herself otherwise, she knew he was right.\nChapter Twenty-Three\n\nShe was cold again.\n\nThe house had been warm when she went to sleep, and with her flannel pajamas, the pregnancy hormones and the knitted afghan, Ginny'd fallen asleep toasty warm. Now she woke, cold and disoriented. The blanket had bunched beneath her, pressing her flesh into an ache.\n\nShe was on the Victorian couch. She put a hand down to touch her book on the floor beside her. The lights were out, she realized as her fingertips brushed the smooth hardcover. She'd found an old favorite, Clive Barker's Imajica, in one of the boxes, and the dust cover had raised letters she could trace.\n\nThe lights were out.\n\nShe hadn't turned them out before falling asleep, she knew that much. She'd been reading by the light of the pendent lamp, which was too dim to make any dent in the shadows but cast a perfect pool of brightness for reading. She'd been on her side, the book propped on a pillow and the couch's firm, upholstered back providing a delightful pressure against her back. She remembered letting the book close, even recalled setting it gently on the floor. But she had not turned out the lights.\n\nSean must have come to check on her, seen her sleeping and turned off the lamp to leave her in peace. Ginny smiled at this thought of domestic kindness, until she remembered they'd been fighting. And at any rate, it wouldn't have been like him to leave her sleeping on the couch. He'd have insisted she come to bed to be more comfortable.\n\nBut if it wasn't Sean, who was it? The boogeyman, she thought with a small laugh. A cool gust of air swirled from beneath the couch and tickled her fingers, and suddenly the idea of the boogeyman didn't seem so laughable. She didn't quite snatch her hand up and out of the dark...but almost.\n\nGinny sat, pushing at the tangle of the afghan in frustration and not quite able to get herself free. She had no idea what time it was, but it felt like her normal midnight or 1:00 a.m. rising. Her bladder was telling her that anyway.\n\nSomething scratched and rustled inside the wall behind the bookshelves.\n\nGinny paused, thinking it was her own shuffling, but a second later the noise came again. The distinctive scritch-scratch of claws or nails against the inside of the drywall. She held her breath. Faintly, faintly, came the far-off jingle of a bell.\n\n\"Noodles?\" It came out as a whisper; she couldn't force her voice any louder than that. \"Noodles, sweetie...\"\n\nThrough the darkness came the sound of breathing, soft and fast and faint. Ginny froze, unable to move, incapable of closing her eyes though she was straining them so hard into the blackness that small, bright flowers had begun blooming around the edges of her vision. She'd put one foot on the floor a minute or so ago and now drew it up under the blanket she clutched to her neck. She had to pee so bad she could taste it, as her gran would've said.\n\nGinny swallowed, then again, her throat so dry she thought she might choke. What had shifted in the walls, what was now breathing so close to her? Or maybe not what. Maybe...who.\n\n\"A girl...with dark hair...like yours when you were small.\"\n\n\"Maeve,\" she whispered, because that was the name she'd wanted to give her daughter, the one she'd lost. \"Maeve, honey? Is it you?\"\n\nGinny tensed, waiting for something to touch her. Weeping, she reached into the darkness and found nothing but the night. She listened in the dark, but the bell didn't jingle again.\nChapter Twenty-Four\n\n\"A blank canvas is only intimidating if you don't let yourself imagine what you might paint on it.\"\n\nLouisa had been fond of saying that as she walked around the room, looking at what they were working on. Ginny knew she was trying to be helpful, but it was never that she'd found the blankness intimidating. If anything, she always had too many ideas about what to paint and never enough skill to re-create what was in her mind's eye. Not intimidating, frustrating.\n\nThe canvas in front of her was now frustratingly and intimidatingly blank. She'd dutifully kept it set it up on the easel near the window, where the light was best. She'd sketched out on a notepad the shapes of what she thought to paint, her pencil making a scritch-scratch noise that was uncomfortably like the noises she'd heard in the walls.\n\nShe looked around the room, waiting for inspiration to strike. And it did, but not to create anything. The fainting couch called to her. That, and a mug of tea and the rest of her book. That was a much better prospect.\n\nThere was nothing that said she had to paint. It should never have become something forced upon her, the way she felt forced now. But Ginny didn't feel like painting.\n\nThe truth was, Ginny was sure she'd never really feel like painting again.\n\nChildren's laughter caught her attention, and she looked out the window to search for them. As she watched, the boy pushed through the hedge and bent to pick up what looked like a badminton birdie. It must've flown over the bushes, though why those kids would be outside playing badminton at this time of year... Ginny shrugged. Not her kids, not her problem. Well, except for the fact they were in her yard again. The boy ran through the pile of leaves just down the hill, his sister following, and she lost sight of them.\n\nThe sky had gone gray again. Ginny shifted her weight from foot to foot and dabbed her paintbrush without enthusiasm into a blob of a color called Azure Sky, which was nothing like the color she could see through her window. Despite the chill in this room, it wasn't cold enough outside for snow, which meant the clouds covering the sun meant rain. Cold November rain, just like in that Guns N' Roses song. The faint rumble of thunder proved her right a minute or so later.\n\nAutumn thunder always felt strange, not like summer storms that sprang up after a hellish day and broke the heat. Storms in the fall were creepy, not sexy. The rain would be cold, not warm.\n\n* * * * *\n\nWarm rain. The sound of thunder. Ginny closed her eyes, remembering how the sky had opened, how everything had come down. Steady, unyielding rain, hard enough to sting her bare arms as she ducked between the tents, wishing she'd thought to bring a sweater or an extra outfit. She would be soaked by the end of the day, her carefully styled hair flattened, her makeup smeared, her pretty shoes bloated with wet.\n\nHer paintings hadn't looked the same in the glare of strung light bulbs instead of sunshine; nobody's had. They'd strung some on wires in the tent. Others leaned on unsteady easels, posts sinking into the rain-softened ground.\n\nThe crowds came, despite the rain. They splashed in the puddles and trekked through the mud. They carried shopping bags of crafts and paintings carefully wrapped in plastic to shield them from the ceaseless downpour. They waved giant tubs of French fries and apple dumplings and ignored the ice-cream truck and cotton-candy vendors\u2014cotton candy dissolves in the rain before it can be eaten. It leaves behind a sticky film as the only reminder of its sweetness. Ginny knew this because she'd watched a young mother pushing her toddler in a stroller, unaware of his tears as his treat washed away before he could get it to his little mouth.\n\nLots of people had come to the art show, and it had seemed to Ginny that at least most of them took a turn through the tent she shared with the rest of Louisa's students. Lots of strangers took the time to ask about her work, some even complimenting it. A couple even bought a piece. Lots of faces, lots of smiles, but no matter how often she looked up hopefully to the tent entrance, waiting, none of them had been his.\n\n* * * * *\n\nBlinking at the next rumble of thunder, farther away now, Ginny came back to herself. Her back ached, and so did her fingers from clutching at her paintbrush so hard. She'd been standing there so long the small dabs of paint she'd put on her palette had started to dry, a thin sheen of darker color covering the brightness beneath. She took a deep breath and put everything down.\n\nShe didn't want to paint today, or maybe never any other day, but she left her supplies where they were so that perhaps when she returned they might taunt her into feeling creative.\n\nGinny went downstairs to make some tea. As she filled the kettle at the sink, the first fat drops of rain splattered the glass. She leaned to crane her neck, trying to get a glimpse of the sky but couldn't quite make it.\n\nThe kids from next door ran across the yard, kicking at the leaves and shrieking with laughter. The wind picked up strands of the girl's blonde hair as she twirled and fell down into a pile, her arms and legs moving like she was making a snow angel. Her brother tossed the birdie at her, hitting her in the forehead. She sat up, indignant, and shouted something at him Ginny couldn't make out. Then she got up to chase him, and they ran out of sight again, down toward the creek.\n\nThe kitchen was broiling hot again, even as the library had been chilly. Her memories had left her flushed, but the temperature in here was unbearable, too hot for hot tea. She settled the kettle on the stove but didn't turn on the burner, and instead went to the fridge for a cold glass of orange juice.\n\nThe carton was empty, not even a swig left. Fuming, she tossed it in the trash and wrote \"orange juice\" on the list clinging beneath a magnet, advertising window treatments, on the fridge. She drank some water instead, then wet a paper towel and used it to dab at her face and the back of her neck, the swell of her cleavage.\n\nIt was too damned hot here. Too cold in other rooms. The damned furnace, Ginny thought, needed a kick. She didn't care what the guy said about it, there was something wrong.\n\nDetermined, she pulled the rechargeable flashlight from the wall dock. Sean would be happy to know she'd found a use for it, even if she didn't want to admit that it had been an eminently practical present.\n\nThe basement door creaked as she opened it. Behind it was the set of spindly, creaking and open wooden stairs with a splintery railing she gripped firmly. The floor below was concrete and unforgiving of a tumble. For a moment she considered taking off her slippers, but she wasn't wearing socks with them and the thought of going in bare feet into the filthy cellar was as unappealing as taking the time to go upstairs and put on socks. Instead, Ginny just made sure to settle each foot firmly on the stairs before she took another step.\n\nThe bulb swayed a little when she pulled the chain, and the pool of light at the bottom of the stairs shuddered. Just beyond it was another pull chain, though, and a few feet more, another. They were hung all over the basement, none connected by a light switch but all close enough that you never needed to pass through any darkness to get to the next...unless, as she discovered now, several of the bulbs had burned out.\n\nBut that's why she had the flashlight. Ginny clicked the button. The blue-white light flashed rapidly, like a strobe, before she clicked it again to put it on the regular setting. A steady beam of bright light shone ahead of her, looking almost solid with the dust she'd kicked up swirling in it.\n\nGinny held the flashlight in her palm and slowly waved the light from side to side. \"Whommmmm. Whommmm.\"\n\nLightsaber.\n\nThe effect was ruined when the light bent along any objects in the way, but still it was good for a giggle as she oriented herself. She swept the room with the flashlight. All the corners the light from the bulbs wouldn't reach, even if they were all lit.\n\nThe furnace was in the far corner, in a little jig-jog that upstairs was part of the dining room. Ginny flashed the light above her, into the ceiling joists. She remembered too late the sound of nails and claws, and screamed when the shivering shadows tossed a pair of bright eyes at her, a flash of teeth.\n\nSeconds later, of course, with her heart pounding and palms sweating, she had to laugh. It wasn't a raccoon\u2014or worse, a rat\u2014but a child's stuffed toy shoved into the space between the rafters and close to the silver ductwork.\n\nThat was creepy and gross, but not terrifying and not as weird as some people might think. She could remember as a kid hanging out in her grandma's basement with Peg and Billy and their cousins, trying to scare each other with stories or playing hide and seek. As a teenager, Ginny's uncle Rick had built a rec room of sorts in the basement, using spiffy 1970s paneling and cast-off furniture he and his friends had salvaged from the garbage. There'd been plenty of weird things tucked into the rafters of Gran's basement, including the gape-mouthed plastic face of a decapitated blow-up doll Peg and their older cousins had convinced her was a \"princess mask.\" Compared to that, a kid's teddy bear was hardly strange at all.\n\nTo her right was the concrete wall that had been repaired in the long-ago fire. It was just as dirty and hung with cobwebs as the other walls, but of slightly different brick. Sean had stacked their ski equipment along it but left bare the metal shelving unit she'd meant him to use. Ginny shook her head, biting her tongue and refusing to let herself get worked up over it.\n\nThe furnace kicked on with a rumble when she approached. That had to be a good sign, right? She didn't know much about furnaces, other than how to change the filter, but the repairman had mentioned that Reset button and whatever he'd done to it had worked, at least for a little while, so it seemed like it was worth a try again.\n\nOver in this corner, the bulb had not just blown, it was missing entirely. Ginny touched the chain and set the fixture swaying anyway as she passed, but she used the flashlight to look over the furnace. She regretted, now, playing the role of little wifey while Sean went with the repairman to check things out. She'd always made it a point in the past to be aware of everything, the basics of what she considered necessary adult skills. How to change a tire, balance a checkbook, change a fuse, mix a basic cocktail. In the days before she'd gone to a Mac, how to defrag a computer. Yet when the repairman was here, she'd hidden herself away in the kitchen like some sad parody of June Cleaver, complete with apron and bare feet.\n\nWhat the hell had happened to her?\n\nA sudden sob threatened to strangle her, but Ginny forced it back. No crying. Not here in the dim and dirty basement. Christ no. She wasn't going to lose it. She bit her tongue and rubbed the sore spot against her teeth until the urge to cry went away enough to ignore.\n\nThe Reset button. Where would it be? She shone the light over the entire furnace, but there was no helpful marking. The furnace itself still rumbled comfortingly but also deceptively.\n\n\"Let me heat your house,\" the furnace's rumble said. \"Or, you know, make you think I'm going to. But then you wake up freezing your tits off while chocolate melts in your cupboards.\"\n\nJust to the left of the furnace was a small window set high in the wall. It opened into a well framed with a half circle of metal and a patch of gravel at the bottom. She could see nothing through it, but some pale light filtered through, enough that when she went around the side of the furnace she could click off the flashlight.\n\nAnd there it was. At least, she assumed the switch on the side of the furnace, tucked between two sections and just above the place the filter nestled, was the right one. What else could it be?\n\nWhat's the worst that could happen, Ginny thought, and flicked it off.\n\nAt that moment, the light from the window cut out completely, leaving her in shadow. Ginny turned, the flashlight tumbling from her fingers as she spun. Framed in the window was a face, eyes wide and mouth yawing.\n\nIt screamed, shrill and high and piercing. The sound ripped at her eardrums and set the hair on the back of her neck on end. She dropped the flashlight, screaming herself, louder and more frantically than when the stuffed bear had startled her.\n\nThe face disappeared. More screams echoed. She heard the faint rustle of feet in the leaves.\n\nGinny collapsed against the furnace, no longer rumbling, and let herself dissolve into relieved laughter. She pressed a hand to her heart to slow the beating. The other went between her legs, praying she hadn't lost control of her bladder. She seemed safe enough there, though there'd been a moment when she was sure she was going to piss herself. At least she'd managed to avoid that.\n\nIt was one of the kids from next door, the face in the window. For whatever reason, they'd been peeking in her windows. Well, they'd had a scare, hadn't they? Maybe it would keep them away from her house, she thought, even as she laughed again at how they'd terrified her too.\n\nShe bent slowly, carefully, to find her flashlight, but it had rolled away somewhere. It was gone. She'd have to look for it later, in the brighter daylight or at least when she'd replaced all the burnt-out bulbs, but for right now her bladder was protesting the strain she'd put on it. She'd be lucky to make it upstairs.\n\nSomehow, with her knees knocked together, Ginny made it to the bathroom in time to avoid an accident. Washing her hands, she caught sight of her reflection and laughed again at the memory of the neighbor boy's terrified face. Of her own fear. She laughed, loud and long.\n\nAnd then she was weeping, both hands gripping the porcelain while she bent forward, helpless against the onslaught. Her shoulders heaved. Sobs racked her. She opened her mouth and almost expected to puke, that was how fierce the tears burned, but, instead, snot and saliva dripped into the sink. Fat, hot tears splashed. Her fingers curled and gripped, tight and tighter, because if she let go of the sink she was surely going to fall onto the floor.\n\nIt didn't pass with ease, this sudden burst of grief, this madness. It didn't fade or taper off into sniffles. It ended abruptly, like someone had slapped the hysteria out of her, and it didn't leave her feeling better, the way tears were supposed to. Everything about her face felt hot and swollen, and when she dared to face her reflection again, she looked how she felt.\n\nUgly.\n\nWith a determined shake of her head, Ginny gathered up the sorrow and the crazy, and she folded it like origami. She pushed it away, pushed it aside. Pushed it inside.\n\nDeep inside.\nChapter Twenty-Five\n\n\"What the hell were you doing in the basement anyway?\"\n\nAs predicted, Sean hadn't been amused by the story she spun as humorous so she could forget how it had ended. Ginny sighed and pushed her fork through the spaghetti noodles and sauce. It was a lackluster dinner, at best. Overcooked pasta and sauce from a jar, garlic bread she'd cobbled together from some leftover hamburger buns and garlic powder. She wasn't hungry anyway.\n\nShe looked at him across the dining room table. He seemed so far away, compared to their seats at the old table in the kitchen, but she figured if he was going to surprise her with this ugly table, she could insist they use it. \"I told you. I was looking at the furnace.\"\n\n\"If the furnace isn't working,\" Sean said, \"tell me about it, and I'll call the repair guy to come back. We paid him enough, he should make good.\"\n\nGinny frowned. \"I can call the repair guy. I'm not helpless.\"\n\nSean said nothing, just dug his fork into the pile of noodles on his plate and slurped them up. Sauce splattered. He washed down the mouthful with a swig from his glass, then forked a bite of salad. He chewed. Loudly.\n\nHe'd always eaten that way, openmouthed, slurping and smacking and crunching. It suddenly repulsed her. Stomach twisting, Ginny broke off a piece of bread and forced herself to nibble it. She hadn't eaten all day.\n\n\"And you should've told me yesterday.\" He pointed at her with his fork.\n\nHe had sauce around his mouth. Once upon a time, she'd have leaned to wipe it with the corner of her finger and tucked it in her own mouth. The thought of that, tasting something from his skin, suddenly repulsed her more. Ginny swallowed convulsively.\n\n\"You weren't home until late last night. I didn't think about it.\"\n\nHe'd come home after she was already in bed. He'd smelled again of cigarettes and liquor. He'd wanted to make love. They'd done it in the dark, without words, his hands roaming over the changing mountains and valleys of her body. It had been like making love to a stranger, which was why she'd been able to come and why she'd gone to sleep with silent tears soaking into her pillow after.\n\n\"Did you turn the furnace back on?\"\n\n\"I...\" Ginny hesitated, \"...I'm not sure. I don't know.\"\n\n\"No wonder it's so frigging cold in here.\" Sean frowned. \"I'll take care of it after dinner.\"\n\n\"Fine. Thank you.\" The words sounded stiff and ungrateful, but what did she have to be grateful for, exactly? Making her feel like an idiot? Or that he might actually complete this chore, instead of merely promising to do it?\n\n\"So,\" he said after a few minutes of nothing but the sound of silverware clinking on the plates, \"how was your day?\"\n\n\"Fine.\"\n\nHe leaned back in his chair and wiped his mouth with a paper napkin; bits of paper clung to the scruff of his goatee. He didn't notice. Ginny had to look away.\n\n\"Just fine?\"\n\n\"Just fine,\" she told him. \"How else would you expect it to be?\"\n\n\"Did you paint today?\"\n\nShe frowned. \"No.\"\n\n\"Why not?\"\n\nSaid that way, it could be a genuinely curious inquiry. Or it could be a dig. Either way, she had no answer for it, no good answer that wouldn't lead to more questions.\n\n\"I didn't feel like it.\"\n\nSean wiped at his mouth again, this time with his fingers. It was the gesture of a man trying to hold back words with his hand, but he didn't try hard enough. \"Why not?\"\n\n\"Christ, Sean. I don't know. I just didn't.\" Irritated, Ginny stood to take her plate into the kitchen.\n\nShe'd baked cookies earlier today when she was not painting. She'd dusted the living room and changed out the towels in the bathroom She'd run a couple loads of laundry. She'd read half a book. She'd napped. She'd watched a couple hours of television. She'd paid some bills. She'd done a lot of things that were not-painting, so why was she letting him make her feel like she'd squandered her day, when he was the one who kept telling her to relax?\n\n\"I just thought, you know. With all your time you'd be getting back into it by now.\"\n\nShe turned from the dishwasher. \"All my time?\"\n\n\"Yeah. All your time. I don't have all the time you have.\"\n\nBoth her brows went up. \"Everyone has the same amount of time, actually.\"\n\n\"Not actually.\" His half smile was supposed to charm her, but it didn't look genuine. \"Some of us die before the rest. So technically\u2014\"\n\n\"I was busy,\" she cut in. \"And I didn't want to paint. Okay? I just didn't feel like it. You act like it's some kind of crime.\"\n\n\"It's just that I wouldn't have bought all that stuff for you, if I'd known you weren't going to use it. I'd have spent the money on something else. In case you didn't notice,\" he added in a tone more sarcastic than she'd ever heard from him, \"we're not exactly floating in extra money.\"\n\n\"I never asked you to buy it!\"\n\nSean didn't say anything at first. They stared at each other across the kitchen until he dropped his gaze. Scuffed his toe on the floor she'd spent a good forty minutes sweeping today. Muttered something.\n\nHer senses of touch, smell, taste had heightened in this pregnancy, but her hearing apparently hadn't. \"What?\"\n\nHe looked up at her, somehow defiant. \"I said, 'you used to like it'. You used to love it. But when I try to help you with it, all of a sudden, you don't want to have anything to do with it.\"\n\nHer jaw dropped. She turned to the sink to wash her hands so he wouldn't see them shaking. \"Wow. What a selfish, self-absorbed thing to say.\"\n\n\"What's that supposed to mean?\"\n\nShe ran the water too hot, but refused to flinch as she rinsed away the soap. Her skin went red. She didn't turn to look at him. \"Why would you think my painting has any goddamned thing to do with you at all?\"\n\n\"That's the trouble,\" Sean said. \"It doesn't have any goddamned thing to do with me, and it never did.\"\n\nTime ticked past, one second at a time, the way it always did. An eternity passed in the span of one, two, three breaths. Ginny swallowed her words and refused to let his become bruises.\n\n\"I'm going to take these cookies over to the neighbors,\" she said finally when it became apparent that Sean was neither going to speak nor leave the kitchen until she did. \"It's about time we met them anyway, and I want to make sure the kids are okay.\"\n\n\"Tell them to stay the hell out of our yard.\"\n\nThe vehemence was so unlike him, it almost made her turn. Ginny kept herself still. She didn't want to look at him. Didn't want to see his face. She was afraid of what he'd see on hers.\n\n\"I'm going to take care of the furnace.\"\n\nShe waited for the sound of his footsteps moving away before she turned. Then she pressed her fists to her eyes until colored sparks danced. She drew in a few deep breaths. She didn't cry.\n\nGinny took the cookies out the back door, across the grass but not through the hole in the hedge. She walked all the way around to the sidewalk, then up the neighbors' driveway. She knocked on the front door, her knuckles stinging in the cold air.\n\nThe woman who opened the door looked surprised and a little suspicious, even when she saw the platter in Ginny's hand. She looked younger than Ginny by about five or six years, her hair in a messy topknot and faint lines of exhaustion around her eyes. She had a baby gnawing its fist on her hip, a spit rag tossed over her shoulder. \"Can I help you?\"\n\n\"Hi. I'm Ginny Bohn. From next door.\" Ginny twisted to point.\n\nThe woman looked at her belly, obviously just noticing the bump. \"Oh God. Yes, of course, come in, please! I'm Kendra. This is Carter.\"\n\nShe waved the baby's fist in Ginny's direction. \"Oh, cookies. Yum, thanks.\"\n\nGinny followed her into the house and down a hall to the kitchen. This house was newer than theirs, laid out more like a raised ranch than an expanded bungalow. It was bright and airy, decorated with furniture from IKEA and plenty of childish artwork. Also, toys all over the place she discovered when her toe nudged a couple of matchbox cars.\n\n\"Oh God. Sorry. Sorry,\" Kendra said as she settled Carter into a heavy plastic high chair and set a rubber hammer in front of him. \"No matter how many times I tell him... CARSON!\"\n\nShe turned to Ginny, who was still holding the cookies. \"Oh, let me take them. Can I get you something to drink? Coffee? Oh no. You're probably off that for now. I had to quit it when I was pregnant, even decaf gave me heartburn, I couldn't stand it. I could make some hot tea?\"\n\n\"That would be great, thanks.\" Ginny slid into a chair at the table across from the baby.\n\nPeg had been frazzled like this when her kids were smaller, and Ginny had no trouble imagining herself equally so. She put the cookies on the table and smiled at baby Carter, who gave her a solemn, somehow accusatory stare in return.\n\n\"You have three?\" Ginny asked.\n\nKendra put a kettle on the stove, then turned. \"Oh yeah. Three monsters. CARSOONNNNNN!\"\n\nThere came the pounding of feet on the stairs. A minute later, Carson skidded into the kitchen on sock feet. Red cheeks, tousled blond hair\u2014that was the face she'd seen in the window, all right. Close on his heels was his sister, hair in pigtails but otherwise a smaller version of her brother.\n\n\"You can't tell they're related at all,\" Ginny said lightly.\n\nKendra laughed. \"They take after their dad. I swear we had a third just so I'd get one that looked like he belonged to me.\"\n\nThe baby in the high chair didn't seem excited by this. His face scrunched up in silent despair. His mother sighed and rubbed the top of his head, waiting a full five seconds before the first wail hit. She looked at Ginny with a faint smile of apology.\n\n\"He's...cranky.\"\n\n\"He's a cutie. And these two,\" Ginny said, still keeping it light, well aware of how protective her sister could be about her children, \"I think I already know. Carter and...?\"\n\n\"Kelly,\" their mother offered with a curious look that became suspicious again, this time leveled at the children. \"What did you guys do?\"\n\nGinny shook her head. \"Nothing bad. I don't want you to think that. They've been playing in the yard, but\u2014\"\n\n\"Carson James Wood! Kelly Madison Wood! What did I tell you about that?\"\n\nIn his high-chair prison, Carter let out a longer, louder wail and pounded his fists until Kendra scooped him out with a sigh. Plunked on her hip, the baby stopped crying out loud, though the silent tears of outrage still coursed down his fat little cheeks. His mother kept her attention on the other two.\n\n\"But, Mama...\"\n\n\"Don't you 'but Mama' me. I told you both to stay in our yard... Oh God.\" She turned to Ginny. \"Were they down by the creek? They were down by the creek, weren't they?\"\n\n\"I don't...know,\" Ginny hedged, annoyed as she'd been by their repeated trespassing, but not willing to send the kids down the river, so to speak. Yet she also felt something like a mother's kinship with Kendra, like there was some sort of code she'd be breaking if she didn't take the mother's side. \"And really, it's okay. I know the leaves can be tempting. And honestly, if my husband actually put them in bags instead of just raking them into piles, they probably wouldn't even be tempted to come over and jump in them. Right, guys?\"\n\nKelly's eyes had gone wide, her lower lip atremble. She shook her head. \"We were looking for the little girl. We were leaving her snacks because she's\u2014\"\n\nCarson elbowed her. \"Shhh!\"\n\n\"Oh, for crying out loud.\" Kendra clapped a hand to her forehead. Behind her, the kettle started to whistle. \"Both of you. To your rooms. I don't want to hear it,\" she said before either of them could protest. \"Go. Now!\"\n\nShe turned off the burner with one hand, twisting her body expertly to keep the baby away from the heat. She took a couple of mugs from the cupboard and put them in front of Ginny, then a small box of loose tea bags. Finally, the kettle, which she also kept far away from the baby. She put the kettle on a trivet and took the seat across from Ginny.\n\n\"I'd pour,\" she said, \"but this guy here has grabby hands.\"\n\n\"I can get it,\" Ginny assured her. \"What would you like?\"\n\nKendra shook her head. \"Nothing for me, thanks.\"\n\nAn awkward silence fell as Ginny prepared the tea, but only for a couple seconds because Kendra snagged a cookie and bit into it. \"Oh wow. Fantastic! No, baby boy, not for you.\" She grinned at Ginny. \"He's nursing, doesn't even have a tooth yet, but he keeps trying to get at our food. Monkey see, monkey do. I guess that's how it is for the youngest.\"\n\n\"I guess so.\" Ginny dunked a tea bag and let it steep, then took a cookie. The dinner she hadn't eaten seemed delicious now.\n\n\"How many do you have? I mean, is this your first?\"\n\n\"Ah...\" Ginny paused, caught off guard though she knew she shouldn't be. It was a complicated question with a simple answer. \"Yes. Our first. But my sister has six, so I've got my auntie card.\"\n\n\"Not the same as having your own, let me tell you that.\" Kendra blew out a breath and looked tired again. \"When you can't give 'em back...\"\n\nAnother few seconds of strained silence. Ginny sipped her tea. Kendra bounced Carter on her knee.\n\n\"I am sorry about Kelly and Carson,\" she said finally. \"I've told them to stay out of your yard. I don't want them down by the creek. I know it's not deep or anything, but kids can drown in just a few inches of water, you know? And besides, they shouldn't be in your yard. I'm sorry.\"\n\n\"It's okay, really.\" Hearing Kendra apologize over and over made it harder for Ginny to be irritated by the kids coming through the hedge. \"Really, they mostly just jump in the leaves.\"\n\nShe thought about mentioning the stones they'd tossed at the house, the noise of their shrieking, the offerings they left in the window well, but in the end decided that would just get them into trouble and make her sound like exactly the sort of cranky neighbor she didn't want to become known as. Besides, she reasoned, someday not so far in the future she might have the kid who ran into the neighbors' yards and did naughty things.\n\n\"Still. I'm sorry. It's just that they're sort of obsessed with it.\"\n\nGinny's brow furrowed. \"The house?\"\n\n\"Yeah. Your house. My husband, Clark...\" Kendra sighed and shook her head. \"Men. They can be such idiots, right?\"\n\n\"Umm...sure. Right.\"\n\nKendra laughed a little. \"Yeah. Anyway, Clark was trying to get them into bed one night when I was out with some of my girlfriends for ladies' movie night... Oh hey, you should totally come! Stacy from down the street, that blue Colonial on the corner? They fixed up their basement pretty nice, big-screen TV and stuff, and her husband likes to have the guys over for poker and beer and sports or whatever, so she told him if he was going to do that, she was having chick-flick-and-wine nights, and it's been great. Maybe your husband would be interested?\"\n\n\"In...chick flicks and wine?\" It took her a second, but she laughed once she caught up to Kendra's train of thought. \"Oh. Sports and poker. He might be. I don't know. He's pretty busy.\"\n\n\"Oh. Travels a lot? I thought I saw that he was gone a lot. Not,\" Kendra said, \"that I'm a Sneaky Pete or anything, just that, you know, you guys being the new neighbors and all, in that house, we just all wondered what sort of people you were.\"\n\nThis pricked at Ginny's ears. \"That house? What do you mean?\"\n\n\"Oh...just that most of these places in the neighborhood have sold two, three, four times over in the past few years. I mean, we've been in here...five? Yeah, five years. And we're old-timers. But Mr. Miller from next door, he built that house before he got married. It was one of the first in the development. And he was the only owner. Until now, you guys. That's all I mean.\" Kendra looked vaguely guilty. \"I mean, it's not like someone died in the house or anything.\"\n\nSomething in the way Kendra said it sent up a flare. Ginny leaned forward. \"They told us he died in the hospital.\"\n\n\"Oh, he did, he did, totally,\" Kendra assured her. From upstairs came the sneaky, sly sliding of feet. \"You'd better be in your rooms!\"\n\nThe noises stopped. Carter giggled suddenly, as though pleased by his siblings' punishment. Kendra chucked him under the chin.\n\nGinny's head spun a little from trying to keep track of Kendra's conversation, but then she was used to Sean's mom, who was the queen of non sequiturs. \"So...your husband?\"\n\n\"Is an idiot? What?\" Kendra laughed again, looking confused.\n\n\"He was trying to get them to go to bed...?\"\n\n\"Oh, right, right. Yeah, so he was trying to get them into bed, and he told them that if they didn't go to sleep, he was going to tell the ghost next door about them, and she'd come over and get them.\" Kendra's mouth twisted, her smile rueful. \"Like I said, he's an idiot. Those kids didn't sleep for a week.\"\n\nNoises in the walls.\n\nCold spots.\n\n\"A girl...with dark hair...like yours when you were small.\"\n\n\"The...ghost?\"\n\nKendra laughed again. \"Oh, he just made that up. It's not true at all. I mean...\" she looked suddenly doubtful. \"It's just that Mr. Miller's daughter, Caroline. Well. You know about her, right?\"\n\n\"I don't.\" Ginny sipped more tea and took another cookie, suddenly ravenous.\n\n\"Oh. Well, she went missing when she was about fourteen or so. They never found her, so far as I know.\" Kendra's eyes gleamed for a moment. Her expression suggested she was both disturbed and solemn with the responsibility of being the one to share this story, but her gaze told a different, gleeful truth. \"Mr. Miller had an older son, Brendan. He'd be the one who sold you the house, right?\"\n\n\"Right. Yes.\"\n\n\"You know he built it himself? Old Mr. Miller?\"\n\n\"I didn't know that.\"\n\nKendra nodded. \"Yep. Custom-built. That's why it has so many nice features. I mean, all those built-ins, right?\"\n\nThe house did have nice features, but Ginny didn't care about them now. \"So...what happened?\"\n\n\"Oh right. Right. Well, old Mr. Miller's son and his wife, not the son's wife. Mr. Miller's wife. They moved out after about a year of not being able to find her. The story is that both of them refused to ever come back or set foot in the house again.\" Kendra lowered her voice, conspiring, though Ginny had no desire to share secrets. \"Mr. Miller lived there all alone for the past fifteen years. Nice guy. Always seemed super sad, though. And no wonder, right?\"\n\n\"No wonder,\" Ginny murmured. The tea had a flat taste she didn't like, but she sipped it anyway to give herself something to do. \"So...if they never found the girl...?\"\n\n\"I heard, just a rumor, you know, but I heard that someone found her on one of those Internet sites, living out in California or something. Runaway.\"\n\n\"So...she definitely didn't die.\"\n\nKendra looked guilty again. \"No. I mean, I don't think so. And surely not in the house. It was before we moved in, of course, but stories like that...\"\n\nGot exaggerated, Ginny thought. Inflamed. But that was exactly the reason why she should find it easy to believe the girl hadn't died in the house. \"Something like that would surely have gotten around.\"\n\n\"Well...yeah. I mean, like I said, Clark was being an idiot. He was just trying to scare the kids, which was stupid. I'm sorry they were in your yard, though. I'll have a talk with them.\"\n\n\"They were peeking in the basement windows. They scared me. I scared them, pretty bad, I think.\"\n\n\"Ohhhhh Gawd. Well, that explains why Carson came tearing in here the other day like wolves were chasing him. I'm sorry!\"\n\nGinny found a smile. \"Really, it's okay. I think they learned a lesson, didn't they?\"\n\n\"Still, I'm going to make them come down here and apologize.\" Before Ginny could stop her, Kendra had gone to the bottom of the stairs to shout up, \"Carson! Kelly! Get your butts down here, now!\"\n\nThe pounding of feet came again. The children looked caught and guilty, scuffing their feet on the linoleum. Kendra took them both and shoved them forward in front of Ginny. Carter grabbed a handful of Carson's hair and pulled hard enough to twist the older boy's head. There was a kerfuffle.\n\nGinny was already exhausted.\n\n\"You tell Mrs. Bohn you're sorry for going in her yard and for peeking in her windows.\"\n\n\"We just wanted to see the little girl,\" Kelly said through a lisp Ginny hadn't noticed before. \"She lives in the basement.\"\n\n\"Kelly, enough stories! Apologize right now.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry.\" Kelly's lower lip trembled.\n\n\"Me too,\" Carson added. \"We just wanted to see her, because sometimes she looks so sad.\"\n\n\"That's enough,\" Kendra snapped. \"Enough stories.\"\n\nGinny held up a hand. \"Wait a second. What do you mean, Carson?\"\n\n\"We always ask her to come out and play, but she\u2014\"\n\n\"Enough! Up to your rooms!\" Kendra yanked his sleeve to turn him toward the stairs, even as her son tried to finish his sentence. She cut him off with a swat to the rear, earning her a sullen glare, but both children obeyed. Kendra turned with a heavy sigh, Carter still bouncing on her hip. \"Honest to God, I'm going to kill my husband.\"\n\n\"It's fine. Really.\" Ginny stood. \"I have to get going anyway.\"\n\n\"I'll let you know about girls' night, okay? And I'll have Clark give your husband... What's his name?\"\n\n\"Sean.\"\n\nKendra nodded as though she'd already known. \"Right, right. I'll have Clark give Sean a call about boys' night. Okay? Sound good?\"\n\n\"Sounds...great,\" Ginny said, though her head was already awhirl from just forty minutes in this woman's presence. She couldn't imagine how it would be to spend any longer amount of time. She was nice and all, but...scattered.\n\nKendra led Ginny to the front door. \"Thanks for the cookies. I'll make sure to keep the kids out of the yard.\"\n\nGinny paused in the doorway to look over her shoulder. \"Oh, you know what? Don't worry about that. I like seeing them there. They can come over anytime they want.\"\n\n\"Are you sure?\" Kendra looked doubtful.\n\nGinny thought of Carson's earnest face, his sister's lispy lilt. Both of them had seemed pretty convinced there was a little girl in her basement. \"Yes. Absolutely.\"\nChapter Twenty-Six\n\nCMM\n\nGinny traced the letters on the diary. At least now she knew who the diary belonged to. It stayed locked, though. Caroline Miller might be dead, or she might be alive and living on a commune in California with a husband and a bunch of kids. But this was her private diary, and Ginny still didn't feel right breaking into it.\n\n\"You should just read it,\" Peg said. \"Maybe there are some clues!\"\n\n\"Like what kind of clues?\" Ginny put the diary back in the train case and closed the lid.\n\nPeg rolled her eyes. \"About what happened to her, duh.\"\n\n\"She obviously hid the diary away so nobody could find it because she didn't want anyone reading it, Peg. I feel like maybe I have to honor that.\"\n\n\"So her ghost doesn't get you?\" Peg lifted a brow and sliced into the chocolate cake Ginny had put in front of her. \"God, so good. When did you get in to baking?\"\n\nWhen I stopped being in to anything else, Ginny thought but didn't say. She pressed her fork into the crumbs on her plate. \"I told you there've been some strange things happening.\"\n\n\"You think it's a ghost, really? Because of what Gran said? C'mon, Ginny. That's just...stupid.\" Peg gave herself a quick sign of the cross.\n\n\"Gee, thanks,\" Ginny said dryly. \"Glad to know my older sister's on my side.\"\n\nPeg sighed and reached to pat Ginny's hand. \"Everything you told me about could be explained. Noises in the walls? The exterminator came, right? Cold spots? The furnace is fixed.\"\n\n\"Not really.\"\n\n\"So, it's still broken. Besides, it's more like your house is cold with hot spots, not cold spots, right?\" Peg pulled the front of her blouse away from her throat and fanned it back and forth. \"I mean, your kitchen's like a sauna.\"\n\n\"Yes. I know.\"\n\nShe hadn't told Peg about the other things. The mug that went missing. The figurines that turned up in random places, like the ones lined up in the window well. The distant sound of a jingle-bell collar from a cat that had been missing for weeks.\n\n\"Listen...\" Peg squeezed her hand again and waited until Ginny looked at her before continuing, \"...how are...things? With you and Sean.\"\n\nGinny gently extricated herself and got up from the table, ostensibly to carry her plate to the dishwasher, but really so she didn't have to look at her sister's face. \"Fine. They're fine.\"\n\n\"You know, when I was pregnant with Jennifer, I thought I might actually end up in prison for killing Dale. It was that bad.\"\n\nGinny turned. \"You never told me that.\"\n\n\"What could I tell you? That I was crazy? That I dreamed, actually dreamed...\" Peg paused, her voice cracking just a little. A glimmer of tears was swept away before they could fall. Peg cleared her throat. \"Jesus help me, Ginny. I dreamed about taking a knife to his throat and just slitting it open like he was a pig.\"\n\nStunned, Ginny leaned back against the counter, gripping it with her hands on either side. \"Jesus.\"\n\n\"I know, I know. It was terrible. I'd have these explicit, vivid dreams like I've never had before. And sometimes, in some of them...\"\n\nGinny watched her sister blush. Peg, an emergency room nurse, dealt with everything imaginable. Bad language, bodily fluids, objects inserted and stuck in orifices that were meant to be exit only. She had a bawdy sense of humor, so long as it wasn't sacrilegious. She'd been the one to tell Ginny about the intricacies of blow jobs and warn her about possibly crapping herself on the delivery table, so what could possibly be so bad, so strange, that it could fluster her?\n\n\"Sometimes, I'd dream that I'd...you know,\" Peg said in a low voice.\n\nGinny had no clue. \"You'd kill him?\"\n\nPeg shook her head, then nodded. Shook it again. \"Yes. I mean, no, yes, I dreamed that, but there were other dreams, not the same ones, usually. But sometimes. Yes, okay? I admit it. Once or twice, I dreamed that sort of dream, that violent dream, a big knife, lots of blood squirting. Once I woke up laughing.\"\n\nGinny thought of her own dreams, those slick, slippery, delicious visions of lust that had been visiting her almost nightly. \"Don't worry, I think that's normal. I mean, not the part about killing your husband, but if you want to analyze it, that big knife probably wasn't a knife. If you know what I mean.\"\n\n\"Sometimes,\" Peg said darkly, \"a cigar really is just a cigar, Ginny.\"\n\n\"Are you saying you really wanted to kill Dale? I don't believe it.\" Ginny pulled a glass from the cupboard and filled it with orange juice from the fridge.\n\nPeg waved away the glass Ginny offered. \"God help me, Ginny. I really did want to...well, maybe not kill him. But I sure did want him out of my life, away from me. I couldn't stand the sight of him. Everything about him drove me insane. The way he breathed at night, I'll tell you the truth, I had visions of putting a pillow over his face.\"\n\nGinny stifled another laugh, though it sounded slightly horrified. \"Oh, Peg.\"\n\nPeg shrugged. \"I had Jenny, and after that everything was fine. And it didn't happen any of the other times, just with that first. So I thought, you know, maybe...\"\n\n\"It's not my first time,\" Ginny said gently.\n\nPeg flushed again. \"I know. I'm sorry, that was stupid.\"\n\n\"No. It's okay.\" Ginny was tired of having to feel sorry for other people's grief surrounding her pain, but this was her sister, and she was trying to help. \"You want to know if I'm having crazy dreams too?\"\n\n\"Are you?\"\n\n\"I've been having my share of sexy ones,\" she admitted. \"Honestly, I don't mind. A nice wet dream once in a while? What's wrong with that?\"\n\n\"And the...other?\"\n\n\"No,\" Ginny said firmly. \"I don't dream of slicing my husband open with a knife, Peg. I think that was just your particular brand of crazy.\"\n\nPeg didn't seem offended. \"I just wanted you to know that if you were having some problems, I'd be willing to listen. Pregnancy can put a strain on any marriage, and so can a big move. And especially, hon, when you have the considerations you do\u2014\"\n\nGinny threw up a hand to stop her. \"Honestly, Peg, I'm completely burned out on this type of discussion. Yes, I had some problems before. But that was then, this is now. And I'm damned tired of everyone waiting with bated breath for me to lose this baby. That's it, that's all.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" her sister said quietly. \"That's not what I'm doing. But can't you understand why Sean might be worried?\"\n\nGinny looked at her with narrowed eyes. \"What's he said?\"\n\n\"Nothing to me. He talked to Dale. Said he thought you weren't really facing things, that you wanted to forget what happened, and he was worried it was affecting how you were dealing with this pregnancy.\"\n\n\"I haven't forgotten!\" Ginny cried. \"As if I could ever forget!\"\n\n\"He says you won't decorate the nursery.\"\n\nGinny shook her head, refusing to get herself worked up over this. \"That's not forgetting. That's being practical. The baby will come home from the hospital and stay in our room for the first few months anyway. And we don't know if it's a boy or a girl, so why should we spend a lot of time and effort on something that might turn out to be...wrong? And babies have personalities,\" she continued. \"What if we go with a jungle theme and our daughter turns out to be a princess sort of girl? What if we have a boy who'd really like trains? Or, hell, the other way around, I don't care. I just want to focus on the baby.\"\n\nShe stared at Peg, who stared back.\n\n\"I just want to think about the baby,\" Ginny said quietly. \"Not the color of the fucking walls. Okay?\"\n\n\"Okay,\" came Peg's equally quiet answer. \"Okay.\"\nChapter Twenty-Seven\n\nGinny wears gartered stockings.\n\nHigh heels, black patent leather, red soles. Shoes she'd never buy in real life, but here they fit her perfectly. Here she walks like a queen in expensive stilettos, and she never thinks of falling.\n\nThe stockings swish, swish as she walks. The bare skin of her thighs rubs together. She wears silk panties. Red, she thinks. Yes, red. A matching bra of red and black, pushing her breasts forward, giving her cleavage that turns men's heads.\n\nOh, she wants to be that woman. The one who makes men stare. She wants to walk into a room and have them stop whatever they are doing. She wants their eyes to bulge out, their tongues to loll, to make them cartoon wolves with an AROOOOGA noise. She wants to be desired.\n\nThere's power in this. These clothes, this walk. The sway of hips, the jiggle of her breasts. She is all woman. She is not just desirable, she is desire.\n\nWhat will he think when he sees her? When her shirt unbuttons, one at a time, to reveal the slope and swell of her breasts? When she unzips her straight black skirt and lets it fall on the floor? When she steps out of her clothes and stands in front of him dressed like a wet dream, will he get hard for her right away, or will she have to kiss him first?\n\nOh, how she wants to kiss him.\n\nIt's all she can think about. That first kiss. How his mouth will taste, how his tongue will feel stroking hers. There have been nights when she can't stop from touching herself to the idea of that mouth, those lips and teeth on her flesh. He will kiss her mouth. He will kiss her face. He will kiss her jaw, her throat, the slope of her shoulder.\n\nHe will kiss her all over, every place she wants him to, and his hands will follow along the path his mouth makes. He will part her thighs and find her heat with fingers, tongue, cock, and she'll take him into all of her body's secret deep places.\n\nShe will take him all in.\n\n* * * * *\n\nGinny woke without opening her eyes, pleasure coursing through her and the shreds of the dream slipping away. She moaned before she could stop herself. When she opened her eyes, Sean was staring at her over the edge of his iPad.\n\n\"Nightmare?\"\n\nA nod made the lie easy. It would've been harder with words, but since she couldn't manage to find any, she settled for sitting up and scrubbing at her face.\n\n\"Must've been a doozy,\" Sean said. \"You were really wriggling around.\"\n\nEmbarrassed, Ginny let her fingers pressing her eyes keep her from meeting his gaze. \"I don't really remember it. What are you still doing up?\"\n\n\"Reading.\" He tipped the screen to show her, though she couldn't possibly read the text from this far away. \"You've only been asleep for about an hour.\"\n\n\"It felt like a lot longer.\"\n\nHe looked concerned and pulled her closer, though it wasn't comfortable for her to snuggle up to him the way he wanted her to. \"You want to talk about it?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Was it about the baby?\"\n\n\"Sean, no.\" Ginny sighed and pushed away. \"I have to pee.\"\n\nShe padded to the bathroom, her habit, as always, to leave the light off and needing it even less with the light from the bedroom. She peed with her elbows resting on her knees, her face in her hands.\n\nShe remembered that lingerie. The bra and panties, expensive and sexy. An impulse purchase. They'd fit her perfectly. She'd tried them on about a dozen times but worn them only once. They were still in her drawer. She'd never wear them again, she knew that, but she hadn't been able to get rid of them, either.\n\nAt the sink she washed her hands and looked up without intending to see anything. Usually she averted her eyes anyway in case the irrepressible urge to shout out \"Bloody Mary\" three times overtook her. That old story had scared the bejesus out of her as a kid. Tonight, though, she was more awake than usual and there was more light. She saw her silhouette, the flash of her eyes and flip of her hair as she bent to the sink.\n\nAnd then, something else.\n\nA figure, a shadow, drifted past the bathroom door. Indistinct, but definitely there. Startled, Ginny whirled, ready to confront a sneaky Sean trying to scare her, but there was nothing there. She was frozen for a minute or so, waiting to see it again. She stared, hard, but saw nothing. Ginny cocked her head to listen for the sounds of anything from downstairs. Was that the creak of a footstep? The squeak of a cupboard. Ah. A late night snack. Satisfied she'd solved the mystery, Ginny headed back to bed.\n\nHe'd turned the light out before going down, at least he'd done that. Ginny crawled into bed with a sigh and settled into her pillows. The dream had faded but the memories lingered. Closing her eyes might bring them even more into focus, so she stared instead at the wall, the darkness...\n\nSomething touched her.\n\nNot something, someone. A hand stroked down her back, cupping her rear. Ginny shrieked and fought against the blankets and the touch, trapped by the tangled sheets at her feet and the pillows she'd propped herself up with.\n\n\"Hey, hey! Honey! Ginny, babe, it's me!\"\n\nSean snapped on the bedside lamp, but it took her a few seconds to stop fighting him. Ginny blinked rapidly. \"When did you get into bed?\"\n\n\"What do you mean, get into bed? I've been here the whole time. I got tired while you were in the bathroom. I figured I'd\u2014\"\n\n\"You turned off the light!\" she accused. \"I couldn't see that you were in here!\"\n\nSean frowned. \"Where else would I be?\"\n\n\"I saw you go into the hallway. I heard you go downstairs. I heard you in the kitchen,\" Ginny insisted when she saw the incredulity of his expression.\n\n\"Honey, you had a nightmare, maybe you just...\"\n\n\"No.\" She shook her head. \"No, I saw it, Sean. And more than that, I heard someone downstairs walking. I heard cupboards opening.\"\n\nSean reached behind the bed to pull out a golf club. He never played golf, but he'd kept that club behind the bed as long as she'd known him. \"Stay here.\"\n\nShe clutched his arm. \"No! What, are you crazy? Are you going to go downstairs? Sean, no. Call the police first.\"\n\nThe second she said it, she knew why he didn't want to do that. Then the police would come, and if there was nothing... Ginny let out a frustrated sigh. He wanted to reassure her, but he didn't believe her enough to call the cops.\n\nOn the other hand, he believed her enough to take the golf club.\n\n\"I'm going with you.\"\n\n\"No you're not. You stay here.\"\n\nThey could fight about it all night, or she could let him go. Ginny let him go, but as soon as he went down the stairs, she was up and out of bed, looking over the railing. Not that she could see anything, but she had her cell phone clutched in her hand, ready to dial 911.\n\n\"Sean!\"\n\nNo answer.\n\nOh God. It was like that story from when she was a kid, one from that same Bloody Mary book, about the headless roommate in the fur collar. She'd hide up here in the dark and reach out to feel him when he came back to bed, and instead of her husband, she'd find a decapitated corpse...\n\n\"SEAN!\"\n\nNo answer again. Her finger swiped her phone to unlock it, her finger hovering over the keypad. \"If you don't answer me, I'm calling the police!\"\n\nHe appeared so suddenly at the bottom of the stairs that she screamed. He waved the golf club at her. Ginny tried to remember to breathe.\n\n\"Nothing down here,\" he said.\n\n\"Are you sure?\"\n\n\"Babe, I'm positive. All the doors are locked and everything. There's nothing, I promise. It was just a bad dream.\"\n\nHe had one foot on the stairs, but she was already heading down. \"I want to see.\"\n\nSean sighed but stepped aside, humoring her. \"I'm telling you, honey, there's nothing.\"\n\nIn the kitchen, she looked around suspiciously, but he was right. Nothing. No sign of anything anyway. No door hanging open, no bloody splatters on the wall, no butcher knife missing from the block. Even the chairs weren't out of place.\n\n\"See?\" He came up behind her and kissed her hair. \"I told you.\"\n\nShe sagged against him, finally calming down. His hands traced circles on her belly. Warm, slow, soothing circles. Within a few seconds, she was giggling at the memory of how she'd jumped and screamed. Ridiculous.\n\n\"My hero,\" she murmured, turning in his arms to kiss his mouth.\n\n\"That's me.\" Sean's hands drifted lower to cup her butt again and pull her close. She could feel him through the thin material of his pajama bottoms. They rocked a little slowly together.\n\nThe body didn't separate the source of pleasure the way the mind did. When he kissed her neck, it felt good. When he rubbed against her, that felt good too. With the remnants of the dream lingering, Ginny was more than willing to see where this might go, but first she needed a drink.\n\n\"All that screaming,\" she explained.\n\n\"I'll be happy to make you scream some more,\" her husband offered with a naughty grin.\n\nShe was laughing too when she opened the cupboard to pull out a glass, but the laughter stopped like it had been slapped from her. So did every bit of desire. She turned to show him what she'd found.\n\nHer mug, the favorite black-and-pink one with the skulls.\n\n\"The least you could do is put it back where it belongs,\" Ginny said coldly.\n\nSean looked confused. \"I didn't put that there.\"\n\nShe gave him her back, too angry to even look at him. \"Someone did, and it wasn't me.\"\n\n\"I'm telling you, Ginny, it wasn't me.\"\n\n\"I didn't do it!\" she shouted and slammed the cupboard door hard enough to make the dishes inside rattle. She whirled on him. \"Why don't you just admit it, Sean? You took my mug to work and you forgot it, and then you brought it home and tried to sneak it back before I noticed. Well. I noticed. Why don't you just admit it?\"\n\n\"Because I didn't do it!\"\n\n\"So, who did?\"\n\nHe was silent for a while, staring. He shrugged and cut his gaze from hers, his expression sullen. Stubborn. Then he looked back at her almost boldly, like a challenge.\n\n\"Maybe you did and just forgot.\"\n\nGinny's lip curled. \"I didn't forget. How could I forget something like that?\"\n\nShe knew by his next silence he was thinking of all the times she had forgotten things, all her absentminded times. Ginny turned back to the sink so she didn't have to look at him. \"That's not fair, Sean.\"\n\nShe wanted to pull away, to storm from the room and ignore him, but his fingers insisted on soothing her. Working at the aches and knobs of pain and tension in her neck and back. He knew all the places to touch her. He always knew.\n\n\"All I'm saying is, you're distracted. You're pregnant. Pregnant women can be forgetful.\"\n\n\"Did you read that on the Internet?\" She sounded bitchy and knew it, but couldn't force herself to care.\n\n\"It's true, isn't it?\"\n\nWith a sigh, Ginny let herself relax against him. His lips pressed her temple and his hands slid down to rub her belly. She closed her eyes and put her hands over his, feeling the baby press upward against the touch. \"Yes. It could be.\"\n\nBut it wasn't. She hadn't seen that mug in weeks. The last time she remembered using it was the night she'd made tea and fallen asleep in the library. Surely if she'd used it since then and put it back in the wrong cupboard she'd remember, and it wasn't like she'd have done it on purpose to fuck with her own head.\n\n\"Things happen, that's all. Give yourself a break,\" Sean said.\n\nWhat he really meant was give him a break. Wasn't that what he always meant? And, because that's what she owed him, that's what Ginny did.\nChapter Twenty-Eight\n\nThey'd never had a lot of extra cash, even when she was working, but they'd always had enough to go on vacation, eat out a few times a week when neither of them felt like cooking, stop for an expensive coffee drink on the way to work instead of brewing it at home. Lots of little conveniences, that's what having enough money brought. And now...well, they weren't in debt, at least not beyond what Ginny considered \"normal\"\u2014mortgage, one car payment with the other vehicle paid off. She and Sean both tried hard to pay off their credit cards every month so they didn't carry a balance.\n\nThey weren't in debt, but they simply didn't have anything extra.\n\nNext month might be better, without the unexpected expense of the furnace repair and an electrician who'd looked at the fuse box but hadn't been able to figure out why they kept blowing fuses. She'd have to start holiday shopping in earnest, a task that always fell squarely on her for both sides of the family, and which she'd usually have finished by now. The move had taken up so much time over the summer she just hadn't had time. Or felt like it either, she thought as the baby moved inside her.\n\nShe tallied up the income and expenses, balancing the accounts. Then she logged into their credit union's online banking site and transferred some money from their savings, cringing at the remaining balance. It had been at least a week since she'd gone online, too busy with unpacking and everything to even think of it, but since dinner was already in the oven and Sean wasn't going to be home until after class, she had some time.\n\nShe looked up instructions on how to reupholster dining room chairs, then how to make slipcovers, then local places that would do it for her. The DIY sites made it seem deceptively easy, but she knew better. The businesses that specialized all charged too much for her budget, at least for now. She shifted on the seat, listening to it creak.\n\nShe flitted around the Internet, browsing some of the email shopping offers that had come in, watching a video her sister had sent a link to. Somehow, without thinking much of it, she ended up logging in to Connex. It had been weeks since she'd checked it, and she didn't even try to get caught up on the entire contents of her updates list. The site had changed a bit too, she noticed with a frown. She couldn't seem to find her inbox or how to upload a photo without stumbling around and hitting something by accident, and a bunch of status updates referenced opting out of new settings she didn't have the time or energy to care about.\n\nHer sister had uploaded a bunch of new pictures, though, and Ginny looked through them absently. Her fingertips found the edge of the table, tracing the letters over and over as she scrolled through her nieces and nephews mugging for the camera, modeling new outfits, whatever. One link led to another, to another and another, until she ended up on the page belonging to a friend of her niece Maria. The girl had posted a lot of personal stuff, much of it TMI. It was like a train wreck\u2014Ginny knew she shouldn't look, but did anyway.\n\nPeople used to put that stuff in journals. Now they put it on the Internet. She thought of the box upstairs in the library, the diary inside it. Her fingers traced the letters carved into the table, over and over.\n\nCMM\n\nCaroline. Her diary. Her name on this table. That girl had lived in this house, and disappeared from it too.\n\nGinny's fingers tap-tapped on her keyboard, running a Connex search for Brendan Miller. Of course, about two dozen names came up, but when she narrowed her search, she came up with just three names. She could tell nothing from the profile photos, since she had no idea what Brendan Miller looked like, but she knew he lived in Lancaster somewhere.\n\n\"There we go,\" she murmured to the screen. She brought up his profile and found an email address but no phone number.\n\nOne thing she'd learned in her business was that even people who should know better often didn't appropriately privacy-protect their online information. A quick further search discovered Miller's address, which was current and confirmed by the most recently updated white pages database. In under ten minutes, she had everything she needed to know to get in touch with him. It was one of the easiest searches she'd done in a long time, but now Ginny sat back in her seat and wondered what she would do with that information.\n\nHe had a right to know. He obviously didn't care about the furniture or other things in his father's house, but surely he'd have wanted something personal of his sister's. Even if he hadn't wanted anything to do with his dad when he was still alive, he at least deserved the chance to have what his sister had left behind.\n\nShe dialed the number as she went upstairs. A woman answered just as Ginny entered the library to look at Caroline's box.\n\n\"Hi, can I speak to Brendan Miller, please?\"\n\nThe beat of silence lasted way too long. \"Who's calling?\"\n\n\"This is Ginny Bohn, I\u2014\"\n\n\"Who?\"\n\nGinny paused. Brendan Miller hadn't come to the settlement. She had no idea if he was married, but this woman sounded like a suspicious wife. She tried again. \"My name is Ginny Bohn. I bought his father's house?\"\n\nAnother long pause. \"Yes? What about it?\"\n\n\"Is he there?\"\n\n\"No. He's not. Can I help you?\" The woman's clipped tone didn't sound the least bit helpful.\n\nGinny tried anyway. \"I've found something in the house.\"\n\n\"He doesn't want anything from there, he told me.\" Another pause, then a resentful sniff. \"I told him there were a lot of lovely things in that house that we could use, but he refused to have any of it. I said that even if he didn't want it, maybe the kids would, someday. I mean, it was family heirloom stuff.\"\n\n\"Oh, honestly...I don't know anything about that, really. There were only a few things we asked remain in the house anyway.\" She thought suddenly of the ugly table she didn't like, but the thought of offering it to this unhelpful and snide-sounding stranger was suddenly unpalatable. \"But I'm not talking about\u2014\"\n\n\"Whatever. It was his father's stuff. I guess if he didn't want it, who am I to say a word?\"\n\nGinny had been on this ride before, the up-and-down roller coaster of marital resentments. She understood how it felt to feel marginalized, she totally did. Yet nothing in this woman's attitude made Ginny sympathetic.\n\n\"It's not furniture,\" she said quickly before the woman could continue complaining. \"It's something personal.\"\n\nThe pause this time was longer. \"Like what?\"\n\n\"I'd really like to talk to him about it, if you don't mind.\"\n\nThat was the wrong thing to say. An audible, choking gasp poked Ginny's eardrum. The woman spat her words like bullets, \"I do mind, as a matter of fact. What did you say your name was again? What sort of personal business do you have with my husband?\"\n\n\"It's his sister's suitcase,\" Ginny said before the woman could go off on her some more. \"I thought he'd want it.\"\n\n\"My husband doesn't have a sister.\"\n\n\"No, well...um, so far as I know, she's...gone.\"\n\n\"Who did you say this was again?\"\n\nIrritated, Ginny sighed. \"Is there a better time I can reach him?\"\n\n\"No. Don't call here again. My husband didn't have a sister.\"\n\nWith that, Mrs. Brendan Miller hung up and left Ginny's jaw hanging open.\n\nWhat a bitch.\nChapter Twenty-Nine\n\nThe Ouija board had been spectacularly easy to get. Ginny simply ordered it online, and it arrived within a couple days. It was different than the one she remembered from slumber parties as a kid. This one was smaller, with glow-in-the-dark letters and planchette. Still, it had the same setup with YES, NO, GOODBYE and the alphabet curving across it.\n\nPeg, on the other hand, could not be convinced to use it. \"No. No way.\"\n\n\"Peggy, c'mon. We used to do it all the time as kids. Remember?\"\n\n\"I remember. But I'm not doing it now.\" Peg shook her head and then her finger. \"And you shouldn't, either. What are you thinking, bringing that into your house? Don't you know that you could attract...something?\"\n\n\"There's already something.\" Ginny put the box aside and set the board in the middle of the dining room table.\n\nPeg huffed. \"Oh, Ginny. Come on.\"\n\nGinny paused to look at her sister. \"I'm serious.\"\n\n\"You have mice or squirrels in your attic, that's all\u2014\"\n\n\"Mice and squirrels might get into the food in the pantry,\" Ginny said. \"But they wouldn't use a mug and then put it back in the cupboard.\"\n\n\"Well, neither would a ghost, for crying out loud.\"\n\nGinny raised a brow. \"How do you know?\"\n\n\"Ghosts are spiritual entities or whatever. They don't need to use a mug.\" Peg waved at the Ouija board. \"And this is just asking for trouble.\"\n\n\"You used to love this game!\"\n\n\"It's not a game,\" Peg said seriously. \"I mean it, Ginny. Father Simon spoke about it a few months ago, because of the kids getting in to stuff like that for Halloween. It's a bad tool. It invites bad things.\"\n\nGinny sighed and pulled the board toward her. She put her fingertips on the plastic planchette and moved it experimentally around the board. \"Father Simon is kind of hysterical.\"\n\nPeg made a snuffling noise of protest, but her expression said she knew Ginny was right. \"Don't be disrespectful.\"\n\n\"Didn't he also give a sermon about how couples should watch more television together because it prevented arguments?\"\n\nPeg's mouth worked on tamping back a smile. \"Yes. He did.\"\n\n\"And how's that working for you and Dale?\"\n\nPeg didn't answer for a moment, then said reluctantly, \"We fought over the remote.\"\n\nGinny slapped the table in triumph. The planchette bounced and slid, skewed toward the board's grinning sun. \"See?\"\n\nPeg shook her finger at Ginny again. \"He's the authority on spiritual matters, and if Father Simon says Ouija boards are dangerous and bad, I believe him. Besides, didn't you see The Exorcist?\"\n\n\"It's a movie, not real life.\"\n\n\"Paranormal Activity?\" Peg asked, as though that somehow was less fictional.\n\n\"Did they even use a Ouija in that?\" Ginny scoffed. \"Also, just a movie.\"\n\nPeg frowned, her expression shadowed. \"You don't remember, do you?\"\n\n\"What, the movie? Not much. I fell asleep, except for the last couple of minutes. Which were some of horror cinema's finest,\" Ginny admitted. \"But no, I don't remember the rest.\"\n\n\"Not the movie. The Ouija board. The one at Gran's house.\"\n\n\"I do remember it. That's why I got this one.\"\n\nPeg sighed. \"But you don't remember what happened with it. Obviously, you don't. Or else you wouldn't be sitting there with that thing in front of you.\"\n\nThis had the flavor of a story. Ginny perked, leaning closer to her sister. \"What happened?\"\n\n\"I don't really want to talk about it.\"\n\nGinny tossed a ball of the plastic wrapping that had been on the box at her. \"Bitch!\"\n\nPeg laughed, though it trailed into an uneasy sigh. \"It was some creepy, scary stuff, Gin. You were maybe...ten? Eleven?\"\n\nWhich would've made Peg seventeen. Ginny remembered being ten, vaguely. It was the year of the short haircut. Being mistaken for a boy was the most traumatic thing for Ginny that year, certainly no strange paranormal thing.\n\nUnless she'd just forgotten about it.\n\n\"We were at Gran's for Christmas. The big party, and we were staying over for the rest of the week, along with Roberta and Dana and Carla.\" Peg paused. \"Or maybe Dana wasn't there, I don't remember. No, I think she was on some youth group trip. Or had she already gone off to college? No, she had to be there, because\u2014\"\n\n\"Is it important?\"\n\nPeg shook her head, focusing. \"Oh no. Anyway, we were all staying over until New Year's.\"\n\n\"Gran had another party, didn't she?\" Now Ginny was remembering a little more. \"She always had the Christmas Eve party, but she had that New Year's thing one year.\"\n\n\"Just the one,\" Peg said ominously.\n\nGinny rolled her eyes. \"She had other New Year's Day things. I remember going there for pork and sauerkraut.\"\n\n\"Sure, just the family. But not a big party with neighbors and stuff. She always said it was because having two big parties so close together was too much work.\" Peg gave Ginny a significant look. \"But I think it was because of what happened.\"\n\n\"Jesus, Peggy. What happened?\"\n\nPeg frowned. \"Ginny, please.\"\n\n\"Sorry.\" Her apology was automatic but sincere; she didn't have to drink the Kool-Aid to understand that her sister liked the flavor.\n\n\"We were all playing with that thing.\" Peg gestured at the board. \"Roberta found it in one of the closets upstairs. It was probably Uncle Jimmy's.\"\n\n\"What, along with the collection of biker mags?\" Ginny snickered.\n\nPeg laughed too. \"Yeah. Anyway, she brought it downstairs after Gran went to bed. We were all supposed to be in bed too, but you know we never were.\"\n\nNighttime in Gran's house during Christmas vacation had created some of Ginny's favorite childhood memories. Sneaking cookies, playing endless games of Monopoly and Clue by the light of the tree. Everyone had new pajamas, the fabric still stiff. The older kids played their portable boom boxes, fighting over who got to pick the next cassette.\n\n\"So Roberta brings this thing down into the living room, and we set it up near the tree. By the train set. Dana and Carla went first. They held it on their knees, sitting crisscross applesauce.\"\n\nGinny laughed at the term. She hadn't heard that in years. Her cousins, fraternal twins, were usually the first to try anything new. \"You're taking a long-ass time to tell this story.\"\n\n\"Do you want to hear it or not?\" Ginny nodded, only slightly chastised, but Peg was determined to draw it out. \"I need a refill.\"\n\n\"Oh, Peg. C'mon!\" Ginny's protests were met with Peg's unwavering stare and her raised coffee mug. \"I'm the pregnant one.\"\n\n\"And you know I don't know how to use that fancy coffee thing you have.\"\n\nGinny narrowed her eyes, but got up. In the kitchen, she fussed with the coffee pods to brew her sister another cup. On a whim, she opened the cupboard to see if any other of her dishes had gone missing or been moved around, or if any other gifts had been left in their place. Today there was nothing.\n\nMaybe she really was just crazy.\n\nPeg came into the kitchen. \"You're a terrible hostess. I need something to eat.\"\n\nGinny removed Peg's full mug and replaced it with hers while she brewed some cocoa from another pod. Then she took both mugs and sat at the table while she watched her sister dig into the fridge. \"If I didn't know any better, I'd say you were trying to stall.\" Ginny gave Peg a significant look over the rim of her mug. \"So come on. Spill it. What, you think I'm going to get too scared or something?\"\n\nGinny had always been the kid who stayed up late reading scary books under the covers with a flashlight, who snuck downstairs to watch horror movies after her parents went to bed. Halloween had never seen her in a princess tiara or a cowgirl hat. Halloween was for zombies and witches and vampires. One year she was a werewolf, complete with ears and furry paws, a bloody and mangled red cape around her neck like a scarf. She'd won first prize in the parade. There wasn't much Peg could tell her about supernatural things that would scare her.\n\n\"You're the one who thinks she has a ghost,\" Peg pointed out. \"I don't want to freak you out.\"\n\n\"I've faced worse fears than ghosts.\" Ginny meant to say the words lightly, teasing, but they came out solemn and serious and heavy. She swallowed hot cocoa too fast, and it burned her tongue. She turned her face from her sister's.\n\nPeg reached for her hand anyway. \"Right. Sorry. I wasn't thinking.\"\n\nGinny shrugged again and blew on her cocoa, though now she no longer had the taste for it. \"So. This story?\"\n\nPeg grimaced. \"Fine. So we were all downstairs playing with the board, and you'd been upstairs sleeping or reading or something, I don't know. But you came down when we were doing it, and you wanted to play. So, you sat down across from Carla and put your fingers on that plastic thing\u2014\"\n\n\"The planchette.\" Fascinated by this story she couldn't remember, Ginny leaned forward.\n\n\"And it started to move.\"\n\nGinny waited, but Peg didn't say more. \"And?\"\n\n\"It started to fly all over the board, all wild. Carla accused you of moving it, but you said you weren't! And it went all over; it started spelling out words and stuff. We all got freaked out. You took your fingers off it, and it stopped. You put your hands on it, and it went again, crazy, until it flew right off the board.\"\n\n\"Wow.\" Ginny laughed. \"Sounds like I was pulling a fast one on you all.\"\n\nPeg was silent for a couple seconds. \"Maybe.\"\n\n\"Or what? Maybe it was Satan?\"\n\n\"You were a devil,\" Peg told her.\n\nGinny tossed a balled-up paper napkin at her. \"Hyuck, hyuck, hyuck. Very funny.\"\n\n\"You don't remember?\"\n\n\"Vaguely. But probably only because you just told me about it.\" Ginny turned her mug around and around in her hands, pressing her palms to the heated porcelain. \"I'm not sure what was so freaky about it.\"\n\nPeg hesitated, but pressed on. \"You said it wasn't you doing it, making it move. That it was the lady in the blue dress.\"\n\n\"Sounds terrifying.\"\n\n\"You insisted it was the lady in the blue dress, and she wanted to tell Carla something important, but Carla was so scared by that time that she wouldn't put her hands on the planchette. You were sitting there and it started moving again, we assumed you were pushing it of course. Trying to scare everyone. But it was going slower, more controlled, and we could read what it was saying. Over and over, 'Don't go to Boston'.\"\n\n\"Wow. Weird.\"\n\nPeg nodded and took a minute to sip from her coffee like it gave her strength. \"You know what happened, right?\"\n\n\"If I knew,\" Ginny pointed out, \"would I be asking you?\"\n\n\"Carla was supposed to go to Boston for a dance competition. Which you probably knew. I mean, everyone was talking about it. But she got so freaked out she didn't go.\"\n\n\"And what happened? Let me guess, the plane she was supposed to go on crashed or something.\" Despite herself, Ginny got a shiver.\n\nPeg shook her head. \"Nope. Nothing happened.\"\n\n\"Well...what on earth? Why would that mean anything then? I was probably just messing with her!\"\n\n\"She didn't go to Boston that weekend, and, instead, she went to Buffalo with her mom, shopping. They were in a car accident. Carla was driving.\"\n\nGinny wrinkled her nose. \"I remember that.\"\n\n\"The car was totaled but they were okay. But, one thing they never talked about, Carla only told me once and it was just after Peter and June got married, and they had that reception in that creepy inn, remember? And everyone was talking about how it was haunted, and what weird things happened, and Carla refused to stay there, she went and stayed at the Holiday Inn?\"\n\nThere were benefits to having a large family\u2014all the stories that started and ended with \"you remember?\" being one of them\u2014but not right now. Ginny waved an impatient hand. \"Yes, I remember.\"\n\n\"Carla told me that a steel rod from the truck that hit them went all the way through their windshield, all the way through the car. If her mom had been driving\u2014because her mom's a few inches taller, right?\u2014she'd have been decapitated. But Carla was driving because\u2014\"\n\n\"She didn't go to Boston.\"\n\n\"Yes!\" Peg crowed, triumphant, and slapped the table hard enough to make their mugs jump. \"Because you told her the lady in the blue dress said not to!\"\n\n\"Oh, Peg.\"\n\n\"The lady in the blue dress, by the way, is in a picture in Gran's house. It used to hang up in the dining room, but she took it down when she remodeled.\"\n\n\"So, I saw a picture of a lady in a blue dress and wanted to freak out Carla, and I made up a story that happened to have some weird repercussions.\" Ginny waved her hand again. \"You can't say it had anything to do with it. I mean, you can never know what might've happened. Only what did.\"\n\n\"I thought you of all people would be excited to hear that story.\"\n\nGinny laughed. \"But you're the one saying it's the devil's tool! Sounds to me like it saved Aunt Dina's life.\"\n\nPeg clearly hadn't thought about it that way, because she opened her mouth to say something, but stopped. Then started. Stopped again, while Ginny laughed. \"It's still not a toy,\" she said finally. \"And I think if you use it to contact whatever's in this house, you'll regret it.\"\n\n\"So you believe me, there's something here.\"\n\nPeg hesitated again. \"I don't know.\"\n\n\"Fine. Don't believe me. But if there's not a ghost or spirit or something in here...\" Ginny paused to draw a shallow breath that wanted very much to be a sob, \"...then it must be my husband trying to gaslight me. Which do you think I'd rather have it be?\"\n\nPeg didn't have an answer for that, at least not one that came out of her mouth. Ginny's sister's thoughts rolled over her face in a series of twitches and glances that required a lifetime of interpretation to understand. Fortunately, Ginny'd known her sister for her entire life. Peg didn't believe Sean was trying to drive Ginny crazy, but she didn't quite believe Ginny's stories, either.\n\nGinny frowned and got up to dump her cooling cocoa in the sink. \"I don't care if you believe me or not. I'm telling you, weird things are going on in this house.\"\n\n\"Maybe you should have Father Simon come over.\"\n\nGinny turned, brows raised. \"What? Why... Oh, Peg. Really? Look, I know you're trying to get me back into the fold and all that, but this is a really crappy way of doing it.\"\n\nPeg had the grace to look guilty, but then defiant. \"It wouldn't kill you to get a little religion.\"\n\n\"I don't go to church. Period. Why on earth would Father Simon come over to investigate my missing mug?\"\n\n\"He'd just come over to talk to you, that's all. If you and Sean are having issues...\"\n\n\"I'm not taking marital advice from a man who's not only not married, but will never be married and in fact has never, in all likelihood, ever even had sex,\" Ginny added. \"And besides that, it's not his business if Sean and I are having problems. I didn't say we were having problems!\"\n\nShe rinsed her mug and put it in the dishwasher, refusing to look at Peg. Her sister's mug scraped on the table. Then her chair skidded on the floor.\n\n\"It was just a suggestion,\" Peg said.\n\nGinny turned, not wanting to fight with her sister. \"I know.\"\n\n\"I'm not saying you're having problems. Just that it wouldn't be a surprise if you were. I mean, this is a stressful time. A move, new house, you're not working. The baby,\" Peg said quietly. \"I wouldn't be surprised at all if it was affecting your sleep or making you susceptible to strange ideas.\"\n\n\"Did Sean tell you that? That I haven't been sleeping?\"\n\nPeg looked caught. \"He said he was worried.\"\n\n\"I'm fine. And it's not my lack of sleep, I'm not imagining these things, and we aren't having any problems.\" Ginny scowled. \"I can't believe you're going to believe him over me anyway.\"\n\n\"Because you think he's gaslighting you? Oh, Ginny. Really? Sean?\"\n\nGinny stabbed a finger in the air. \"I don't want to believe it, no! But knowing he went and talked to you behind my back about how crazy I am only makes that seem more likely, doesn't it?\"\n\n\"I'd believe in a ghost before I'd believe your husband was trying to drive you crazy.\"\n\n\"Aha!\" Ginny cried triumphantly. \"Yes! You see what I'm talking about?\"\n\n\"I'd also believe you were crazy before I believed you had a ghost.\" Peg smirked and took her cup to the dishwasher. She studied her sister up close, seriously. \"Talk to Father Simon, Ginny. Do it as a favor to me.\"\n\n\"Do me a favor and stop trying to foist him on me.\"\n\nPeg sighed and closed the dishwasher. \"Fine, fine. Whatever. But don't ask me to do that devil board with you, and get rid of it. Don't have it in your house. Even if you think it can't do anything bad, it's a bad influence. And don't do it by yourself!\"\n\n\"Oh, like in Witchboard?\" Ginny hadn't thought about that, she'd been focused on the idea that two people were required to use it.\n\n\"I don't know what that is, but it sounds bad. Promise me you won't use it alone. That's how the demonic influences get inside you. Promise me!\"\n\nPeg seemed so serious that Ginny nodded. \"I promise. Of course. Fine. I'll toss it in the trash as soon as you leave. I promise, Peg.\"\n\nPeg eyed her suspiciously, but then nodded. \"Good. Call me later, okay?\"\n\n\"Fine. Yes.\" Ginny ushered her sister to the door, accepted her hugs and more advice, because that was what her sister did. But when the door closed, she didn't call her sister's priest to come over for dinner, and she didn't dump the Ouija board in the garbage either.\n\nIt wasn't the first time she'd broken a promise.\nChapter Thirty\n\nCandles were supposed to be romantic, Ginny thought. But when the power went out and your husband had misplaced the rechargeable flashlight and blamed you for it, candlelight was only annoying. In the kitchen she'd lit a series of tea lights in every single holder she could find. In the living room she'd lit a couple of jar candles, and in the dining room, collected in the center of the old, scarred table on a porcelain platter, she'd lit three huge pillar candles. The scents\u2014pine needles, vanilla, cinnamon and something called Misty Memories\u2014warred with one another. With her stomach too.\n\nThe light was pretty, golden and flickering over the old, polished wood. It hid all the flaws in the plaster, the dust in the grooves of the carved wood. It made shadows, though. Moving, deceitful shadows.\n\nGinny looked at the board in front of her. She should put it away, get in the car and go anywhere until the power came back on. But she didn't have the strength to face the Christmas mall crowds, frenzied by all the sales. She wasn't hungry and didn't want to sit by herself in a restaurant. And coffee shops had soured for her. Besides, Sean would be home in an hour or two and by then she'd be ready to eat. He could take her out to dinner if the electricity wasn't back on. Buy her a new rechargeable flashlight. Hell, a generator, if this was the sort of thing that was going to keep happening.\n\nFor now, she studied the board in front of her. Her fingers curled and pressed the cool plastic. She closed her eyes and drew a breath, anticipation tingling in her fingertips as she waited for the planchette to move.\n\nNothing.\n\nMaybe she had to say something. Some sort of greeting? \"Hello.\"\n\nStill nothing. She inched her fingers toward her and the planchette moved easily enough on the little felt pads at the ends of its legs. No friction or resistance. Ginny moved it around in a circle, then a figure eight, but she could tell it was her making it go. Not spiritual forces.\n\n\"Is there...anyone here?\"\n\nFor a second it seemed like the planchette twitched, but as she waited, breathless, nothing else happened. With a frown, Ginny sat back and stared at it. In the flickering light, the shadows beneath the planchette made it look like it was wiggling, just a little, but when she touched it, she could feel nothing.\n\nShe tried again, letting her fingertips rest so lightly on the plastic she was almost not touching it at all.\n\n\"Caroline? Caroline Miller. I'm talking to you.\" Ginny hadn't meant to let her voice drop so low and growly, but speaking at full volume seemed silly. She took a breath and held it for a second before letting it seep out through her nostrils. The smells of the melting wax made her want to sneeze.\n\nThe Ouija board did nothing. Frustrated, Ginny thumped her fist on the table. The planchette jumped and skewed a little, the pointer facing her.\n\n\"C'mon. I know there's someone here. I know you're in this house. Caroline,\" Ginny said. \"I have your suitcase. With your things in it. With your diary. I haven't read it yet, out of respect, but maybe...maybe you want me to read it? Why did you put those things up there in the closet? Why didn't you want anyone to find them?\"\n\nThat was a dumb question, she realized. Of course Caroline wouldn't want anyone to find her box of secrets. Ginny wouldn't have wanted anyone reading her diary when she was thirteen or fourteen either. She thought of her own little secrets. She wouldn't want anyone knowing of them now, though hers had been much more easily hidden and erased.\n\nBut not forgotten.\n\n\"Do you want me to read this journal?\" Ginny put her fingertips back on the planchette. \"Will it tell me what happened to you?\"\n\nThe candles flickered as though someone had blown a breath across the flames. Ginny froze, catching sight of motion from the corner of her eye. She turned, slowly, slowly and saw only shadows growing longer and shorter as the candle flames moved. Still, there was a presence here. She felt it, didn't she? The weight of someone's gaze. She strained to hear the sound of breathing, the creak of floorboards. The back of her neck prickled.\n\nShe whipped her head around, preparing to scream at the sight of some ghostly figure floating toward her with its mouth yawning wide to eat her up.\n\nNothing.\n\nWith a shuddery sigh, Ginny pushed the board away from her. Maybe Peg had been right. It was dangerous to do this alone, if only because of the things it made her imagine.\n\nShe was sliding the box back into its place on the shelf in the living room when the lights splashed across the front windows and tires crunched in the drive. She pulled the curtain enough to peek out, then met Sean at the door, opening it wide and stepping back out of the way so he could come in.\n\n\"Creepy.\" He unwrapped his scarf and hung it on the coatrack, then set his briefcase at the foot of the stairs where he'd forget it repeatedly until she bugged him about it.\n\n\"What's creepy?\" Ginny rubbed her arms against the chill breeze he'd brought in with him.\n\n\"The way you opened the door, like nobody was there.\" He leaned to kiss her, but absently. \"What's with the candles? Did I miss something? It's not our anniversary...\"\n\n\"The power's out.\"\n\nHe grinned at her, his teeth flashing white in the dim light. \"You're kidding, right? Here I thought you were planning some romantic dinner surprise. I got excited there for a minute, thinking about heart-shaped meat loaf.\"\n\n\"I couldn't cook anything without power.\" Guilt groped at her like a drunken prom date. It had been a long time since she'd surprised him with anything like that. The fact she hadn't even thought about it felt worse than the fact she hadn't done it.\n\nSean looked over his shoulder. \"How long's the power been out?\"\n\n\"About an hour.\"\n\n\"Well...\" he shrugged and gave her a confused look, \"...are you sure? I mean, did you check it?\"\n\n\"It's dark outside, Sean. I think I'd notice if the lights suddenly came back on.\"\n\n\"No, I mean...did you call the electric company or anything? Because everyone else on the street seems to have power.\"\n\nThis first stunned her, then annoyed her. She went automatically to the wall switch, already squinting against the flare of light she expected when she flipped it. But, like the Ouija board's reluctance to perform, the lights didn't respond either.\n\nShe couldn't keep the triumph from her voice. \"No. See? Out. Just like all those other times.\"\n\n\"Shit.\" Sean reached around her to flip the switch on and off several times. \"The whole rest of the street's lit up. Nobody else is dark. Must be another fuse.\"\n\n\"Of course it is.\"\n\n\"Still, why'd you sit here in the dark?\"\n\n\"Because the last time I went downstairs to look at the fuse box you told me I shouldn't. So I didn't,\" Ginny said carefully. So carefully.\n\nSean said nothing.\n\n\"I'm getting really tired of this, Sean.\"\n\nHe rubbed her arms gently. \"Yeah, yeah. I know.\"\n\n\"I mean, the power goes on and off if a squirrel sneezes in the yard. It's winter; it's dark a lot earlier and cold.\" She was getting ramped up and wanted to stop, but couldn't. \"It's ridiculous, Sean! We just bought this house; we paid more for the extra-detailed home inspection. Why does this keep happening?\"\n\nTo give her husband credit, he took her near hysteria in stride. He pulled her close and pressed his lips to her hair. With her cheek against the front of his jacket, the heat in her face faded. She fisted her hands in the material and closed her eyes, willing herself to remember this was not that big a deal.\n\n\"I'll get an electrician in here.\"\n\n\"We can't afford it,\" she muttered against him. \"Those guys charge an arm and a leg just to come through the front door, not to mention, God forbid, he finds something wrong.\"\n\nSean's back straightened. \"I wish you'd quit worrying so much about money.\"\n\n\"I wish we had more,\" Ginny said. \"Then I wouldn't worry.\"\n\nFor a moment, his hands tightened around her. Then he let her go, stepped back and headed for the kitchen. Ginny followed.\n\n\"I know you don't want me picking up a part-time job\u2014\"\n\nHe stopped in the kitchen so fast she almost ran into him. He turned, and even in the shaky, dim light from three-dozen tea lights, she could see his look of scorn. \"Ginny, get real. Get a part-time job? Like that?\" He gestured at her jutting belly.\n\n\"Pregnant women work all the time.\"\n\nHe put his hands on her upper arms, but unlike the soft caress of earlier, this time his fingers pinched a little too hard. \"I don't care.\"\n\n\"You're hurting me.\"\n\nHe softened his grip and rubbed to take away the sting. \"I'm sorry.\"\n\nShe knew he hadn't done it on purpose, but moved away from him anyway. \"I've always worked part time during the Christmas season. And it would help, Sean. A lot.\"\n\n\"I don't want anything to happen to you. That's all. Can't you understand that? Jesus,\" he added so suddenly, so fiercely, she jumped. \"I can't believe we even have to go over this again.\"\n\n\"I understand why you wouldn't want me to work doing what I was doing. I get that. But a few shifts here and there at the bookstore, or\u2014\"\n\n\"I'm going to check the fuse box.\"\n\n\"Fine.\" Ginny pushed past him and into the dining room, ostensibly to get her now-cold tea, but mostly to avoid snapping at him. She braced herself for the question about the flashlight, already biting her tongue, but all she heard was the thud of his shoes on the basement steps.\n\nA couple minutes after that, the lights came on.\n\nThe sudden brightness stung her eyes, the perfect excuse for tears. Ginny blinked them away, went to the kitchen to pour her tea in the sink. She wet a paper towel and dabbed her face with it too.\n\n\"It was a fuse again,\" Sean said from behind her.\n\nShe hadn't heard him come up, and startled, a hand on her heart. \"God. You scared me.\"\n\nHe had the flashlight in one hand, unlit now. \"Sorry.\"\n\n\"Where'd you get the flashlight?\"\n\nSean gave her a funny look as he ducked out of the doorway, presumably to hang it back on the nail and plug it in. \"What do you mean?\"\n\n\"It was gone.\" He had to remember the argument. Or maybe he didn't. Sean had a way of pushing things to the back of his mind that he didn't want to remember.\n\n\"I just figured you put it back.\"\n\n\"I didn't.\"\n\nSean sighed, looking weary. \"Ginny, I'm starving and exhausted. Can we just...not do this now?\"\n\n\"Do what?\" Tears threatened again. Knowing it was pregnancy hormones didn't help. She hated this up and down, this constant topsy-turvy. \"Talk? Discuss how this is the same flashlight that went missing and you accused me of taking it, or, what, I don't know, hiding it from you or something, but when it was my mug that was gone, you wouldn't even\u2014\"\n\n\"Enough!\" he cried too loud. \"Christ. Just...enough. Okay?\"\n\n\"Fine.\" She looked away from him and breathed in. Somehow, she found it within her to reach for his hands, to link their fingers. She looked at him, her husband, the man she'd bound herself to until death did them part. \"Want me to make you something to eat? I can heat up some pot roast. I know there's some in the freezer. Why don't you go take a hot shower and I'll make dinner. Then maybe we can watch a movie or something?\"\n\n\"I have some homework...\" He hesitated. She let go of his hands, but he grabbed hers back. \"No, pot roast sounds good. And a movie. That sounds great.\"\n\nHe went upstairs, and Ginny went into the kitchen to pull leftovers from the freezer and put them in the microwave. She hesitated before pushing the button, but this time the lights stayed on. No blown fuses.\n\nShe rinsed the empty Brownie bowl and held it to the light for a moment. She hadn't filled it for a few days because she'd been meaning to pick up some of the licorice treats Sean liked, but hadn't remembered the last time she was at the store. She did have some wrapped butterscotch candies\u2014Sean didn't like them, Ginny thought with a small smile, but maybe the Brownies did. They were in the pantry, and she steeled herself out of habit before she went in.\n\nGinny had avoided the pantry closet since the baby shower, unloading her weekly loads of groceries and cleaning supplies as fast as she could or making Sean do it. Every time she went inside it, she couldn't stop her skin from crawling with the memory of the flies swarming all over her. Worse now was the fact that the closet was so narrow\u2014with her increased bulk she could go in but could barely turn around enough to get out without backing out.\n\nIt was hot, as usual, though, thank God, the smell had gone away and there was no evidence at all of flies of any kind. Still, Ginny kept a foot propped against the door to keep it from swinging shut as she reached for the bag of candy on the shelf. It was right where she'd left it. But there was something else too.\n\nA red collar with a jingle bell.\n\nWith a cry, Ginny clutched it, mindless that the door shut behind her. She pressed it to her heart. \"Oh, Noodles.\"\n\nThe cat had gone, and unlike the folk song, it didn't seem like she was coming back. But there was this, at least. Ginny closed her eyes against tears for a moment. Then she opened them. She kissed the collar and rubbed the soft leather for a moment, making the bell jingle. Then she tucked it away inside an unused kitchen crock and tapped the lid gently.\n\nSean wouldn't understand. He might even think she put the collar there, which would raise uncomfortable questions about where the cat had gone. What had happened to her. What part Ginny had played in her disappearance.\n\n\"Thank you,\" Ginny said aloud. \"Thank you, Caroline. And...please...keep Noodles safe with you. Love her a lot...for me.\"\nChapter Thirty-One\n\n\"The house looks amazing. How did you do it?\" Kendra bounced Carter on her hip as the baby looked goggle-eyed at the lights strung along the molding.\n\n\"A little at a time. That's all.\" That was the truth too. A little bit every day for the past three weeks. A few strings of lights, a couple batches of cookies. Nothing too strenuous, nothing Sean could chastise her about.\n\nNothing, in fact, that he'd noticed. He'd come home from work and class every night, sometimes too late to even eat dinner. Sometimes he smelled of the bar. Sometimes he didn't. When he did get home early, he watched TV and went to bed. He hadn't so much as put a hand on her in weeks. Barely kissed her in the mornings. It was just like it had been...before, only this time she didn't have the Inkpot to distract her.\n\n\"Well, it looks great. Thanks so much for inviting us.\"\n\nGinny found a smile. \"Glad you could make it. Help yourself to food, drink, whatever.\" She looked at Carson and Kelly. \"I have games set up in the den, if you want to play them. There are some other kids in there.\"\n\nWatching them scamper off as Kendra took the baby toward the buffet table, Ginny scanned the room for sight of her husband. He'd gone into the carport to put some beer in the giant tub of ice. She needed him to get some more napkins down from the high pantry shelf.\n\n\"Talk about a white Christmas.\" This was Peg, a plate of food in her hands and a set of festive reindeer antlers on her head.\n\n\"Are you kidding? It's been snowing since the end of November. I'll be surprised if we ever have spring.\"\n\n\"Pessimist.\" Peg bit into a sugar cookie. \"Ooh. Gran's recipe?\"\n\n\"Yes. Of course.\"\n\nHer sister laughed. \"You've become ridiculously domestic.\"\n\n\"Wow, and you look ridiculously festive.\" Ginny looked at her own maroon, dropped-waist dress. It had a white-lace collar. She felt ridiculous. Like a pregnant toddler.\n\n\"You look gorgeous,\" Peg said. \"That dress is the perfect color for you.\"\n\nGinny rolled her eyes. \"Yeah. Thanks.\"\n\nPeg laughed. \"Oh stop. Great party, by the way. Who are all these people?\"\n\n\"Beats me. Word must've spread around the neighborhood.\" Ginny waved a hand toward the dining room, where she'd set the table with the vast display of food. \"Neighbors. Some people Sean works with. You guys. Friends. You know, the usual Christmas open house crowd.\"\n\n\"Who knew you were so popular?\"\n\nGinny laughed and shifted, wishing she'd gone with her sneakers instead of these too-tight black flats. Her dogs were barking. \"Not me.\"\n\nThe door opened, bringing in a swirl of frigid air and whirlwind of pine needles from the decaying wreath on the front door. More people. She knew them. Louisa from the Inkpot, along with Tiffany, Michele and Becky. Ginny would've stepped back in surprise, but the wall was at her back and she had no place to go.\n\n\"I'll let you go play hostess. I'm going to find Dale,\" Peg said and abandoned her.\n\nNot that Ginny should've felt abandoned. These people had been her friends once, or at the very least acquaintances. Louisa, in fact, had made quite the effort to stay in touch. Guilt stabbed her. She'd never returned Louisa's calls or messages, and though she'd promised her that day in the grocery store, Ginny had never gone back to the Inkpot.\n\n\"Ginny! Oh my God, you look so great!\" Tiffany had a loud voice and a bright smile, and she was a hugger. She came for Ginny with both arms open wide, engulfing her before patting and making baby goo-goo noises at her belly. \"Congratulations!\"\n\n\"Thanks. Umm...\"\n\n\"Your husband invited us,\" Tiffany said. \"Came by the Inkpot with a cute, little printed-out invitation and said to make sure that the whole gang came. All of us.\"\n\nOf course Sean hadn't mentioned it. He probably thought he was doing her a favor. Ginny smiled and nodded, accepted their hugs and congratulations, directed them toward the food and drink and where to hang their coats. She moved to close the door behind the last person, but someone pushed it open from the other side.\n\nAnd there he was.\n\n\"Hi, Ginny,\" Jason said. \"Merry Christmas.\"\n\nThe world whirled out from beneath her, but Ginny didn't fall, and she didn't spin. She would never do that again for him. Never.\n\n\"I came with Becky,\" he said quietly. Standing a little too close. Voice a little too low so she had to strain to hear him. His gaze held hers a little too long. \"I didn't mean to surprise you.\"\n\nGinny blinked rapidly. She took a breath. \"Oh, Jason. Yes you did.\"\n\nThen she turned on the flat heel of her pinching shoe and went upstairs, leaving him behind. It was quiet up there, the sounds of the party far enough away to make it clear to her she had responsibilities as a hostess to get down there and make sure everyone had enough to eat, enough to drink. Enough to make merry.\n\n\"Fa la la la fucking la,\" she whispered with the bedroom door shut tight behind her back. She put her hands on her belly as the baby inside squirmed and kicked. Her heart hurt, and it hurt to breathe, but, no, she was not going to cry. She was not going to lose her shit here and now. Not tonight, not because of him.\n\nHe'd come with Becky. Of course he did. Becky had always had her sights set on him. Becky, with her low-cut shirts and tits hanging out, her tiny, tight ass and skinny jeans tucked into knee-high boots, her blonde hair hanging down from underneath her trendy little caps.\n\nGinny's jealousy was huge and ugly and unrepentant. It came with sharp teeth and jagged claws and venom, and it tore her up from the inside out. She panted with the effort of keeping her tears locked up tight, but her mouth opened in a silent, yawning scream she stopped by biting the meaty part of her palm. She closed her eyes and breathed.\n\nShe breathed.\n\nIn the darkness by her closet, something moved.\n\nWith the lights off, the push of air as whatever it was moved gave it away, rather than anything she could actually see. The only light came from beneath the door, and it crept only an inch or so along the floor around her feet. Then, the flash of something.\n\nEyes.\n\nNow was not the time to fuck with her. Ginny stepped forward. \"Who's there? What are you doing in here?\"\n\nAnd then, more softly, \"Caroline?\"\n\nIt moved again, dark on dark. A hint of swirling hair, an outstretched hand. Ginny reached suddenly frigid fingers into the darkness. The room had gone so cold she was sure that in the light she'd have been able to see her breath.\n\n\"Ginny?\" The door bumped into her, closing at once. She stepped away as Sean pushed it again. Light spilled into the room, bright enough to make her squint. \"Are you\u2014 Hey. What's wrong?\"\n\n\"Nothing. It's too hot downstairs. I came up to change.\" She tore at the hideous dress, moving toward the open closet door. She turned on the light, looked up and down, but whatever it had been was gone. If anything, it was colder in here than in the bedroom, and in a moment she saw why.\n\nThe cubbyhole door was open. Not a lot. Just a crack, but it was enough to let the tendrils of icy outside air seep into the closet. Ginny closed it, hard. She traced the outline of the door with her fingertips and turned to look at her husband who'd come in behind her.\n\n\"I'll be down in a few minutes. I just want to put on something more comfortable.\"\n\n\"I thought maybe you weren't feeling good. Peg said you just disappeared.\"\n\nGinny straightened, looking him in the eye, searching his face, that lovely face, for any sign. Anything at all, any glimmer or hint that he'd known what he was doing when he invited her \"friends\" from the Inkpot.\n\nBut no matter how well she'd always been able to read him, Sean had never been transparent. For all the times she'd spent wishing he knew her, there'd been an equal number in which she'd been unable to understand him. Her husband stared back at her, his expression concerned but otherwise implacable.\n\n\"No. Just too hot. And this dress, I never should've put it on. It makes me look like Laura Ashley puked all over me.\" She swiped at the collar and then the casual French twist of her hair.\n\n\"You look beautiful.\"\n\n\"I look enormous and blotchy and disgusting!\" Ginny shouted.\n\nThe words rang in the closet, softened only a little bit by the hanging clothes. They echoed. They stung.\n\n\"You look,\" her husband told her, \"beautiful.\"\n\nThen he backed out of the closet and left her there.\n\nShe was going out of her mind. That was all. The simplest and easiest explanation\u2014she was crazy. There was nobody in the room; there had been nobody in the room. There was no ghost haunting this house.\n\nBut there was a ghost haunting her.\n\nWith shaking, swift fingers, Ginny used the mirror over her dresser to put on some lipstick and swipe some shadow on her eyelids. She dabbed perfume on her wrists and at her throat\u2014lilac and vanilla, a special-blended scent she ordered from an online parfumerie. She put on a pair of black-velvet pants, not maternity but of material stretchy enough they still fit. Then a dark-green sweater from the back of her closet, also not maternity but cut with a swing to the hem that meant she could leave it untucked to her thighs and have it look like it was meant to be worn that way. She twisted her hair up again, but left a few loose curls to frame her face.\n\nThen she went downstairs.\n\nThe party had grown while she was gone. More neighbors, her brother and Jeannie, hesitantly reconciled. A few more people from Sean's office. It was too much to hope that Jason had gone. Ginny saw him standing next to Becky in the far corner of the living room, next to the Christmas tree. Becky was laughing, tossing her hair. Jason was looking everywhere but at her, both his hands full of crystal punch glasses.\n\nGinny moved through the guests and played hostess, ignoring them both.\nChapter Thirty-Two\n\nSince finding the collar, Ginny no longer feared the pantry. She wasn't tall enough to reach the napkins Sean had not yet managed to get down for her, though she'd reminded him a couple times. People were pulling paper towels off the holder, not that it was a big deal, but she was going to run out of those soon too. Now Ginny stretched up onto her tiptoes, reaching, her fingertips skating along the plastic-wrapped package of napkins she'd purchased specifically for the Christmas party because they had snowmen on them. Festive napkins, perfect for a party, except by the time she managed to get them down the party would be over and she'd be stuck using holiday napkins until the Fourth of July.\n\nThe door opened, then shut.\n\n\"I can get that for you.\"\n\nShe knew that voice without turning, and there was scarcely enough room for her to whirl around. So she didn't. With her back to him, Ginny said, \"I can get it.\"\n\n\"You can't. Let me.\"\n\nShe could feel him against her back, a heat she'd imagined a hundred times. No, a thousand. He didn't touch her, but then he didn't have to, did he?\n\n\"I can get it,\" she repeated firmly, voice neutral, like she was speaking to a stranger.\n\nJason cleared his throat. Ginny's fingers curled in the wire shelving in front of her. She willed herself to stay still as he reached over her to grab the napkins down and hand them to her. When it was done, he didn't move away.\n\nHe said her name in a low voice, full of longing. More heat. Her cheeks flushed with it, but this was not the fire of lust kindling in her breastbone.\n\nIn all the times she'd imagined seeing him again, all the ways she'd thought about how this would go, never in one of them had she faced him with her belly pushed out in front of her as proof she was tied to another man. She'd never pictured him in her house. Her own fucking house.\n\nGinny turned, the expanse of her body pushing him back a step. \"What are you doing here, Jason? Really. What the hell are you doing?\"\n\n\"I wanted to see you.\"\n\n\"It's been almost a year.\"\n\nHe nodded, his eyes fixed firmly on her face like he was afraid of looking anywhere else. He was looking at her, but not really seeing her. \"I know. But I wanted to see you, and when Becky asked me...I just...\"\n\nOne of the things she'd always liked best about him was the way they could talk to each other. Whatever else had failed, it had never been their words. Watching him now, his mouth working with nothing coherent coming out, Ginny wanted nothing more than for him to shut up before he ruined every memory she had of every conversation they'd ever shared.\n\n\"You shouldn't be here, Jason.\"\n\n\"I know.\"\n\nThey stared in silence beneath the bright, bare bulb of the pantry. It was unforgiving, that light, shadowing his face and make the lines of it harder than she remembered. It highlighted the glint of silver in his hair, the lines at the corners of his eyes and mouth. He'd aged since she'd seen him last. Well. She supposed she'd changed more than he had, and in a far less flattering manner.\n\nIncredibly, he moved a step closer. Once, standing this close would've sent electricity arcing between them, a palpable spark. Now, there was nothing for her except the slow and dull throb of the grief she'd tried her very best to shed. The anger, rising.\n\nJason's voice rasped when he spoke, \"I'm sorry, Ginny.\"\n\nSorry he wanted to see her? Or for that other thing she'd worried over and picked apart until it had left her raw? Or for something else she'd never figure out, she thought, looking him over. It didn't matter. It was over. That cake was baked.\n\nThat door was closed.\n\nShe couldn't squeeze by him. \"Move.\"\n\nJason backed up, hands out but not touching her, to let her pass. He snagged her sleeve before she could totally get away. She stopped, but didn't turn. There wasn't enough room.\n\n\"I'm sorry, Ginny.\"\n\nShe couldn't keep her voice steady, though she tried. \"You should have come to Philadelphia.\"\n\n\"I wanted to.\"\n\n\"Not enough.\" She shrugged to show him how little she cared, and it must've worked because from behind her, Jason let out a small sigh.\n\n\"Well...you look great. And...I guess I'm glad to see that you decided to...you know. Stay with your husband.\"\n\nAt this she turned, her incredulity passing in a heartbeat.\n\n\"Jason,\" Ginny said with something close to pity. Something more like condescension. \"I never, ever intended to leave my husband.\"\n\nThat was it. All she had to say. He let her go, and she took the napkins in her trembling hands, into the dining room, where she opened the package and filled the basket she'd placed there for just that purpose. She focused, focused, eyes blinking to keep them dry, swallowing hard against the tightness in her throat that could've been tears or a scream, she couldn't tell the difference.\n\n\"Great party.\" Becky lifted her glass of wine. \"And you, wow, Ginny. You look so...happy.\"\n\nThere might've been smug satisfaction on the woman's face, or it might've been Ginny's imagination. Either way, she straightened with a smile. \"Thanks.\"\n\n\"I mean it. You're really glowing.\" Was that something wistful in Becky's tone?\n\n\"It's hot in here.\" Ginny made a show of fanning her face. \"But thanks.\"\n\nBehind her, Sean appeared with a platter of mini corn dogs from the oven. He put them on the table with a nod toward Becky and looked at Ginny. \"I was going to get the napkins for you. But I saw you already got them.\"\n\nBefore she could answer, Kelly and Carson pounded through the dining room with Ginny's nephew Luke fast on their heels, though at eighteen, Luke was old enough to know better. She reached as he thundered past, and brought him up short.\n\n\"No running, it's too crowded in here.\"\n\nLuke looked sheepish. \"Sorry, Aunt Ginny. Just playing with the little kids.\"\n\n\"Play something else,\" she suggested, but not unkindly. \"I don't need my whole house torn apart.\"\n\nBecky was gone by the time she finished scolding, but Sean was still there. He watched Luke head out after the kids, then looked at her with an expression so odd her heart thumped in response. But if there was something he wanted to say, he wasn't going to do it there.\n\nThe party went on. Food eaten, beverages drunk. Some people danced in the living room. Some kissed beneath the mistletoe. The front porch became the haven for the smokers, including Jason, whose profile Ginny could see through the kitchen window when she filled the kettle for tea. Sean was there too.\n\n\"Kelly? Carson?\" Kendra came into the kitchen without her little baggage on her hip. She wore her coat and a worried expression. \"Ginny, hi. Have you seen my kids?\"\n\n\"I saw them earlier, playing with my nephew.\" She turned from the sink and put the kettle on the burner but didn't turn it on. A look at the clock told her it was late, probably past the kids' bedtime. Close to her own, actually.\n\n\"I can't find them.\" Kendra gave her a weary smile. \"I think they're playing hide and seek.\"\n\n\"Oh.\" Ginny chewed the inside of her cheek. \"Umm...well. Let's find Luke and see if he knows where they are.\"\n\nLuke had abandoned the play of little kids in favor of facing off with his dad in Guitar Hero. The rapt audience of freshman girls from down the street made the reason for his decision obvious; nevertheless, a thin, helpless bite of annoyance stung her.\n\n\"I don't know where they are, sorry,\" Luke told her with an apologetic shrug. \"I haven't seen them in a couple hours.\"\n\nIt wasn't like Kendra was the queen of keeping an eye on her children, Ginny thought uncharitably at the sight of Kendra's panicked expression. Still, having once misplaced Luke in a department store when she was supposed to be taking him to pick out a birthday present for Peg, Ginny knew the rush of panic. She put a hand on Kendra's arm.\n\n\"We'll find them. They have to be in the house somewhere. Right?\"\n\nKendra nodded, looking doubtful. She pulled a cell phone out of her pocket and pressed a few numbers. \"Clark. Are the kids there with you? No, not Carter, I know he's there. No, well...they didn't go with you? No,\" she snapped. \"They're not missing. They're just...they're here somewhere. I just wanted to make sure they hadn't gone with you before I started hollering for them. Yes, we'll be home soon. Just put him in the crib, for God's sakes! Give him a bottle, whatever!\"\n\nShe disconnected and gave Ginny an embarrassed shrug. \"You'd think he'd never put the kid to bed before.\"\n\n\"We'll find them,\" Ginny repeated so she didn't have to comment on Kendra's marital discord. God knows, Ginny shouldn't judge. \"Let's look upstairs.\"\n\nSean had come back inside the house, his nose and cheeks flushed pink with cold. He smelled of smoke. Ginny pulled her husband aside to explain the situation. He didn't get it, she saw that clearly enough.\n\n\"I'm going to take Kendra upstairs and check around. Keep an eye out down here.\"\n\n\"Carson!\" Kendra cried, because at that moment her son ambled out of the dining room with a cookie in each hand and chocolate around his mouth. \"Where have you been? I've been looking for you everywhere! Where's your sister?\"\n\n\"Don't know.\" Carson lifted a cookie to his mouth but didn't bite it. He looked suddenly alarmingly green. \"Don't feel good.\"\n\nOh hell no, Ginny thought. \"Bathroom's down the hall.\"\n\nGod help Kendra if her son puked all over Ginny's brand-new area rug, she thought, but Kendra at least had this part of parenting down. She hustled Carson down the hall so fast he dropped both cookies before he could toss them. The bathroom door slammed behind them.\n\nGinny looked at Sean. \"I'll go look upstairs.\"\n\nHe lifted his eyes to the ceiling at the sound of pattering footsteps. \"Someone's up there.\"\n\nRunning. Back and forth along the hall and in the baby's room. Also the library. Ginny and Sean tracked the noises with their eyes for a minute before she gestured at the fallen cookies. \"Can you get that? I'll be back.\"\n\nHe looked first surprised, then annoyed, but said nothing as he bent to clean up the crumbled mess. Ginny left him to it, not interested in an argument, though his response had rubbed along her skin like a shark's scales being stroked the wrong direction. She climbed the stairs with one hand on the railing to help heave her bulk along, and by the time she reached the top she had to stop and catch her breath.\n\nShe flicked the switch on the wall, but the ceiling fixture stayed dark. Colored light from the outside Christmas bulbs came in through the window facing the street, but it was filtered even further by the stained glass. Some other light drifted into the hall from the bathroom night-light, but that was it.\n\nShadows moved, whispering and giggling. The patter of feet slapped the floor beyond the railing across from her and slipped around the corner into the nursery. The door shut with a click, cutting off the childish laughter.\n\n\"Kelly?\" Ginny put her left hand on the railing, but didn't move toward the nursery.\n\nShe could go to the left, past the bathroom and her bedroom, to get there, or she could go to the right and pass the library. The door was closed there too. If Kelly came out of the nursery, she could jog either left or right and avoid Ginny altogether, depending which way she ran. Ginny didn't feel like chasing her, especially not in the dark. As she hesitated, her decision was made for her.\n\nThe door to the library opened, and Kelly tumbled into the hallway on a couple stumbling steps before she stopped with her back to Ginny.\n\n\"Come out, come out, wherever you are!\"\n\nGinny put out a hand to snag the girl's dress. \"I'm right here.\"\n\nKelly whirled with a shriek that startled Ginny into echoing it. Her scream scared Kelly into another wail, and the girl ran back into the library. Ginny managed to gather her wits, though, and pursued her. The light in this room worked, though both of them put their hands up against the sudden brightness when she turned it on.\n\n\"Enough,\" Ginny snapped, her patience worn thin by the unpleasantly behaved neighbor children. \"Kelly, stop it.\"\n\nKelly's screams trailed into a whimper. Her terror faded visibly, though at the sight of Ginny's face, her eyes widened and she looked like she might start to sob instead of scream. \"You scareded me!\"\n\n\"You scared me too. You shouldn't be running around up here in the dark, especially alone.\"\n\n\"I'm not alone. I'm playing with the little girl.\"\n\n\"Which little girl? From the party? What did she look like?\"\n\nKelly looked evasive. \"Umm...she has dark hair.\"\n\n\"What's her name?\"\n\n\"I don't know her name, I think it's Carrie.\"\n\nGinny froze. Her gaze narrowed as her heart set up a quickened, nervous thumping in her wrists and the base of her throat. \"It's not nice to tell stories that aren't true, Kelly.\"\n\n\"I'm not telling stories.\" Kelly looked chastened, but unrepentant. She scuffed at the floor with one of her patent-leather shoes. \"Carson quit with us because he wanted some more cookies, but she kept playing.\"\n\n\"Kelly,\" Ginny said warningly. \"Don't make me tell your mom that you were lying to me.\"\n\n\"But I'm not! I was playing with the little girl, I was. You can ask her yourself!\"\n\nGinny looked around the room, half expecting to see a floating ghostly form. \"Where is she?\"\n\nKelly looked shifty-eyed again and shuffled her feet. \"She probably ran away.\"\n\n\"Where would she go?\"\n\n\"I don't know.\" Kelly shrugged.\n\n\"She was in here with you? Playing hide and seek?\"\n\nKelly nodded, looking a little relieved that Ginny's tone had gone a little softer. \"Yeah, she was hiding in the cubby, and I found her, but she ran through.\"\n\n\"In the...\" Stunned, Ginny looked toward the small door set into the wall. There was another identical door in the nursery, but she hadn't known the storage space connected the rooms.\n\nIt made sense, of course, but another surge of irritation rose. The one peek she'd taken had shown her a slanted, narrow space with nails sticking through the roof and a gap in the floorboards under the eaves, stuffed with insulation. Not the place to be running and playing.\n\n\"Where is she now, Kelly?\"\n\n\"I don't know, I told you, she ran through...\"\n\nThe girl kept talking for a minute or so, but Ginny was looking past her to the easel and paints she'd set up weeks ago and had been ignoring ever since. The painting on the easel had only been a few strokes, just a couple blobs of color and some light pencil sketching. She hadn't touched it since then, or even looked at it. But one thing Ginny knew for sure\u2014she most definitely had not been finger-painting.\n\nAnger, real anger now, instead of just annoyance, bubbled out of her. Stalking past the sniffling child, Ginny looked at the painting. Jaw set, she glared at Kelly.\n\n\"What did you do?\"\n\n\"I didn't...I mean, me and Carson...and the little girl...\"\n\n\"Why would you touch this? What made you think this would be okay, to go into someone else's house and touch their stuff?\" Ginny snapped a hand toward the mess on her canvas.\n\nSomeone had streaked it with color in broad, thick lines. There was a pattern to it, but no shape, no form. It wasn't a painting that meant to look like anything specific, not a dog or horse or person. Not even a rainbow. If anything, it resembled some of the most offbeat pieces of modern art she'd ever studied, and Ginny loathed modern art.\n\n\"Answer me!\" She took a step toward Kelly, who must've rightly assumed it was threatening though Ginny hadn't so much as raised a hand.\n\n\"I t-t-told you, it wasn't me or Carson. It was the little girl, she painted it!\"\n\n\"Let me see your hands.\"\n\nKelly tucked them at once behind her.\n\nGinny's mouth twisted, but she kept herself from shouting. She took another step toward Kelly. \"Kelly, I don't want to have to tell your mommy you've been naughty.\"\n\nReluctantly, Kelly held out a hand.\n\nGinny snagged her wrist to study the girl's palm for telltale signs of paint. That was how Kendra found them.\n\n\"Kelly? What's going on?\"\n\n\"Mommy!\" Kelly screamed and ran into her mother's arms, burying her face against Kendra's stomach. Her shoulders shook with sobs.\n\nKendra gave Ginny a narrow-eyed, frowning glare. Peg had once revealed to her younger sister that no matter how terrible her children had behaved, if another adult was the one disciplining them, something protective and feral reared its head. Ginny saw it in Kendra's gaze now, the sharp glance at Ginny's hands and then how she took up her daughter's to go over the wrist. Checking for bruises, maybe.\n\nGinny didn't care. She'd seen the evidence on Kendra's hands. She kept her voice sickly sweet, though. Concerned, not accusatory. She felt more than able and happily willing to take on Mama Bear, but the tiny, still-rational part of her held her tongue.\n\n\"She got into my paints. Be careful she doesn't get it on your pretty blouse.\"\n\nKendra yanked Kelly's grasping hands away from her at that news, peering harder at her daughter's palms. She sagged, then looked at Ginny, embarrassed. \"Oh God. Kelly. What on earth?\"\n\n\"You should take her home,\" Ginny said firmly enough that Kendra blinked. \"Now.\"\n\n\"Right. Yeah, I'm sorry. I'm really sorry, Ginny.\" Kendra paused. \"I cleaned your bathroom for you, though. Carson's okay now, but...yeah, I took care of it.\"\n\nAs though Ginny should be, what, grateful? She smiled thinly but kept her voice as sweet as sugar cookies. \"Thanks for coming to the party.\"\n\nKendra nudged Kelly forward; the girl went as reluctantly as she'd offered Ginny her hand. \"Say thank you to Mrs. Bohn.\"\n\nKelly hesitated.\n\nGinny smiled at her. She couldn't really get down on her knees to be eye to eye, but she bent forward so the girl had no choice but to stare her in the face.\n\n\"Merry Christmas, Kelly.\"\n\n\"Thankyouforhavingus.\" Kelly'd rushed the words and ducked back behind her mother, who gave Ginny another apologetic look.\n\n\"Merry Christmas. Thanks for the party, it was really lovely. Umm...yeah.\" Kendra fumbled when Ginny didn't return the smile. \"We'll just...okay. Good night.\"\n\nIn the doorway, Kelly looked over her shoulder at Ginny. \"Merry Christmas, Carrie!\"\n\nKendra shushed her, shoving her along, but Ginny turned to look behind her. The cubby door was cracked open, just a little, and she couldn't remember if it had been that way before or if that squeak of Kelly's patent-leather shoes had masked the creak of it opening.\n\nGinny stared at it for a long time as the sounds of merriment drifted up from downstairs. It wouldn't take much for her to cross the room and open that door. At the very least, she should shut it tightly to prevent drafts.\n\nShe opened the door the whole way, her fingers reaching for the pull chain on the light she remembered was inside. It, like the light in the hall, didn't come on. Ginny muttered a curse for ancient light bulbs. She looked along the low space, into the darkness, forcing herself not to be uneasy. There was nothing in there but dust and the nose-tickling smell of pink insulation, and maybe a mouse or two that had been smart enough to avoid the bait left by Danny, the exterminator.\n\nExcept there was something back there, in the deep and shifting shadows. Something small and crouched. And something on the floor too\u2014spots of green, the same color that had been on Kelly's palms and splashed across Ginny's canvas. She looked hard into the darkness and willed her eyes to find a face, hands, toes, but the figure remained solid and lifeless, without a glimmer of eyes or teeth. It remained a nothing.\n\nShe leaned in just a little to take another look at the floor, the small curved imprint of a bare foot. Unmistakable as anything else, just this one, the others more spattered and uneven. She was reaching to touch the paint and check to see if it was wet, when someone called her name. Startled, she jumped and smacked her head on the inside of the doorframe. With a muffled curse, she backed out of the cubby.\n\n\"Your friends are getting ready to leave. I thought you'd want to say goodbye.\" Sean leaned in the library doorway. \"What are you doing?\"\n\n\"Oh. That little heathen from next door was messing with my stuff. She was inside here, running from room to room.\"\n\n\"In the crawl space?\" Sean came up behind her to look over her shoulder. \"In the dark?\"\n\n\"Apparently.\"\n\nHe snorted soft laughter. \"Brave kid.\"\n\n\"Stupid kid. She could've fallen through, broken a leg. Or worse. Not to mention that she got into my paints and...\" Ginny broke off with a sigh and a shake of her head. \"Never mind. Just remind me, next year, when I say I want to have a party...that I don't.\"\n\nHis laugh sounded a little more like his usual, this time. \"Right. You say that now, but...\"\n\n\"Next year we'll have a little one of our own. I probably won't even have time to plan a party.\"\n\nHe gave her a curious look and put a hand on her belly, rubbing. A tiny foot, a little hand, pressed against his touch. He put his other hand next to it, his strong fingers curling against her flesh. \"You'll want to see everyone.\"\n\nGinny put her hands over his. \"Honestly? The only people I need to see will be the ones I already see all the time. I don't need to host a big shindig and invite all kinds of people over and feed them and stuff.\"\n\nSean said nothing for a moment or two. Then he leaned to kiss her. \"Your friends,\" he reminded. \"They said they were leaving. I thought you'd want to say goodbye.\"\n\nGinny knew then whom he meant, and why exactly he'd gone to such lengths to invite them. It was a relief, in a way, not to wonder anymore if he knew. She said nothing at first, letting the sounds from downstairs drift up to them...but not come between them.\n\nFinally, she pushed away just enough to look at him. \"They can find their own way out.\"\n\nAfter a moment he nodded. Then he hugged her again, his hands moving in small circles over her back as her belly made a bridge between them.\n\nIt wasn't until later in bed, when she'd woken once again in the night with wide eyes and the idea that someone had spoken her name, that Ginny recognized what had been so odd about the paint in the crawl space. It had looked like the print of a bare foot, a child's foot. But not Kelly's she remembered, because Kelly had been wearing patent-leather shoes.\nChapter Thirty-Three\n\nMore snow. Inches of it on top of the mountains they already had. Sean had made it to work, even though the radio stations were all warning motorists to stay off the road. His class would be cancelled, or so she thought, but he'd told her he had to make it in or forfeit some of the paid time off he wanted to take after the baby came. She had to weigh the anxiety of imagining him swerving into a ditch against knowing how much help it would be having him home, and in the end Ginny'd had no choice anyway. If her husband said he was going to work, he was going to work. It was stupid to make them all come in when they could just close the offices. It served no purpose to have people risk their lives to come in and pound away on keyboards, entering data.\n\n\"Not all of us have the benefit of working for ourselves,\" he'd reminded her this morning, early, when she'd rolled over in bed with a groan at the sound of his alarm.\n\nHe hadn't pointed out that Ginny wasn't working and hadn't been for months. She said nothing about it either, just got up and made him breakfast while he showered and the lights flickered, and she hoped the power wouldn't go out again.\n\nIt did, of course, blipping on and off a few times before finally cutting out altogether. Ginny sighed, frustrated and thinking of the three loads of laundry she had yet to do, the full dishwasher. Her rumbling stomach and the soup she'd intended to heat up for her lunch.\n\nHer cell phone rang, Peg on the other end inviting her over for lunch and to watch movies. Peg's house had power. Peg had a four-wheel-drive vehicle and wasn't afraid of driving in the snow, because, as Peg said, she'd survived teaching six teenagers how to drive.\n\n\"I'll come pick you up. We'll hang out. I'll bring you home when Sean gets home, or he can stop here on his way home from work. I'll make goulash. It'll be good.\" Peg paused. \"I never see you anymore.\"\n\nThat wasn't true\u2014Peg had stopped by on her way to what she called the \"fancy\" grocery store on Ginny's side of town just two weeks ago.\n\n\"You're just not used to having all your kids out of the house, that's all. Makes you feel like you're missing stuff you aren't.\"\n\n\"Not true,\" Peg said. \"What, I can't miss my baby sister? And besides, you know...I worry about you, a little bit. In that big house alone.\"\n\nGinny was silent for a second or two. \"You don't have to worry about me.\"\n\n\"But I do.\"\n\nAbove her, the lights flickered, but immediately dimmed and went dark. Ginny sighed. \"Yes. Please come get me. I can't stand it here without power; it's so gray today I can't even get any decent light to read.\"\n\n\"I'll be there in half an hour.\"\n\nIt took forty minutes, actually, the roads worse than Peg would admit at first. Her SUV handled everything okay, but it was eerie riding the snow-covered streets, the wind so bad the traffic lights swung. Not many other people were on the road.\n\n\"The smart ones,\" Ginny teased.\n\n\"Yeah, yeah. I can take you home, let you sit in the dark eating cold cereal.\"\n\nBut Ginny knew Peg wouldn't do anything like that, even if they'd been closer to Ginny's house and it would've made sense for Peg to turn around. As it was, by the time they got into Peg's driveway, the wind had kicked up further and the snow had become so thick it turned the afternoon to dusk. Peg pulled into the garage and shook her head.\n\n\"I hope we don't lose electricity.\"\n\nGinny made a face. \"You'd better not. The only reason I came with you was for the food and the warmth.\"\n\n\"And the entertainment,\" Peg pointed out. \"C'mon. Let's get inside.\"\n\nIt hadn't been as long Peg seemed to think, but it had been long enough that nostalgia crept over Ginny as she sat at her sister's kitchen table with a mug of Peg's homemade cocoa in front of her, along with a plate of shortbread. Instead of watching movies, they played cards and laughed about old stories. They filled themselves with cocoa and cookies, and Peg never did get around to making the goulash, which was okay since every time Ginny called Sean's number she got a message saying his number was unavailable.\n\nShe called her house four or five times as the afternoon wore on, becoming night, but each time the phone rang and rang without the answering machine picking up. That meant the power was off. The sixth time, she was able to leave a message for Sean, saying she was on her way home and would be there soon.\n\n\"The power's back on. Can you give me a ride home?\"\n\nPeg looked at the clock. \"You're not staying for dinner?\"\n\n\"Couldn't get ahold of Sean,\" Ginny said, already gathering her coat. Her back ached from sitting in the hard kitchen chair, but she wasn't going to tell her sister that. \"He should be almost home by now. At least the lights will be on for him.\"\n\n* * * * *\n\nAll the lights were on, blazing forth from every window, when Ginny got home. She waved as Peg backed out of the driveway. The snow had tapered off drastically an hour or so before stopping, so the roads were passable.\n\nHumming, pleased with the afternoon despite how it had begun, Ginny let herself in the front door. Sean, who seemed to come from nowhere, his face a strained mask and his hair askew, swooped down on her immediately.\n\n\"Where the hell were you?\"\n\nTaken aback, Ginny shrugged out of her coat and hung it on the coatrack by the front door before looking at him. \"I was with Peg. I left you a message.\"\n\n\"I didn't get any messages!\"\n\n\"I tried your phone,\" she said patiently, biting back her own instant anger that had been jerked upright by his tone. \"I kept getting an error message. But I left one on the answering machine.\"\n\nShe saw at once by his expression that he hadn't even checked, but before she could point that out or make an explanation, he'd launched into her again.\n\n\"God dammit, Ginny! You pissed and moaned about me going in to work today because you said the roads were too bad, then I come home to find you gone, every freaking light in the house on...your car still in the driveway. What the hell was I supposed to think? You couldn't leave me a goddamned note?\"\n\nOh, how tempted she was to snap back at him, to curl her lip. Instead, she pushed past him and down the hall to the kitchen, keeping her pace steady. Not running, not giving him that effort. In the kitchen, she looked at the answering machine, blinking merrily with one message. Hers, it had to be.\n\nShe turned as he came in after her. \"I did leave you a message. It's not my fault you didn't listen to it. And I told you, your cell phone\u2014\"\n\n\"There's nothing wrong with my fucking phone.\"\n\nGinny blinked, slowly. She took a step back from him. \"Are you calling me a liar?\"\n\nHis shoulders heaved and his fists clenched, lightly, but clenched just the same. He said nothing. Her gut twisted. Her heart became stone. She had a thousand words to say to him, perhaps many more than that, but she bit them all back, chewed and swallowed them. Ginny shoved them deep inside her to join everything else she'd pushed down.\n\nSean scowled. \"I came home and you were gone. All the lights were on, and you weren't here. No note, nothing.\"\n\nHer chin lifted, just a little. \"So...what? You thought I just ran off and left you? With all the lights on? Without my car?\"\n\n\"Someone could have come for you.\"\n\n\"Someone did come for me,\" she told him. \"My sister.\"\n\nSean shook his head, just barely.\n\nGinny sighed and shifted to ease the ache in her back. Her belly rippled with Braxton Hicks and the baby's kicking. She winced as she tucked her hands beneath it, wishing she could lift it in a sling and somehow relieve at least some of the weight.\n\nShe pointed at the blinking answering machine. She sounded weary, because that was how she felt. \"I left you a message. I'm sorry you were worried.\"\n\n\"I thought you'd gone off with him.\"\n\nShe'd had a hard-enough time catching her breath lately, but at this every molecule of oxygen left her. She sagged, fingers clutching at the countertop. Her tongue had gone thick, her lips numb. \"Oh, Sean. No.\"\n\n\"I thought, well, this is it. She's gone. She finally did it. But the least...\" his voice broke, and she saw with growing alarm that her stoic husband was close to tears, \"...the least she could fucking do is leave a note!\"\n\n\"I went to Peg's, that's it!\" Her own voice rose, razor-edged with hysteria. \"I didn't go off anywhere. I wouldn't. Sean, I\u2014\"\n\nHe turned from her when she tried to touch him, and Ginny let her hand fall to her side. She had no right to force him to let her soothe him. She had no right to anything, really, and she would take none.\n\n\"Just tell me something, because it's been driving me crazy thinking about it.\"\n\nShe swallowed hard, prepared to give him all the details, the few there were. \"What?\"\n\nSean scraped at his eyes with the fingertips of one hand, the other's fingers tucked into his belt loop on his hip like he was afraid what it would do if he didn't keep it tethered. \"Did you love him?\"\n\nIt wasn't the question she'd expected, but as soon as he asked, she knew she'd been foolish to think he'd ask anything else. \"No.\"\n\nHe looked at her, his expression horridly naked. \"Then why?\"\n\n\"Because you wouldn't touch me,\" she told him simply. She spread her fingers and gave a half shrug, her words the truth, with nothing to redeem them but that. \"You stopped hugging me, kissing me, touching me. You stopped all of it, Sean. It was like living with my brother...no, worse than that, because I've never doubted, even when he was being mean to me, that my brother loved me. And for a long time, with you, I wasn't sure.\"\n\n\"I never stopped loving you,\" he said hoarsely.\n\nShe hated the sound of tears in his voice. She hated that she'd done this, broken him somehow. Tearing off the scab was supposed to help an infected wound leak its poison, but this...she'd never wanted this.\n\n\"I wanted my husband there for me. I needed you. And you just...went away.\" She wanted to touch him, but mindful of his last reaction, kept her hands at her sides. \"I know you were grieving. But you wouldn't talk to me.\"\n\n\"I was. I couldn't bear it, how much you'd gone through. How I almost lost you too.\" He shook his head and began to pace. \"Seeing you in the hospital, knowing I'd done it to you...\"\n\n\"You didn't do anything to me.\" She wanted to empathize with him, or at the very least find an edge of sympathy for his agony, but all she heard was him burdening himself with what had been her pain. Making what happened to her, somehow...his, not even theirs. But just his.\n\nTypical, she thought. Turning the loss of their baby somehow, into his private torture. That he'd somehow been responsible, or that he could've done anything differently. It was typical of his need to fix things, regardless of what had broken them or how much worse his efforts at tinkering made them.\n\n\"I got pregnant. We both wanted kids. Something was wrong. We lost the baby.\" She took a deep breath, hating that she had to be the one, once again, to walk him through this. \"It happens to a lot of people. We're far from the only ones. And it was a blessing, I think, because we weren't prepared to have a child with special needs, or even to lose a child after it was born.\"\n\nHe shuddered, still pacing. Every so often his hand crept up to tug through his hair. \"I couldn't stand to think about it happening again.\"\n\n\"So...you just stopped...\" she shook her head, trying to piece this together, to make sense of it, \"...you stopped touching me.\"\n\n\"I had to.\"\n\n\"Despite what the nuns might've told you in the third grade, Sean, hugging doesn't lead to pregnancy.\"\n\nHe stopped his pacing, thank God. He looked at her. \"You just...you were at me. All the time.\"\n\nThis was not how she remembered it, not at all. Ginny remembered needing to hold him and be held. To grieve together. And later, when her body had healed enough for it, to make love to him again and find that closeness that had always been so much a part of their marriage.\n\n\"I was at you?\" She tried hard to think on it, to recall if she'd been some sort of vamping siren, skimping around in lingerie or accosting him in dark corners. \"You think wanting to have sex with my husband is...what...wrong? Weird? Abnormal?\"\n\n\"You were at me about having another baby.\"\n\nWith the counter behind her, Ginny couldn't move backwards. Her fingers slipped and gripped on the laminate. One nail bent and broke. Wincing, she held it in front of her to watch a small bead of blood form beneath the nail she pulled off and tossed into the sink drain. She sucked at the blood, and it was only half as bitter as all the things she wanted to say.\n\n\"And I couldn't do it,\" Sean said. \"I just...couldn't.\"\n\nAgain, Ginny racked her brain to think if she'd been the one pushing for another child. All she could think of was telling him, at the time, it would all be okay. They could try again. They could always try again. She remembered saying it from the hospital bed. She remembered saying it in the shower with the hot water pounding over her aching body as the blood leaked down her legs and into the drain. She'd said it to comfort him.\n\n\"I thought you wanted a baby,\" she told him and reeled with the idea that all this time she'd been trying for something he didn't even want.\n\n\"Not enough to risk losing you.\"\n\nShe'd been wrong to think Sean had never feared losing anyone, she saw that now. But, try as she might, she couldn't make herself sympathize with his choices.\n\nHe started pacing again.\n\nThis time, she reached out and grabbed his sleeve, hard enough to stop him. \"Stand still. Look at me.\"\n\nShe waited until he did, his gaze naked and horrid and hard to face, but she forced herself to do it. \"I am fine. This baby is fine. Nothing is going to happen to this baby, or to me. You're not going to lose me.\"\n\nHis sharp bark of laughter surprised her enough to let go of his sleeve. Her husband's mouth twisted\u2014not quite a smile, not quite a sneer. He closed his eyes for a long couple of seconds, and when he looked at her again, his gaze was flat and hard and assessing.\n\n\"I already did.\" He gestured at her belly. His shoulders sagged. He let himself sink into one of the kitchen chairs and buried his face in his hands, squeezing his head like a man in the grip of a migraine. \"Didn't I?\"\n\nShe sat across from him and took his hands, forcing him to let her hold them. She squeezed his fingers. He didn't look at her, but that made it easier and she was grateful for that.\n\n\"No. Never.\" There'd been times when Ginny was uncertain of what would happen and where her path would lead, but of this she had never been unsure. \"You did not lose me.\"\n\nHe looked up at her. \"I didn't want to watch you go through that again, and I was right, wasn't I?\"\n\nDisturbed, she squeezed his fingers again. \"No. You'll feel differently when the baby comes. You'll see, it will be all right, and we'll be okay\u2014\"\n\n\"I don't know if I can,\" he said quietly.\n\nHer heart started breaking. \"You don't know if you can what?\"\n\n\"Love it. Be a father to it. I figured I'd try, you know? I'd do my best. But I'm not sure I can.\"\n\n\"Oh, Sean. Of course you can. You'll love this baby. Lots of people are scared about becoming parents, but...you'll see. You'll be an amazing father.\"\n\n\"But I won't,\" he told her steadily, \"be the father.\"\n\n\"Of course you\u2014\" He wasn't talking about being afraid. Being incompetent. \"What? Oh\u2014 What the hell?\"\n\nShe snatched her hands from his. It would've been her turn to pace, if she'd been able to push herself away from the table, to get her bulk moving quickly enough. Instead, she sat, trapped by her inertia.\n\n\"I wondered if you were going to tell him,\" he continued conversationally, like they were discussing the day's mail. \"But he didn't seem to know. I saw him look at you at the Christmas party when they came in. He was surprised. Why didn't you tell him?\"\n\n\"Because it was none of his business,\" Ginny snapped. Her heart raced. Her stomach churned. She thought she might vomit or pass out; her hands trembled. \"Sean, you are the father of this baby.\"\n\nHe shook his head, pushing away from the table, and she grabbed for him, snagged his sleeve but couldn't keep him there. He jerked from her touch and stood so fast the chair tipped over behind him. She jumped at the crash and put her hands on her ears for a moment. She closed her eyes.\n\n\"You are the father of this baby,\" she told him, not wanting to see him not believing her. \"I swear to you.\"\n\n\"I can't be.\"\n\n\"You are!\" Ginny shouted, glaring at him.\n\nThey stared at each other. She shuddered. He backed up to the doorway as though he meant to flee, but stayed.\n\n\"I can't be,\" he said again. \"I had a vasectomy.\"\n\nGinny tried to draw a breath and could find nothing but dust in her throat and lungs. She choked on it, gasping. This was...this was...\n\nShe became aware of him shaking her. Her head lolled. Sean cradled her, slapping lightly at her cheeks until she shoved him away from her. She struggled to her feet, facing off with him.\n\n\"What in the actual fuck do you mean, you had a vasectomy?\"\n\nHe looked as she imagined she had when confronted with the acknowledgment of her infidelity. Guilty and somehow defiant too. The world tipped, but she refused to slide with it.\n\n\"I couldn't take the chance of getting you pregnant again. I couldn't.\" His tone had turned pleading, and he held out his hands to her.\n\nShe refused to take them. \"I can't believe you'd do something like that without even telling me!\"\n\n\"I knew you'd say no.\"\n\nShe spit to the side, her disgust so thick it was like some living thing she needed to eject. \"You should have told me. We should have talked about it. We could've talked about lots of things!\"\n\n\"I knew you wanted a baby\u2014\"\n\n\"No!\" The word slashed at her throat. \"You wanted to fix the situation, Sean, the way you always do. You wanted to fix it so you didn't have to worry about me getting pregnant, so you didn't have to worry about anything. It was all about you, like it always is!\"\n\n\"That's not true!\"\n\nShe shook her head and made a shoving gesture with her hands, though she was nowhere near him. \"When? When did you do it?\"\n\n\"The weekend you were gone to the art show.\"\n\n\"In Philly.\" She laughed dully. \"Oh Christ, Sean. Jesus Christ.\"\n\n\"I know you were with him. And it was almost eight months ago. You do the math.\"\n\n\"You don't know shit,\" she told him flatly, her rage undiminished, but finding herself incapable of raising her voice. \"And you do the math, you son of a bitch. I came home from Philly and we made love. Remember? After we went to that Italian place. You couldn't even wait until we got upstairs. We did it in the living room. Remember that?\"\n\nThe sex had been some of the best they'd ever had, and, now, even the memory of that pleasure was destined to become pain. Ginny pressed her hand to her breast, pushing on her heart, willing it not to burst. She swallowed around the lump in her throat.\n\nWithout looking at him, she shook her head. \"You know it takes a few weeks after a vasectomy to be completely sterile, right? They did tell you that, didn't they?\"\n\nHe didn't answer at first, and when she forced herself to look at him, she saw another combination of guilt and defiance.\n\n\"Did you even read the paperwork or pay any sort of attention, Sean? Did you? No,\" she said before he could, \"because you never do. You never pay any fucking attention!\"\n\n\"I went back a week later, like they said. I was all good.\"\n\n\"Yeah, well, we fucked before that, didn't we?\" She straightened. \"This is your baby, and you want to know how I'm so sure?\"\n\nHe said nothing.\n\n\"I didn't fuck Jason in Philadelphia, that's how I know. In fact,\" she added as though it were a casual admission, when it was anything but, \"I never slept with him. Not once. I never even kissed him, so how's that for being absolutely sure he's not the one who knocked me up?\"\n\nSean blinked. She held up a hand to stop him from speaking. His mouth opened, then closed.\n\n\"I did not have sex with him. Never. But I did have sex with you and, vasectomy or not, you are the one who fathered this child. So I would suggest you pull up your big-boy pants and start dealing with it. Because this is...this is how it is,\" she gasped, breaking down at last. \"This is how it fucking is!\"\n\nSomehow, he was holding her, rocking and stroking her back. She didn't want to be in his arms, but didn't have the energy to push him away. He comforted her, but it was his own comfort he sought, and Ginny was just too damned tired to stop him.\n\n\"But I thought...\" Sean murmured. \"I mean, I saw some of your emails...\"\n\nShe didn't have the strength to even confront him about his snooping; at any rate, she'd sent the emails and had been wrong to do it. She always knew she would own up to what she'd done, if she had to. But that was before she found out about Sean's betrayal, which was somehow bigger than what she'd done. Or maybe it wasn't, maybe it only felt that way to her and would be the opposite to him. It didn't matter.\n\n\"You didn't sleep with him,\" he said happily, as though that made everything okay. \"Good. Oh good.\"\n\nShe pushed away from him and went on clumsy feet to the sink to splash some cold water on her face and the back of her neck.\n\n\"I'm glad,\" Sean said from behind her. \"God, Ginny. You don't know how glad I am.\"\n\n\"Well,\" she said coldly without turning, \"don't be that fucking happy. I didn't sleep with him, but I wanted to. And I was going to. He didn't show. That's the only reason I didn't.\"\n\nThe lights went out again.\nChapter Thirty-Four\n\nInstant darkness fell over them.\n\nGinny heard the scrape of a chair on the linoleum and Sean's muttered curse. The table bumped, the glass salt and pepper shakers in the center of it rattling. Sean cursed again.\n\n\"Don't move,\" she said crossly. \"You're going to get hurt.\"\n\n\"Where's the flashlight?\"\n\n\"I don't know. It should have turned on when the power went out.\"\n\n\"Did you use it today?\"\n\nShe could sense where this argument was going and her answer came out clipped, \"No. I didn't have to. It was daylight when Peg came for me.\"\n\n\"Are you sure you didn't use it and then not put it back?\"\n\nThat he could accuse of her this, of all things, while they stood together in the dark, after having the worst fight of their marriage...Ginny lost it. She started to laugh, at first low and then louder. Her laughter cycled up and up, becoming a series of hiccuping, frantic guffaws that hurt her throat.\n\n\"Jesus, Ginny! Stop it!\" His hand passed by her close enough to brush her sleeve, but he missed her.\n\n\"I didn't use it!\" she shouted into the shadows. \"You're the one who used it last. Remember? You took it downstairs to check the fuse box the last time it blew. That's the last time I saw it. You left it down there, probably.\"\n\n\"Well shit.\" Sean sounded miserable.\n\nShe didn't want to take glee in it, but she did. If she'd been able to caper with it, she would've. She wasn't proud of that, but it was the truth. The full and awful truth. She was glad he'd been the one to lose the flashlight, that his accusation had bounced back and hit him in the face.\n\n\"You left it down there,\" she crowed. More laughter, this time cut off with her hand over her mouth because the sound of it disturbed her. It would've been better to vomit than keep laughing that way.\n\n\"I'd better go get it.\"\n\n\"How are you going to do that in the dark?\" she said derisively. Disgusted by this, by everything. And so suddenly tired all she wanted to do was lie down and close her eyes and maybe not wake up.\n\n\"Let me use your phone.\"\n\nThe baby moved inside her, a reminder of why Ginny couldn't give in to selfishness. She sighed and fished in her pocket for her phone. When she thumbed the screen, the dull blue gleam provided at least a little illumination. A thought snagged her; she pulled her hand back before he could take the phone.\n\n\"Where's yours?\" A beat of silence proved her right again. Ginny sighed, no longer gleeful. No longer glad to be proven right. \"You lost it?\"\n\n\"I dropped it,\" Sean said. \"I think I did something to the battery. It won't turn on.\"\n\n\"But there's nothing wrong with your goddamned phone,\" she quoted. \"Wow.\"\n\n\"Just give me yours. I'll go get the flashlight and we'll figure out what to do next.\" Sean took the phone from her limp fingers. \"You stay here. Don't move.\"\n\nGinny said nothing. She watched the blue light move out of the kitchen. She heard the basement door open, then the creak of Sean's feet on the stairs.\n\nShe sat in the darkness.\n\nShe sat for a long time.\n\nShe wasn't sure when the tears began, only that they started in silence. They burned in her eyes and slid down her cheeks. She tasted salt. She put her face in her hands and sobbed, shoulders heaving, body racking.\n\nIn the darkness, Ginny broke.\n\nAnd in the darkness, a small hand touched her.\n\nShe didn't startle from it, because somehow she'd been expecting this to happen. Small fingers curled over her shoulder, then slipped down her arm. A small hand held hers. The fingers were cold and slender, the nails ragged when they pressed lightly into Ginny's palm.\n\n\"Carrie?\" Ginny whispered, and got no answer but a squeeze.\n\nThen the hand withdrew as the sound of Sean's feet came up the stairs. The cellar door opened with a familiar creak, and in the next moment the white glare of the flashlight cut through the dark and pierced her eyes. Shadows danced behind her.\n\nSomething crashed.\n\n\"Ginny?\"\n\n\"I'm right here.\"\n\n\"I told you to stay put.\" Sean shone the light around the kitchen.\n\nGinny put up a hand to block the glare, but not before she saw a glass of water she'd left on the edge of the counter had fallen and smashed on the floor. She twisted in her chair, but whatever had knocked it off the counter had disappeared. She closed her fingers over the residual feeling of that cold touch.\n\n\"You could've cut yourself,\" Sean said.\n\n\"I didn't do that.\" Outside, the wind howled and a spatter of snow hit the windows over the sink.\n\nIt startled Sean, who crunched glass under his feet. He muttered another invective and swept the light over her. \"It just fell?\"\n\nGinny shrugged.\n\n\"Don't tell me it was a ghost.\"\n\nShe said nothing, told him nothing. His shoes crunched more glass and he swept the light around the room again. He grunted.\n\nThe lights came on as all the appliances beeped. Sean clicked off the flashlight. Ginny didn't move.\n\n\"It's broken,\" Sean said unnecessarily, and she didn't know if he meant the glass or everything else.\nChapter Thirty-Five\n\n\"Mr. Miller?\"\n\nThe man getting ready to cross the street paused, brow furrowed as he tightened his scarf around his neck. \"Yes?\"\n\nGinny had been good at her job, back when she did it. Good at getting people to talk to her without alarming them. Something in her face, she thought. Something pleasant and deceptively innocent. She wasn't investigating Brendan Miller for insurance fraud, so, really, he had nothing to fear from her, but he looked at her warily anyway.\n\n\"I'm Ginny Bohn.\"\n\nIt took him a second or two, but he figured it out. From his expression, Ginny thought he might bolt, and what would she do then? Waddle after him? The thought was laughable.\n\nHis gaze fell to the bump of her belly beneath her puffy coat. \"If there's a problem with the house, you need to talk to the realtor about it. We signed papers; you took it as is...\"\n\n\"It's not about the house. Well. It sort of is about the house.\" She stepped to the side, in front of him, when he moved to go around her. She'd stopped working because she was pregnant, but now realized something\u2014he might've shoved her aside if not for her belly. She held up the train case. \"I have this.\"\n\nMiller stopped trying to get around her. \"What is it?\"\n\n\"It belonged to your sister.\"\n\nThe cold wind had rubbed two pink spots in his cheeks. Now they grew brighter. His mouth worked for a few seconds before he actually spoke. \"Impossible.\"\n\n\"I found it in the house. I thought you might want it.\"\n\nHe fixed her with an angry, sullen glare. \"I don't want it. I don't want anything to do with anything from that house. Okay?\"\n\n\"Okay. Okay.\" She knew how to soothe, how to gentle. Like taming a skittish horse or a strange, tooth-baring dog. \"I'm sorry. I just thought you might like to read it.\"\n\n\"Read it?\"\n\n\"There's a diary,\" Ginny told him. \"At least, I think that's what it is. It has your sister's initials on it. Look, can I buy you a cup of coffee or something? Get in out of the cold?\"\n\nShe pointed down the street. \"My treat.\"\n\nFor a moment, she thought he'd say yes. She was so certain, in fact, that she'd already taken a few steps in that direction. But Miller shook his head and backed up.\n\n\"No. I don't think so.\"\n\nGinny paused. There was an art to working people, getting them to agree to things they didn't want to do, or to admit to what they'd prefer to keep a secret. \"I know what happened to your sister.\"\n\nIt was the wrong thing to say. His gaze flickered. His mouth thinned. \"Nobody knows what happened to my sister.\"\n\nThis time, he did push past her. Ginny managed to snag his sleeve, not hard enough to stop him but enough to give him pause. \"There's something in the house, Mr. Miller.\"\n\nHe'd just stepped off the curb, and stood between two parked cars. Everything about him vibrated the urgency to flee across the street. He looked at her over his shoulder.\n\n\"I told you. You bought it as is. If you have a problem, talk to your realtor.\" Then he stepped out into the street.\n\n\"I think it's your sister!\"\n\nThat stopped him. He turned. He wasn't much older than Ginny, though the lines on his face and gray in his hair made him seem so. He was good-looking, behind the scowl and the furrowed brow, but there was nothing welcoming about him. Not at all.\n\nHis gaze dropped to her belly. \"What is it that you want, exactly?\"\n\n\"I just want to know what happened. That's all.\"\n\nShe'd gotten to him. Everything about him sagged. He put a hand over his eyes, briefly, before looking down the street to the coffee shop.\n\n\"Fine. I'll give you half an hour, but that's it.\"\nChapter Thirty-Six\n\n\"She was always scribbling.\" Miller looked at the case Ginny had pushed across the table in front of him, but he didn't touch it. \"My dad called her Doodle. She'd draw for hours in these big notepads, that soft white paper...what was it called? Newsprint. She'd draw cartoons and landscapes and people, animals, just whatever. And when she got older, she'd write stories to go with them.\"\n\n\"Did she keep a diary?\"\n\nHe shrugged. \"I don't know. I didn't pay attention.\"\n\nSomething in this sentence seemed to break him again, because he put his elbow on the table and his face into the comfort of his hand. Ginny had learned the trick of seeing when someone was faking pain, but everything about this guy's anguish was real. Her fingers crept over the table toward him, but she stopped herself from touching his sleeve. He didn't seem the sort to welcome it.\n\n\"I didn't pay attention,\" he repeated. \"I didn't want to know. I didn't want to see.\"\n\n\"See what?\" Ginny asked gently.\n\n\"My mother didn't either, though that's not really an excuse.\" He shuddered. His fingers dug into his skin. His hand covered his eyes, so she couldn't see if he was crying, but his voice had gone rough and hoarse.\n\nGinny was silent, giving him time.\n\nWhen he finally looked at her, his eyes were rimmed red but dry. \"She was always his favorite. I was the son, right? He should've been taking me out to play ball in the backyard, toss around the pigskin. He should've been taking me fishing, camping, all that shit. But nope, Caroline was his favorite. They'd spend hours tucked up together in his big chair, reading books or looking at those stories she wrote. She could do anything and get away with it. Once she carved her initials in the dining room table, can you believe it? I thought my mom was going to murder her, but my dad just told her to leave it alone. Caroline was a daddy's girl, all the way. My mother called her 'the little wife.' Like she was joking, but I don't think she was.\"\n\nA worm of nausea twisted inside her. Ginny's fingernails scraped at the table as she withdrew her hand. She linked her fingers, squeezing them tightly together on the table in front of her.\n\n\"Yeah,\" Miller said, though Ginny hadn't spoken. \"You know what I'm talking about. It was cute when she was little, right? But not when she started to get boo...breasts. She shot up a few inches, started to get curves and wear makeup.\"\n\n\"How old was she?\"\n\n\"Thirteen. And, Christ...\" He pressed the heel of his hand to his forehead for a moment, then shook his head. \"I have two daughters. Seventeen and fourteen. I know what it's like, you know, when they start developing. It gets weird. They get weird.\"\n\nDistaste rippled across his face, and he gave her a look of such loathing that she'd have recoiled if it had been directed at her instead of his memories.\n\n\"You have to make some distance between you. You just have to. They're not your little girls anymore, you can't be having them sit on your lap and whisper in your ears. It's just...that's not what a dad does.\" His lips drew back to reveal perfectly straight but yellowed teeth. \"I have daughters. I know.\"\n\nGinny had a flash of a summer night years ago. She'd been what, twelve? Thirteen? She'd worn a thin, sleeveless nightgown with flowers on it, and it had shrunk in the wash. More likely, she'd grown. It hit her midthigh instead of reaching her knees, and the fabric had grown faded in the wash. It had been her favorite for a long time. She'd come out of the shower, her hair still wet, and gone to sit with her dad on the couch to catch a rerun of some comedy program. He'd been annoyed, told her to go change her clothes or stay in her room. She hadn't understood then and maybe not ever, until just now.\n\n\"What did your mother do?\"\n\nMiller grimaced and looked down at his hands, which had linked much the same as Ginny's. \"She had her favorite too, I guess. Even if by default.\"\n\n\"And then your sister disappeared.\"\n\n\"She never came home from school.\" He kept his voice low and his gaze on his hands. His fingers twisted tighter, knuckles going white with the pressure. \"She went in the morning and stayed all day. Her friend Laura was the last person to see her, and she was crossing the park, heading for home. She never made it.\"\n\n\"And they never found out what happened?\"\n\nAnother shrug. He looked out the window, toward the street. \"No. Someone reported they saw her getting into a white van, but, really, that's such a clich\u00e9; who knows if it's true. We had some other reports of her being spotted in different places across the country. California, Montana. None of them ever panned out. She was just...gone.\"\n\n\"What did your parents do?\"\n\nHe looked at her. His smile was terrible, thin-lipped and more like a snarl. \"They fell apart. They'd been on rocky ground for a while before that.\"\n\n\"Fighting a lot?\"\n\nHe shook his head. \"Oh no. They never fought, at least not where I heard them. No. They stopped talking to each other before Caroline went missing. After she was gone for a while and the news started to taper off and the investigation went cold, they stopped even seeing each other. It was like they were invisible to each other. They'd pass in the hall, not even look at each other.\"\n\n\"It must've been horrible for you. I'm sorry.\"\n\nHis laughter was worse than the terrible smile. \"It could've been worse. I could've been in the back of someone's van, right?\"\n\n\"How old were you?\"\n\n\"Sixteen.\" The cup in front of him had stopped steaming, and now he drank. \"We stayed there for another year after she went missing. We never talked about her. I mean, I tried, but I wasn't allowed to.\"\n\n\"They told you that?\"\n\n\"They didn't have to. I wasn't stupid, and I wasn't heartless. I could see it upset them. So it was sort of like...I'd never had a sister in the first place. They took down her pictures. They put away her things. I wanted to save some of them...I tried.\"\n\nHe cleared his throat once, then again. He looked at her, his gaze naked. \"She always wanted a cat, but my dad hated them. Said he was allergic, but he wasn't. He just didn't like them. It was maybe the one thing he didn't give her that she wanted, you know? But he let her have hamsters instead. A whole bunch of them, they just kept having babies. Well, after she was gone, nobody remembered to take care of the hamsters. They started eating each other.\"\n\nGinny swallowed, thinking of the plastic bags in the closet. The bones. The fluffs of fur. \"Oh.\"\n\n\"Yeah.\" Brendan Miller gave a short, sharp laugh. \"I didn't want them to take them away, though. I kept thinking, hey, maybe she'll come back. If she ran away, right? She'll come back for them. She loved those stupid hamsters. So I took them, and I hid them. But they died anyway.\"\n\nShe didn't have to ask what he'd done with them; she already knew. But she didn't know why. \"You hid them in the closet?\"\n\nHe nodded, looking guilty, then lifting his chin as though daring her to accuse him of something. What, she didn't know. \"Yeah. I was a kid. A dumb kid. I thought maybe, even though they were dead, she'd want them. So I put them away for her until she could come back.\"\n\n\"But she never came back.\"\n\n\"No. Then my mom left him, and I went with her.\"\n\nGinny's cup was long empty and her bladder had begun its protests. \"And you never went back? Or had anything to do with your dad ever again?\"\n\nMiller shook his head. \"No. And that bastard...he never...\"\n\nShe waited for him to compose himself, embarrassed not just by his story but by the somehow confessional nature of it. She shifted in her chair, needing the bathroom and not wanting to get up before he was finished. Miller swallowed hard and gave her another of those bright, hard stares.\n\n\"He never bothered trying to see me, I mean. We left, he never bothered or cared about us after that. He sent checks on time; that was all my mother cared about. And that was it.\" He drew in a shaky breath and let it out. \"Like I said. He had his favorite, and it wasn't me.\"\n\nBefore Ginny could say something, even to offer sympathy, Miller had pushed the train case back toward her.\n\n\"So I don't really care to read my sister's journal or whatever it is. Throw it in the trash. It's old news. She's gone, and she's never ever coming back.\"\n\n\"You're sure of that?\"\n\nHe shrugged. Then nodded. Stood. He tossed a couple dollar bills on the table, though she'd offered to pay for the coffee he'd barely touched. Miller stared down at her.\n\n\"I'm sure of it. All those stories about seeing her in California or wherever are bullshit, and you think so too, or else you wouldn't have come after me so hard. You think my sister's haunting your house, Mrs. Bohn? Well. You might be right. But, guess what, I don't care. And I don't want to know about it. Never contact me again, or I'll have no problem going to the authorities. And if you find anything else...\" he paused to give the box a sneer, \"...consider it yours. I don't want it back.\"\n\nShe didn't want to shout after him, but it took her two or three steps for every one of his just so she could catch up. Ignoring her suddenly violent urge to pee, Ginny caught him again at the curb. \"You think your father did something to her, don't you?\"\n\nMiller gave her the side eye. \"I don't think it. I know he did.\"\n\nThen he stepped off the curb and crossed the street, leaving her behind.\nChapter Thirty-Seven\n\nThis was it. She was going to open it and read it. Ginny plucked the key from beneath the stack of faded pictures, and fit it into the lock. She turned it. She opened Caroline Miller's diary and started to read.\n\nFour pages of random thoughts scrawled in an uneven hand. Nothing important, no revelations. Then...nothing. Blank pages.\n\n\"Wow. So that's kind of a letdown, huh?\" Sean leaned over her shoulder. \"Bummer.\"\n\nGinny had told him the entire story, come clean about everything. The things she'd seen and heard and felt and thought. The time for secrets had ended, for both of them. Sean didn't believe her about there being a ghost in the house, but he did believe that Ginny thought it was true. That was enough for her; it had to be.\n\nIn the past, Ginny hadn't asked him to quit smoking or sell his motorcycle. He'd decided those things on his own. She didn't ask him to stay, either. She hadn't asked Sean if he'd thought of leaving her, but she'd faced the idea of leaving him and hadn't done it; now she waited. Some things that were broken could be repaired, good as new. Others, even if they worked again, would always bear evidence of the damage that had been done. That was their marriage. Broken, repaired, working somehow. But not unscathed. Perhaps someday they'd both stop tiptoeing around each other, or maybe they'd always hold what each had done between them for the rest of their lives. The baby would make a difference. Or not.\n\n\"I love you\" was all she'd said, over and over, as Sean paced and ran his hands through his hair and when he'd asked her if it was his fault, any of this. \"I love you,\" she'd told him. \"That's what matters.\"\n\nShe wasn't sure if he believed in her love, any more than he believed in the ghost of Caroline Miller, but it seemed as though he believed Ginny believed in it. And that also had to be enough.\n\nNow, he squeezed her shoulders before withdrawing. \"I'm sorry. I know you hoped it would give you some clues. Or something.\"\n\n\"It's okay. I'm not sure I'd have learned anything I didn't already know. Or couldn't guess.\" Ginny closed the diary and put it back into the train case, along with the pictures and all the other bits and pieces of things that had once belonged to Caroline Miller. She looked at him. \"And maybe...maybe someone in a white van really did carry her off. Or maybe she's okay.\"\n\n\"We'll just never know,\" Sean said.\n\nAnd maybe it was better that way.\nChapter Thirty-Eight\n\nThe worst winter in twenty years was turning into the worst spring. While usually an early thaw would've been welcome, this year the massive amounts of snow that had accumulated were melting too fast for the earth to handle it. Water rushed day and night, down the street and into the drains, which overflowed and made lakes across the sidewalks and into the yards. Kids sloshed in it and ran paper boats down it.\n\nGinny looked for Pennywise, the clown.\n\nNot really, though she did avoid the drains when she went out to get the mail. Debris had clogged many of them, making the problem worse. So did the gray skies dumping more rain every day. She was sick of the sound it made on the roof. Sick of sloshing. Sick of everything being damp.\n\nShe was sick of waiting, waiting, for things to change.\n\nShe could see the star of her due date on the calendar now. The obstetrician told her she could go early. She could go late. This wasn't her first pregnancy, but it was her first to go to term and there was no predicting what her body was going to do. The baby would come when it was ready, the doctor told her. That was the way babies worked.\n\nFrom the nursery window, Ginny watched Kelly and Carson duck through the hedge and into her yard. The snow had gone, replaced by mud and the grass that had been overlong before winter came. They ran through it in their rain boots and slickers, slashing at the overgrowth with long sticks. Then back through the hedge, widening the hole for a moment before the brush closed behind them again.\n\nThe rocking chair Sean had struggled so hard to put together still squeaked, but rather than finding this annoying, Ginny took comfort in the consistent noise. She closed her eyes and rocked in the nursery she'd finally allowed herself to decorate, both hands on her big belly. She listened to the squeak and the creak of wood on wood.\n\nShe listened for the sound of footsteps.\n\nSomething like a sigh brushed past her on a swirl of cool air. They'd turned off the heat at the beginning of last week, and even in an unseasonably warm late February, it was not yet time for air-conditioning. She wanted to open the windows at least, but the rain prevented it. Instead, Sean had turned on the house fan.\n\nGinny rocked and breathed. Another whisper, another sigh, the soft pad of footsteps in the hallway. If she opened her eyes, she'd see nothing but shadows. Ghosts never showed themselves in the daytime. But she felt a presence, eyes watching. She felt a hopefulness. It was the only way to describe it.\n\nSo, she sang.\n\nHer gran had sung this lullaby to her when she was small. Like the best of Grimm's fairy tales, the song about a pair of children lost in the woods had delighted her childhood love of all things macabre, and it wasn't until Ginny got older that the horror of the lyrics had become clear. She sang it now anyway, to the baby in her womb and for those she'd lost.\n\nFor the one who seemed unable to leave.\n\nIn the yard, Kelly and Carson chased each other again. Their screams snapped open Ginny's eyes. She sighed herself, annoyed that they couldn't seem to stay in their own yard, that they had to be so loud. Her child would never, she thought mildly. Never, never.\n\nThey disappeared around the side of the house, heading back toward their yard again. Ginny's eyes drooped. She drifted. She'd been sleeping better at night, but now it seemed all she wanted to do was sleep. Her body's way of getting ready, she supposed.\n\nSleeping, she dreamed.\n\n* * * * *\n\nShe stood next to the crib Sean had so painstakingly put together. It had been dressed in pale-green-and-yellow linens decorated with jungle animals. She recognized it as the pattern someone had given her at her baby shower\u2014though, as was the way of dreams, she couldn't remember who'd given it. Cartoon lions and elephants and monkeys capered next to palm trees all over the sheets and bumpers. Over the crib hung a mobile, and it spun lightly and tinkled out a classical tune she couldn't recall the name of.\n\nThere was nothing scary in this dream, but a sense of unease twisted inside her, getting strong as she crossed the room to look into the empty crib. She touched the mobile with one finger to stop its turning, and the music ground to a sudden, unlovely halt. One, two, final notes plucked at the air and fell silent.\n\nGauzy curtains blew inward, reminding her again this wasn't real. She'd never have such long curtains. They were dangerous. Could tangle around a curious toddler's neck. And ugly, she thought. Pink and purple, sheer, tab tops.\n\nThese were not her curtains.\n\nAh, this, then, was not her baby's room. Ginny turned in half a circle, looking around. Again, in the way of dreams, she looked down at her flat belly and mourned the loss of it, even as she knew it had to mean she'd given birth. That meant there was a baby here, somewhere. Not in this room, which clearly belonged to an older child. A girl who favored pink and purple, a white-painted bed hung with netting Ginny would also never allow because it could strangle a child in the night.\n\nEverywhere she looked, she saw danger. A tangle of too many electric cords plugged into a socket. A bookcase laden with toys and books, unsecured to the wall, just begging to be toppled over onto a soft head. In the closet, a pull string, too long, and an empty socket, tempting a child's curious fingers to probe. Too many things that could cause harm. Her heart pounded. She clutched at the air, but touched nothing.\n\nSomewhere, far away, her baby cried for her. Ginny's nipples got tight and hard, burning. She covered them with her palms and felt the sharp points, but the pressure didn't relieve the tingling and hot fluid leaked through her shirt. An answering pull tugged in her womb, deep inside. Like menstrual cramps, but harder and more painful.\n\nShe turned around and around, but this room had no door. She was trapped here, and she ran her hands over the walls, now a garish pink. Like the inside of an organ. Like a wound. The steady thud-thud of a heartbeat throbbed in her ears as the floor beneath her shifted and pulsed.\n\nThe crying didn't stop. Desperate, Ginny pushed at the walls, feeling for the door or a window, and found nothing. She turned around and around. She punched at the walls and felt an answering pulse of pain deep inside her. She kicked, she punched, she swore and got nothing but more pain for her efforts.\n\nGinny quieted. Listening. The baby\u2014her baby, she had no doubts\u2014still wailed and wept. Ginny pressed her fingers to her forehead. This was a dream. She knew it, yet couldn't quite control it.\n\nShe was sitting in a rocking chair by the window but couldn't wake herself. She tried, with a leap and a howl, but the room stayed the same. She heard the creaking of the rocker on the wood and imagined her foot pressing. Releasing. Her breathing, soft and slow. But she could not wake herself.\n\nThe baby was still crying.\n\nThere was a door in this room, she remembered that. A small door, child-sized. It went from one room to the next. She didn't need to get out another way, if she could get through there...and suddenly it was there, that little door. That tunnel strewn with mouse shit and insulation, the hazard of nails poking through the roof, ready to score her scalp and make her bleed.\n\nThen she was in the library. She still heard the baby, though it was farther away now. Harder to hear.\n\nGinny's baby was crying, it was somewhere in the house, it was lost and she had to find it. Ginny had lost her baby. She'd lost her baby. She had lost her baby, and it was crying, it was screaming for her, it was crying and there was a pounding...a pounding...\n\nA pounding at the front door, and the bell rang. Steadily, insistently demanding she wake up, wake up, wake up.\n\n* * * * *\n\nGinny woke, startled, gasping, her hands pushing out instinctively to ward off the touch of whoever was shaking her awake. She was alone. She blinked and ran her tongue over her sleep-sticky teeth. She'd been asleep in the rocking chair, her head drooping, and now her neck hurt.\n\nShe rubbed it as she listened. No baby crying, but the doorbell rang again. Then a moment after it. Then there was a knocking.\n\nWith a sigh, she heaved herself up from the chair, ready to pound whoever was banging so fiercely. It had better be a special delivery package of something expensive, she thought as she lumbered down the stairs and shuffled to the front door. But it wasn't.\n\nIt was Kendra, hair wild, eyes wide. \"Ginny. I knew you were home, I saw your car.\"\n\n\"I was sleeping.\" It was a pointed response, but Kendra didn't get it.\n\n\"Are Kelly and Carson over here?\"\n\nGinny stifled a yawn with the back of her hand, noticing that Kendra looked soaked. Her jeans were black to the knees from wet, her shoes sloshing. She had no umbrella and her pale-pink T-shirt had gone semitransparent. She needed a sweatshirt.\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"No?\" Kendra looked past her into the hall. \"Are you sure?\"\n\nAnnoyed, Ginny leaned against the doorway to relieve some of the pressure on her back. Her entire pelvis ached, along with her hips. Her joints were separating, according to the doctor. She was lucky she could stand upright at this point, that's how it felt.\n\n\"Yeah. I'm sure.\" Ginny paused. \"I saw them earlier, in the backyard.\"\n\nThis was also a pointed statement Kendra didn't seem to get. She shook her head, water splattering. \"I told them to stay in the yard. Not to come over here. But they just really like your yard, I guess...\"\n\n\"I guess they do, but they're not inside, I'm sure I'd have noticed that. Did you go around the back of the house and check? Maybe they're peeking in my windows again.\"\n\n\"They're not there.\" Kendra heaved a breath and burst into tears.\n\nGinny watched her impassively for a moment. Surely this was still a dream. Part of a nightmare that was worse than the one she'd been having. But it got worse, because Kendra let out a low, sobbing breath.\n\n\"OHMYGODTHECREEKTHEYWENTDOWNTOTHECREEK!\"\n\nThe words came out in a rush, one butted up against the other so that Ginny needed a half minute to parse out what the other woman had said\u2014but when she did, her resentment and snark fled as swiftly as a hare chased by nipping hounds. She reached for Kendra and found her wrists. Tugged them.\n\n\"Stop.\" She sounded calmer than she felt. \"Stop, we'll find them. We will go look, okay? I'm sure they're fine.\"\n\nKendra, panicked, shook her head so fast her hair stuck and clung to her cheeks. She moaned, a brittle, fragile noise that set the hair on the back of Ginny's neck standing upright. She bore down on Kendra's wrists, pinching the skin and maybe even crunching the bones. Kendra cried out, but looked at her.\n\n\"We will find them. Okay? Come on. Let's go look.\"\n\nKendra resisted. \"Noooooo...\"\n\nGinny wanted to slap her. \"If they're really down there, don't you think you'd better haul your ass and get to them?\"\n\n\"What if they are there?\" Kendra cried through chattering teeth. She jerked free of Ginny's grip and crossed her arms over her stomach, bending as though she might puke. \"What if they are there, and we find them?\"\n\nGinny stepped out of the way, no patience left for this woman whose terror she could empathize with, but whose uselessness she could not. \"We want to find them\u2014\"\n\nKendra shook her head again and looked at Ginny with wide but somehow sightless eyes. \"WHAT IF THEY'RE DEAD?\"\n\n\"They aren't dead,\" Ginny said solidly and looked past Kendra to the pouring rain. \"I'm sure they're wet and cold and scared of getting into trouble, but you won't ever know if you don't move your ass.\"\n\nKendra still didn't move, not until Ginny grabbed up her coat from the rack and pushed past her. She'd forgotten boots and had none anyway, her feet too swollen for anything but these slippers. Sodden grass squelched under her feet as she stepped off the porch and sidewalk, with Kendra finally following. They should've gone through the house and out the back, but too late now. Ginny hunched against the rain, which sent chill, dripping fingers trickling down the back of her neck.\n\nThe yard sloped gently but in her ungainly state she needed support and grabbed Kendra's arm to get it. Fortunately the woman didn't let her topple. She gripped Ginny by the arm, and then with a handful of her jacket in the back. She barely kept them both upright when Ginny slipped in the mud, though. The sudden shift in her weight sent pain rippling through her thighs and deep inside.\n\nGinny groaned. \"Oh God. Kendra, seriously, I'm like eleven months pregnant here; you're going to have to go down the bank yourself.\"\n\nThe creek had already risen up and over, flooding the lower yard. Ginny hadn't realized how close to the house it had crept, even in the few short hours since last she'd looked out the window. The grass floated like seaweed in the cold brown water. Rippling waves pushed some debris, newspapers or junk mail, it looked like, against Ginny's calf and she wrinkled her nose in disgust.\n\n\"I can't!\"\n\nGinny stood as straight as she could and backhanded Kendra across the face. The slap wasn't nearly as hard as she'd meant it to be, but it still cracked Kendra's cheek and left a red imprint.\n\nKendra gasped and put a hand to her face.\n\n\"Look at me!\" Ginny demanded. \"Should I be out here going after your kids? No! What the hell is wrong with you? Get your ass down there and look for them!\"\n\nKendra stepped back, and Ginny wavered in the squishy muck. More rippling water washed over her legs, splashing the hem of her nightgown. She looked to where the creek had once burbled and chuckled along over smoothly polished stones, as cheerful and dangerous as a fluffy kitten. It rushed and roared now.\n\nJust across it, in a pond like the one in which Ginny and Kendra stood, was a figure in a red hooded coat. It turned at the sound of Ginny's shouts, and Kendra let out a wail of relief.\n\n\"Kelly! Kelly! Where's Carson?\"\n\nHe was there too, a little farther on. Both children waved at their mother, who set off at a run through the overflowing creek toward them. She went down in a minute as her foot plunged into a hole or something. Kendra face-planted into the water and flailed.\n\nGinny wanted to laugh in that horrid way she always wanted to chuckle when someone fell, not because she really thought it was funny, but because there was no helping it. She cut it off into a strangled yelp and moved a step or two forward. She stopped herself from going farther.\n\nShe was pregnant, for God's sake, and already this was a bad idea. Kendra had fallen into the water, and Ginny didn't want to do the same. She'd never get up. She'd drown in her own backyard.\n\nBesides, Kendra had made it to her feet, soaked and muddy, but seemingly unscathed. Until she started to scream, that was. She screamed and flailed some more, backpedaling and falling again. She rolled, desperate to get up and out, while the kids stared at her with goggle eyes. Kelly got too close to the edge, where the water was rushing instead of just rippling, and her feet got taken out from under her.\n\nGinny watched in horror as Kelly went under, nothing but the red hood showing. In seconds she was downstream a few feet and sputtering up out of the water, but she couldn't get to her feet. Kendra screamed. Carson had put his hands over his face.\n\nGinny was moving without thinking, one hand on her belly and the other held out to balance herself like a tightrope walker with a pole. She slipped in the soggy grass but made it to water up to her knees before Kelly went under again. The girl had snagged on a tree branch that had fallen into the water, and it was the only thing keeping her from being pushed farther downstream. It was also pressing her under the water.\n\n\"OHMYGODMYBABY!\" Kendra shrieked.\n\nGinny was actually closer to the girl. Her slippers had come off. Her toes dug into the mud and grass, which gave her a better grip. Just a foot or so in front of her was where the creek normally ran, and she had no idea how deep it was. Just that it was fast. Beside her was a part of another branch that had fallen during one of the snowstorms, thick and heavy enough that she had to strain to lift it.\n\n\"Help me!\" she ordered Kendra.\n\nMiraculously, the other woman moved without fuss. She grabbed the end of the branch and lifted it as Ginny guided it toward Kelly. The girl grabbed at it. Missed. Grabbed again.\n\nThis time, she caught it. Her mother yanked it, moving Kelly just a few feet closer so she could grab the red coat.\n\nIt was over in minutes. Ginny found herself clutching a sobbing and shaking Kelly, both of them higher up on the lawn and away from the creek, while Kendra waded across using the branches and grabbed up Carson. By the time she got back to Ginny's yard, all of them had blue lips.\n\nBut they were alive.\n\n\"Oh my God, oh my God!\" Kendra clutched at both kids. \"What were you doing! What were you thinking?\"\n\n\"We...we...we wanted to see the...\" Carson could barely speak through his chattering teeth.\n\nWhatever it was he'd wanted to see, his mother wasn't interested. She shook him, then grabbed at his sister and started hauling them away from the water.\n\nGinny, exhausted and shivering, followed. Every part of her ached, and all she wanted was a hot shower, clean clothes and the comfort of her bed. Instead, she slipped on the sopping grass and went to her knees. Her fingers dug into the soft mud.\n\nAhead of her Kendra wasn't even looking back as she bustled her kids home. The three of them were sobbing and screaming. Ginny thought she should be offended her neighbor wasn't even bothering to look back and check on her, but that would mean she had to deal with Kendra and her two spawn. And didn't she understand, anyway, the force that moved a mother to forget everything else but her children?\n\nThe baby moved inside her, protesting the position and kicking out so hard the little feet stole Ginny's breath. She gasped, then coughed as she pushed herself along the muddy slope and struggled to get herself upright. Her fingers dug again into the soil and grass and slipped, scraping along a tree branch. Or something. Not a tree branch.\n\nGinny dug a little deeper and came up with something shorter than the length of her forearm. Knobbed on the end. It must once have been white, but time in the earth had turned it dark. She cradled it against her for a moment and looked behind her at the rushing water that had eroded so much of her yard. Then at the thing in her hand. She knew what had so captivated Kelly's and Carson's attentions, what they'd been looking at.\n\nIt was a bone.\nChapter Thirty-Nine\n\nShe'd showered and changed her clothes and tied her wet hair up on top of her head, but that only left the back of her neck exposed and vulnerable. Sean's fingers squeezed, squeezed her there. He meant the touch to be gentle and soothing, but every press against her sent a ripple of irritation down her spine, until finally she shrugged her shoulders to squirm away.\n\nThe officer who'd come to the house was young and fresh scrubbed. His uniform had been crisp and polished when he came to the door, but now shoes were spattered with mud and his trouser legs, sodden. He'd gone down to the creek, but in the dark and with the rain coming down more heavily than before, he'd come back in the house.\n\n\"How long will it take?\" Ginny asked. \"Until you know if it's human?\"\n\nThe officer looked uncomfortable. \"I'm not really sure. I've never had to deal with anything like this before. It could be a...week? Maybe?\"\n\n\"A week?\" Ginny sounded as outraged as she felt and turned away to keep him from seeing her face.\n\n\"Well...forgive me, but it's not like it's an emergency,\" the officer said quietly. \"We'll do the best we can and let you know, okay? In the meantime, if you find anything else, you let us know.\"\n\n\"We're not going to find anything else.\" Sean said this to soothe her, not the cop. He rubbed her shoulders again. \"Thanks for coming out, Officer.\"\n\nWhen he'd gone, and they were in bed, trying to sleep, Sean kissed her shoulder. \"It's going to be okay, Ginny. All of this will be okay. I promise you.\"\n\nShe knew about his promises, and wanted to believe him. Or at least that he meant it. But how could he promise her something like that?\n\n\"Maybe now you can just forget about all this stuff.\" Sean's voice rose beside her in the dark. He sounded sleepy.\n\nGinny was anything but tired. She breathed in the scent of lavender, faint now but still lovely. She needed to buy some more before the baby came. She had to do a lot of things before the baby came.\n\n\"It's over,\" Sean said. \"You have to know that, right?\"\n\nSean loved horror movies as much as she did, maybe more. He had to know that finding the source didn't make the ghosts go away. Not if you hadn't yet figured out what they wanted. Ginny breathed. She breathed.\n\nThe bed dipped as he rolled toward her. His hand rested on her hip, then slipped around to caress her belly. His heat covered her back as he nuzzled at her shoulder.\n\n\"You don't believe me,\" she said. \"Even after what we found.\"\n\n\"We don't know yet what you found.\"\n\n\"Bones, Sean.\"\n\n\"They could be anything. Animals. Someone's pet cemetery, probably.\"\n\nGinny shivered, though her flannel pj's, the blankets and her husband's warmth had made her anything but cold. \"They're not animal bones.\"\n\nSean sighed. \"Honey...even if they're not...\"\n\n\"What?\" She'd have turned to face him, but her body was too unwieldy. \"If they're not...what?\"\n\n\"Even if they're not animal bones, they're not hers.\"\n\n\"And that's supposed to reassure me?\" Ginny huffed and tossed his arm off her so she could heave herself upright. The floor felt very far away when she sought it with her toes. \"Jesus, Sean. If they're not Caroline's bones, whose are they? Do you think that makes me feel better?\"\n\nHe shifted to sit next to her, his legs long enough that his feet had no trouble finding the floor. He took her hand. \"I just think you've let yourself get too worked up about this Caroline Miller business. You said yourself there were reports of her being sighted in California and Idaho and a whole bunch of places.\"\n\n\"Her own brother thinks something happened to Caroline here, in this house. Something her dad did. Well, I think her dad killed her.\"\n\n\"And buried her down by the creek.\"\n\n\"Yes.\" Ginny shook her head. Her bladder panged. She might as well get up and go to the bathroom. She couldn't sleep anyway, and she'd be up in an hour, even if she peed now.\n\n\"That bone was small. It was really small.\"\n\nA Braxton Hicks contraction rippled across her belly, and she bit back a gasp as she put a hand on the bedpost to keep herself from doubling over. It wasn't painful, just surprising. Her fingers gripped the wood.\n\n\"It didn't belong to a fourteen-year-old girl. That's all I'm saying.\"\n\nGinny put her other hand on the lump of her belly. The baby was quiet, not moving. Did it dream, she wondered suddenly. Or did it share her dreams the way it shared what she ate?\n\n\"It was a baby's bones.\"\n\n\"We don't know that either.\"\n\nBut she knew it. She felt it. She rubbed her belly, but the baby didn't move. When was the last time she'd felt it move? She'd lost track. So close to the end now, it seemed the baby was always squirming, never still.\n\n\"I know it, Sean. I know it.\"\n\nShe didn't realize she was weeping until he pulled her close to stroke her hair and his T-shirt felt damp under her cheek. Ginny knuckled her eyes, pushing hard enough to make brightness bloom behind her eyelids. She drew one hitching breath after another but couldn't seem to get enough air. She rocked, and he rocked with her.\n\n\"It's a baby. I know it's a baby...\"\n\nHe hushed her, but she couldn't be soothed. Tiny bones in the closet, bigger bones in the yard. So much death in this house, and the baby hadn't moved, hadn't moved in hours.\n\nShe realized she'd said it aloud when he answered her.\n\n\"Does it hurt anywhere?\" Sean rubbed her back. \"Ginny. Are you...bleeding?\"\n\nShe shook her head, then wondered if he could see her in the dark or just feel the motion of her body. \"No. It's not that.\"\n\nShe'd spent the last few months telling him over and over that this was all going to be fine, but no matter how much she'd pummeled him, Sean had never quite believed it. Had she been wrong, and he right? Her hands moved over her belly again and again, seeking any motion beyond the tightening of her muscles.\n\n\"It doesn't hurt. They're not regular. It's Braxton Hicks, not regular contractions.\"\n\n\"It's too early for you to be in labor.\"\n\n\"I'm not in labor, Sean.\" Ginny swallowed snot and salt; the taste nauseated her.\n\n\"Should we call the clinic?\"\n\nAt two in the morning, calling the doctor for a little hysteria seemed unreasonable, unless you were a pregnant woman nearly due to give birth, one who'd found bones in her backyard.\n\n\"I'm just upset. Give it a few minutes.\"\n\nTogether, they waited in the dark, their hands linked, but the cramps and contractions eased.\n\n\"It's going to be okay, Ginny. I promise you,\" Sean said again as morning light eased through the windows.\n\nShe didn't believe him, but she believed he thought it was true, and this also had to be enough.\nChapter Forty\n\nGinny didn't want to look out into the backyard. Caution tape sectioned off the lower portion of the yard where the creek still ran deep and fast. The rain hadn't stopped, either. She didn't want to look out and see the churned mud and torn-up grass, or all the places the investigating team had dug. It was only a yard, the damage could be repaired.\n\nAnd they'd found nothing.\n\nThey were going to keep looking. Moving downstream, as well as starting farther upstream. There wouldn't be a single infant bone buried in her yard; that just didn't make sense. But it could've come from anywhere, not her yard, or its companions might've been swept away.\n\nIf only the rain would stop. Off and on for the past week and a half, sometimes a steady downpour and others a faint drizzle, the water refused to sink into the ground already oversaturated from the melting snow. Everything was wet. Nothing would dry.\n\nGinny didn't really want the tea she'd made\u2014even thinking about drinking it made her feel like she had to pee. The never-ending patter of rain on the roof didn't help. Her back hurt. Her feet hurt. All her joints ached and creaked. Sitting for too long made her rear end numb, but lounging on the couch left her too lethargic to finish all the tasks that had suddenly become so important. The books called it \"nesting,\" and Peg laughed when Ginny told her on the phone how she'd gotten the overwhelming urge to run every single washable item in the house through the laundry.\n\nGinny hadn't laughed. The need to make everything clean for the arrival of her baby was pathological and embarrassing, but she was also helpless against it. The problem had become lugging the baskets up and down the stairs, difficult enough earlier, before she'd become so huge and clumsy. Now impossible.\n\nShe comforted herself with folding and refolding the tiny shirts and pajamas. With stacking diapers and packages of wipes. She arranged and rearranged the plastic shelves full of baby items and organized the selection of stuffed toys on the wooden bookcase. She rocked in the chair, which, with its hard wooden back, should've been uncomfortable, but which offered her just the right amount of support.\n\nShe rocked a lot.\n\nShe dreamed.\n\nShe woke to darkness, sorry at once she'd allowed herself to nap in the chair instead of in bed or at least on the couch. Her head spun for a second or two when she stood, gripping the arm of the chair, and blinking to orient herself. The night-light in the hall reminded her where she was, but for a good few minutes she had to think about it.\n\nThe nursery. She was in the nursery. In her house. Sean was gone; he'd be home later, after work, after class. Later. Everything would be later.\n\nDiscomfort rippled across her lower belly. She stood for a moment, legs planted slightly more than shoulder-width apart. Something twinged inside her, and she winced.\n\nShe needed a drink. Her mouth had gone dry. Her stomach was a little upset, and the thought of a cold glass of ginger ale was all at once the most perfect thing she could imagine.\n\nShe shuffled toward the door out of habit and was glad for it when her foot kicked something small and metal. There was no way she could bend to pick it up, but she heard it skitter across the floor and land somewhere close to the soft throw rug. When she turned on the light switch near the door, the lights seemed to take forever to turn on. Those stupid fluorescent bulbs she hated. Too dim at first to see what she'd kicked, and she didn't want to wait until they got bright enough.\n\nIt was a button. Struggling, she managed finally to grab it and tucked it in her pocket. By the time she got downstairs, she had to pee. Again. The sound of rain had infiltrated everything, so that the splash of urine in the bowl was drowned out. She flushed, washed her hands, and in the kitchen poured herself a tall glass of ginger ale. The first sip went down easy, cool and sparkling. The second tasted bitter. She poured the rest down the sink.\n\nFrom the basement came the juddering sound of the sump pump going. The floor rumbled a little under her feet. Ginny put her hand on the counter for a moment, feeling off-balance. Her hair fell in her face, and she brushed it away.\n\nThe phone rang, and she thought about ignoring it, but answered anyway. \"Hello.\"\n\n\"Hey, sweetheart. It's me.\"\n\nThe sound of Sean's voice relieved her more than she knew she needed to be relieved. \"When are you coming home?\"\n\n\"Soon. The professor was late, and he's going over stuff that will be on the final. I was going to duck out early, but...\"\n\n\"No. You shouldn't miss it.\" This class was breaking him. He needed all the help he could get. Ginny took a deep breath, but her lungs barely filled. Too much baby, not enough room for anything else.\n\n\"What's going on there? You okay?\"\n\n\"It's still raining. And it's dark,\" she added.\n\nHe laughed. \"Turn the lights on?\"\n\n\"I don't know, I kind of like it in the dark. It's peaceful, with the sound of the rain.\"\n\n\"I thought you'd be sick of that by now. I am. How's the sump pump?\" Sean coughed lightly, then murmured something to someone on the other end of the line. \"Sorry, honey, I have to go. The break's over.\"\n\n\"Go, go.\" Ginny made a flapping gesture with her hand, though of course he couldn't see it. \"I'm fine. Everything's okay here. So long as the power stays on.\"\n\n\"Right.\" Sean paused. \"Shit. I should come home.\"\n\nShe laughed. \"No, no. I'm fine. Really. Be careful coming home, the rain's horrible.\"\n\n\"And you...the baby? You're still okay?\"\n\nHis question annoyed her less now that she was so close to the end, because he was asking something she could answer with full confidence and have him believe her.\n\n\"A few Braxton Hicks. That's all. I love you. Be careful,\" she added, trying to get him before he could disconnect, but he already had.\n\nThe floor vibrated again as the sump pump went off. Ginny peeked out the back door at the glitter of rain slanting down. The entire backyard had become a swamp. They wouldn't have to bother going to the beach this summer, they could simply pitch an umbrella off their back patio.\n\nHer stomach had settled a bit, which was good, though now the first tingles of heartburn were tickling the base of her throat. Ginny took a handful of saltines and a glass of milk with her upstairs to the library, where she picked up the book she'd been trying to finish for the past few weeks. There was nothing wrong with the book, it was all her. Easily distracted and having difficulty focusing. She thumbed the pages and settled her milk on the small wooden table she'd set up next to the chaise lounge. Then she tucked herself under the knitted throw and tried to concentrate.\n\nThe problem was the rain. Constant, ceaseless, drumming. She'd turned the heat up and now the room had become almost stifling. Ginny couldn't stand against the triple threat of heat, white noise and pregnancy. The book dropped from her fingers and she knew it as she let her head fall back against the chaise, but she was simply too drowsy to care.\n\nShe woke up when the electricity went out. The sudden black pounded her eyelids as thoroughly as if she'd been in the dark and the lights had snapped on. Ginny pushed herself upright, forgetting about the book, which crashed to the floor. She looked automatically toward the windows to see if theirs was the only house without power, but the outside was as dark as in. So, the whole neighborhood then.\n\nFortunately, she'd grown so used to moving around this house in the dark that it was no big deal for her to make her way downstairs, though she made sure to take her time and place each foot solidly and carefully on the step, to be sure she didn't tumble down. The rechargeable flashlight had turned on when the power cut out, so she had no trouble seeing her way to grab it from the dock.\n\nBeneath her feet, the floor did not vibrate. The sump pump wouldn't run without electricity, of course. Which meant water in the basement. Ginny moved to the back door again, but the light from inside reflected on the glass and she could see nothing but her own silhouette. She shielded the light and tried to see outside.\n\nThat couldn't be the creek, could it? Lapping at the edges of the flagstone patio? Ginny opened the back door, heedless of the rain, and held up her light.\n\n\"Oh shit.\" It was the creek, or maybe it was just that the saturated swamp of her backyard had joined with the still-rushing creek waters to make one vast pond that seemed to be creeping toward her house at an exponentially fast rate. \"Shit, shit.\"\n\nHer phone rang from her pocket. \"Sean? Where are you?\"\n\n\"I'm stuck. The roads are closed. The bridge is out.\" Sean sounded panicked. \"The state police are redirecting everyone; they said almost all the back roads are flooded out. I don't know how I'm going to get home. Are you okay?\"\n\nOther than the nausea now rumbling through her? \"Yes. I'm fine. But the power's out. And the water...Sean, the water's going to come into the basement.\"\n\n\"Don't you go down there!\" he warned. \"Not in the dark. It'll be fine.\"\n\nGinny moaned, imagining the water pouring in, rising. Ruining. \"But the water...\"\n\n\"It's too dangerous for you to go down there. Promise me you won't. In fact, you should go across to Kendra's house.\"\n\n\"They don't have power either,\" she told him. \"It's not just us. And frankly, I would rather drown.\"\n\nThis forced a laugh from both of them, and the small bit of humor made her feel better. Ginny looked into the backyard again, then went to the front of the house to look out the front door. In the driveway, the water was up to the middle of her car's tires. Fear, real fear, plucked at her.\n\n\"Everything's flooding here, Sean.\"\n\n\"You stay put. I'm going to ask the cop what to do. But you...don't you go out and try to drive in it.\" Sean sounded fierce, determined. Helpless. \"You stay there, Ginny. Get upstairs if you think it's going to come in the house.\"\n\n\"Oh, it won't, will it? Just the basement. It's not going to come in the house, Sean.\" But even as she said it, a vision of gray waves of water washing over her kitchen floor and down the hall filled her head.\n\nHer stomach muscles went tight. Hard. Ginny put a hand on the table, bending forward with her legs slightly spread. This felt different than the other times. This felt more...real.\n\n\"Ginny! Are you okay? What's going on?\" Sean had been talking to her, but she hadn't heard.\n\nGinny shook herself as the contraction passed. She blew out a slow breath. \"I'm fine. Just a contraction.\"\n\n\"Shit! What?\"\n\n\"Nothing to worry about,\" she soothed him, though in fact she was starting to wonder if there would be something to worry about very soon. She put a hand on her belly, low, then over her crotch. She ached down there. Inside, deep. \"Just get home when you can. Be careful\u2014\"\n\nBut again, she was cut off, this time not because her husband had a quick-draw disconnect thumb, but because the signal had been dropped. Ginny breathed in, breathed out, until the pain in her belly eased. She still ached inside, something like the worst sort of menstrual cramps. But when it passed she could stand upright and breathe easily again, at least as easily as was possible with her child doing the cha-cha against her ribs.\n\nIn the bathroom, though, the paper slid too easily against her flesh after she urinated. Something thick and wet spilled over the sides of the paper, and with a grimace Ginny maneuvered the light so she could see what it was. The doctor had warned her about the mucus plug, but truthfully Ginny hadn't quite understood what it was or what it would look like until she saw it there.\n\n\"Oh. Shit,\" she said softly and let the paper fall into the toilet. She flushed and struggled back into her panties. She washed her hands, forgetting that with the electricity off, the water pump wouldn't work until the tap sputtered and burped, going dry, and the toilet tank didn't refill.\n\nAnother contraction hit her at the base of the stairs. Still mild, she almost could've walked through it, but she didn't want to take a chance on the stairs. Ginny held the newel post until the pain passed and tried to remember how long it had been since the last one. She'd better start keeping track, no easy task with all the clocks stopped and no clue where her watch was.\n\nUpstairs. Sean had told her to go upstairs. She heaved herself up one at a time and went into the library, where she set the flashlight on the table. It wasn't bright enough to read by, but it cast enough light to show her the plate she'd left there earlier was empty. Ginny touched the crumbs with her fingertip and put them to her tongue. Salt. She wasn't hungry, which meant she'd probably eaten them. Right?\n\nBut she knew she hadn't.\n\nShe looked into the shadows, toward the small door of the crawl space. Of the closet. She'd have bent to look beneath the fainting couch if her body would bend that way, which it wouldn't. Instead, she sat, her knees slightly spread and her hands on top of them. There was nothing to do here but wait. She thumbed her phone and brought up Peg's number, but that call rang on and on without answer. Ginny typed in the net address for the local news channel, but the page stuck halfway and refused to load so that all she could read was \"Roads closed, police direct traffic to alternate\".\n\nShe waited for another contraction, but none came. She waited for the lights to come on, and that didn't happen either. In limbo, waiting, starting to get chilled as the house cooled, Ginny curled up under the blanket and let herself float in the darkness. Not quite dreaming, but not really awake.\n\n* * * * *\n\nIn front of her, a child.\n\nA girl. Long dark hair, bedraggled and tangled. Big dark eyes shadowed with darker circles in a pale, pale face. She wore a dirty, shapeless sack of a dress that had been cut from a flowered pillowcase and a tattered cardigan, the buttons of which were missing or hanging by threads. Scabs and dirt encrusted her legs and bare feet. She stared at Ginny as her mouth worked, but nothing came out.\n\nGinny blinked and sat, slowly. The flashlight had dimmed a little. She should have turned it off to conserve the charge. How long had she been sleeping?\n\n\"Come. Please.\" The girl held out a hand.\n\nThis was not the girl in the photos Ginny'd found, though there was something of her in the shape of her face. And this girl was too young. Ginny had never seen this girl, but she knew who it was, just the same. \"Caroline.\"\n\nThe girl said nothing.\n\n\"What do you want?\" It seemed the right question to ask a ghost who'd at last been brave enough to show her face. \"Are you here because I found...I found you?\"\n\nThe girl stepped forward. The floor creaked. Ginny frowned. Why would the floor creak beneath something that had no weight?\n\n\"Come. Please. Please?\" The girl held out her hand, the tiny fingers dirty, the nails ragged. She opened her palm, faceup. There was a button there, like the one Ginny had found earlier. It fell from her hand and hit the floor with a clink before rolling under the lounge.\n\nGinny was up and off the lounge, her arms pinwheeling, as fast as she could move. It wasn't fast at all. Her breath sharp in her lungs, she put the chaise between her and this wraith, this vision, this shade that was no ghost.\n\nOh God.\n\nIt wasn't a ghost.\n\n\"Who are you?\" Ginny's voice came out high, strained, not like her own voice at all.\n\n\"Water.\" The girl looked toward the bookcase, which made no sense. Then at Ginny. She pointed down. \"Water is down there.\"\n\n\"In...the basement?\"\n\nThe girl took another delicate, hesitant step toward Ginny. In the flashlight beam, her skin looked almost translucent, her dark eyes somehow filmed. Ginny was reminded of pictures she'd seen of cave fish and mushrooms, things grown in the dark.\n\n\"Down there. It's coming in. It's coming up!\" The girl shuddered and jerked. She turned and ran for the cubbyhole door while Ginny stared in stunned silence. \"Please come! Please come help!\"\n\n\"We want to see if the little girl can come and play. The little girl in the basement. I was playing with the little girl.\"\n\nGinny thought of what Kelly and Carson had said. She remembered what they'd called her. She spoke, her voice on the edge of a cough, but loud enough. \"Carrie.\"\n\nThe girl turned. Incredibly, she smiled. Her teeth were black and skewed, but the smile was sweet and shy. She held out her hand. \"Please come. Hurry. Come!\"\n\nYou think your father did something to her, don't you?\n\nI don't think it. I know he did.\n\nShe thought about things going missing and being returned. Of a waving silhouette in a window. Food set out in a bowl and being eaten.\n\nShe thought of the sound of footsteps in the night.\n\nShe thought about the place where the garage had once been, and the basement wall that looked different from all the others.\n\nAnd then she knew what had happened all those years ago.\nChapter Forty-One\n\nCarrie gestured frantically and ducked into the cubbyhole. Ginny bent to look inside. The rain sounded much louder here, and she shivered at the waft of damp, cold air.\n\n\"I can't fit in here, honey.\" The endearment slipped naturally from her lips. That was how you addressed a child. \"I'm too big. And I don't understand...\"\n\nCarrie disappeared. Only for a second, because after that her small head peeked out from a dark place in the corner. Ginny strained to look. It was an air duct.\n\nNot all of it made sense, but this did. Still, she shook her head and waved at the girl to come closer. Carrie's wide eyes blinked when Ginny shone the light too closely on her, and she put up a hand to block it.\n\n\"I can't fit in there, honey. Listen, you need to come out here, okay? I'll...I'll call someone. We'll go across the street, or next door.\" Ginny hesitated, thinking of the water rushing down the street, as swift and deep as the creek in the back. \"I will help you.\"\n\nCarrie let out a low, moaning cry of desperation. She wriggled from the air duct and dropped almost soundlessly to the dirty plywood. She moved toward Ginny, who backed up as instinctively as if a raccoon or a rat was coming at her, though the girl had shown no signs of antagonism.\n\n\"I'll take care of you,\" Ginny whispered.\n\nAnother contraction hit her. She groaned at the suddenness, one hand on her belly and the other grabbing at the easel. It tipped, spilling her unfinished canvas.\n\nCarrie cried out and covered her face. A second later she peeked through her fingers and moved closer. She put her small hands on Ginny's belly, and Ginny didn't have the concentration just then to recoil.\n\n\"Water, coming up. Down there.\" Carrie pointed again to the floor, to her bare feet, to something Ginny couldn't see. \"Mama says, come get help.\"\n\nGinny choked. Everything inside her seemed to be tensing, and the sharp ache inside her intensified. She counted the seconds\u2014one, two, three, four\u2014before everything eased. Her fingers had gouged the inside of her palms. She swallowed, hard.\n\n\"Your mama is down there?\"\n\nCarrie nodded and tugged at Ginny's sleeve. \"Please come. Mama says, the lady is nice. I tell her, the lady is nice. She says, you help us.\"\n\nCarrie looked pleading, then terrified. She shook so hard her teeth chattered and looked around the room, though there didn't seem to be anything to see. She looked back at Ginny.\n\n\"Mama says, he is gone!\"\n\n\"Who? Who's... Oh God, oh God,\" Ginny muttered. She managed to stand up straight. \"Your mama and you in the basement. And he...yes, honey. He's gone. And I'm going to help you. But I can't get into that air duct, I have to call someone. We'll call, okay?\"\n\nBut her cell phone still wouldn't pick up a signal, and the power was out, and though she knew there was a landline phone somewhere around, she didn't know where it was or even if it would work if she plugged it in.\n\n\"How high is the water, Carrie? How far up?\"\n\nCarrie hesitated, then ducked low to the ground and held her hand to just above Ginny's ankle. Then she put it higher. Higher. To Ginny's thigh.\n\nSurely it couldn't be that high, could it? If the basement was flooding that much, it would come into the first floor, wouldn't it? Ginny didn't know. All she could think of was a foundation where there'd once been a garage and the concrete wall in the basement below it.\n\n\"You come.\" Carrie tugged her sleeve, pulling Ginny toward the bookcase to the right of the fireplace.\n\nAll the pieces were falling into place. The figure she'd seen in the window upstairs\u2014not the one by the easel, but another window on the other side of the fireplace, one that she'd assumed was built for symmetry. The one behind the bookcase.\n\nCarrie reached along the molding and pressed something with her small fingers. The bookcase creaked. It shifted.\n\nIt moved.\n\nGinny cried out, not so much in surprise as a twisted sense of victory. She was not crazy. She was not crazy. And this house was not haunted, at least not by a ghost.\n\nCarrie grunted, shoving at the bookcase until Ginny hooked her fingers into the now-open slot and pulled. Even with the weight of the books, the case moved smoothly, on oiled tracks like a sliding glass door. It was an ingenious design, but the space behind it proved even more so.\n\nThere was a window here, identical to its sister on the other side of the fireplace, though this one was hung with a cloak of spiderwebs, the sill decorated with a multitude of dead flies. The narrow space between the outside wall and the back of the bookcases was just wide enough for Ginny to stand in, though even without the baby bulk, she'd have brushed both sides with her shoulders. Directly to the left of the opening was the brick side of the chimney, while about four feet to the right was an opening in the floor.\n\nJust a hole, no safety railing or anything to keep an unwary stumbler from falling into it. But then, Ginny thought, anyone entering this space would've had to know exactly where they were going. Carrie ducked around her and leaped toward the hole, too fast for Ginny to catch her.\n\nGinny, imagining the girl plummeting into an empty space, cried out.\n\nCarrie looked over her shoulder and stepped into the darkness. She didn't fall. She gestured for Ginny to come closer.\n\nIt was a metal spiral staircase, the first step a few inches below floor level. It circled into darkness, though when she hung the light into the opening, Ginny could see that the stairs continued without a break down to a small landing.\n\nShe'd never have thought she could fit into it, but she could. And did. There wasn't enough room for her to fall either forward or back, so even without a railing to grab she could put one foot at a time down on each step. She couldn't see Carrie below her, but she could hear her. When Ginny got to the landing, there wasn't much more room. She held the flashlight as high as she could to look around the narrow column of space.\n\nShe was behind the pantry that should've been an extra foot or two wider, but wasn't. \"Oh God. He did this. He built all of this...\"\n\nShe didn't have time to break down or dwell on the sickness that had led George Miller to build this house with a prison inside it, though that was what she was sure she'd find. Ginny gave herself a shake that set her head spinning. She braced for another contraction. Everything about her pelvis felt loose and wobbly, like her hips weren't hinged quite right. A contraction eased and passed, and she drew in a few shaky breaths.\n\nCarrie had already gone down the first few steps of the other spiral staircase, moving without fear or pause into the inky blackness that reached beyond the dimming glow from Ginny's flashlight. She spoke over her shoulder, \"Come.\"\n\nGinny followed, slowly and carefully. Her hand shook, which sent the light tipping back and forth. Shadows, light and dark. She eased down, step-by-step. The air smelled damp, thick with must that wanted to make her cough, if only she could draw a breath deep enough.\n\n\"Wait,\" Ginny whispered. Then louder, \"Carrie. Wait for me.\"\n\nThe narrow corridor bent at a right angle and ran along what must've been the back of the house. The exterior concrete wall was black with wet, and water was actually trickling in fast streams down from the ceiling. Water on the floor too, a couple inches that got deeper the farther she went, as though the passage was on a downward slope.\n\nGinny put one hand on the inside wall, also of concrete. George Miller had really done his work well. There was no sign from the basement that this section was two feet shorter than it should've been. She shuddered, stopping, her gorge rising. Her muscles tensed again as she leaned against the wall to let the contraction pass. Ginny swallowed bitter saliva, trying not to puke. Still, no pain. Just discomfort. Yet there was no denying it\u2014she was in labor.\n\n\"Carrie. Wait.\" The spasm passed, Ginny straightened and pulled out her phone again. Upstairs she'd fluctuated between one and two bars. Down here, with multiple layers of concrete and earth between her and the sky, there was nothing.\n\nThe water had risen another inch while she stopped. Carrie danced in it, impatient and frantic, while Ginny slogged toward her, grateful for her slippers. Even heavy and soaked, they were protection against whatever might be on the floor under the water.\n\nThe flashlight dimmed drastically before rallying and returning at half its former brightness.\n\nGinny shook it, knowing even as she did the effort was silly. It didn't have batteries the way old flashlights did. You couldn't rattle it into another burst of energy. Instead, the beam of light shook around and went even dimmer.\n\n\"Shit,\" she breathed.\n\nWhat the hell was she doing? Nine and a half months pregnant, no power, no phone, a faulty light, following some feral child into a basement that was flooding. She didn't even have a weapon. It was the classic stupid move from every horror movie, and suddenly she was choking with laughter. Bent with it, shoulders heaving as the flashlight swung dangerously close to the water and she fought the grip of another contraction.\n\nNo, no. Don't fight. Don't fight it.\n\nGinny tried to breathe through it the way the classes taught, but the laughter wouldn't let her. All of this, so ridiculous. So surreal. She'd have gone to her knees right there in the water if the passage weren't so narrow there wasn't room for her to fall.\n\nThe laughter and the contraction passed. Ginny wiped her face\u2014tears or sweat, she couldn't tell. Carrie had moved even farther down the passageway, around another corner. Ginny followed with the lamp, the light now the strength of a guttering candle, held high.\n\nThe corridor came to a dead end. Not a concrete wall here, but something shiny. Metal? Shit, the wall was metal, smudged with handprints and splashed with water where Carrie must have kicked. The girl turned as Ginny rounded the corner. She gestured.\n\n\"Come. Please.\" She tugged at a metal handle and the wall moved the way the bookcase had, sliding like a pocket door into a recess in the wall. Carrie put her back to the door and braced her feet against the wall on the other side. She grunted with the effort.\n\nGinny sloshed closer. The flashlight swung in her hand, back and forth. Dark and light. She could see nothing beyond the sliding metal door.\n\n\"Honey, I won't be able to get through there. There's not enough room.\"\n\nCarrie pushed harder, forcing the metal door farther into the recess. Her legs shook, and she bit on her lower lip. There was still no way Ginny could step over Carrie's legs and shove her bulk through the opening. Ginny put a hand on the door just above Carrie's head. She could feel it threatening to move the moment the little girl ceased her counterpressure.\n\nGinny wedged herself into the space as far as she could, her breasts and belly crowding against the girl. \"I got it. Go.\"\n\nCarrie moved at once, slipping from the space and letting the door move against Ginny's weight. Ginny had a vision of an elevator door slamming shut on an unwary passenger\u2014but somehow she guessed this door wouldn't spring open. It would cut your fucking fingers off instead.\n\nThe door sprang shut behind her the instant she left off the pressure, but she wasn't all the way through. It would've snapped her ankle had she not shoved the flashlight between the door and the wall just long enough to get her foot out. That was the end of the flashlight, which cracked with a snap and plunged them into perfect darkness.\n\nGinny closed her eyes and tried to catch her breath. Sounds became magnified without sight to counter them, she knew that. She heard the soft swish of Carrie's feet in the water and felt the push of it against her calves. Carrie's chilly fingers slipped into hers and squeezed. She probably could see much better than Ginny could, but even cats needed some amount of light in order to see in the dark. Carrie was still human.\n\nWasn't she?\n\nGinny grabbed her phone from her pocket and pressed the Home button to bring up the menu. Instant bright-white light. She slid her thumb along the screen to unlock it and tapped quickly, looking for a flashlight app. \"I can't believe I didn't think of this before.\"\n\nShe found it. More bright light, using her phone's LED flash set to a permanent glare. It lit the corridor, even narrower on this side of the door, and threw giant shadows on the walls. The ceiling was lower, hung with shiny ductwork and wires that cast weird patterns of shadow. Ginny ran her hand along the door. This side had no handle. Nothing but smooth, cold metal reflecting the light from her phone.\n\nThen, up near the top, higher than a child could reach, higher than Ginny herself could reach, she saw a small dark circle. She stretched to touch it, and her fingertip felt a rough edge before dipping just barely inside. A hole. Probably for some sort of key, which she did not have.\n\nShe was trapped down here.\n\nBut she would not be afraid. She would not let herself give in to terror. All the creepy, scary things that had happened since moving into this house had not sent her gibbering, and neither would this, especially since she knew the cause was nothing supernatural. She would not be afraid.\n\nShe was a liar.\n\nShe followed Carrie down the corridor and the ceiling got lower and lower. The light from her phone was eye-achingly bright and far-reaching, yet like the high beams of a car, limited in scope. They'd only gone about four feet when the corridor jogged again, this time to the right.\n\nThe smell hit her first, hard as a fist, thick like smoke. The musty, earthy smell of the water had been nose-tickling but normal. Natural. This stench, of unwashed bodies and rotten teeth, of food left to spoil...of human waste... Ginny retched, turning her head and certain she was going to vomit. She hadn't eaten anything in hours. Nothing came up but bile she spit into the water that was now up to her knees. She heaved again, then stood to shine the light.\n\nThe room was no larger than her bedroom and built on a cant that left her thinking of those haunted house rooms with the strobe lights, usually painted black and white, the kind with tilted floors to screw up your perspective. The ceiling was so low she had to bend her head, and the light showed her there were at least two slanted fun-house doorways. A small, domed refrigerator took up space in one corner, with what looked like a tiny two-burner stove next to it and a spindle-legged sink. Beside that, a child-sized wooden table perfect for tea parties in which every cup was poisoned. The furniture wasn't all she saw in this nightmare room.\n\nThere was something else too.\nChapter Forty-Two\n\nCarrie splashed through the water to reach a low metal bed frame and stained mattress shoved against the far wall. The water licked at the mattress's bottom edge. It would be sodden in minutes. There were four of them. Or five. Ginny could not yet look at whatever they were, those crouched and shivering things with pale faces and grasping, skeletal hands.\n\nGinny switched the phone from one hand to another. The light shifted. Shadows loomed and swooped from the shaking of her hands. She closed her eyes. Pain, this time fierce and deep and seemingly unrelenting until then...it was gone. She opened her eyes.\n\nWhatever was on the other side of the room had moved closer.\n\nGinny couldn't speak. Her breath came short and sharp as dizziness assailed her. She almost dropped the phone, but then clutched it so tight her fingers hurt.\n\nShe gave a breathless, gasping scream. They were in front of her, two of them, with Carrie hanging back with the other three still huddled on the bed. One stood, up and up, curving and hunched, its neck and head tilted at a strange angle to show her a smooth, pale face with dark eyes. It held out a hand to Carrie, who linked her fingers with it. They stood in front of Ginny, saying nothing. Just watching.\n\nAnd... Oh God. They were not monsters, they were not things made of shadow and fear. They were children. A boy of maybe thirteen, grown too tall for this cramped space. A girl a little older than Carrie but not much bigger, her dark hair as tangled and dirty but pulled back from her face with a length of frayed ribbon. And there too, thinner and without her collar, but purring as she was cuddled\u2014Noodles.\n\n\"Oh,\" Ginny said in a broken, hesitant whisper. \"Oh, you poor things.\"\n\nFrom beyond one of the dark doorways came a low, rattling hiss that turned the heads of all the children, those in front of her and the ones who'd hung back on the bed. Something slithered through the water, and Ginny saw a snake before she recognized it as something more sinister. A length of chain coiled and moved, disappearing into the water, now just past Ginny's knees.\n\n\"Mama, I brought the lady.\" Carrie turned with another shy smile, and the shadows shifted.\n\nThe figure in the doorway moved toward her, one shoulder higher than the other as the weight of the shackled wrist kept one hand closer to the floor. The shaved skull and hollow cheeks made it impossible to guess its gender, though the worn dress gave a hint. Ginny knew at once who she was.\n\n\"Caroline. Oh my God. Caroline Miller.\"\n\nCaroline gave a hoarse croak. She was weeping, Ginny saw, though it was too dark to see if there were any tears on her wasted cheeks. She drew Carrie to her and kissed her head. She looked at Ginny.\n\n\"Is he gone? He's really gone?\"\n\nGinny pushed closer, carefully, through the water, though the small room was mostly bare. \"He's gone,\" Ginny said, and let Caroline's withered hand take hers. \"I'm here.\"\n\nCaroline's body racked with silent sobs, but when she raised her face to Ginny's again, her eyes were dry. She licked her cracked lips. \"The water's coming in.\"\n\n\"Yes. I know.\" Ginny tried not to shudder. She failed.\n\nCaroline might look weak, but her grip was so tight it became painful. She leaned closer, her breath sour but her eyes bright. \"I sent Carrie for you. She said you were a nice lady, that you left things for her.\"\n\nGinny nodded, though that wasn't quite the truth. \"Yes. I didn't know... Oh my God. I'm so sorry. I didn't know.\"\n\nCaroline's bright gaze didn't dim as she shook her head. \"Nobody knew. It's all right. It's all right. You're here now. You can help us. You can help us?\"\n\n\"The door closed behind me.\" Ginny tried to breathe shallowly so she could avoid the stink. \"How do you open it?\"\n\nA rough and grating noise came from Caroline. Incredibly, a laugh. \"From this side? You don't.\"\n\nGinny watched as Caroline's children gathered silently around her, staring with wide eyes and open mouths. There were four children altogether. The oldest, a girl, hunched like her brother, put a hand on Caroline's shoulder and murmured something Ginny didn't understand.\n\nCaroline replied, her voice pitched low and mumbling, the words not only indistinct but not quite right. Strung together in a pattern Ginny couldn't recognize, like tuning in unexpectedly to a foreign radio station. Whatever Caroline said seemed to satisfy her daughter, because the girl nodded and stepped back, just outside the circle of light.\n\nGinny's fingers cramped, and she switched hands again. She looked at her phone's battery indicator. The water had risen impossibly higher, up to her thighs. \"My light won't last forever. We have to get you out of here. All of you. How do we open that door, Caroline?\"\n\n\"He had a key. Always a key. It was shaped like a...\" Caroline's mouth worked, her expression momentarily blank before her eyes focused again, \"...a T. It was shaped like a T and that's how he opened the door. There is no other door.\"\n\n\"Of course not.\" If they'd been able to get out through that door, wouldn't they have done it long ago? \"Carrie. She was small enough to fit through the ducts\u2014\"\n\nBefore Ginny could speak again, a swift and hot gush of fluid ran down her legs. She clutched her belly and held out the phone, blindly, hoping someone would take it from her before she dropped it. Someone did, and she put both her hands between her legs, terrified she'd feel a baby's head bulging against her giant cotton panties.\n\n\"The baby,\" she said, and a groan took the place of any words she might've said next.\n\n\"Your baby is coming,\" Caroline said flatly. \"Here and now? Don't worry. Don't worry.\"\n\nWorry was not the name for this vast and roaring terror, this overwhelming fury of anxiety and fear. Ginny gasped as the contraction peaked. She breathed with it, incapable of embarrassment though she'd bent over to put her hands on her knees and was panting like a dog on the street in August. Everything inside her pressed down, down. Only the rising water kept her from squatting right there, because she would not, could not push her baby out into that filthy wetness.\n\nShe became aware of Caroline on one side of her, the oldest daughter on the other. They walked Ginny in mincing crab steps, the largest she could take, through the doorway and into a smaller room the size of a closet. The light from her phone shone over their shoulders, illuminating a full-size bed and a dresser. As the light slanted crazily along the walls, Ginny saw they'd been hung with countless childish drawings like the one that had been left on her easel. The stick figures seemed to dance, and, nauseated, she closed her eyes while they took her to the bed.\n\nShe put both her hands on the damp mattress and bent forward. She breathed. And finally the contraction passed.\n\n\"My water broke. I'm having contractions,\" she said without opening her eyes. \"The baby is coming, yes. Here and now.\"\n\nTears came, shaking her. A firm hand squeezed her shoulder. She looked up to see Caroline.\n\n\"I will help you. Linna will help you. We know...we know about babies, lady.\"\n\n\"My name is Ginny.\"\n\n\"Ginny,\" Caroline said, and smiled. \"Ginny, we'll help you. It's going to be all right.\"\n\nNothing could be all right about this. Water up to their thighs, the stink overpowering everything else. Her baby born in this hovel? No. No. Ginny shook her head, but another contraction ripped its way through her, and there was nothing but pain to think about just then.\n\nIt passed.\n\nThere was something amazing about how much it hurt and how suddenly the pain ceased, and she'd have been able to think about it more if only the world would stop spinning. It was because she wasn't breathing, Ginny knew, and braced herself to take a long, stinking gulp of fetid air. It helped only a little.\n\n\"You need to get on the bed. Lie back. Lift your dress, and let us look.\" Caroline gestured. \"Deke. The light.\"\n\nGinny'd prepared herself mentally for knowing that in the hospital it was likely she'd have a whole slew of strangers staring at her vagina while she pushed this kid out. In no realm of her imagination had one of those staff been a teenage boy. There was no shielding of her body, though, no way even for her to protest, because she was too busy bearing down against the sudden pressure in her womb.\n\nHands helped her back onto the disgusting mattress, propped her with pillows. Hands lifted her nightgown and pulled her panties off. Ginny wept, not from pain or shame, but from knowing there was no way her baby could survive this filthy place.\n\n\"Mine did,\" Caroline told her, and Ginny realized she'd spoken aloud. \"The ones who got born alive, they all made it. Yours will too.\"\n\nGinny opened her eyes. \"My phone. I have to see if...there's a signal.\"\n\nDeke handed over her phone without argument. Ginny thumbed the screen, with no luck. She tried anyway, first with a call that wouldn't even send and then a text. After that, another. Each time, a small, angry red exclamation mark showed up next to her message, proving it didn't go through. Her fingers tightened on the phone with the next contraction, and Caroline gently pried it from her hand.\n\n\"Let Deke hold the light, Ginny.\"\n\nGinny panted and gasped, then gave in to a shriek. This embarrassed her more than anything else had, but Caroline patted her shoulder.\n\n\"It's okay to scream,\" she said. \"Nobody can hear you down here.\"\n\n\"You...all...can.\"\n\nCaroline gave another rusty laugh, as cutting as knuckles on a grater. \"Screams don't bother us.\"\n\nThe pain faded. Ginny drew a breath. She shifted on the bed, against the pillows, and tried to see the floor. \"The water?\"\n\n\"Still coming in.\" Caroline turned her head and coughed, then spit.\n\nThe chain on her wrist jangled. She didn't use that arm at all, Ginny saw. The fingers of that hand looked curled and useless. Caroline saw her looking and gave her a smile that showed straight, even teeth that could only be the product of expensive orthodontia.\n\nThis detail drove home the horror of this girl's...no, she was a woman now...this woman's life more than anything else could have. Ginny remembered that smile, flashing bright with metal. The curly permed hair, the fashionable clothes. Caroline had been smart and bright and beautiful once. All of that had been stolen from her, replaced with...this.\n\n\"When the pains get worse, one on top of each other, it will be almost time. You'll feel like you have to push the baby out. Like you have to use the toilet. You won't be able to help it. But until then, you should rest and try to get through each pain as it comes.\" Caroline said this calmly, as though it were the most normal thing in the world to be giving birth in a flooding basement, in the dark. \"Linna and I will be here to help you.\"\n\nGinny waited for the next pain, but her body seemed to have gone quiet. \"I can't feel it moving.\"\n\nCaroline said nothing at first. Then, softly, she put her good hand on Ginny's belly. \"It doesn't matter. Your body will push it out, no matter what.\"\n\nMore tears came, but Ginny forced them back. She clutched at Caroline's hand. \"I'm so sorry. So, so sorry I didn't figure this out sooner. I didn't put the pieces together, they were all right there. I should've known. I should've...\"\n\n\"How could you have known anything?\" Caroline looked surprised, then sad. \"My mother didn't know. My brother didn't know. Nobody ever did. But you're here now. And this will all be okay. But first, your baby\u2014babies don't wait for anything.\"\n\nMore contractions came and went, some longer than others. Ginny waited for them to form some sort of pattern, but they refused. Some were short, others long. She tried counting the minutes between them and lost track with their irregularity.\n\nGinny had no idea how much time had passed and asked to see her phone. Only half an hour since she'd come into this room. An hour, maybe a little longer since she'd last spoken to Sean. Not soon enough for him to worry. Not soon enough.\n\n\"Mama. Water,\" the girl a little bigger than Carrie said.\n\n\"Yes, Trixie. I see it.\" Caroline never lost her calm, flat tone. She sat on the bed next to Ginny and took her hand. \"It won't be long now.\"\n\n\"Until the baby comes?\"\n\n\"Or the water.\" She'd proven her ability to laugh, but there was nothing like humor in Caroline's voice now.\n\nGinny tried to think, to focus, to fixate on something her brain wanted to tell her was important. Something about...Carrie. Something about...the water.\n\nAnd then she couldn't think of anything but the agony. It tore at her. It consumed her. As though from far away, she heard Caroline murmuring to Linna, something about blankets. Something about a basin. But then the all-encompassing urge to bear down took over, and all Ginny could think about was pushing.\n\nHands moved her again, lifting her hips, in the almost nonexistent break between contractions, to slide something beneath her. Hands pressed on her knees, parting and pushing them back toward her hips. Hands cradled her feet, bare, the slippers lost.\n\nIt had never been like this. The pain had been a familiar echo, vaster but still not entirely foreign. But this grinding, desperate need to strain and push and expel...Ginny was helpless against it. She couldn't stop it. Her body did what it was meant to do. If she died, she thought, her body would continue to birth this child.\n\nShe felt the baby move down the birth canal, inch by agonizing inch. Too slow, and too fast at the same time. A bright, red-hot center of pain burned between her legs as she screamed. The sound spiraled up and up until her voice broke.\n\n\"The head. I see the head,\" Caroline told her. \"The baby's almost here.\"\n\nGinny looked down between her legs to see Caroline and Linna both poised there, hands ready. The light from her phone had no delicacy. It made everything harsh. Ginny saw the flash of the other children's faces, but Deke was solid and steady; he held the light focused firmly between Ginny's thighs.\n\nThe inexorable need to push cycled back, and Ginny rode it. Her fingers clutched the bare mattress, digging into the now-sodden material. She growled with her efforts, her teeth gritting so tightly she thought a tooth cracked.\n\nThe baby was born.\n\nFor a breathless, eternal moment, the emptiness inside confused her and Ginny sagged against the pillows. There was no cry, no wail. She struggled upright, desperate, and croaked out a wordless plea.\n\nCaroline bent over the child, then lifted it. The baby hung limply in her hands. Then it moved. Then it screamed.\n\nGinny had never been so happy to hear anything in her life.\nChapter Forty-Three\n\nGinny dozed with her baby tucked up close to her naked skin, both of them covered in a blanket and Noodles purring by her side. She was too exhausted to care how dirty it was. Caroline and Linna pressed on her belly, eliciting a fresh burst of pain and another hot slosh of something from inside her. They talked to each other in that mumbled, mangled language, ignoring her, while the other children were dispatched on errands Ginny didn't understand.\n\nShe didn't care.\n\nFor now, her son was safe. They were warm, though anything but dry. And Ginny was tired...so tired...\n\nShe didn't want to, but forced her eyes open. Her vagina burned and ached. Someone had pushed a folded bundle of material between her legs. The baby snuffled against her, then went quiet. Ginny was bleary, but awake. Her mouth tasted sour, dry. She'd have given almost anything for a drink of cold water.\n\nGinny smoothed her hand over her baby's soft head and marveled at the hair there. It was pale, not dark like hers. He took after Sean. Ginny wanted to know the color of his eyes, but didn't want to shine the bright light directly on him. \"You have electricity down here.\"\n\n\"Yes. Sometimes. But it was better to use a flashlight with batteries, when we could. It's so good to have light.\" Caroline's low voice drifted through the darkness. \"We have two lamps, but the outlets down here are bad. When we try to use the stove, sometimes it blows the bulbs.\"\n\nGinny thought of all the times the power had gone out. \"It blew our fuses too.\"\n\n\"He said he'd fix it. That and the heat, he got that directed in to us because it was so cold. But it never worked as well as he wanted. He said he could build things just fine, but he didn't understand electricity. We have a couple candles, but the matches got wet. They were your candles...\" Caroline paused and sounded almost shy. \"He stopped letting us have them, and no matches, either. Because we might start another fire. And that would've been very, very bad.\"\n\n\"Caroline, why did you wait so long before you sent Carrie to get me?\"\n\nThere was a long, long silence.\n\n\"We had to know,\" Caroline said quietly, \"if we could trust you.\"\n\nThe simple way she said it broke Ginny's heart. She found the other woman's hand, the one weighed down by the chain and shackle. \"You can trust me.\"\n\n\"He didn't know we were saving food. He didn't know we'd eat only half of what he brought us, eat the things that would go bad. I made us put the rest away, in case. He was getting old, you see. He said he'd be around forever, that no matter what happened he'd be there, but I knew better. So I made us put the food away. Batteries. The light bulbs, though he'd yell about how careless we were to break so many.\" Caroline coughed again. The noise was rattling and thick. She spit to the side, into the water. \"He always threatened not to bring more. To let us starve, or sit in the dark. But I always knew he wouldn't. He didn't want us to die, you know. He didn't want us dead.\"\n\nGinny shivered. \"But...I don't understand, Caroline. Why would you stay here? If Carrie could get out through the ducts to get food, to find me, why wouldn't you send her earlier? I would've helped you sooner.\"\n\nThe bed dipped as the children gathered around. Their mother looked around at them, then at Ginny. \"You're here now.\"\n\nA pulse of hot fluid leaked from between Ginny's legs. She grimaced, but there was nothing to do for it. \"My husband is on his way home, but the roads are closed. He might not get here for a while, but if he doesn't hear from me, he will worry. He'll send someone or do something. But, Caroline...we can't wait for that. You have to send Carrie out again.\"\n\nCaroline said nothing at first. She looked around at faces focused on hers. All of them were so quiet. They sat so still.\n\nShe looked at Ginny. \"Yes. Carrie should go out.\"\n\nCarrie let out a low wail and shook her head. She ran from the room. Caroline held up a hand when her sister moved to go after her. \"No, Trixie. I'll go after her.\"\n\nDragging her chain behind her, Caroline went into the next room, leaving the light behind. Ginny stared at the foot of the bed. Deke, the tall boy who'd held the phone while she gave birth. Linna, the oldest girl. Trixie, a little bigger than Carrie.\n\nThe circle of light stretched to the wall, and Ginny could clearly see a few of the drawings she'd noticed earlier. This one had six stick figures. One, the mother. Five children around her. She looked again at the group.\n\n\"One of you's missing.\"\n\n\"T-T-Tate.\" Trixie had a stutter, either nerves or a speech impediment. \"Huh-he got stuck. Huh-he was t-too big.\"\n\n\"He said bad things would happen if we tried to get away,\" Deke said flatly, the \"he\" in question clearly referring to George Miller, and not Deke's brother. \"Tate pushed him. He hit Tate's head, and Tate wasn't sure what happened. Then Tate said we need to try, Mama. We need to try. And he went\u2014\"\n\n\"Deke,\" Caroline said sharply, a dark silhouette in the doorway. \"That's enough.\"\n\nThe water, at least, seemed to have stopped rising. It sloshed against Caroline's thighs as she moved toward the bed. \"Carrie will go. But she's very afraid. She's not sure what to do.\"\n\n\"Do you have a pen? Paper? Something to write with?\"\n\n\"Everything's wet,\" Linna said. \"The crayons are broke. The paper was in the cabinet. It's ruined.\"\n\nTrixie let out a sob at that, and flung herself onto the bed while Linna rubbed her back.\n\nGinny was struck with inspiration. \"My phone. I'll type a note in it. She can take my phone and find someone. Go next door, give them the phone. They'll see it. If not, at the very least, they'll know it's my phone, or figure it out. And she can tell them, can't she? Where we are?\"\n\nCaroline hesitated. \"Carrie is...special.\"\n\n\"She's very special,\" Ginny said softly, seeing Carrie creeping up behind her mother. \"Very special and very brave. She'll know just what to do. Won't you, Carrie?\"\n\nCarrie stepped out from behind her mother, and into the feathery edges of the light circle. \"Scared.\"\n\n\"Bad things happen!\" Deke cried suddenly. \"Bad things happen when we try to go outside! Don't let her, Mama. Don't let her go!\"\n\n\"Deke, hush!\" Caroline shook him by the shoulders. \"You're going to scare your sisters. Stop. It will be fine. We have to do this. You don't understand, but we do.\"\n\nHorribly, Ginny thought she understood. Caroline remembered a life on the outside, but none of these children did. After living their entire lives down here, was it any wonder they might be afraid of what waited for them in the outside world? What horror stories had George Miller told them to keep them willingly imprisoned?\n\n\"Tate went out! Tate went out and he never came back! He got lost! Tate didn't come back!\"\n\nThe back of Caroline's hand cracked across Deke's face hard enough to send him splashing to his hands and knees in the water. He came up sputtering, backing away, across the room.\n\nGinny's stomach churned at the violence, and she cringed, covering her baby as best she could.\n\nNobody else seemed surprised at Caroline's actions. She spoke calmly, \"Deke. I don't want to make you go to the corner. Not now, like this. But if you can't get yourself under control, you will go to the corner even if you have to sit up to your ears in this water. Do you understand me?\"\n\nIn the white light, Deke looked extremely pale. Water sluiced over his face, mimicking tears. He nodded after a moment. \"Yes.\"\n\nCaroline sighed. \"Carrie, can you take this lady's phone up through the ducts. Out of the house? Can you go outside?\"\n\nCarrie shuddered visibly. She hadn't been splashed with water; her tears were real. She shook her head.\n\nAgain, Ginny was inspired. \"Carrie. You know the other children? The ones you were playing with here in the house? Kelly and Carson, the night of the party.\"\n\nCarrie looked fearful, then nodded.\n\n\"They live in the house next door to me. You can go to their house and see them. Their mother is very nice, she's a nice lady. Like me. You can trust her too.\"\n\nCaroline pushed the hair from Carrie's forehead and cupped her cheeks. The chain clanked. \"You have to be brave and strong, like Miss Ginny said. You have to do this for us, baby. It's...well. You just have to. Okay?\"\n\nCarrie nodded again. Ginny gestured for the phone. Carefully, so she didn't disturb her sleeping, still-unnamed baby, Ginny tapped a message into her phone. She saved it as a note, sent it as a text that failed, and added it to an email that also failed. It didn't matter, once Carrie got the phone into a place where there was a signal, all of the messages would be sent. She checked the time too.\n\nFive hours since the last time she'd spoken to Sean.\n\nIt seemed so impossible that all of this had happened in so little time, but she didn't need a pinch to prove she wasn't dreaming. She had the pain between her legs and the child snuffling lightly in her arms. She had the splash of water and five pale, wide-eyed faces staring at her.\n\n\"Do you have a plastic bag?\" Ginny asked. \"The kind for sandwiches. One that closes at the top. In case she drops it, so it doesn't get wet.\"\n\n\"No. We have a few plastic bags, but we used them to line the toilet.\" Caroline shook her head.\n\n\"Never mind. She's going up, right?\" Ginny took a deep breath, determined to be positive. \"Carrie. You hold it tight. Is there something else we can put it in for her? A purse or a bag we can tie to her?\"\n\n\"I have a stocking,\" Linna piped up shyly. \"It got a hole. We didn't mend it yet. She can use the match for it. It's long enough that we can tie the end to her shirt somehow.\"\n\n\"Yes. That will work.\" Ginny held up the phone. \"But once she takes it...we won't have any light.\"\n\nCaroline smiled. \"We've sat in the darkness before. We can do it again.\"\n\nGinny cringed at the idea of sitting here in the pitch black with four feet of water all around her, the bed like a boat in an unstable sea. But it was the only option. She needed to get her baby out of here.\n\nShe checked the message one last time, hoping something had managed to get through, but nothing had. She thumbed the screen and tilted it to show Carrie. \"See? Like this. You just push this button when you get there, you show it to them. Okay? That's all you do.\"\n\nThe phone looked twice as big in Carrie's tiny hand. Ginny lost her breath when it looked like the girl was going to drop it over the side of the bed, but she caught it. Carrie pushed the button and held up the phone for Ginny to see.\n\n\"Yes. Like that.\" Ginny took the phone, then the sock Linna handed her. \"Okay. Are we ready for the dark?\"\n\n\"Yes. We are,\" said Caroline.\n\nIt was instant and total and unyielding, that darkness. But it wasn't unfamiliar, and it was no longer terrifying. Carrie found her way into the ductwork. The rest of them huddled on the damp mattress, piled with equally damp blankets, trying to stay warm. The baby woke, wailing, and found Ginny's breast. The sharp pull of his lips and tongue on the sensitive nipple stung, and Ginny had no milk yet, but the baby sucked anyway and seemed content.\n\nGinny blinked, eyes straining, but the darkness here was total. It was something of a comfort, actually. She closed her eyes and let herself drift for a minute or so before forcing herself back to consciousness.\n\nCaroline's rusty laughter gritted out of the darkness. \"Ginny. I lied.\"\n\nGinny roused, trying to push through the wall of her weariness to understand. \"About what?\"\n\n\"Being ready for the darkness,\" Caroline said. \"Nobody is ever ready for it.\"\nChapter Forty-Four\n\n\"I was thirteen when I figured out I could get my daddy to give me anything I wanted.\" Caroline's words drifted out of the darkness.\n\nGinny had no idea how long they've been sitting in silence. Someone had moved onto the bed to cuddle next to her. She thought it must be Trixie by the size and the flow of hair. Trixie snored lightly.\n\n\"Caroline, you don't have to tell me this now.\"\n\n\"Now,\" Caroline said, \"might be the only time I ever tell it.\"\n\nThat would not be true; Ginny knew that. Caroline would have to tell her story a lot of times very soon. To the police, certainly. To her brother. To the media, if she wasn't careful, or if she wanted to earn something for her pain. Still, Ginny thought she knew what the other woman meant. What better time to tell a story like this, but in the dark?\n\n\"All my friends liked my dad the best because he was always around to do whatever we needed. He could always drive us to the mall, or he'd drop us off at the pool and pick us up. And he'd sometimes stop on the way home to treat us to ice cream. He didn't try to talk to us like the other dads did. He just listened. He let me pick the music. He was...cool. He was the cool dad.\n\n\"When I was thirteen, I wanted a bikini for the summer. My mother said no. She wanted me to wear a one-piece. But all my friends had them. She made me buy a babyish suit. I was the only one. The only one without a cool swimsuit. And my dad noticed.\"\n\nCaroline's voice was low and warm, like melting butter. Or maybe Ginny was melting, dissolving into the darkness and shadows. She put a hand between her legs and it came away wet, the smell of copper strong on her fingers. She was bleeding. A lot.\n\n\"He took me to the mall and gave me money to buy a new suit. He saw all my friends wearing them. He wanted me to have one. To be like them. They fought about it, really loud. Brendan hid in his room with his music playing loud, but I could hear them in their bedroom. He won the fight. He always won the fights. And he brought the suit to me; he tossed it down on the bed, and told me to try it on. To show him how it fit. So I did.\"\n\nPause. A breath. Silence, but for the sound of water, trickling.\n\n\"I figured out then that I could get whatever I wanted out of him. Out of boys, in general. With just a little show of T and A.\"\n\nThe phrase seemed oddly innocent, but fitting.\n\n\"Do you know,\" Caroline asked suddenly, \"if she knew there was something going on? My mother, I mean. She had to have known. Didn't she?\"\n\nGinny couldn't tell if Caroline was desperate for affirmation or denial. \"I don't know.\"\n\n\"She knew,\" Caroline whispered. Then, even softer, \"Do you think she misses me? Will she be happy to see me again?\"\n\n\"Oh, Caroline. I'm so sorry. But your mom passed away.\"\n\nMore silence. The baby made a meeping grunt, but settled. Ginny's thighs stuck together when she moved.\n\n\"So...I'm an orphan.\" Rusty, grating laughter became a sob. \"Just as well. Just as well.\"\n\nGinny had lost track of time long ago. She listened for the sound of shouts or voices, but heard nothing. \"These rooms...soundproofed?\"\n\n\"Yes. He built this house like this, you know. Back before he even met my mom. He built this house himself.\"\n\nGinny's lips pulled back from her teeth. \"Jesus Christ.\"\n\n\"He told me he was taking me to the beach for the weekend. As a special treat. We weren't supposed to let Mom know. He said nobody could know, or they'd want to come along. That's why he picked me up on the way home from school. I was walking. I was just scuffing my feet along in the leaves and thinking about going to the football game the next day. He pulled up in a van. I didn't know it, and I would never ever have gone inside.\" Caroline paused. Coughed. She coughed for a long time, and when she stopped, her voice had gone rough and thick with phlegm. \"But I saw it was my daddy, so I got in.\"\n\n\"Someone reported it. The van. They saw you get into it.\"\n\n\"But they didn't know it was him. Obviously. They thought a stranger took me.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Ginny said.\n\nCaroline snorted. \"They were right.\"\n\nA sound like distant thunder rumbled, then stopped. Ginny felt the vibration in the bed, or maybe just thought she did. She strained, listening. They all did. But nothing else happened.\n\n\"When he showed me the bookcase, the hidden stairs, I thought it was amazing. So cool. And then when he showed me this little space, like a playroom, I thought it was so much fun. He told me this was our place, our special place, that nobody would ever know about it, and until he left me there and didn't let me out, I thought it was going to be great.\" Caroline sounded tired. \"Also, he lied. Because it wasn't just our special place. Not until later. Not until after.\"\n\n\"After what?\"\n\n\"After she died,\" Caroline said wearily, casually. \"I wasn't the first one.\"\n\n\"Oh. Oh God.\" There should've been more words than that, but Ginny had none.\n\n\"Her name was Terry. She was jealous of me, right from the start, because I had long hair and pretty teeth. She didn't have teeth. He'd pulled them so she couldn't bite.\"\n\n\"Please. You don't have to tell me this.\"\n\n\"I have to tell you this!\" Caroline hissed. \"I have been waiting for too long to tell someone this!\"\n\nGinny shut up after that. Caroline talked. Ginny listened.\n\n\"He never touched me, not until she died.\" That seemed to be an important fact. \"He promised he'd let me out. But I saw what he did to Terry. I didn't want to lose my teeth, or have him cut my hair. I thought someone would find me. I mean, I was in the house. In the goddamned house, right? How could they not know? How could they not hear me screaming? I did try to get away. So he put on the chain. And then...a baby.\"\n\nAt every pause, Ginny hoped Caroline wouldn't say anything else. She prayed for someone to find them. But other than another rumble that sounded like distant thunder, there was only blackness and Caroline's voice.\n\n\"He took it away from me. It was a boy. He said I wasn't old enough to take care of a baby. I was fifteen by then, or...I think I was. I lost track of time. I made marks, for a while, on the wall. But he saw them and erased them. So he took the baby. It was small anyway. I think it would've died. I think...it did die. Didn't it, Ginny? Did my baby die?\"\n\nGinny thought of the bones in her backyard. \"I think so, honey. Yes.\"\n\nCaroline gave a shuddering sigh. \"Then came Tate, and he let me keep him. Said I needed something to keep me occupied when he couldn't visit me. Tell me something. When did my mother die?\"\n\n\"I'm not sure, Caroline. But I know that she and your brother moved out of this house about a year after you went missing.\"\n\n\"Oh. Oh. Oh,\" Caroline said. \"Oh. She didn't stay? So she didn't know. Really? She didn't know I was here?\"\n\nMrs. Miller might have suspected something, but it couldn't have been this. \"I don't think so, honey. I'm sure she didn't know. I think she really thought you were...gone.\"\n\n\"She thought I was dead.\"\n\n\"Yes. I think so.\"\n\nCaroline gave a barking sob. \"Oh. Okay. That's good. That's good, you know? Because she just thought I was dead, she didn't leave me here on purpose.\"\n\n\"No. I don't think so.\" Ginny reached blindly to find Caroline.\n\nCaroline turned and pressed herself to Ginny's shoulder. Her tears were hot and wet on Ginny's neck; the baby gave a startled cry. Ginny put her hand between Caroline and the baby, but didn't push the other woman away. She cradled her as best she could.\n\n\"No, Caroline. She didn't leave you here on purpose. I'm sure of it.\"\n\nThey sat that way for another interminable amount of time. Ginny had never known kids to be so quiet for so long, but thought perhaps they'd all fallen asleep. Her muscles were stiff, and her back ached. Every movement sent another hot pulse between her legs, and her head spun.\n\n\"I'm bleeding,\" Ginny said. \"Too much, I think.\"\n\n\"I thought once the children came, he'd leave me alone. He promised, after each one, he would take us all upstairs. After the ones that didn't make it, he always said he would take me to the hospital. But he never did.\"\n\n\"How many times?\"\n\n\"I don't know,\" Caroline said, but Ginny knew that was a lie. No mother who lost a child could ever forget it, no matter how many times it happened.\n\n\"Caroline, I feel really bad. I feel really sick. I'm losing too much blood.\"\n\n\"Wait.\"\n\nThe bed moved as Caroline got up and returned a few minutes later. She took away the material bunched between Ginny's legs and replaced it with another. Ginny forced her mind from thinking of germs. Sepsis. Her breath shuddered. Oh God. Where was Sean? Where were the police?\n\n\"Shh. Shhh, listen.\" Ginny sounded drunk. She wished she were.\n\nDeke spoke up. \"It's Tate!\"\n\n\"Tate's gone,\" Linna snapped. \"Don't be a dumb-bum. Tate went up and he didn't come back. He's dead!\"\n\n\"Tate knew he was getting old. Tate said, what happened if he died? What would happen when he didn't bring the food? So Tate tried to get the key, the special key, but he pushed Tate down so hard it cracked his head open. And then he went crazy.\" Deke was sobbing, shouting as Caroline and Linna tried to shush him.\n\nHis shouts startled the baby awake. He began to wail. Ginny rocked and soothed, but nothing would calm the infant.\n\n\"Tate said the only way out was through the walls! And we didn't have food anymore, it was gone, and the heat was off, the 'lectric was off, it was cold! Tate went up,\" Deke said, more quietly, \"and he didn't come back.\"\n\n\"When did Tate go up?\" Ginny asked. \"Not so long ago. After we moved in, right? It was after that. George died in the hospital, and we bought the house four months after that. Your food ran out. Your power ran out. And Tate went up, into the duct, and didn't come back.\"\n\nThe furnace. The flickering lights. Oh God.\n\nThe flies.\n\nGinny heard herself muttering, though her words were a slurred jumble of sounds she couldn't distinguish, even to herself. She struggled to move, to get up, and felt herself falling into a different sort of darkness. She clutched her screaming baby. She would not drop the baby. She would not drop her son.\n\nThe sound of thunder wasn't distant this time.\n\n\"Ginny! Wake up! You have to get up! Now!\"\n\nGinny fought the waves of black and red, the swirling descent of gray. Someone shook her. Someone tried to take her baby from her arms, and she screamed, fighting.\n\nThe roar grew louder. So did the sound of water. Someone pulled her, got her standing, pushed her toward a spindle-legged chair shoved in front of the dresser. Which she could see.\n\nThere was light.\n\nFaint, from the room outside this one, but after so long in the dark, any speck of light was bright as a star. Ginny put one hand on top of the dresser, the other cradling her shrieking child. Screams were good, better than silence. Better than a baby who made no sound. Someone shoved her from behind, and her muscles protested as she tried to lift her leg and get on top. Something ripped inside her, something slid down her thighs, something thick and tearing her on the way out.\n\nClarity hit her along with the pain. The rumble and roar had been the basement wall collapsing. The water was rushing in, frothing and foaming and rising.\n\nThe ceiling in these rooms was not high.\n\nTrixie was already crouched on top of the dresser. There was no room for Ginny there. Instead, Ginny put her baby there, one hand on her son to keep him from toppling off. The naked infant squalled in fury.\n\nThe water rose.\n\nCaroline and Ginny clung to the dresser. On the opposite side of the room, Linna, clutching the cat, and Deke had scrambled on top of the table. The water had already reached their shins and was still climbing. Their backs pressed to the ceiling, necks angled.\n\nImpossibly, the water rose.\n\nIt was up to Ginny's chest, and filled with rubble. Something sharp hit her leg and sent her swirling into the muck, her head under the water with barely enough time to grab a breath. She came up choking, flailing with one hand, the other hooked into the dresser's metal handle.\n\n\"Asher!\" Until that moment, she hadn't known what she wanted to call her baby. But now she knew there was nothing else to call him.\n\nGinny got to her feet and put a hand on top of the dresser, found her son and held him in place. She didn't need a chair to get to the top of it now, because the water buoyed her. Trixie shuddered, and Ginny took her hand. She looked into her face, realized she could make out the sight of the girl's dark eyes, her open mouth.\n\nThe water rose and pushed her upward, to the low-hung ceiling. She clung to the dresser. She kicked to keep herself from being swept away. She focused on Trixie's face.\n\n\"I'm here,\" she cried. \"I'm here. I'm here.\"\n\nSomeone shouted her name. More light poured into the room, bright and glaring and focused in beams. Flashlights. Men in boots and yellow overcoats.\n\nAnd Sean.\n\nHe grabbed her, but she wouldn't let go of the dresser without Asher safely cradled against her. Firemen, the other men were firemen. They shouted, pointing, grabbing at Linna and Deke. Sean, hair plastered to his face, reached for Trixie and pulled her from the dresser, into the water that was now neck high. Ginny held her son over her head and moved, following him, the front of her nightgown gripped tight in Sean's hand.\n\nSomehow, he pulled them out, over the remnants of the collapsed basement wall and the dirt that filled the space. Down the corridor that rose at the slight incline so that by the time they reached the metal door, propped open with a large metal shaft, the water was only to their knees. Then they were through the door, the stairs in front of them and the firemen with the other children close behind them.\n\nThen they went up.\n\nAnd they didn't come back down.\nChapter Forty-Five\n\nGinny rocked.\n\nAsher, warm and clean, sucked sporadically at one breast, rosebud mouth going periodically lax. Ginny smoothed her hand over the baby's soft, downy hair. She sang him a lullaby, soothing her son to sleep. In the next room, her husband slept too.\n\nIn another house, another place, Caroline Miller and her children were also warm and fed and safe. But did they sleep? Did they dream? Ginny didn't know. The police and Social Services and Brendan Miller and lawyers and the media had all taken their pieces of Caroline and the children from the basement. Ginny had visited them in the hospital just once, right after they were found, and then only because she and Asher had been admitted as well.\n\nShe and Sean had managed, so far, to keep the reporters camped out in front of the house from bothering them too much; she supposed at some point they'd have to talk to them, or they would all give up and go away. They bothered Sean more than they did her, if only because Ginny clung to the idea that somehow sharing what happened might help Caroline and her family more than keeping all of it as yet one more secret.\n\nGinny was tired of secrets.\n\nIn her arms, Asher stirred and let out one small cry, then fell further into sleep. Ginny rocked, her eyes closed, smiling at the sound of Noodles's collar jingling as the cat padded into the library and jumped onto the Victorian couch where she'd taken to spending most of her time. She was still too thin, but she never got underfoot anymore, and she never ran into places she wasn't supposed to go.\n\nGinny rocked, dozing in the dark. There came the creep of small bare feet, the whisper of cold air swirling, the soft brush of fingertips against her own. Maybe those things would always be in this house. They'd never go away. But Ginny didn't open her eyes, because she knew it was all a dream. That was all, just a dream.\n\nShe wasn't haunted any longer.\nAbout the Author\n\nMegan Hart writes books. Some of them use a lot of bad words, but most of the other words are okay.\n\nShe can't live without music, the internet, or the ocean, though she and soda have achieved an amicable parting of ways. She can't stand the feeling of corduroy or velvet, and modern art leaves her cold. She writes a little bit of everything from horror to romance.\n\nFind her at: www.meganhart.com, www.twitter.com\/megan_hart, and www.facebook.com\/megan.hart!\nLive fast, die young, and leave a bloodthirsty corpse!\n\nGhost Heart\n\n\u00a9 2016 John Palisano\n\nLive fast, die young, and leave a bloodthirsty corpse. That's the saying of a new pack of fiendish predators infesting a New England town. They're infected with the Ghost Heart, a condition that causes them to become irresistible and invincible...as long as they drink the blood of the living. But these vampires don't live forever, and as the Ghost Heart claims them, their skin loses color and their hearts turn pale. When a young mechanic is seduced by the pack's muse, he finds falling in love will break more than his heart.\n\nEnjoy the following excerpt for Ghost Heart:\n\nWe headed outside, toward the alley behind the bar; we walked into the nice, cool drizzle. I loved the change in climate. The bar had been so hot and stuffy, so being outside was welcome. Mike hiked up the collar of his leather jacket and couldn't walk fast enough.\n\nOnce we made it around the corner I spotted the Whistleville River just beyond the bridge. I thought about how, a few miles up, on the east side of town, the Jeep in my shop had plunged over that same bridge. I imagined the bodies of the kids stuck there, tangled in the water grass, decomposing, and slowly turning into fish food. I shook off the idea\u2013\u2013just chalked it up to collateral damage from a nice Anchor Steam buzz.\n\nWe rounded the old brick building and made our way toward the parking lot in back. Rain filtered through the street lamps, falling in curtains, shifting and moving in the crosswinds. A new spotlight lit the rain from the side. Headlights. Tires screeched a few hundred feet in front of us.\n\nThere was a Jeep. Another damn Jeep, I thought. It raced toward us, stopping with a hard jerk. The rainfall increased.\n\nA window rolled down, but I couldn't see inside.\n\nA raspy, deep voice, said, \"Hey.\"\n\n\"What do you need, man?\" I asked. \"Come on.\"\n\n\"You know exactly what you did,\" he said. \"Disrespecting me and my girl.\"\n\n\"I don't know you, man,\" I said. \"I think you're mistaking me for someone else.\"\n\n\"So you're calling me a liar?\"\n\nI pulled my collar up. \"Look, friend,\" I said. \"I don't have time for this. I'm drunk. I want to go home.\"\n\n\"Oh, sure,\" he said. \"You just want to go home and forget all of this.\"\n\nHis door opened. It was the big, bald guy that had been next to Minarette. \"Too late,\" he said. \"The damage is already done. Talking about me.\" Two others got out of the Jeep. They looked like normal, clean-cut guys in their 20s, only there was something wrong with their expressions. I thought they had to have been high on something. Their eyes seemed so vacant.\n\n\"Like I just told you, man\u2013\u2013I'd have no reason to. I don't even know you.\"\n\nOne of the cronies said, \"Come on, Damian. Get him already.\" I had a name.\n\nI looked over to Mike, who was staring at the other two guys\u2014guys we didn't know\u2014who'd found their way over toward him.\n\nI got shoved. Damian. He was in my face. \"What're you going to say now?\"\n\nMy head got real dizzy. Too much booze. I wasn't in any kind of shape to fight.\n\nHe shoved me again. I tried to stay up, and did so barely.\n\nA holler, and Mike was against a wall.\n\n\"Leave him alone,\" I said. \"This isn't his fault.\"\n\n\"Well,\" Damian said, \"I don't care.\"\n\nHe pushed me, but I stepped back.\n\n\"This is bull,\" I said. \"And I sure as hell ain't gonna apologize for something I didn't do.\"\n\nHe swung for my face\u2013and just barely hit my shoulder.\n\nHe was way stronger than me. I was in trouble. My shoulder thudded. There'd be a nasty bruise. The bastard.\n\nI put up my fists while Damian hovered.\n\nMike was on the ground. One of the goons was on top of him. Looked like they were robbing him.\n\n\"Get off him,\" I said. \"You bullies. What the hell?\"\n\nHis fist, my face.\n\nEvery color exploded\u2013\u2013like I was in the middle of a mortar shell.\n\nI tried to put up my arms to block him, but I'd been knocked for a loop.\n\nAnd he hit me again.\n\nI felt incredible pain.\n\nI felt nothing.\n\nMy feet failed first\u2014my legs followed.\n\nDown for the count, the others cheered.\n\nEverything felt like it'd turned slow motion. Reaching behind, I sat myself down. The world spun. The hit was too much for me to brush off.\n\nDamian kicked me in the chest. My breath forced out, the hit knocked me to the pavement.\n\nI heard more cheering, and more laughing.\n\nMy breath wouldn't catch.\n\nDamian leaned over me. His pug-like face looked inches away, then, miles away.\n\nHe said something, but it didn't register. Everything sounded like we were inside a tunnel.\n\nMore kicks to my middle.\n\nMy body and mind were separate. There was nothing grounding me.\n\nI turned my head to check for my friend.\n\nThe two goons were centered on his head. They'd leaned down and it looked as though they were eating him. What the hell?\n\nThey were on his neck. They held him down with their hands. The veins on the backs of their hands were puffed out, like they'd done steroids.\n\nOne lifted his head. He looked so normal, other than those vacant eyes. The ghoul could've been anyone. Blood rimmed his lips and dripped from his chin: it was Mike's blood. Our eyes met for a moment and from between the ghoul's lips a worm-like thing slipped out. The tip was pointed and sharp. It twitched just a bit and I knew it was his tongue, although it was different than any other I'd ever seen or heard of.\n\nHe lowered his head again. When he connected, Mike jerked. It seemed more like a reflex than a reaction. Mike's eyes were shut. His skin had gone pale.\n\nThey were draining him of his blood.\n\nOne of their shirts had come undone in the front in the scuffle. His chest looked so white it was almost clear. I swear I could see his insides moving...could make out the faint movement of a beating, translucent heart. A stream of red entered the chamber, blossomed, and then colored the cradle of veins surrounding the organ. Blood. Mikey's blood\u2013drained from him and taken inside the ghost-like heart of the ghoul kneeling over him. How could the blood get from its tongue to its own heart so damn fast? I thought.\n\nI tried to yell and scream, but nothing came out. I was in shock. Nothing worked. I looked up to see where Damian was. He'd walked away from me and stood a few feet away from his creeps; he watched them work. Damian's skin was the same pasty white as his consigliore.\n\nI turned my head and every nerve inside me seemed to explode at once. Mike laid still a dozen feet from me. Rain ran from his forehead, down his cheek. Only it wasn't just rain, I noticed. A good stream of blood ran within the rain. There were unnatural gaps in his throat where they'd fed. Moon-shaped bruises marked his flesh.\n\nThose bastards. I'd get 'em. Somehow, some way, I knew I would. They stood over him, both of them wearing goatee-shaped smears of blood. Formerly empty eyes glistened. The blood\u2013\u2013Mike's blood\u2013\u2013had reinvigorated them.\n\nThe sons of bitches.\n\nDamian looked lit up from the inside. That sounds funny, because people don't glow. It's just that the rain seemed not to touch him. His skin didn't look well at all. Maybe it was because he was so pumped from the fight that he just looked that way. Who knows?\n\nHe'd won. They'd won in no time.\n\nI considered myself a big guy, but I'd been outgunned. I was shocked at how fast Damian had taken me down. It was inhuman.\n\nDrugs. Had to have been drugs. Maybe coke. Definitely some kind of upper. That'd explain it.\n\nThen? One final insult\u2013a swift kick to my balls.\n\nThe blinding pain knocked me down from space, and back inside my beaten husk.\n\nBile rose. I turned my head, spewing hot, half-digested beer everywhere.\n\n\"You should take a picture,\" one of the goons said.\n\n\"Don't need to,\" Damian said, \"I won't forget this.\"\n\nNeither would I.\n\nDamian laughed and looked down at me. \"You loser,\" he said. \"You got something smart to say now?\" He spat at me, turned, and walked away. I heard them get inside the Jeep, turn it on, and drive away.\n\nHe and his crew were gone, leaving Mike and me lying broken in the rain.\n\nOnce I could no longer hear their Jeep leave, I pulled myself up. Everything hurt and stung. My wet clothes clung to me. I crawled over toward Mike.\n\nNudged him.\n\nGot nothing.\n\nKept pushing, tapping, and calling his name.\n\nNo response.\n\nI used my thumb to try and open an eye.\n\nNo reaction.\n\nI checked for a pulse.\n\nFound one, but it was faint.\n\nThe skin of his wrist was cold.\n\nI tried CPR, but never really learned how, so it was for naught.\n\nReaching inside my coat pocket, I found my phone in pieces. One of Damian's kicks must've smashed it. Still, I tried to turn it on. Just in case I could make one more call. No dice.\n\nI screamed at Mike.\n\nA few folks had made their way over, probably after hearing my yelling. I hollered for them to call an ambulance, and the cops. They didn't have to, though. Blue and red lights arrived moments later, just as the rain let up. I got myself to a bench, and sat.\n\nWhen I finally got my head on straight, I watched as the EMTs put my friend on a stretcher. They rushed, going as fast as they could. Mike was in big trouble.\n\nSo was I. \neBooks are not transferable.\n\nThey cannot be sold, shared or given away as it is an infringement on the copyright of this work.\n\nThis book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.\n\nSamhain Publishing, Ltd.\n\n11821 Mason Montgomery Road Suite 4B\n\nCincinnati OH 45249\n\nLittle Secrets\n\nCopyright \u00a9 2016 by Megan Hart\n\nISBN: 978-1-61923-087-3\n\nEdited by Don D'Auria\n\nCover by Kanaxa\n\nAll Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.\n\nFirst Samhain Publishing, Ltd. electronic publication: February 2016\n\nwww.samhainpublishing.com\n\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}}
+{"text":"\n\n\n\nProduced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed\nProofreading Team at http:\/\/www.pgdp.net (This file was\nproduced from images available at The Internet Archive)\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n                     [Illustration: E. F. BENSON.]\n\n\n\n\n                               A REAPING\n\n                                  BY\n                             E. F. BENSON\n\n                       [Illustration: colophon]\n\n                        THOMAS NELSON AND SONS\n                       LONDON, EDINBURGH, DUBLIN\n                             AND NEW YORK\n\n\n\n\n                                  TO\n                          LADY EVELYN LISTER\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n\nJUNE                       9\n\nJULY                      35\n\nAUGUST                    63\n\nSEPTEMBER                 87\n\nOCTOBER                  113\n\nNOVEMBER                 149\n\nDECEMBER                 181\n\nJANUARY                  215\n\nFEBRUARY                 247\n\nMARCH                    281\n\nAPRIL                    319\n\nMAY                      353\n\n\n\n\nA REAPING\n\n\n\n\nJUNE\n\n\nOf all subjects under or over the sun, there is none perhaps, even\nincluding bimetallism, or the lengthy description of golf-links which\none has never seen, so utterly below possible zones of interest as that\nof health. Health, of course, matters quite enormously to the\nindividual, but nobody with good health ever gives two thoughts (far\nless one word) to the subject. Nobody, in fact, begins to think about\nhealth until his own begins to be inferior. But, then, as if that was\nnot bad enough, he at once clubs and belabours his unhappy friends with\nits inferiority. It becomes to him the one affair of absorbing\nimportance. Emperors may be assassinated, Governments may crumble, it\nmay even be 92 degrees in the shade, but he recks nothing of those\ncolossal things. He ate strawberries yesterday, and has had a bilious\nheadache almost ever since. And the world ceases to revolve round the\nsun, and the moon is turned to blood, or ashes--I forget which.\n\nBut the real invalid, just like the man who enjoys real health, never\ntalks about such matters. It is only to the amateur in disease that they\nare of the smallest interest. The man who is well never thinks about his\nhealth, and certainly never mentions it; to the man who is really ill\nsome divine sense of irresponsibility is given. He brushes it aside,\njust as one brushes aside any innate inability; with common courage--how\nlavishly is beautiful gift given to whomever really needs it--he makes\nthe best of other things.\n\nThese poignant though obvious reflections are the outcome of what\noccurred this evening. I sat between two friends at dinner, both of them\npeople in whom one's heart rejoices. But one of them is obsessed just\nnow with this devil of health-seeking. The other has long ago given up\nthe notion of seeking for health at all, for it is not for her. She\nfaces incurable with gaiety. So I have to record two conversations, the\nworse first.\n\n'Oh, I always have ten minutes' deep-breathing every morning. It is the\nonly way I can get enough air. You have to lie on your back, you know,\nand stop one nostril with your finger, while you breathe in slowly\nthrough the other; and you should do it near an open window. There is no\nfear of catching cold, or if you do I can send you a wonderful\nprescription.... Then you breathe out through the other nostril. I wish\nyou would try it; it makes the whole difference. No, thanks, caviare is\npoison to me!'\n\n'Well, so is arsenic to me,' I said. 'But why say so?'\n\n(It did not sound quite so brusque as it looks when written down, and\nnative modesty prevents my explaining how abjectly patient I had been up\ntill then.)\n\nThen there came the reshifting of conversation, and we started again,\nwith change of partners.\n\n'I do hope you will come to see us again in August,' said the quiet,\npleasant voice. 'I shall go up to Scotland at the end of the month. Your\nbeloved river should be in order: there has been heaps of rain.'\n\nBut I could not help asking another question.\n\n'Ah, then they let you go there?' I said.\n\nShe laughed gently.\n\n'No, that is just what they don't do,' she said. 'But I am going. What\ndoes it matter if one hastens it by a few weeks? I am going to shorten\nit probably by a few weeks, but instead of having six tiresome months on\nboard a yacht, I am going to have rather fewer months among all the\nthings I love. Oh, Dick quite agrees with me. Do let's talk about\nsomething more interesting. Did you hear \"Tristan\" the other night? No?\nRichter conducted. He is such a splendid Isolde! There is no one to\napproach him!'\n\nThere, there was the glory of it! And how that little tiny joke about\nRichter touched the heart! Here on one side was a woman dying, and she\nknew it, but the wonder and the pleasure of the world was intensely\nhers. There, on the other, was the excellent Mrs. Armstrong. She could\nnot think about the opera or anything else except her absurd\ndeep-breathing and her ridiculous liver. Nobody else did; nobody cared.\nEven now I could hear her explaining to her left-hand neighbour that\nnext to deep-breathing, the really important thing is to drink a glass\nof water in the middle of the morning. Slowly, of course, in sips. And\nshe proceeded to describe what the water did. Well, I suppose I am\nold-fashioned, but I could no more think of discussing these intimate\nmatters at the dinner-table than I should think of performing my toilet\nthere. Besides--and this is perhaps the most unanswerable objection to\ndoing so--besides being slightly disgusting, it is so immensely dull!\n\nHowever, on the other side there was a topic as entrancing as the other\nwas tedious, and in two minutes my other neighbour and I were deep in\nthe fascinating inquiry as to how far a conductor--a supreme\nconductor--identified himself with the characters of the opera.\nCertainly the phrase 'Richter is such a splendid Isolde' was an\nalluring theme, and by degrees it spread round the corner of the table\n(we were sitting close to it), and was taken up opposite, when a member\nof the Purcell Society gave vent to the highly interesting observation\nthat the conductor had practically nothing to do with the singers, and\nwas no more than a sort of visible metronome put there for the guidance\nof the orchestra. It was impossible not to retort that the last\nperformance of the Purcell Society completely confirmed the truth of\nthat view of the conductor. Indeed, the chorus hardly thought of him\neven as a metronome. Or else, perhaps, they were deaf, which would\naccount for their sinking a tone and a half; in fact there were flowers\nof speech on the subject.\n\nBut how extraordinary a thing (taking the view, that is to say, that a\nconductor conceivably does more than beat time) is this transference of\nemotion, so that first of all Wagner, by means of merely black notes and\nwords on white paper, can inspire the conductor with that tragedy of\nlove which years ago, he wove out of the sunlight and lagoons of\nVenice; that, secondly, the conductor can enter into that mysterious and\nmystical union with his band and his singers, and reflect his own mood\non them so strongly that from throat or strings or wailing of flutes\nthey give us, who sit and listen, what the conductor bade them read into\nthe music, so that all, bassoons and double-bass, flutes and strings,\ntrumpets and oboes and horns, become the spiritual mirror of his\nemotion. By means of that little baton, by the beckoning of his fingers,\nhe pulls out from them the music which is in his own soul, makes it\ncommunicable to them. Indeed, we need not go to the Society for\nPsychical Research for experiments in thought-transference, for here is\nan instance of it (unless, indeed, we take the view of this member of\nthe Purcell Society) far more magical, far further uplifted out of the\nsphere of things which we think we can explain. For the mere degrees of\nloud or soft, mere alterations in _tempo_, are, of course, less than the\nABC of the conductor's office. His real work, the exercise of his real\npower, lies remote from, though doubtless connected with them. And of\nthat we can explain nothing whatever. He obsesses every member of his\norchestra so that by a motion of his hand he gets the same quality of\ntone from every member of it. For apart from the mere loudness and the\nmere time of any passage, there are probably an infinite number of ways\nof playing each note. Yet at his bidding every single member of the band\nplays it the same way. It is his thought they all make audible with a\nhundred instruments which have all one tone; else, how does that unity\nreach us sitting in our stalls?\n\nThat is the eternal mystery of music, which alone of the arts deals with\nits materials direct. It is not an imitation of sound, but sound itself,\nthe employment of the actual waves of air that are the whistle of the\nwind, and the crash of breakers, and the love-song of nightingales. All\nother branches of art deal only second-hand; they but give us an\nimitation of what they wish to represent. The pictorial artist can do no\nmore than lay a splash of pigment from a leaden tube on to his canvas\nwhen he wishes to speak to us of sunlight; he can only touch an eye with\na reflection in its corner to show grief, or take a little from the\nsize of the pupil to produce in us who look the feeling of terror that\ncontracts it. Similarly, too, the sculptor has to render the soft swell\nof a woman's bosom in marble, as if it was on marble a man would pillow\nhis head. It is all a translation, a rendering in another material, of\nthe image that fills us with love or pity, or the open-air intoxication\nof an April morning. But the musician works first-hand; the intangible\nwaves of air, not a representation of them, are his material. It is not\nwith a pigment of sound, so to speak, that the violins shiver, or the\ntrumpets tell us that the gods are entering Valhalla. Music deals with\nsound itself, with the whisper that went round the formless void when\nGod said, 'Let there be light,' with all that makes this delicate\norchestra of the world, no copy of it, no translation of it, but it\nitself.\n\nAnd for the time being, while the curtain is up, the control of these\nforces, their wail and their triumph, belongs to the conductor. He gives\nthem birth in the strings and the wind; he by the movement of a hand\nmakes them express all that sound expressed to the magician who first\nmapped them on his paper. Indeed, he does more; he interprets them\nthrough his own personality, giving them, as it were, an extra dip in\nthe bath of life, so that their colours are more brilliant, more vital\nof hue. Or is the member of the Purcell Society right, and is the man\nwho gives us this wonderful Isolde only a metronome?\n\nIt is often said that the deaf are far more lonely, far more remotely\nsundered from the world we know, than are the blind. It is impossible to\nimagine that this should not be so, for it is not only the sounds that\nwe know we hear, but the sounds of which for the most part we are\nunconscious, that form the link between us and external things. It\ncommonly happens, as in the dark, that we are cut off from all exercise\nof the eyes, and yet at such moments we have not been very conscious of\nloneliness. But it is rare that we are cut off from all sound, and the\nloneliness of that isolation is indescribable. It happened to me once in\nthe golden desert to the west of Luxor, above the limestone cliffs that\nrise from the valley where the Kings of Egypt lie entombed.\n\nI had sat down on the topmost bluff of these cliffs, having tethered my\ndonkey down below, for the way was too steep for him, and for several\nminutes observed my surroundings with extreme complacency. Below me lay\nthe grey limestone cliffs, but where I sat a wave of the desert had\nbroken, and the immediate foreground was golden sand. Farther away, in\nall hues of peacock green, lay the strip of cultivated land, and beyond,\nthe steel blue of the ancient and mysterious river. It was early yet in\nthe afternoon, and the sun still high, so that the whole land glittered\nin this glorious high festival of light and colour. And, looking at the\nimperishable monuments of that eternal civilization, it seemed that one\ncould not desire a more convincing example of the kindliness of the\ncircling seasons, of the beneficence that overlooked the world from\ngeneration to generation, so that man might well say that this\ntreasure-house of the earth was inexhaustible. No breeze of any sort was\nstirring, but the air, pure, hot, invigorating, was absolutely still.\nBut at that moment I suddenly felt as if something was dreadfully wrong,\nthough I did not at once guess what it was. Then came the thought, the\nidentification of what was wrong: it seemed as if the world was dead;\nthen came the reason for it: it was because there was no sound. For a\nmoment I listened in order to verify this--listened with poised breath\nand immovable limbs. Yes, I was right: there was no sound of anything at\nall; for once the ears were deprived of the delicate orchestra that goes\nup, a hymn of praise, day and night from the earth. It was like a\ndreadful nightmare.\n\nI first tried coughing, to see if that would be companionable, but that\ndid not do; I coughed, and then silence resumed its reign. I lit a\ncigarette. I moved, rustled, even got up and walked a little, kicking\nthe pebbles that lay about in the sand. But that was no use, and I\nperceived where the defect was. I knew I was alive, and could make\nsounds, but what I wanted was some evidence that something else was\nalive. But there was none.\n\nSomehow this fact was so disquieting that I sat down again to think\nabout it. In my reasonable mind I knew that absolutely everything was\nalive, only there was at this moment nothing to tell me so. Not a fly\nbuzzed over the hot sand, not a kite was to be seen wheeling slow as if\nin sleep, a black speck against the inviolable blue that stretched from\nhorizon to horizon. I was the only thing alive as far as I had evidence.\nOr supposing--the thought flashed suddenly across me--supposing I, too,\nwas dead? And what was this--this dome of air and the golden sand? Was\nit hell?\n\nI cannot describe the horror of this. Momentary as was the sensation, it\nwas of a quality, a depth of surcharged panic, which comes to us only in\nnightmares. I was alone, I was not within touch, in this utter\nstillness, of any other consciousness, and surely that must be hell, the\nouter darkness of absolute loneliness, which not even the glorious\ngolden orb swung centre-high in the blue could ever so faintly\npenetrate. Indeed, it and this iridescent panorama at my feet only added\nsome secret bitter irony to the outer darkness. All the light, the\ncolour, the heat, which one had so loved was there still, but life was\narrested, and there was nobody.\n\nThen quite suddenly and unexpectedly the farcical happened, for from\nsome hundred yards away down below the steep cliff up which I had\nclimbed came a long discordant bray from my donkey, who perhaps felt\nlonely, too. But I have never heard a sound which was to the spirit so\noverpoweringly sweet. I heard that, and gave a long breath, and shouted,\n'Thank you very much!' for the whole glory of the noon, which silence\nhad blackened, was instantly restored.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nOne of the interesting things to which I have alluded, in contrast with\nthe tedium of Mrs. Armstrong's health, was occurring to-day, for the\nthermometer had indeed been up in the nineties, a fact which fills all\nproper-minded people with pride. Our dear, stuffy old London had\nregistered 92 degrees in the shade at Messrs. Negretti and Zambra's that\nmorning, and I with my own eyes had seen it. It was impossible not to be\nproud, just as it is impossible not to be proud when one is in a train\nthat is going over seventy miles an hour, a thing that may be timed by\nthe small white quarter-mile posts that are so conveniently established\nby the side of the line. Once I went in a train that did a mile and a\nhalf in seventy-three seconds. I have not got over my elation yet. Or\nwhen an extraordinarily vivid flash of lightning occurs, with a\ncongested angry spasm of thunder coming simultaneously with it, are you\nnot sorry for the nerveless soul that does not thrill with personal\nelation at power made manifest? Or when Madame Melba sings the last long\nnote of the first act of 'La Boh\u00e8me'? Or when the organist in King's\nCollege Chapel pulls out the tubas, making the windows to rattle in\ntheir leaded panes by the concussion of the astonished air? Or when a\nperfectly enormous wave rides in from the Atlantic, and is transformed\nsuddenly from the illustrious blue giant into a myriad cascades of snowy\nwhite, as, jovially dealing itself its own death, as it were, it is\ndashed against the brown steadfast rock of the land? Or when Legs (I\nshall speak of him soon), as he did to-day, sliced his drive very badly\nat the fourth hole at Woking, and hit the front of the engine of an\nup-train with extraordinary violence, and thereupon collapsed on the tee\nin speechless laughter for the sheer joy of the gorgeously improbable\nfeat?\n\nFor all these things, so I take it, are evidence of the splendid energy\nof things in general in which we, each of us, have our share. So that\nwhen our train goes very fast, or when thunder cracks very loudly, or\nwhen blue waves are turned to smoke, though we are not actually\nresponsible in any way for these encouraging facts, which are dependent\non pressure in a boiler, electricity in the air, and a disturbance in\nmid-Atlantic, yet as by some wireless telegraphy, the energy of them is\ncaught in the receiver of ourselves, and we throb back to it, feeling\nthe pulse of life, which is exactly the same life in boiler and cloud\nand wave as that pulse in ourselves, which beats at the wrist. Life!\nLife! Life! All one--all absolutely one!\n\nAnd to-night, too, though not in any of these particular ways, how it\nthrobs and beats in this hot darkness of June! For a moment I wished I\nwas in the country, to feel the pulse of the woodland and the garden.\nFor the green things of the earth are awake all June; they never sleep\nday or night; they hold their breath sometimes in the hour before dawn,\nand they hang their heads sometimes beneath some scurry of summer rain;\nbut day and night their eyes shine; they are growing and living, and are\nalways awake till autumn comes, when they doze, and winter comes, when\nthey sleep sound, day and night alike, dreaming, perhaps, of the spring,\nwhen from deep sleep they will slowly awake again, aconites first, and\nsoon after daffodils, and then the buds of the hawthorn, little green\nsquibs of leaf....\n\nBut I had not gone a hundred yards from the doors within which I had\ndined, when the mysterious joy of London summer night smote these\nthoughts of the country into silence. The whole town was awake, theatres\nwere pouring out into the streets, and boarding the giants of the\nroadway, the snorting smelling motor-buses, their trotting brothers, and\nthe inferior cabs and hansoms, where one could be alone and not stop on\nthe way, but be taken decorously and dully to one's destination. There\nwas news, too, in the evening papers--a horrible murder, I think it\nwas, but the nature of the incident mattered very little. It was\nincident, anyhow; something had happened. And without wishing to know\nexactly what it was, I felt extraordinarily pleased that something had\nhappened.\n\nThe dip of Piccadilly between Devonshire House and Hyde Park was\ncomparatively empty, and a sudden shudder of the mind came across me. I\nhad been sitting next a dear friend, condemned to death. How _could_ I\nhave forgotten that, for forgotten it I had, in this riotous summer of\nLondon. Then I knew why I had forgotten it. It was because she had been\nso superior (an odious word, but there is no other) to it herself. That\ncourage, that passionate interest in the dear things of the world, her\ncontempt (for this time there is no need of another word) of death, had\nbeen infectious. To her it was a mere incident of life. 'Things in\ngeneral' were no less real and delightful to her because this incident\nwas coming close, than they were to me, who had not yet, as far as I\nknew, to look it in the face.\n\nYet, after all, to any of the others sitting at that table, death, so\nsmall an incident to her who had steadfastly regarded it, might in\nreality be closer than to her. And she exulted in the things of life\nstill: they had lost no interest for her.\n\nI stopped for a moment at the bottom of the hill, as one must when\nsomething quite new to oneself strikes one. That was the ideal she had\nshown. Fearless, undismayed, full of summer. 'And with God be the rest.'\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nAt Hyde Park Corner a coffee-stall and an ice-cream stall jostled each\nother. Each had its following. But both at the moment seemed to me to be\nheretical, and instead I turned into the Park to walk as far as the\nAlexandra Gate, whence I had to get into Sloane Street.\n\nIt was like coming out of the roar of a tunnel into the day again, and\none's eyes (though conversely) had to get accustomed to the dark after\nthe glare and noise of the dear streets. A little wind whispered\noverhead in the planes; a little odour of moist earth came from Rotten\nRow. Quiet, solitary figures passed, or figures in pairs, closely\nlinked, but for the most part silent. On benches underneath the trees\nthere were pairs of figures. In Heaven's name why not? To flirt, to make\nlove, to look into eyes, is an applauded, and rightly applauded, pursuit\nin sequestered corners, under palms, beneath the eaves of the staircase,\nwith the band blaring from the ball-room just beyond. But it doesn't\nseem to strike the fastidious, who write letters to papers about the\n'state' of the parks, that it is just possible that there are other\npeople in the world who haven't got ball-rooms and palms, and marble\nstaircases. What are they to do, then? The answer of these\nletter-writers is deplorably futile, for they talk about indigent\nmarriages! As if you could stop the life of the world by pointing with\nimpious hands towards the Savings Bank! God laughs at it!\n\nBut the people who most call attention to the state of the park are\nthose who have sat in the back drawing-room with their 'gurls,' while\nmamma has been Grenadier at the door, and papa has put a handkerchief\nover his broad face, when he has finished his glass of port after lunch\n(after lunch!), and smokes his cigar in the dining room. It really is\nso. Young men and maidens may sit on a plush sofa in the dreadful back\ndrawing-room and behave as young men and maidens should (and if they\nshouldn't, they will); and why in the name of all that is decent should\nthey not sit on a bench in the Park and kiss each other? Yet the person\nwho objects to their doing so, and who writes to the papers in\nconsequence, is exactly the man who, in his semi-detached villa at some\nnameless suburb, draws his handkerchief over his face, and obscenely\nsnores, while Jack, a respectable bank-clerk, kisses Maria in the back\ndrawing-room. Good luck to them all, except to the horrible man who\nsnores and writes to the papers when he is awake! He would be better\nsnoring.\n\nThe moon had risen and rode high in a star-kirtled heaven, making a\ndiaper of light and shifting shadow below the shade of the many-elbowed\nplanes. Even now, close on midnight, it was extraordinarily hot, and for\na little the grass and the trees made me long again for the true\ncountry, where the green things on the earth are native, not, as here,\noutcasts in the desert island of the streets. Yet, when there is, as in\nLondon, so large a colony of castaways, extending, you will remember,\nright down from beyond the Serpentine Bridge to Westminster, so that,\nexcept for the crossing at Hyde Park, one may walk on grass for all\nthese solid miles, one hopes that the trees and flowers are tolerably\ncheerful, and do not sigh much for the wild places away from houses.\nNever was there a town so full of trees as this, for walk as you may in\nit, you will, I think, with three exceptions only, never find a street\nfrom some point in which you cannot see a tree to remind you of shade at\nnoontide and grassy hollows. But the names of those streets shall not\nhere be stated; they must, however, consider themselves warned.\n\nThen the streets again, crowded still with moving figures, each an\nentrancing enigma to any passenger whose soul is at all alert, and swift\nwith the passage of those glorious motor-buses, pounding and flashing\nalong on their riotous ways, the very incarnation to me of all that\n'town' means! I cannot imagine now what London was like without them. It\nmust have been but half alive, half itself. It is impossible to be\npatient with these curious folk who consider them nuisances, who say (as\nif anyone denied it) that they both smell and clatter. That is exactly\nwhy they are so typical of London; indeed, one is disposed to think that\nthey were not made with hands, but spontaneously generated out of the\nSpirit of the Town.\n\nAnd how delightful to observe their elephantine antics if the streets\nare slippery, when they behave exactly like a drunken man, with\nappearance still portentously solemn, as if he had heard grave news, but\nafflicted with strange indecision and uncertainty on questions of the\ndirection in which he intends to walk. I was on one the other day which\ndid the most entrancing things, and had it all to myself, as everybody\nelse got down, not seeming to see that if a motor-bus has been\n'overtaken' it is far safer to be on it than anywhere else in the\nstreet, just as a drunken man may lurch heavily with damage to others,\nbut never hurts himself. It was in Piccadilly, too, a beautiful theatre\nfor its man\u0153uvres. Trouble began as we descended the hill by the Green\nPark: it had _vin gai_, and was boisterously cheerful; but it was\nextraordinarily uncertain about direction, and slewed violently once or\ntwice, so that hansoms started away from our vicinity as rabbits scuttle\nfrom you in the brushwood. Then my bus suddenly pulled itself together\nand walked quite straight for a lamp-post by the kerb. It felt tired, I\nsuppose, and leaned wearily against it, snapping it neatly off with as\nlittle effort as it takes to pluck a daisy. Then it hooted, moved\ngravely on again, and, thinking it was a member of the Junior Athen\u00e6um,\nmade straight for the door. But it forgot to lift its feet up to get on\nto the pavement, and stumbled. Then it saw a sister-bus, backed away\nfrom the pavement, and tried to make friends. But the other simply cut\nit and passed by. So it gave a heavy sigh, and began to mount the hill\ntowards Devonshire House. But it had scarcely gone twenty yards when the\nbehaviour of its sister so smote upon its heart that it could not go on,\nand turned slowly round in the street to look back at that respectable\nbut uncharitable relation with pathetic and appealing eyes. It might\nhappen to anybody, it seemed to say, 'to take a drop too much, and you\nshouldn't judge too severely.'\n\nThis sense of being misunderstood gave it _vin triste_ of the most\npronounced kind. I have seldom seen so despondent a drunkard. It moaned\nand muttered to itself, and I longed to console it. But beneficent\nNature came to its aid: laid her cool hand upon its throbbing head, and\nit slept. I got gently off, feeling, as Mr. Rossetti, I think, says (if\nit was not he, it was somebody else), that I must step softly, for I was\ntreading on its dreams.\n\nAnd all this for a penny, which the conductor very obligingly refunded\nto me, as I had not been taken where I wanted to go!\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nSloane Street, and soon my dear house, into which I was towed by my\nwatch-chain. For my latchkey was on the end of it, and, having opened\nthe door, I could not get the latchkey out, and had to step on tiptoe,\nfollowing the door as it opened. Wild music came from the upstairs, and,\nhaving disentangled my key, I ran up, to find Helen and Legs trying with\nsingular ill-success to play the overture to the 'Meistersingers,' from\na performance of which they had just returned. They took not the\nslightest notice of my entry.\n\n'No!' shouted Legs. 'One, two; wait for two! Oh, do get on! Yes, that's\nit. Sorry; I thought it was a sharp.'\n\nThey were nearing the end, and several loud and unsimultaneous thumps\ncame.\n\n'I've finished,' said Helen.\n\nLegs had one thump more.\n\n'So have I,' he said. 'Isn't it ripping?'\n\n\n\n\nJULY\n\n\nHelen has gone to church, after several scathing remarks about\nSabbath-breakers, by whom she means me, and probably also Legs, as I\nhear the piano being played indoors. As a matter of fact, I have not the\nslightest intention of breaking anything--though Legs seems to have\ndesigns on the strings--for even here under the trees on the lawn it is\nfar too hot to think of such a thing. Several slightly disappointed dogs\nrepose round me, who hoped that perhaps, as I was not going to church, I\nwas going for a walk. This afternoon, I am afraid, they will be\ndisappointed again, for I propose to go to afternoon service in the\ncathedral, and they will think I am going for a walk. But on Sunday dogs\nhave to pay for the commissions and omissions of the week.\n\nThe bells have stopped, so Helen will quite certainly be late, and the\nsilence of Sunday morning in the country grows a shade deeper. Fifi\njust now, with an air of grim determination, sat up to scratch herself;\nbut she could not be bothered, and sank down again in collapse on the\ngrass. Legs, too, has apparently found the heat too much even for him,\nand has stopped playing. And I abandoned myself to that luxury which can\nonly be really enjoyed on Sunday morning, when other people have gone to\nchurch (I wish to state again that I am going this afternoon), of\nthinking of all the things I ought to do, and not doing them. On Monday\nand Tuesday, and all through the week, in fact, you can indulge in that\nsame pursuit, but it lacks aroma: it is without bouquet. But give me a\nchair under a tree on Sunday morning, and let my wife call me names for\nsitting in it, and then let the church-bells stop. Fifi wants washing.\nLegs said so yesterday, and we meant to wash her this morning. I must\ncarefully avoid the subject if he comes out, since I don't intend to do\nso. Then I ought to write to the Secretary of State--having first\nascertained who he is--to remind him that Legs is going up for his\nForeign Office examination in November, and that his (the Secretary of\nState's) predecessor in the late Government promised him a nomination.\nHow tiresome these changes of Government are! One would have thought the\nConservatives might have held on till Legs' examination. Then I should\nnot (1) have to consult Whitaker to find out who the present Secretary\nof State is, and (2) write to him, and--probably--(3) find that either I\nhaven't got a Whitaker, or else that it is an old one. This will entail\nexpense as well.\n\nHow the silence grew! I could not even hear any bees buzz among the\nflower-beds, and wondered whether bees do no work on Sunday. There was\nnot a sound or murmur of them. Probably this is quite a new fact in\nnatural history, which has never struck anybody before. It would never\nhave struck me if I had gone to church. Then Fifi pricked one ear, sat\nup, and snapped at something. It was a winged thing, with a brown body,\nrather like a bee. How indescribably futile!\n\nThen there came a little puff of wind from the end of the garden, and\nnext moment the whole air was redolent with the scent of sweet-peas.\nSweet-peas! How strangely, vastly more intimate is the sense of smell\nthan any other! How at one whiff of odour the whole romance of life, its\nbeautiful joys and scarcely less beautiful sorrows, the dust and\nstruggle and the glory of it, rises up, clad not in the grey robes, or\nstanding in the dim light of the past, but living, moving,\nbreathing--part of the past, perhaps, but more truly part of the\npresent. Like a huge wave from the immortal sea of life, cool and green,\nand speaking of the eternal depths, yet exulting in sunshine and\nrainbow-hued in spray, all the memories entwined about this house held\nand enveloped me. Here lived once Dick and Margery, those perfect\nfriends; here, when they had passed to their triumphant peace, came she\nwhom, when I first saw her, I thought to be Margery. From this house\n(where still in memory of Margery we plant the long avenue of\nsweet-peas, because she loved them) two years ago we were married, and\nhere I sit now drowned in the beautiful past that is all so essential a\npart of this beautiful present.\n\nBut it would be as well, perhaps, if this book is to be in the slightest\ndegree intelligible (a thing which I maintain is a merit rather than a\ndefect), to put together a few simple facts concerning these last two\nyears.\n\nIt was two years ago last April that we were married, and took a small\nhouse in town, though we still spent a good deal of time down here with\nHelen's father. But before the year was out he died, leaving everything\nto Helen, who was his only child. So, as was natural, we continued to\nlive in the house which was so dear to both of us.\n\nLegs is my first cousin, and he has lived with us for a year past, for\nhe has neither father nor mother; and since he was cramming for his\nForeign Office work in town, it was far the best arrangement that he\nshould make his home with us. Legs is the only name he is ever known by,\nsince he is one of those people who are almost unknown by their real\nname (which in this case is Francis Horace Allenby), and are alluded to\nonly by some nickname which is far more suitable. If, for instance, I\nsaid to somebody who knew him quite well, 'Have you seen Francis\nlately?' I should probably be favoured with an inquiring stare, and\nthen, 'Oh, Legs you mean!' while to his million acquaintances (he has\nmore than anyone I ever knew) he is equally Legs Allenby. The name, I\nneed scarcely add, is a personal and descriptive nickname, for Legs\nchiefly consists of them. When he sits down, he would be guessed to be\nwell on the short side of middle height; when he stands up he is seen to\nbe well on the farther shore of it. He was Legs at school, and his\nfamily, very sensibly, and all his friends, saw how impossible it was to\ncall him Francis any more. For the rest, he is just over twenty,\nsandy-haired, freckle-faced, and green-eyed, with a front tooth broken\nacross, a fact that is continually in evidence, since he is nearly\nalways laughing. It would be sheer nonsense to call him good-looking,\nbut it would be as sheer to call him ugly, since, when you have got a\nface like Legs', either epithet has nothing to do with it. But I have\nnever seen any boy with nearly so attractive and charming a face, and\nLegs, whose nature is quite as nice as his face, and extremely like it,\nhas the most splendid time.\n\nAnd that, to finish these tedious explanations, is our household. There\nis no other inmate of it--no little one, you understand.\n\nLegs is an enthusiast--a fanatic on the subject of life. Everything,\nincluding even his foreign languages, which he has to cram himself with,\nis the subject of his admiration, and he discovers more secrets of life\nthan the rest of the world put together. At one time it is a chord which\nis meat and drink to him; at another the romances of Pierre Loti; or,\nagain, golf is the only thing worth living for, while occasionally some\ngirl, or, as often as not, a respectable elderly married woman, usurps\nhis heart. Last week he discovered that there were only two people in\ntown the least worth talking to, but yesterday, when I asked him who the\nsecond one was, having forgotten myself, I found that he had forgotten\ntoo, for if the 'Meistersinger' overture was not enough for anybody, he\nwas a person of no perception.\n\n'Why, it contains all there is,' he had said, when he finished it the\nother evening with Helen. 'It's all there, the whole caboodle.'\n\nBut this morning, from the silence indoors, I imagine he must have found\nanother caboodle--a book probably. Or equally possible, Legs has an\nattack of acute middle-age, which occasionally takes him like a bad\ncold in the head. Then he wonders whether anything is worth doing, and\nis sorry for Helen and me, because we are so frivolous. Six months ago,\nI remember, he had such an attack, induced by reading a book about three\nacres and a cow, which raised in him the sense of injustice that all of\nus three had so much more than that. During this period he took no sugar\nin his tea, refused wine, and began to write a book which was called\n'Tramps,' contrasting the horror of indigence with the even greater\nhorror of extravagance. It was really directed against Helen and me, for\nwe had lately bought a small, snuffling motor-car. These outbursts of\nSocialism are generally coincident with Atheism. But they do not last\nlong: Legs soon feels better again.\n\nI was right, it appeared, about the conjecture that he had found a book,\nbut I was wrong about the attack of middle-age. Legs jumped out of the\ndrawing-room window with wild excitement.\n\n'Oh, I say!' he cried, 'why did you never tell me? I thought Swinburne\nwas an awful rotter! But just listen.'\n\nAnd he read: 'When the hounds of spring are in winter's traces.'\n\n'Did you ever hear anything like it?' he said. '\"Blossom by blossom the\nspring begins!\" Why, it's magic! Oh, don't I know it! Do you remember--I\nsuppose you don't--when all the daffodils came out together last year?'\n\n'Oh, Legs, what an ass you are!' I said. 'Because you never noticed them\ntill I showed you them.'\n\n'No, I believe that's true. Oh, don't argue! Listen!'\n\nAnd he began all over again.\n\nThen he lay back on the grass with his hands underneath his head,\nlooking up unblinking into the face of the sun. That, by the way, is\nanother peculiarity of his: he looks straight at the sun at noonday, and\nis not dazzled. His eyes neither blink nor water. He can't understand\nwhy other people don't look at the sun.\n\nThen--if by any chance you care to understand this quiet, delightful\nlife we lead, it is necessary that you understand Legs--then his mood\nsuddenly changed.\n\n'Oh, I'm wrong about the daffodils,' he said; 'you showed me them. But\nthis chap _is_ a daffodil. I suppose he's quite old, too. I wonder how\nyou can get old, if you have ever felt like that. What a waste of time\nit is to do anything if you can feel. I hate this Foreign Office affair:\nwhy shouldn't I do nothing?'\n\n'Because you can't,' I remarked.\n\n'What do you mean?'\n\nI had not been to church, and so had heard no sermon. Therefore, I\npreached one on my own account.\n\n'You will know in about fifteen years,' I said. 'Anyhow, you will find\nthat, unless you are brainless and absurd, you must do something. You\nare quite wrong. It isn't nearly enough to feel. The moment you \"feel,\"\nyou want to create. You not only want, but you have to; you can't\npossibly help yourself. You have just read that heavenly poem. You now\nwant to write something like it. You hear what spring once said to a\npoet, and you want to put down what spring says to you!'\n\n'Oh, you're quite wrong,' said Legs. 'He has said what spring means.\nThat's the last word on the subject. But summer now: this, to-day----'\n\n'So you want to create,' said I.\n\nA glorious trait about Legs is that he never admits conviction. He only\nchanges the subject. Thus, if the subject is changed by him, his\ncontroversialist is satisfied.\n\n'I don't believe in the highest of the shortest suit if your partner\ndoubles,' he said. 'What are you to do if you have two spades and two\nclubs all contemptible?'\n\n'Lead the less contemptible.'\n\nLegs turned slowly over on his side, and lay with his face against the\nshort turf of the lawn. '\"Blossom by blossom,\"' he said, '\"the spring\nbegins.\" I wonder if he meant more than that! Did he mean to tell of the\ntime when one is young oneself, and it is all blossom? Lord, how\npriggish that sounds! But it is all blossom, except for this beastly\nGerman. I hate German! It sounds as if you were gargling. Damn! I have\nto go up by the early train to-morrow, too! And you and Helen will stop\nhere till after lunch. Grind, grind--oh, I lead the life of a dog! And\nthen, if I am very successful, I shall have the privilege of sitting on\na stool in a beastly building in Whitehall, and writing a _pr\u00e9cis_ from\nsome silly old man in Vienna or Madrid, about nothing at all. It isn't\nworth it!'\n\nLegs and I, it will be observed, deal largely in contradictions.\n\n'Yes, it is,' I said. 'Everything almost that one does is worth it. As\nlong as you are actively doing anything with all your heart, you can't\nbe wasting time, nor can there be anything better worth doing. It is\nonly when you say that a thing isn't worth doing that it becomes so.'\n\nLegs sat up again.\n\n'Oh, I want nine lives at least!' he said. 'Or why can't one buy some of\nthe time that hangs so heavy on other people's hands? I know a man who\nreads the _Times_ all through every morning, and the _Globe_ every\nevening. Yet, after all, I dare say it is quite as improving as sitting\nhere and talking rot as we are doing. I shall go and put in half an hour\nover that accursed Teutonic language before lunch.'\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nLegs had, as it seemed to me, run over most of the topics of human\ninterest in the few minutes he had been out, and since I was still\nirrevocably determined neither to wash Fifi, nor to write to the\nSecretary of State, nor, indeed, to open the very large book on the\ncrisis in Russia, which I had brought out with me (to bring out a book\non Sunday morning and not to open it is strictly in accordance with the\nspirit of the thing), my mind went slowly browsing, like a meditative\ncow, over the dazzling display he had spread before me. And\ninstinctively and instantaneously I found myself envying him, though why\nI envied him I did not immediately know. But it was soon obvious; I\nenvied his power of making soul-stirring discoveries; his rapture over\nthat magical spring song of the man he had thought 'an awful rotter.' I\nenvied him his ignorance of the perfectly patent fact that it is only\nfools who can go on doing nothing, and of the fact that it is infinitely\nbetter to sit on a stool and do arithmetic for stockbrokers than to do\nnothing at all. But youth does not know that, and I think I envied him\nhis youth. Yet--so often does one contradict oneself--I knew very soon\nthat I did not envy him any of these things. After all, I still went on\nmaking soul-stirring discoveries, and propose to do so until the very\nend of my life, when I shall make the most soul-stirring discovery of\nall, which is death. And to envy the fact of his having just discovered\nthe magic of Swinburne's spring song would be exactly the same as\nenvying the appetite of somebody who has just come down to breakfast,\nwhen you are half-way through. Your eggs and bacon were delicious, but\nthe fact that you have eaten them makes it impossible to wish for them\nagain. And it should make you only delighted that other people keep\ncoming down to breakfast--till the end of your life they will do that,\nunless the world comes to an end first--and, thank God, they will find\neggs and bacon delicious too, hungry and fresh in the morning of their\nlives.\n\nI was becoming slightly too active in mind for the proper observance of\nSunday morning (given, of course, that you have chosen not to go to\nchurch), for the real attitude is a state of tranquil bemusedness, but\nit was too late to stop now.... What, in fact, did I want? Did I want\nto be twenty again, and go through the days and hours of those fifteen\nyears once more?\n\nYes, I did. If the world could be turned back for fifteen years, I would\ngladly take my place there, and go through it all, good and bad\ntogether, just as it has happened. I would encore this delightful song,\nin fact, and be content that it should be sung again--it, not another\nsong. Of course, if one could start again at the age of twenty--or ten,\nfor that matter--and live it over again with the knowledge,\ninfinitesimal as it is, that one has gained now, I imagine that the vast\nmajority of the world would put the hands of the clock back. On all\nthose thousands of occasions on which one has acted stupidly, unkindly,\nevilly, and has probably suffered for it without delay (for it is\nmercifully ordained that we have not long to wait before our punishment\nbegins, especially if we have been foolish), we should now do\ndifferently, remembering that it did not pay--to put things at their\nlowest--to be asses and knaves. Apart from that, we should have the same\nbeautiful, flawless days again, when, so I cannot but think, the\nbeneficent power has somehow come very close to us and our surroundings,\nand by its neighbourhood has given us a series, again and again\nrepeated, of hours in which we have been unable to imagine anything\nbetter than what we have got. We have wanted, with all the eager\nhappiness that wanting gives, and we have obtained; but before any\nleanness of the soul has entered we have wanted again. We have had\nhappiness, not content (since that implies the end of wanting) but\nhappiness, the content that dwells not in the present only, but looked\nforward. I have no idea whether, on the whole, I am happier than the\naverage of other people, since there is no thermometer yet invented that\ncan register that. But I do know that I would choose to go back and live\nit all over again, _as it has been_. With the little experience, the\nlittle knowledge that must inevitably come with years, whether one is\nstupid or not, I imagine that everybody would choose to go back, but I\nwish to state distinctly that I would go back without that. I suppose it\nwas that which made me just now feel I envied Legs. But I don't do that\nreally for this reason.\n\nSupposing that what I should choose (because I really should) were given\nme, what then? I should arrive again eventually in the mere measure of\nyears at the point where I am now, no different, no better, no worse. I\nshould like to go back, because it has been _such fun_. But there is\nbetter than that ahead: of that I am completely convinced. There are as\nmany (if not more, and I think there are more) entrancing discoveries\nfrom middle age as there have been from youth, and I am convinced again\nthat if one happens to live to be old there will be as many more.\n\nAfter all, to re-read life again would be like re-reading the first\nvolume of an absorbing book. One has revelled in the first volume, and\nnaturally wants to revel again. But what is going to happen? There is\nnothing that interests me so much as that. To-day, even in this quiet\ndomestic life of ours, there are a hundred threads leading out into\nunknown countries, all of which, if one lives, one will follow up. And\nall, big and tiny alike, are so stupendous. If, to take the forward\nview, I could see in a mirror now what and where all those people--few\nof them, no doubt, but friends--those who really matter, would be in a\nyear's time, how I should seize the magic reflector, and gaze into it!\nIncomparable as has been the romance of life up till now, it is known to\nme. But to peep into the second volume!\n\nThe sun, in the full blaze of which Legs had laid, peeped over the top\nof the elm in shade of which I had seated myself, and, not being\nLeggish, I shifted my chair again to consider this point.\n\nIt is a question of scale that is here concerned, though the scale seems\nto me to be an unreal one. If I happened to be the Emperor of All the\nRussias, and the magic mirror were given me, I should look eagerly out\nfor my own figure, and see if I still wore a crown. I should scrutinize\nthe faces of those around me, to see if war and the hell-hag of\nrevolution had been shrieking through my illimitable country. But my\ninterests are not soul-stirring to any but me, and anyhow not of\nEuropean importance. So I should look to see who sat on this lawn a\nyear hence; I should ask for a short survey of the Embassy at Paris, to\nsee if Legs was attached; I should visit a dozen houses or so. But if I\nwas allowed to put the clock back fifteen years, I should have to wait\nlonger for this.... So I must reconsider my choice, and I am afraid I\nmust reverse it. But it must be understood that I choose not to be\ntwenty again, merely because it will take longer to be forty and fifty.\nI want the second volume so much.\n\n'Or....' Here Helen's voice broke in. She had come back from church, and\nhad seated herself on the grass, and I believe that half of what\nappeared to be soliloquy was actually spoken to her. But she is\nwonderfully patient.\n\n'It is youth you want,' she said, 'and you have got it till you cease to\nwant it. It is only people who don't care about it that grow old. Or is\nthere more than that? Is it wanting to go on learning that keeps one\nyoung?'\n\nA dreadful misgiving came over me.\n\n'Am I dreaming?' I said. 'Or did you tell me the other day that I showed\nsigns of wishing to teach?'\n\nShe laughed.\n\n'No; it is quite true. But I will tell you when you cease to wish to\nlearn. I shall say it quite, quite clearly.'\n\nShe took off her hat, and speared it absently with a pin.\n\n'We had an awful sermon,' she said, 'all about the grim seriousness of\nlife, and the opportunities that will never come back. It does seem to\nme it is most absolute waste of time to give a thought to that. I shan't\ngo to church next Sunday. I don't feel fortified by thoughts like that.\nIt's much better for me to know that you would put the clock back, live\nit all over again. But about looking forward. Oh, Jack, I think I\nshouldn't look in the magic mirror if I had the chance. What if one saw\noneself all alone? One would live in dread afterwards.'\n\n'Or what if you saw a cradle in the room?' said I.\n\nShe looked up at me quickly, and then put out her hands for me to pull\nher up.\n\n'Perhaps I should look in the mirror,' she said.\n\nPoor Legs, as he had said, left by a very early train next morning, and\nHelen, moved by a sudden violent attack of vague duty, went with him.\nThe access was quite indeterminate. She thought merely that one ought to\nget back to town early on Monday, so as to have the whole day there\ninstead of splitting it up. Personally I followed neither her reasoning\nnor example, and intended to spend the day in dignified inaction in the\ncountry, and not split it up by going to town till after dinner. But to\nthe owner of a motor-car the train appears a degraded sort of business,\nand, greatly daring, I meant to start about nine in the evening, and be\nthe monarch of the road; for when there is no other traffic, any car\nbecomes a chariot of triumph. Helen, I may remark, loves our motor when\nshe does not want to go anywhere particular. When she does she takes the\ntrain. I think, in fact, that it was my proposal that we should drive up\ntogether after dinner that was the direct parent of her sense of duty.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nSo, when I came down at the not unreasonable hour of nine to breakfast,\nI found that I had the house to myself, and--I am not in the least\nashamed of the confession--found that the prospect of an absolutely\nsolitary day was quite to my mind. I do not believe myself to be\nunsociable or morose, but every now and then I confess that I like a day\nin which I see nobody. It is not that one is busy, and wants to get\nthrough one's work, for, on the contrary, when I have a great deal to\ndo, I hugely desire the presence and the conversation of friends in the\nintervals of 'doing.' But occasionally it is a very good thing to chew\nand ruminate, to be surrounded by the quiet green things of the earth,\nwhich give you all their best without waking the corresponding instinct\nto exchange ideas, to give something of yours to meet theirs. For\nintercourse with one's fellow-men, especially with one's friends, is\nlike some rapid interchange of presents. Everybody (everybody, at least,\nwho has the smallest sense of sociability) searches in his mind for any\nlittle thing that may be there, and gives it his friend, while the\nfriend, accepting it, gives something back. From all that--we cannot\ncall it an effort since it is so completely spontaneous on both\nsides--it is well to be free occasionally, to lie, so to speak, under\nthe pelting rain of life that is ever poured out from the voiceless,\neloquent, bright-eyed happiness of Nature, to make no plan, to\ncontemplate no contingency, to drop that sort of fencing rapier that we\nall wield when we are with our fellow-men, and lie like a log, with one\neye open it may be, and be rained upon by the things that live, and are\nclothed and nourished without toil or spinning.\n\nI am aware that the great Strenuists, from Mr. Roosevelt downwards,\nwould hold up their toil-hardened hands at this, exclaiming: 'You mean\nit is better now and then to be a cow than a Man?' Precisely so, but\ncows are not nearly as inactive as Man on these occasions ought to be.\nThey eat too long, and they switch their tails, and stamp their feet.\nBut the long, stupid, bovine gaze is moderately correct. At least, I\nhave never detected a shadow of intelligence in a cow's eye. If there is\nany, the man who occasionally becomes a cow must be careful to get rid\nof it. Nor must he be a cow too often: that is fatal. If he is a cow for\none day in every six weeks, I think he will find the proportion is\nabout right.\n\nSo all day, literally all day, I sat, or, when sitting became too\nfatiguing, lay on the lawn, and nothing happened that did not always\nhappen, but all was worth observing in a purely bovine manner, without\nintelligence. Little brown twigs occasionally fell from the elms, and\nonce or twice a withered yellow leaf came spinning on its own axis, as\nif it was the screw of some unseen steamer. A stag-beetle walked slowly\ndown from the wooden paling, and came some ten yards across the lawn. It\nstopped there about an hour, I should think, doing nothing whatever.\nThen it turned and went back on to the paling again. A robin took about\nthe same length of time to make up his mind that I was quite harmless,\nand eventually pecked at my bootlace, which was undone. It took him an\nenormous time to decide, with his head cocked sideways, whether it\ntasted nice or not, but eventually he settled it did not, for he did not\npeck it again. Then a jackdaw sat on one of the poles of the tennis-net,\nand said 'Jarck' seventeen times after I began to count. He began to\nsay it the eighteenth time, but stopped in the middle and ate an\nincautious earwig.\n\nThat was almost too exciting, and I transferred not my attention,\nbecause I had not got any, but my bovine gaze to the big flower-bed\nopposite. All summer was there, dim, hot, blossoming summer in full\nluxuriance of growth, so that scarcely a square inch of earth was\nvisible. I did not even name the dear familiar flowers that grew there.\nOne was a spire of blue, one was a cluster of orange; there was an\norchestra of red trumpets, a mist of starry grey, and bits of sky caught\nin a web of green. And from beyond (I could not help naming that) the\nodour of sweet-peas. I lay and soaked in it.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nTo use a simile, do you know those mysterious things which are to be\nfound on the chalk downs, called dew-ponds? Often, of course, they are\nfed with rain, but even when for months no rain has fallen, you will\nstill find them full. They just lie open to the sky and that is all. And\nthe mind, so it seems to me, is something like them. Often it is fed in\nthe obvious way, as the dew-pond with rain, by conscious thought, by\nactive intercourse with others. But sometimes it is not a bad thing for\nit to be like the dew-pond, just to lie open to the sky, and drink in\nthe eternal wine of Nature, which fills its pond again. All that is\nrequired of it is to do nothing whatever, not to think even, but just to\nbe there, to be in existence, to let go of everything. It really is\nworth the experiment, though it is not quite so easy as it sounds, for\nthoughts, ideas of some kind, keep leaking in. They must be firmly\nexcluded.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe snuffling motor rose like a hero to the occasion, and came round\nthrobbing with excitement. Something in the idea of this drive by night\nhad evidently taken its fancy, and it positively burned to exceed the\nlegal limit, a wish that I was only too glad to gratify. When we started\nthe crimson of the sunset was still aflame in the west, but gradually\nthe colour was withdrawn, as if some unseen hand was pulling out scarlet\nthreads that ran through some exquisite fabric of dainty embroidery,\nleaving there only the soft transparent ground of it. Then more\ngradually, so that the eye could not trace the appearance of each, but\nonly knew that the number was being multiplied, behind the dark velvet\nof the sky were lit the myriad suns that make a flame of space, and sing\nin their orbits. Colours faded and disappeared, and soon the world was\nturned to an etching of black and white. The roads were empty of\ntraffic, and though July was here, still from dark coppice and leafy\nscreen there sounded the one eternal song, the rapture of nightingales.\nOften it seemed to me as if we were standing still, while the world in\nits revolution span by us; there was but a space of lamp-lit road by\nwhich, shadow-like, dream-like, the trees and open spaces ran. For a\nlong piece together, as over the Hartford Bridge flats, nothing marked\nour passage except this whirling of the world. It seemed in the darkness\nthat time had ceased, and that from its own impetus this globe and the\nthousand globes above were circling still.\n\nThen in front there began to shine, like the reflected light of some\ncomet coming nearer, the huge glow-worm of London. For a while it\nrested, like some remote befogged star on the horizon; then its light\nbrightened, and its little crawling caterpillars, the trains and buses,\nbegan to creep by us, reaching out, as it were, to the end of the leaf,\nthe greenest and most succulent parts.\n\nThen, like the opening of a photographer's shutter, so swift it was, we\nwere in the traffic of the town again, and all was familiar, all was\nhome. The country was home too, and here was another. Which was the\ntruer sense? The sense that claimed the jackdaw on the tennis-net as a\nbrother, or the sense that rejoiced in this fierce-beating pulse of\nlife?\n\nPerhaps, since they are both true, there is no question of comparison.\n\n\n\n\nAUGUST\n\n\nSomething of the primeval savage blood still beats in us, we must\nsuppose, else why is it that we, effete inhabitants of London, who love\nthe closeness and proximity of our fellow-men so much, feel no less\nkeenly the rapture of being miles and miles away from railways and the\nfolk who travel on them? How quick, too, is the transition from one mood\nto another, so that while a week or two ago we rushed insanely, it may\nbe, but with extraordinary pleasure, from party to party, jabbering with\nchildlike delight to myriad acquaintances, face to face on a blocked\nstaircase, or in the drawing-room unwillingly silent while somebody\nsang, we now take the same childlike pleasure in long days of solitude.\nBut we may take our solitude in pairs, in company with a friend who for\nthe time being is no friend at all, but a bitter (and, it is to be\nhoped, disappointed) golfer, or we may lie out all day in the heather\nwith a silent stalker, or, as has been my fortunate lot for the last ten\ndays, may spend long hours, with a sandwich and a fishing-rod and a\ngillie, in angling over coffee- streams or windswept lochs.\n\nThe oldest inhabitants never remember anything like this summer, but\nthey are bad evidence, because their memories are probably very\ndefective owing to their age; but, what is more convincing, younger\npeople, whose memories are less impaired, never remember anything like\nit. So there has been little of the coffee- streams for me\npersonally, but, instead, long quiet days by this wonderful loch,\nsupposed to hold trout of fabulous dimensions, which, as far as I can\nmake out, nobody has ever caught, though every one agrees that they are\nthere. Then came a wonderful day, with more than trout-wonder in it.\n\nI came up here to this remote lodge alone, for the trio of us usually go\nour own ways in holiday time. Legs, in any case, had to go to Germany to\nlearn that classic and guttural tongue, and Helen and I always make\nvisiting arrangements independently of each other, unless we are both\nbidden to a house to which we both want to go. But it stands to reason,\nso it seemed to us, that husband and wife probably do not have the same\nfriends, and it is as absurd for her to stay at a house because the host\nis a great friend of mine as it is for me to stay at a house because the\nhostess is a great friend of hers. Coincidences sometimes happen, in\nwhich we both go together. Otherwise we make our own arrangements. I\ncannot bear some of her friends; she finds it almost impossible to\ntolerate some of mine. And with shouts of laughter we agree to differ.\nThen in September or October the trio will come together again, and will\nall talk at once, describing simultaneously, while nobody listens, our\ndelightful adventures.\n\nI started from the lodge that morning after an early breakfast, the\ngillie having already gone on with lunch, and what we hoped would be the\napparatus of death; for, the first time during this last week, it was a\nsoft and cloudy morning, with a warm wind from the south-west,\nsufficient even in this cup of the hills, where the lodge stands, to\nset the trees tossing their branches, and to strip the red ripe\nrowanberries from their stalks. Upon the unsheltered tops, then, where\nlay the dark- loch with its fabled inhabitants, there should be\nripple enough for fishing purposes. I walked unencumbered but for the\nfield-glasses I always carry; for nothing, during periods of waiting or\nin the half-hour that follows the sandwich, is so fascinating as to spy\nout the busy animal life on these empty moors, or find some three or\nfour miles away two or three little human specks moving very gently up\nthe hillside after the deer, or sitting there patiently till some\nuntoward affair, suspicious hinds, or a foul wind are lulled into\ninactivity.\n\nBut first I had a mile of pine-wood to climb, up steep, slippery,\nneedle-strewn paths, with bracken already yellowing on each side, making\na sea of russet and green, while from overhead, in the thick arching\nboughs, there came, as it were, the noise of an aerial sea, the hiss of\nripples on a sandy shore as the wind whistled through the stiff springy\nfoliage. Now and then a rabbit scuttled through the ferns, and once I\nsaw quite close at hand a roe-deer with flicking ears and startled eyes,\nthat, as it caught sight of me, gave me one shy look of the woodland,\nand then galloped off, cutting its way through the tall bracken. The\npath sometimes led by the side of the stream that came out of the loch\nto which I was bound, but the dryness of the summer had hushed its\nvoice, and it but trickled down the ways it was wont to prance along in\nspring. Here and there a tree of the tamer woodland, a beech, or\nstripling elm, grew among the primeval firs, but it looked as if it had\nwandered here by mistake, had strayed, a member of some later\ncivilization, into a settlement peopled by those of the older world.\n\nAnd as I walked something of the same feeling of strangeness, of having\ngone back to the earlier ages of the world, came over me also. Like the\nlost beech, there were none of my kind here, and I felt, though in an\nimmeasurably greater degree, what one feels when one stands in the\nvalley of the tombs of the Egyptian Kings. But all round me here were\nthings far more ancient than they. \u00c6ons before Pharaoh oppressed the\nchildren of promise there stood here on this hillside the ancestors in\ndirect line of this woodland. The knowledge of the dawn of the world,\nwhen it was still but a little time since God had bidden the green\nthings to live upon the earth, had been transmitted to these citizens of\nthe hillside, and to them time had been but a little thing, and a\nthousand ages were but as yesterday.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nAs I ascended farther and more remotely into the heart of the wood, a\nsort of eager tremor, a desire to see that which I knew was there, and\nwhich must be so overpowering in its immensity, began to grow on me.\nWild silent life bubbled and hummed round me; eyes watched me from\nbeneath the fern, and looked down on me from the over-arching fans of\nthe pines; ears were pricked at my footstep; strange wild smiles\nbroadened into a laugh at the intruder, at this child of immeasurably\nlater ages. Sometimes it seemed to me as if this ancient consciousness\nof the woods was scornful and contemptuous, so that I quickened my pace\nand longed to get out of this dark room; at other moments, and truer\nones, I knew better, knowing that I, too, was of it all, a\nmanifestation of life, a piece of the pine-woods and brother of the\nbracken.\n\nThere is no myth that grew so close to the heart of things as the story\nof Pan, for it implies the central fact of all, the one fact that is so\nindisputably true, that all the perverted ingenuity of man has been\nunable to split into various creeds about it. For Pan is All, and to see\nPan or to hear him playing on his pipes means to have the whole truth of\nthe world and the stars, and Him who, as if by a twisting thumb and\nfinger, set them endlessly spinning through infinite Space, suddenly\nmade manifest. Flesh and blood, as the saying is, could not stand that,\nand there must be a bursting of the mortal envelope. Yet that,\nindisputably also, is but the cracking of the chrysalis. How we shall\nstand, weak-eyed still and quivering, when transported from the dusk in\nwhich we have lived this little life, into the full radiance of the\neternal day! How shall our eyes gain strength and our wings expansion\nand completeness, when the sun of which we have seen but the reflection\nand image is revealed! That is to see Pan. It killed the mortal body of\nPsyche--the soul--when she saw him on the hill-top by the river, and\nheard the notes of his reed float down to her; but she and every soul\nwho has burst the flimsy barrier of death into life joins in his music,\nand every day makes it the more compelling. Drop by drop the ocean of\nlife, made up of the lives that have been, rises in the bowl in which\nGod dips His hands. He touches every drop.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe wood in front had grown thin, and I was nearly out on the open\nheather of the hills. Just here the path crossed the stream bed; a great\ngrey cliff of rock was above me, in which a pattern of lichens had found\ncrevices for their roots; the pine-trees waved solemnly overhead; the\nmiracle of running water, perhaps the greatest miracle of all, chuckled\nand eddied as it slid into the brown pool. And quite seriously I waited\nto see Pan. The ferns would be pushed aside, and the merry face would\nsmile at me (for Pan, though he kills you, is kind), and he would put\nhis pipes to his lips, and the world, as I had hitherto seen it, would\nswim away from me. And just before he puts his pipes to his mouth, I\nhope I shall say: 'Yes, begin; I am ready!' Or shall I stop my ears, and\nshut my eyes to him? I hope not. But the fern waved only, and the water\nran, and ... and I was going a-fishing.\n\nI suppose I had not gone more than a hundred yards after this pause when\nexecrable events occurred. It seemed as if some dreadful celestial\nhousemaid suddenly woke up, and went on with her work. She shut the\nwindow (that is to say, the wind dropped), and began to dust. She dusted\nall the clouds away, and in ten minutes there was not one left. From\nhorizon to horizon there was a sky positively Egyptian, and an\nabominable sun shone with hooligan ferocity. And I was going a-fishing!\nI said what I should not say with such extraordinary distinctness and\nemphasis that I rapidly took out my field-glass, and swept the\nuntenanted fields of heather to see that there was no one within a mile\nor two. But I expect the roe-deer heard.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nSandy was waiting for me at the near end of the loch, when I arrived\nthere a quarter of an hour afterwards. Scotchmen are never cynical, but\nI should otherwise have suspected him of cynicism when I saw that he had\nbeen at pains to set up my rod, and was soaking a length of gut. The\nbrilliance of the sun from the polished and untarnished field of water\nwas a thing to make the eyes dazzle. So I was cynical in turn, and, from\npure cynicism and nothing else at all, I put on (for the sake of the\ncurious) an astonishing fly, with a green body bound with silver, and a\nZulu. It was a shade too cynical to go out in the boat, for I think\nSandy would have seen through that, as it was impossible that any fish\nshould rise at anything in this state of affairs, and I fished from the\nshore. Fishing at all was an idiotic proceeding, and so the incredible\nhappened. I wish to call attention to the incredibility of it, since it\nhappens to be true.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nHere was I, then, on a still and windless morning, with a blazing sun\noverhead, and a looking-glass loch in which were supposed to be\nmonstrous fish, whose shyness apparently increased in ratio to their\nweight, for nobody had ever seen them before, but had only heard about\nthem second-hand, like ghost-stories. Half a dozen casts carried out a\nconvenient length of line, which fell, so it appeared to me, on the\nglassy surface of the water like the cane of an angry schoolmaster,\nresonant and cruel. Then at the end of the cane, where the Zulu was,\nthere came a boil just underneath the looking-glass; my rod bent, and\nthe reel screamed. For one moment I knew, so I thought (for the boil\ncame just as I was preparing to cast again), that I had hooked some\nstalwart weed, or perhaps a snag of tree-trunk. Then I knew I had hooked\na fish. He was clearly insane to have taken a fly at all, but what\nmattered was that he was a large lunatic. I thought I knew also that\nthis was but the first act of what would turn out to be a tragedy. But\nthe tragedy was not for me.\n\nAgain, for the sake of the curious, I will give his weight. He turned\nthe scale at five pounds some six hours later. So I imagine he was about\nfive and a half when he came out of the water with the Zulu in his\nmouth. He was mad; he turned a fierce Bedlamite eye on me.\n\nI dare say I am more impatient than the true fisherman, but when I have\ncast my fly upon the waters for three hours without a hint of a rise, I\nsit down, and do not feel it incumbent on me to rise again unless\nconditions change. So when, at about two o'clock, nothing further had\nbroken the surface of the loch except the cane of the schoolmaster, I\nfelt, after eating my sandwich, that I was not unlikely, without\nincurring the contempt of Sandy, to prolong the interval. I wanted also,\nafter my mis-tryst with Pan that morning, vaguely also, after that day\nof bovine observance of Nature which I had spent a week or two ago in\nthe garden at home, to 'sit up and take notice.' Instead of nirvanic\ncontemplation, I wanted to focus all that surrounded me, not to see a\nstag-beetle advance ten yards, and then go back to the place he advanced\nfrom, but to see the activity of it all, to be alert and to collect, not\nto be lazy and to soak.\n\nYes; it was a wonderful day. Almost immediately I spied two little\nhuman figures on the adjoining forest creeping, creeping up a steep\nbrae. A mile below I saw their ponies. They moved so slowly that it was\nonly possible to see they moved at all, because they passed out of the\nfield of my glass; the deer I could not find.\n\nThen, after watching them for ten minutes more, I saw they stopped.\nStealthy movements went on. Then came the sharp crack of a rifle, but\nbefore the report reached me they had both jumped up, and ran into a\nhollow of the hills, where I lost them. It was like being at sea, and\nhaving news twitched out from the receiver of a Marconi apparatus.\n\nBut hardly had that drama been played to its curtain when another\nstarted. The call of a startled grouse, 'Come back, come back, come\nback!' sounded close at hand, and it was followed by another and yet\nanother. Sandy had remained by the edge of the loch when I climbed this\nhillock for my lunch, and since then I had been very quiet, so I could\nnot imagine what had caused this commotion on the hill, as the stalkers\nwere not on this beat at all to-day. I could account, in fact, for the\nmovements of any human being that could have disturbed grouse for a mile\nor two. Then I looked up to the enormous sky, and saw.\n\nAbove me, but close, so that I could see the outspread feathers of the\nwing, was a golden eagle. As I watched I saw he was not vaguely\ncircling, looking out for prey, but employed in his stalk, even as on\nthe other side of the valley ten minutes ago I had watched another\nstalk. He was sweeping wide circles of the moor, and driving up towards\na gully of the hills behind the fowls of the mountain, flying in low and\never narrowing semicircles, so that it must seem to the terrified grouse\nand black game that huge-winged danger threatened from every quarter but\nthat. Yet still I could not guess what his plan was when he had driven\nthem there.\n\nAnd then I saw. Straight down from the grey crag of cliff that rose on\nthe west of this gully, into which he had driven the birds, there\ndropped his mate, savage and hungry, seeking her meat from God. Aha, you\ngrand Mistress Eagle; it is dinner-time!\n\nMerrily and well has the old cock-grouse lived in the heather, lying\nwarm in the sun, and filling himself with the good things of the\nmoorland, but to-day Pan sends him to your table, and in the swift\nhissing down-rush of your wings he hears his pipes. Pan will play them\nfor you, too, some day, and the grey film will cover over your fierce\nyellow eye that was wont undazzled to behold the sun in his strength,\nand the strong hooked beak which gasped for one breath more of the\naromatic moorland air will close, and be hungry no more, and the\ncrooked, horny talon will relax, and next year, maybe, I shall find\nwhitened bones on the hillside, and perhaps, crumpled up under them, a\nfeather, an eagle's feather. But I shall not be so foolish as to say I\nhave found you, for do I imagine that that is all there is of you, that\nyour life, your spirit, has been blown out like a candle? I know better\nthan that.\n\nFor, indeed, there is no other explanation possible of the incessant\nwar, the death, the murder, the butchery in which Nature's fair hands\nare steeped and stained, except by this one supposition that the spirit\nof bird and beast escapes at the moment of death from the splendid\nsunlit prison of this beautiful world, which has the bright-eyed hours\nfor its bars. Otherwise the world becomes a mere intolerable shambles,\nviler than Chicago. I at any rate cannot believe otherwise, but should\nany sceptical reader at this point ask me to sketch out for him the\nsubsequent movements of the wasp he has just squashed in the tongs, or\nthe trout I have just landed, I hasten to assure him that I have not the\nslightest idea about them. But that does not invalidate the explanation,\nnor in the least disturb my complete belief in it. I do not know what\nthe weather will be this day year. But I make no manner of doubt that\nthere will be weather of some kind. I only insist that he with his\ntongs, and I with my Zulu-fly, cannot destroy life. One cannot even\ndestroy matter; how much less, then, the lord and master of matter!\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nI think I have never been in a house where absurd gaiety--the gaiety of\nfriends, of health, of outdoor spirits--was so rampant as here; and she\nwhose house it was, and who was leader of the ludicrous, was she, as you\nmay have guessed, who in June had asked me to come here for the last\ntime. That evening when I got home I found her sitting out in the garden\nenjoying the last half-hour of sunset, and she beckoned to me across the\nlawn.\n\n'It's true,' I said. 'I have caught the original trout. He had gone mad\nfrom old age and riotous living, and came to the fly when the sun was\nbrightest and the winds were dead.'\n\n'I wish you wouldn't use such beautiful language,' she said. 'How much\ndoes he weigh?'\n\n'About a ton. He has gone to be weighed now.'\n\n'And anything else?'\n\n'Not a fin. No more bites, as somebody said last night. I chattered with\nrage.'\n\n'You did; and what have you been thinking about?' she asked.\n\n'Pan chiefly. No, to be honest, I think I have thought about the fish\nmost. But Pan next!'\n\nShe turned rather slowly on her long wicker-couch, the tired aching\nbody for the moment usurping the use of her eyes.\n\n'Ah, don't let us talk,' I said; 'you are tired and suffering.'\n\nAt that she laughed.\n\n'All the more reason for thinking about something less inferior than\none's own health,' she said. 'What cowards we are nowadays! Why, our\nforebears in Elizabeth's time used to go smiling to the rack for the\nsake of some small difference of dogma, and we snivel when we have the\nopportunity of showing, by our contempt for pain, the truth of things\nthat matter much more. If bravery in the abstract and cheerfulness are\nnot worth being brave and cheerful for, I don't know what is. In any\ncase, what conclusion did you come to about Pan? Oddly enough, I have\nbeen thinking of him, too. Let's compare notes, and see if we mean the\nsame person.'\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nI told her more or less what I have already written down on the subject,\nand at the end she nodded at me with the quick eager gesture that was so\ncharacteristic of her.\n\n'Hurrah!' she said. 'I have guessed the same. So perhaps our guesses are\nright. But I put it to myself rather more personally, and, though it\nsounds conceited, so much more vividly than you. That is only natural,\nyou know; Pan concerns me much more immediately than he concerns you, we\nhope. And another image of him suggested itself to me, which appeals to\nme more than your figure of the ferns being pushed aside, and the hand\nwith the pipes in it being raised to the smiling lips. Listen!'\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe sun had dropped behind the big trees to the west of the lawn,\nleaving us in shadow, though it still shone on the hills to the east of\nthe house. But evening was coming without any chill or whisper of autumn\nin it, and in this northern latitude nights were short in August. It was\nas if she already saw dawn.\n\n'Jim and I and our children,' she said, 'and you and all my friends are\nshipwrecked, or so it would seem to anyone who did not understand, on a\nlittle rock surrounded by infinite sea. Every one alive in the world is\nthere, too, as a matter of fact, but our friends somehow are so big to\nus, and strangers and acquaintances so small in comparison, that all\nthat really is seen by us is our own immediate circle. Huge thumping\nseas surround our rock, and, for some occult reason, we all have to sit\nexactly where we are, while the waves rush up, and every moment sweep\nsomebody away. We can't move our places, and go higher up on the rock,\nand we have to sit and look at the big waves, we poor shipwrecked people\n(so a man who does not understand would say), and know that this wave or\nthe next will wash us off. That is the ignorant view of the situation,\nand the most pessimistic, so we will answer it at once.\n\n'Even if it was right, what then? Supposing we were shipwrecked, and all\nround us was the howling sea of death, would it not be much better,\nuntil the wave swept us off, to make the best of it, to talk, and laugh,\nand be pleasant with our friends, instead of looking with\nterror-stricken eyes at the hungry sea? How much nicer even for\nourselves to be amused and talk a little while, instead of being\nfrightened, and how much nicer for our friends when we are swept off, as\nwe all certainly shall be, to know that before we were swept off we\nwere moderately cheerful, and picked up bits of seaweed, and played with\nshells! I say nothing of the moral aspect of it all, because if you once\nbring that in there is no question any more about the matter, since in\none case we are brave, and in the other merely cowardly. But given that\nwe are shipwrecked, that the sea of hungry death surrounds us, and will\nsoon pick us off, how much better, on the lowest possible view of the\naffair, to play about, to be kind and gentle, even if to-morrow there\nwill be an end of us, utterly and for ever!\n\n'Yes, I am using beautiful language too. But I am talking of beautiful\nthings.\n\n'Well, that view is the silliest and most incomprehensible possible. How\ndid we get on this absurd rock, if only death surrounds us? Did we come\nfrom death into life? That is impossible, since scientifically you can't\nproduce life out of dead things. Or did some ship founder on the sea of\ndeath, and did we swim to shore, where we shall live until a wave sweeps\nus off again? That is possible; but, then, what was that ship on which\nwe once were passengers, that for a time anyhow, until it foundered, if\nit did founder, rode over these waves? That is a serious question, but\nthere is only one answer to it. The ship must have been life in some\nform. But the image does not seem convincing, does it?\n\n'What is left, then? Only this, that the sea which surrounds us on our\nlittle rock is not death at all, but life. Just as some day without\ndoubt a wave will sweep us off our rock again, so there is no doubt that\nonce a wave of that sea put us on the rock where you and I now are. If\nthere is a wreck at all, it is a land-wreck, a wreck that puts us on\nshore. From the great sea of life we have been washed up for a little\nmoment on to our little rock. Soon we shall be received back into life\nagain!\n\n'In the interval, though in a new sense we are wrecked, how interesting\nis our rock, and how full of dear people, and pink shells, and divine\nthings of the sea that life, not death, casts up round us, and nourishes\nby the spent water of its waves! How utterly idiotic it would be not to\ncollect them eagerly, these little bits, for when we go back into life\nwe shall see the forests from which they come, the sapphire caves in\nwhich they really dwell. A little bit of life, that grouse that the\neagles ate, was cast up close to you to-day. I shall particularly ask,\nwhen the wave takes me off again, where it came from. And I shall go and\nsee the place. And certainly I shall see Mistress Eagle come back.'\n\nCourage, huge, natural courage like this, absolutely unassumed,\nabsolutely instinctive, may have one of two effects on the beholder of\nit. It may make him weep for the admiration of it, or it may make him\nlaugh out of joyousness of heart for the same admiration. At least I\nlaughed.\n\n'Oh, be sure to show me the place when I come,' I said. 'I am certain\nthat Mistress Eagle will have a nice house.'\n\n'They all have,' she said. 'There are many mansions.'\n\nShe looked at me in silence a moment.\n\n'But I was not so certain of all these things when first I knew that I\nwas so soon to see them all,' she said. 'At first, though I was never\nexactly frightened, I was dazed and stunned. I saw nothing clearly. I\nmust use another image for that, and say that days passed as one sees\nthe landscape pass through a railway-carriage window which is blurred by\nrain. I could see nothing clearly; it was all dim and rain-streaked. But\nthen, without any conscious effort on my part, except perhaps a little\nexercise of patience, we passed--the train and I--out of the scud again,\nand soon the glass cleared, and I saw the green valleys and the sunny\nhillside just as they had always been.'\n\nAgain she paused.\n\n'I have not told you anything of importance yet,' she said; 'all I have\nsaid is really quite obvious. But this now----\n\n'You think of Pan as the smiling face that peeps from the fern, the\npresence that assures all suffering things that he is kind when he pipes\nto them, even though the sound means death. But surely that is no more\nthan a sort of pagan mythical aspect of him. I always think that he\nsuffers too, that every pain which he seems to inflict is only the\nreflection of the pain in his own universal heart, although he still\nsmiles. It is from the cross that He smiles at us all.'\n\n\n\n\nSEPTEMBER\n\n\nThe 'Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness' has indeed been a close\nbosom friend of the maturing sun, and for the last three days before\nLegs went back to his crammer in town, he, Helen, and I spent a\nprostrated existence. Heat that in July invigorates, is utterly\nintolerable if it occurs at the end of September, just as the crisp\nwinter day, which would be so welcome in January, descending to the\nearth as it usually does in June, produces merely amazed horror at the\nweather, and probably a cold. The superficial view that we suffer\nbecause we are improperly clad for these climatic surprises (a view that\nHelen put forward the other night) is beside the point. During these\ndays, if I was improperly clad, it was only because I has so little on.\nIn fact, only ten minutes before she had said as much.\n\nThe state of Legs' affections, I am bound to add, aggravated the\nsultriness of the weather, and made me feel exactly 350 (three hundred\nand fifty) years old. To take it at its best, he was embarked on a\nviolent flirtation with a dreadful girl; to take it at its worst, he was\nfalling in love with her. She is the daughter of a neighbouring minute\nsquire, who owns three turnip-fields, and calls it shooting. Legs shot\nover it the other day, and after walking over the whole estate twice,\ngot back to The Grange in time for lunch. This was before I returned\nfrom Scotland, or I should have tried to prevent it. Probably I should\nnot have succeeded.\n\nThe neighbouring squire's name is Ampthump. I know quite well that it is\nnot his fault, but that, wedded to what he is and a German wife, makes\nme unable to like him. His wife makes incredible quantities of jam,\nwhich, again, is an innocent pursuit; and Charlotte, the daughter, talks\nGerman to Legs, who I wish was more like Goethe. The whole family, in\nfact, as may have been already perceived, appear to me to be simply\nintolerable.\n\nThe attachment also has already led to equivocation on the part of\nLegs. He pretends that he talks to Charlotte because it is so good for\nhis German. He knows that it is not so, and I know it is not so, and I\nthink he knows that I know it is not so. But it really looks at the\nmoment that unless they marry each other there will be a broken or, at\nany rate, a cracked heart. I only hope it will not be Legs'. I don't\ncare the least what happens to Charlotte's heart. It may, however, be\nonly a flirtation, in which case there probably will not even be a\ncrack. Legs will wake up one morning, and after handling some precious\nwithered flowers will wonder what on earth they ever meant to him, and\nthrow them in the fire. Or Charlotte will do something equally\ndesperate. That is my hope; my fear is that they are falling in love\nwith each other.\n\nThis narrative, it should be understood, is the gist of what I have been\nsaying fragmentarily to Helen. She considers it a cynical view, which\nalarms me, since I hold the creed that all cynics are properly and\nirretrievably damned. To-night Legs went to bed early, with dishevelled\nhair, a wakeful eye, and a gale of sighs, and I came upstairs to talk\nto Helen about it all while she brushed her hair.\n\n'You are quite ridiculous about it,' she said. 'Because you happen not\nto like the Ampses (we have agreed on that abbreviation), you think that\nthey are unlovable. Legs has proved the contrary. Besides, what on earth\ndoes her name matter, if she is going to change it?'\n\nI groaned intentionally, and in a graveyard manner.\n\n'Do you mean that you think Legs is in love with her?' I asked.\n\n'Yes; at least, I hope so. He had a long talk with me to-day. He said he\nfelt it was time he settled down. What a darling! Just twenty! I wish I\nwas.'\n\nMost of this was irrelevant. I tried to pick out pieces that were not.\n\n'Of course, her name doesn't matter,' I said. 'Her name might be----\nWell, you can't do worse than Ampthump, and it does happen to be exactly\nthat. But her face is like a ham----'\n\n'That is superficial,' said Helen. 'Beside, it isn't. It's oval.'\n\n'So is a ham. And she's a prig. Ampthump! Good Lord!'\n\nI am afraid I shouted this, because she said: 'Hush! Legs will hear.'\n\n'Not he. Or if he does, he will think it is only the wind whispering the\nbeloved name.'\n\n'Yes, but you didn't whisper it. Oh, do take the brush. You made me send\nmy maid away, so you must do it yourself. I can't brush from here,\nbecause my arms are in front.'\n\nNow in my heart I pity everybody who has not seen Helen with her hair\ndown. All such folk, in all their millions, lead impoverished\nexistences. There is a wave in it that is like the big unbroken billows\nwhich succeed a storm, when the clouds have passed and the sun shines.\nIt is lit from within, even as they seem to be irradiated from the\ndepths. Those billows must go over a sandy foreshore, for they are\nyellow, and the sun--I know not how--must be foggy, for there is a\nlittle red light in them. And brushing, as I did now, I held my hand\nover them, and the hair rose to it with a tiny cracking sound. Her hair\ncame to my hand, lifted towards it that unminted gold that framed her\nface, and covered her ears. And for a little while it was no wonder that\nI forgot about Legs and his Charlotte.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nI suppose every one knows the sensation of being lost. You can be lost\nall by yourself, as I was once, as I have said, in the western desert of\nEgypt, on which occasion the bray of a donkey was to me the trumpet of\nthe Seraphin. That was a dreadful experience, since it implied being out\nof touch with life. But I should be glad to know if there is anything\nthe world holds which is more enraptured than the sense of being lost\nwith one other person, to feel the world swim away, and be dissolved, so\nthat you and the comrade you are with are quite alone. To feel that\nthere is no existence except the existence of her who is lost with\nyou.... It was Helen's hair.\n\n'That's the world's side; there's the wonder!' That lover understood.\nEveryone saw Helen's hair.\n\n    '\"But the best is when I glide from out them,\n      Cross a step or two of dubious moonshine,\n      Come out on the other side....\"'\n\nI never could quote correctly. The point is that the beloved has another\nface, the face she turns to her lover. No one else sees it; it is 'blind\nto Keats, him even.'\n\nA moment ago I thought that no one but me must see Helen's hair. Now let\nthem all see it, the waves of the sunlit sea, not breaking, unless the\nbreak be where I put my hand an inch above them.\n\n'Thanks, dear,' she said soon. 'You brush it much better than my maid.\nNow shall we talk for five minutes? Then I must go to bed.'\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nI had hideous accumulations of various fag-ends of work to do, and at\nthe end of the five minutes, or it might be ten, I went downstairs\nagain, to begin at any rate this dreadful patchwork of odds and ends. It\nwas still, I was almost sorry to observe, only just eleven, and since I\nhad with both eyes open deliberately and firmly wasted all the hours of\nthe day, my uneasy Conscience told me that I had better, if it was to\nhave the ease it craved, not think of leaving my chair for a couple of\nhours at least. I argued this point with it, and lost some minutes, for\nI told it that it was extremely bad for me to work at night; that it\ntook more out of one than work in the day; that work done under these\ncircumstances was never good work; that doctors recommended one never to\nwork at night, but go peacefully to bed before the evening\nfever--whatever that might be--set in. Then there ensued a short\nspirited dialogue.\n\n'Most sensible,' said Conscience. 'Give me your word that you will get\nup at six to-morrow, then, and work for two hours before breakfast, and\nyou have my leave to go to bed now.'\n\n'But I shan't wake at six,' said I, 'and the servants have gone to bed.'\n\n'I will wake you,' said Conscience. (Conscience is quite capable of the\nodious feat.)\n\n'But I can't work before breakfast,' I said. 'It makes me feel'--I could\nnot think of the word for the moment--'oh yes, faint.'\n\n'Well, feel faint, then,' said Conscience.\n\n'But I would sooner not; it implies weakness of the heart.'\n\n'Not to do your work implies weakness of character.'\n\n'Shut up,' said I, 'and let me begin, then.'\n\nAnd I could swear that my Conscience gave a self-satisfied chuckle.\n\nFor an hour I waded wearily, knee-deep only, so to speak, in work, like\na man who wants to swim, but has to trudge out over level sands. Most\npeople, I fancy, even the laziest of us, like working, when we get up to\nour necks, or, better even, out of our depths, in it, but the wading is\nweary work. The worst of it was that the fact that I had to wade so far\nwas entirely my own fault, for the whole of the last week I had never\ntaken the trouble to finish up any one job, and now there waited for me\nseveral bills to pay, since a few mornings ago I had sat down to pay\nbills, and had paid them all except two or three; several letters to\nwrite, all of which had to begin either falsely (_i.e._, 'I have just\nfound your letter of the 17th) or apologetically (_i.e._ 'I haven't\nanswered your letter before because----'). Then there was a\nhalf-corrected proof of an unfinished article, badly written originally,\nand, what is more, written without conviction. It was on a subject that\ndid not particularly interest me, and I had only written it because the\nmisguided editor of a magazine had offered me \u00a325 for it, and I very\nmuch wished to buy a seal-top spoon which cost exactly that sum, and\nwhich I knew perfectly well I had no right to buy. So, saying to myself\nthat I would write this article (which I should not otherwise have\ndone), I had bought it, and here was the dismal price that I had to pay\nfor it--namely, that this wretched article was a piece of literary\ndishonesty. I had to fudge and vamp over it, trying to conceal the\nnakedness of the land by ornamental expressions. That was brought home\nto me now. It was all bad cheap stuff, and though most of us are\ncontinually turning out bad cheap stuff, not knowing it is bad and\ncheap, such manufactures become criminal when we do know it. As long as\nwork is honest from the workman's point of view, it is only his\nmisfortune when he does not know its valuelessness; but when he does\nknow its valuelessness, he sins by intention, and is a forger. I was\none, and by my forgery I had bought a seal-top that was not. I thought\nthat when I tacitly agreed to work for two hours to-night, my tiresome\nConscience would put its head under its wing, and leave me alone; but I\nfound now that it was broad awake again, and chirping like a canary.\n\n'What are you going to do?' it chirped. 'Are you going to send out a\nrotten forgery which everybody who knows anything will detect? or are\nyou going to tear it up, and be left with a purchase that you know you\ncan't really afford? Remember that you must get a new dining-room carpet\ntoo; you promised Helen you would. Chirp, chirp, chirp!'\n\nI am bound to say that this enraged me.\n\n'What's the use of making that row?' I said. 'It's you, Conscience, who\nhas to settle.'\n\n'I haven't the slightest idea,' said Conscience. 'It's your fault; you\nwouldn't listen to me when I told you that you had no right to accept\n\u00a325 for your dreadful article.'\n\n'You didn't say it so loud, then,' said I.\n\n'No, but you heard all right,' said Conscience.\n\n'I hardly heard,' said I. 'You spoke so indistinctly.'\n\n'Yes, but you did hear,' it chirped, with a sort of devilish\ncheerfulness. 'You knew quite well what I meant. Now you suffer for it.\nHurrah!'\n\nI wonder if I am cursed in this matter of Conscience beyond the majority\nof mankind. Often and often (I will swear to this in the House of Lords\nif necessary) my Conscience is hardly audible at all at the time when I\ndo anything which I ought not to do, or omit to do anything which I\nought. To continue the simile of the canary, which really fits the case,\nwhen the actual choice comes, it is as if the canary had a thick\ngreen-baize cover round its cage, and only hoarse and muffled notes\nreach me. Very often, indeed, I am sorry to say, I don't attend to them,\nor say it is only the cat, and in consequence do what I should not. Then\nthe moment it is done the baize cover is whisked off, and the infernal\nand cheerful chirping, or so it sounds, succeeds to the wrong choice or\nthe weak omission. And the burden of the chirping is always the same.\n\n'I told you so; I told you so. Now you are in a mess! What are you going\nto do now? Chirp, chirp, chirp!'\n\nAnd a hurricane of dry and deafening notes follows.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nI sat there with this column of stupid twaddle in my hands, and\nConscience watched me with its bright bird-like eye. Much as I like\nbirds, I hate their eyes, because they remind me of Conscience. They\nare beady and absolutely unsympathetic, frightfully quick to see, and\nwithout a particle of pity in them. Conscience never pities one at all;\nit is the foe that is of a man's household. It always gloats over one's\nmistakes, and things that are more than mistakes, and only says:\n\n'Here comes the master with the whip. A new lash, I see, this time. And\nwhat a thin shirt you have got on!'\n\nNor, when the whipping is over, does Conscience sympathize.\n\n'I told you so; I told you so,' it says. 'No, there is no soothing\nointment of any kind in the house. I ate it all up. Wasn't that a\nbeautiful new lash?'\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWell, I tore that dreadful nonsense up, and wrote another apologetic\nletter. I am getting quite good at them. But to-morrow--this is what\nmakes Conscience mad--I shall tell Helen about it. The telling is not\npleasant; it never is. But as soon as Helen knows, Conscience has simply\nto retire. It does not understand why it suddenly becomes so\nunimportant, and that gives it a fit of impotent rage. Nor do I quite\nunderstand, though I am nearer to the explanation than Conscience is.\nBut she understands. At least, I suppose so, or else she would not be\nable to put the green-baize cover on again.\n\nAnd then, what with apologetic letters, and the drawing of two or three\ncheques, and the stupid attempts, in this matter of the dishonest\narticle, to produce something out of nothing, by covering up the\nnothingness by more ornamental expressions, and the eventual destruction\nof it all, I found that the two hours were gone, and that I had kept my\npromise to the idiotic canary. It had ceased chirping from experience\nwhen I told it I was going to confess to Helen.\n\nThe night was intensely hot, and through the long open windows of the\nroom in which I had been working no breeze entered. Though September had\nbut a quarter more of its course to run, it was like some sultry July\nmidnight, portending storm, for when I went out to take the night-breath\nthe sky was thickly overcast, so that no direct ray either of moonlight\nor of starshine, came earthwards. The serrated outline of the elms at\nthe end of the lawn was scarce distinguishable against the scape of the\nclouds, and the low land of the water-meadows was blanketed in a mist\nthat was only just visible by its whiteness against the black blot of\nthe hills behind. Fifi, who had very sensibly decided to sleep on the\nveranda, did not stir when I came out, though I heard the instinctive\nthump of her short tail on the tiles, the natural politeness of the dear\ndog, though she really could not stand on ceremony with me to the length\nof getting up. So, maliciously, I am afraid, since I thought this\nslightly cavalier conduct, I said 'Puss,' though there was no Puss of\nany sort, as far as I was aware. But my malice was again thwarted, for\nFifi just tapped again with her tail, in courteous recognition of a\nstale old joke, just to show that she appreciated my intention, but she\nmade not the smallest further effort towards activity.\n\nSo she was half asleep, and all the world, this dear, blessed world,\nwhich is so full of merriness and simple, innocent pleasure, despite the\nfulminations of fashionable priests, was quite asleep, not stirring,\nscarcely breathing, just sleeping, sleeping. It was not yet the hour\nwhen, just before the hold of the night begins to tremble and be\nweakened in the sky, all living things wake for a moment--that\nmysterious moment, when sheep take a bite of grass and cows twitch their\ngrave ears, and horses stand up for a minute before they settle down to\nthe light morning sleep which dissolves with day, and when even indoors,\nif you sleep with a dog in your room, and happen yourself to be awake,\nyou will hear a stretching of limbs on your bed or on the carpet, and a\nlong sigh breathed into the blankets. Plants and flowers, so I truly\nbelieve, feel the same thing; and though there may be no wind\nperceptible to you if you are abroad, as sometimes I am, at that hour,\nyou will hear, just at the moment when cattle move and sheep take their\nbite of grass, a stir go through the trees, and a hushed whisper lisp in\nthe flower-beds. At that moment, too (you need not credit this, though\nit is absolutely true), though it has rained all night till then, and\nwill rain thereafter, steadily, soakingly till morning, the rain ceases,\nas suddenly as if a tap was turned off. Time and again I have tested\nthat.\n\nBut, as I have said, that mysterious moment was not due yet. It was\nstill two hours short of it, and everything was still asleep. Even in\nthe last minute or two Fifi had fallen fast asleep, too, after I had sat\ndown in a wicker chair on the veranda, for when I called her there was\nno tap of response. To-night, too, the sleep of the world seemed to me\n(feeling it as one does by that sixth sense, which still exists dormant\nin us, and is most awake at night) to be extraordinarily deep. It was\nthe sleep of a world that was very tired with this long hot summer.\nThere seemed no pulse stirring in it at all, as you may find it stir in\nthe light sleep in which Nature indulges in June, or still more in the\ndark, wet nights of spring, when the secret boiling up of life begins\nagain from hidden root to budding tendril, so that if you lay your ear\nto the trunk of a tree it seems that the effervescence of the young year\nis audible, and sings within it, even as the telegraph poles are\nresonant with the wind that hums in the wires. Nor could I hear, when I\nrose and walked across the lawn, even though the dew was heavy on the\ngrass, the hiss of startled worms, withdrawing from the approaching\nfootfall. Black, too, and lifeless, was the oblong of the house except\nwhere the lights burned in the room in which I had been trying to be\nhonest. The long herbaceous hedge was black, the lawn was black, Helen's\nwindows and Legs' were black.\n\nI went back to the seat I had just left, and lit a cigarette, meaning to\ngo upstairs to bed when I had smoked it. Fifi still lay motionless,\nthough generally any excursion into the garden at any time of day or\nnight sets her scampering. And then, quite suddenly, quite unexpectedly,\nfor nothing was further from my thoughts, I became aware that, though\nthe physical world was asleep, there was some enormous stir and activity\ngoing on in the occult world which surrounds and permeates us. Yet that\nis perhaps a wrong expression, for the same activity and stir always\ngoes on in that unsleeping realm; and I must express it more accurately\nby saying that the part of me which was able to perceive it was suddenly\nquickened. It is possible, of course, since I confess to being able to\ngo to sleep whenever I choose, and often without delay, when I do not,\nthat at that moment I fell asleep. But whether I fell asleep or not,\ndoes not make the slightest difference, for there was clearly some part\nof my brain awake, and it made my eyes think that they saw, and my ears\nthink that they heard, that which immediately followed.\n\nAs far as I am aware, in any case, I sat down again in a rather creaky\nbasket-chair and lit a cigarette. The match with which I lit it, I threw\non to the gravel path in front of me, and, since I required it no\nfurther, it proceeded to burn prosperously. By its light I could see\nFifi with her nose between her paws. I saw, also, that my shoe-lace was\nuntied.\n\nAnd then I heard my name called from the garden, in a voice that was\nperfectly familiar to me, though for the moment I could not say, so\nelusive is the ear, whose voice it was that called. It was not Helen's,\nit was not Legs', it was not ... and then I remembered whose voice it\nwas. It called me by name, once only, in the voice that had said, 'It is\nfrom the cross that He smiles at us all.'\n\nI do not think I was frightened, but simply for the purely personal\nreason, that to me there was nothing to be frightened at. The match\nstill burned on the gravel path, so short had been the measurement of\nthis in the world of time, and I could still see Fifi's nose buried\nbetween her paws. Then she raised it, looked out into the garden with\nterrified scrutinizing eyes, focussing them on something, invisible to\nme, and gave one long howl. But there was no moon. It was at something\nelse she howled.\n\nThen, I confess, as if some bomb had burst within me, terror flooded my\nwhole mind, submerging it, and I sprang up. Simultaneously I heard a\nsort of strangled scream from the room above, and the scurry of unshod\nfeet overhead. Next moment the sound of an opening door came to my ears,\nand a quick stumbling tread on the stairs. I ran indoors, and reached\nthe door leading from my room into the hall, just as the handle was\nseized and shaken by someone on the other side of it, and Legs burst\ninto the room, his hair all tumbled and erect, and his face wearing such\na mask of terror that for the moment I recognized him only because it\nmust be he.\n\n'Who is that in the garden?' he said. 'Someone in white, who looked up\nat my window? And Fifi howled at her.'\n\nThis would never do. Nerves, terror are the most infectious things in\nthe world, and unless I took steps, there would, I knew, be standing\nhere two babbling lunatics.\n\n'I was dozing in the veranda,' I said, 'and Fifi woke me by howling. She\nwoke you, too! Legs, don't be an ass! Pull yourself together. If there\nhad been anything, I should have seen it.'\n\nLegs was as white as a sheet. The whiteness somehow showed through his\nfreckled sun-tanned skin. He was swaying to and fro on his feet, as if\nhe would fall, and I put my arm around him, and deposited him in a\nchair. Then I poured out a wineglassful of neat whisky.\n\n'Don't speak another word till you have drunk that,' I said. 'Then I\nshall count ten slowly, and then you may speak.'\n\nFifi had followed me in, and sat close to the door whimpering. With my\nheart in my mouth and a perspiring forehead, I went across to the\nwindow as I counted, shut and locked it, and pulled down the blind.\n\n'Nine, ten,' I said.\n\nA little colour had begun to come back to Leg's face. He had drunk the\nwhisky, a beverage which he detested, like water, and the frozen fear of\nhis eyes was less biting. And then, as suddenly as it had come on, my\nterror left me. Whatever it was that I had heard, whatever it was that\nLegs had seen and Fifi perceived, there was nothing to terrify. Besides,\nwithin myself, now that the cowardly disorder of my nerves had passed, I\nbelieved I knew what it was that had made its presence so strangely\nperceived by us all. The mortal suffering of a dear friend was over.\nAlready I was ashamed of having told Legs that I had been asleep and had\nneither seen nor heard anything.\n\n'Legs, I lied just now,' I said. 'I heard my name called from the garden\nin Margaret's voice.'\n\n'You mean she is dead?' asked he gently. 'The last accounts had been\nbetter, I thought.'\n\n'I'm sure she is.'\n\nThen for a moment, like a sudden squall, the white terror passed over\nLegs' face again.\n\n'It was not her I saw,' he said hoarsely; 'it was Death. I thought she\nhad come for me. Fifi saw her too.'\n\nI sat down on the arm of his chair.\n\n'Yes, old boy,' I said, 'I think that you and Fifi both saw some\nmanifestation of what I heard. But there is nothing to be frightened at.\nBut how was it you were at your window? You had gone to bed hours ago.'\n\n'I know, but I couldn't sleep, so I got up and sat by the window.'\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWe sat there for some time after that, and by degrees Legs recovered\nfrom his collapse, and soon, instead of terror, mere sleepiness invaded\nhis face. Once or twice he stifled a yawn, and at length he got up.\n\n'I am dead sleepy,' he said. 'I think I shall go to bed.'\n\n'You are not frightened any longer, are you?' I asked.\n\nLegs looked at me out of drooping eyelids, and he seemed puzzled.\n\n'Frightened? What about?' he said. 'Good-night.'\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nI was very late down next morning, and found that Helen and Legs had\nnearly finished breakfast. As I came in he jumped up.\n\n'Ah, here he is!' he cried. 'Now, did you sit up very late last night?'\n\nWhen he asked that I began to have some suspicion of what was coming\nnext.\n\n'Yes, very. Why?'\n\n'Well, were you talking to yourself? Helen and I both woke in the night,\nand heard talking in your room. I had had some dream that frightened me,\nand I nearly came downstairs for human companionship.'\n\n'Why didn't you?'\n\n'I was too sleepy. But--were you talking?'\n\n'No. You were dreaming. So was Helen. I may have groaned now and then\nover proofs, but not more than that.'\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nLegs nodded at Helen.\n\n'I told you it was ghosts,' he said.\n\n'And you heard voices too?' I asked Helen.\n\n'Yes; at least, I thought so. But I was very sleepy. I thought also I\nheard Fifi howl.'\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nSo, you see, there is no corroboration of my story, and if I dreamed it\nat all, or made it up, there is no one to whom I can appeal for\nconfirmation of its verity. But there is just this little bit of\nevidence--namely, that though Legs had finished breakfast, he went on\ndrinking cup after cup of tea. When Helen left us he explained this to\nme.\n\n'I woke with a mouth like a lime-kiln,' he said--'just as if I had been\ndrinking that dreadful whisky of yours. I drank most of my jug, too, and\nthey had to bring me more water to wash in.'\n\nWhat happened last night, then, had been wiped clean off Legs' brain\nagain. Whatever it was that he had seen, that which made him stumble\nwhite-faced downstairs, had gone. But an hour or two later, while we\nwere out playing croquet in the garden, some faint echo of it, I think,\ncrossed him again. A telegram was brought out for me, which contained\nwhat I knew it would contain, and I handed it to him when I had read\nit. Then we went quietly indoors.\n\nJust as we got into my room again, he said:\n\n'How odd that sensation is of feeling that something has happened\nbefore! When you handed me the telegram, I felt I knew what was in it.\nAnd during the last week she had been rather better, had she not?'\n\n\n\n\nOCTOBER\n\n\nThe business of the dining-room carpet (a case of conscience makes the\nwhole world kin, so I confidently return to this matter) was settled\nmore beautifully than I had thought possible. I told Helen all about it,\nand she said:\n\n'Thank goodness you tore the thing up! Dear, you _are_ such a silly ass!\nThere's nothing whatever more to be said. You are, aren't you?'\n\n'There's nothing more to be said, I believe you remarked.'\n\n'Well, you may just say \"Yes,\"' said she.\n\nSo I said 'Yes.' It was a variant of the woman's last word, spoken by a\nman instead.\n\n'There, now we'll go and quarrel about the rose-garden,' said she.\n\nWe went and quarrelled. She was flushed with triumph over making me say\n'Yes,' and in consequence I got my way about several disputed points,\nwhich to-day the darling thinks she chose herself.\n\nThe rose-garden is a design of unparalleled audacity, and when it grows\nup, it will be nothing short of stupendous. For between us Helen and I\nare territorial magnates, and beyond this house and garden, which are\nhers, I am owner of two fields, and limitless possibilities. I bought\nthem a year ago, in a sudden flush of extravagance, and for six months\nwe maintained there (at staggering loss) a poultry-yard in one corner\nand a cow over the rest. The original design, of course, was to make a\nsound investment in land, which, in addition to the fathomless pleasure\nof owning it, would keep us in butter, eggs, chickens to eat (not to\nmention, as I hasten to do, savouries of chicken liver on toast), and\npossibly beef. If one considers the question closely, it is difficult to\nsee how a cow can (1) give milk, and (2) give beef; but Helen, in\nvisionary enthusiasm, said we should have oxen as well, and why not pigs\nin the farther corner? I did not at once see why not, and I bought the\ntwo fields with the same unconcern as I should have bought a box of\nmatches, which yield so sure an enjoyment in the matter of lighting\ncigarettes.\n\nThen we both began to learn that, though we might be gardeners, we were\nnot farmers. The poultry-yard was (mistakenly, no doubt) erected at the\ncorner of the field nearest the house, and morning after morning we were\nawakened at dead and timeless hours. Helen said that when a hen made a\nlong clucking noise, it meant she had laid an egg, and that, till the\nthing became incredible, consoled me. For if she was right, it was clear\nthat hens laid invisible eggs, or that they were doing tiresome\nconjuring tricks, and that the long-drawn crow meant, 'I have laid an\negg, but see if you can find it. I am the mother of this disappearing\negg.' We usually were not able to do so, but sometimes an egg was found\nin a hedge, or in a ditch, which when found was totally uneatable,\nexcept by the Chinese. Personally, I believe that by some unhappy\nmischance we had bought celibate and barren poultry, whose customs drove\nus daily nearer Bedlam; in fact, it the pig that was our hellebore.\n\nThe pig was not a pig, but a sow. She went mad, too--or so I must\nbelieve--jumped the pigsty in the opposite corner, made a bee-line for\nthe poultry-yard, went through our beautiful wire-fencing as if it had\nbeen a paper hoop in a circus, and ate two hens. The cock beat a\nmasterly retreat, and was never heard of again. The other four hens\nfollowed him. And the sow, dripping with gore, lay down in the hen-house\nand slept. Almost before she woke, she was sold for a song.\n\nThen the cow came. I do not wish to libel her, but I think I may safely\nsay that she was milkless and excitable, and had a wild eye. She roamed\nover my fields (mine, I had bought them) as if they were her own. Had\nnot Legs been so agile and swift, she might have tossed him. As it was,\nshe ran into the brick wall at the lower end of the garden, and made her\nnose bleed. As far as I know, that was the only liquor that she parted\nwith. She was probably mad also, for she used to low in the middle of\nthe night, when all proper cows are fast asleep. Asleep or awake,\nhowever, now she makes her fantasias elsewhere. I almost hope she is\ndead, for it requires a larger optimism than I possess to believe that\nshe will ever become a proper cow, for she was more of a steed for\nMazeppa. Perhaps she was a horse after all, a horned horse. I wish we\nhad thought of that at the time. As it was, we sold her at outrageous\nloss, as a cow. And with her we parted with any idea of keeping farmyard\nanimals for purposes of gain. Perhaps we were not serious enough about\nit, and the animals saw that.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThrough last spring and summer the fields rested after this invasion of\noutrageous animals, and about the middle of May it struck Helen and me\nsimultaneously that we were going to have a crop of hay. That was\ndelightful, and much less harassing than hens. Hay would not wake one at\ntimeless hours, nor would it go mad, and have to be sold at a quarter of\nthe price we gave for it, since we gave nothing for it at all. It was\nthe pound of tea thrown in with the fields we had bought, or the _Times_\nnewspaper thrown in with your subscription to that extraordinary\nlibrary.\n\nFrom this there was born the scheme of giving a haymaking party, to\nwhich we originally planned to ask everybody we knew, amended that to\nasking all the children we knew, and afterwards (this was Helen's\namendment) decided not to ask anybody at all, partly because children\nwere so serious, but chiefly because there might not be enough hay to go\nround. We neither of us knew how many square yards of hay it was\nreasonable to supply to each person, and it would be dreadful if there\nwas not enough. Either Helen or I, or both of us, would have to go\nwithout, and it was safer to give the haymaking party to each other. We\nwere in town all May, and the first half of June, but had left word with\nthe gardener to send us a postcard when the hay was ready. The weather\nthroughout these weeks was gloriously sunny, and in our mind's eye we\nsaw the crop growing taller and thicker with each blazing day.\n\nThen one evening came the memorable postcard:\n\n'A reddy.'\n\nWe flew to the 'A.' In the middle of the largest field was a small\nhaycock like a penwiper. One not quite so large and round at the top,\nmore like a pincushion, was visible in the next field.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIt was clear after this that the Powers that Are willed that our fields\nshould not be used for utilitarian purposes. Hence the inception of the\nrose-garden.\n\nA brick wall (the one against which the insane cow had blooded her nose)\nbounded the garden. From there the ground declined steeply away into the\nmiddle of the larger field, which was cup-shaped, the ground rising on\nall sides of it. (It was at the centre of the cup, where the sugar is,\nthat the penwiper had been raked together.) To-day a flight of steps\nmade of broken paving-stones--an entrancing material--led down the side\nof the cup from the garden-gate, and up the opposite <DW72>. Standing\nwhere the sugar is, therefore, you saw on every side of you rising\nground, which had been terraced, and walks of broken paving-stone,\ncommunicating with the two staircases, lay concentrically round. And the\nHerculean labour which had already occupied us so many rapturous\nafternoons was to plant the whole cup with rose-trees, so that,\nstanding in the centre, there was nothing visible except sky and roses.\nThat was practically done; and to-day what occupied us was the\nconsideration of the level remainder of the field, of which there was\nsome half acre. It was rough, coarse grass, starred with dandelion,\nwhich gave the first hint. We wanted to get rid of the dandelion,\nand----\n\nAt last I got Helen to agree, and I mixed together in a wheelbarrow an\ninfinity of bulbs, and other delectable roots. There were big onion-like\ndaffodils, neat crocuses with an impatient little yellow horn sticking\nup, fritillary roots, bottle-shaped tulips, the corms of anemones, and\nthe orris of the iris. Then, trowel in hand, each with a bag of bulbs\ntaken haphazard out of the wheelbarrow and with a bag of sand to make a\ndelectable sprouting-place for the roots, we started. Every dandelion\nencountered was to be dug up with honesty and thoroughness, and where\nthe dandelion had been there was to be planted a bulb taken at random\nout of the bag. Helen said it would take ten years. Personally, when I\nlooked, I thought longer, but I did not say so, for I practice reticence\non discouraging occasions.\n\nI wonder how many people know the extraordinary delight of doing a thing\nfor oneself, starting from the beginning. I do not say that it gives me\nthe smallest pleasure to black my boots or brush my clothes, since\nsomebody has already made those boots and woven the cloth. But there is\nnothing more entrancing than to deal first-hand with Nature, to make\nholes in the earth, and put in them roots, the farthest back that we can\ngo with regard to vegetable life. Rightly or wrongly, it seems to me a\npleasure as clean and as elemental as the joy of creation itself.\nWhether we write a book, or paint a picture, or carve a statue, we,\nthough we do not really create, but only arrange what is in existence\nalready, are going back as far as we can, taking just the root-thoughts\nand translating them to song or shape. And though we do not really\ncreate at all, but only use and arrange, as I have said, the already\nexisting facts of the world, passing them, it may be, through the\ncrucible of the mind, we get quite as near to Nature, if not nearer,\nwhen we go a-bulb-planting. The bulbs are our thoughts, our pigments,\nwhat you will, and when in spring-time we shall see them making a meadow\nof Fra Angelico, it will be because we have actually planted these\nthings ourselves that the joy of creation will be ours. Not to do that\nwould be as if an artist laid no brush on the canvas himself, but merely\ndictated to a dependent where such a colour should be spread. But given\nthat he had a slave so intelligent and so obedient that he could follow\nto a hair's-breadth the directions given him, can you imagine the artist\nfeeling the possessive joy of creation in the result, even though it\nrealized the conception to the uttermost? Not I; nor, in the garden, do\nI care, like that, to see what others have done. It is not sufficient to\ndirect; one has to do it oneself.\n\nI love, too, and cannot conceive not loving, getting hot and dirty over\nthe wrestling with the clean, black earth. A great deal of nonsense is\ntalked about the dignity of labour, but it is chiefly talked by those\nwhose labour lies indoors, who, excellent craftsmen as they may be, go\nspudding about in the intangible realms of the mind. I doubt, indeed,\nwhether any market-gardener has ever spoken of the dignity of labour. We\nleave that to those who only know it by repute. But I long to put down\nthe manner of the transaction. I do not in the least think it dignified,\nbut it is such fun.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe green had mostly faded from the grass, leaving the meadow, as is\nalways the case in October, far more grey than green. Certain plants,\nhowever, were still of varnished brightness, and the dandelion leaf was\none. There was no need to pick and choose, and without moving a step, I\ndug the trowel down into the earth, loosened it all round the vegetable\nenemy, and lifted it. An ominous muffled snap came from inches down in\nthe earth, which I tried to pretend I had not heard. But one could not\ncheat the eye also. There, at the bottom of my excavation, was a milky\nroot, showing a danger-signal of white against the brown loam. I had to\ngo deeper yet: the whole of the tap-root must be exhumed. Another dig,\nanother snap, a raw-looking worm recoiled from the trowel, only just in\ntime, and eventually up came the remotest fibre. How good the earth\nsmelt! How reeking with the life of the world! Cold, clammy, rich earth,\never drawn upon by the needs of the Bank of Life, ever renewed by that\nwhich life paid back to it. A thousand years had gone to the formation\nof my trowelful, and a few inches below was the chalk, where a million\nlives a million years ago had spent themselves on the square inch of it.\nSlowly, by work of the myriad sea-beasts, this shoulder of chalk was\nheaved from the sea, the myriad lives became a myriad myriad, and here I\nhad the little lump of chalk borne up on the end of the trowel which\ntold of the labourers of the unnumbered years. Then, in a spoonful of\nsand, I put the sign, the evidence of another decade of millions on the\ntop of them, and stuck thereon an onion-like daffodil root that was born\nlast year. In a fortnight's time that child of to-day will have reached\ndownwards, feeling with delicate, pleased touch the sand of a thousand\nyears ago, will delve through the time of the pyramids of Egypt, will\ndraw moisture from the chalk that was old when our computation of time\nwas not yet born, and will blossom next April, feeding its sap on the\nprimeval years. And for what? To make Helen and Legs and me say, 'Oh,\nwhat a beautiful Horsfeldii!' Then we shall look at the fritillary that\nprospers a yard away.\n\nThe eternal romance of it all! To the right-minded there is nothing that\nis not a fairy-story. Like children, we crowd round the knees of the\nwonderful teller of it, and say, 'Is it true? Is it all true?' And He\ncan't tell lies. Sometimes, when we have a sort of moral toothache, we\nsit apart, and sniff. We say that scientifically we have proved there is\nno God. So said the fool in his heart. But nowadays the fools write it\ndown in their damned books, and correct the proofs of it, and choose the\nbindings of it, and read, with gusto, the thoughtful reviews of it. And,\nGod forgive them, they think they are very clever people, if I may be\nexcused for mentioning them at all.\n\nBut fairy-stories! How surprising and entrancing are even those which\npeople make up and put in books, while round us every day a fairy-story\nfar more wonderful is being told not only for us to read, but enacted\nfor us to see. It is only familiarity with it which robs us of the\nsense of its wonder, for imagine, if we could make ourselves ignorant\nagain of what happens to bulbs when we put them in the earth, how the\npossibilities of flying-machines would grow flat and stale before the\nopening of the daffodil. For a man's capacity for happiness is in great\nmeasure the same as his capacity for wonder and interest, and\nconsidering that there is absolutely nothing round us which does not\nteem with wonder if only we had the sense to see it, it argues very ill\nfor our----\n\nA wild shriek from the hillside opposite (distance forty yards)\ninterrupted me.\n\n'I didn't mean to,' cried Helen; 'but I cut a centipede in half. They\nare going in opposite directions.'\n\n'Dig another hole!' I shouted. 'Then go back when the halves have gone\naway. Yes, very distressing, but you can't avoid everything.'\n\n'Murderer!' said Helen.\n\nThis was feminine logic. I had not cut the centipede in half!\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIt was one of those golden October days of which we have now had some\nhalf-dozen. Every night there is a little frost, so that morning both\nlooks and smells exquisitely clean, and it is hardly possible to regret\nthe turn of the year; though dahlias are blackened, the trees blaze with\ncopper and gold, for in this week of windless days scarce a leaf has\nfallen, and the stems are as thick with foliage as they were in the\nsummer, and to my mind doubly beautiful. And this work of bulb-planting\nseems to bridge over the winter, for we are already at work on spring.\nBut in November, Helen and I mean to turn our faces townwards again, for\nit is possible there to be unaware of the transition to winter, which is\nso patently before one's eyes in the country, and which, with the best\nwill in the world, it is impossible not to find rather depressing. Some\npeople, I know, label the squalls of February March as execrable, and\nflee the country then. But we both love them. These are the last\ndespairing efforts of winter. His hand is already loosed from the earth;\nhe strikes wildly, knowing that there are but few blows left in him. But\nin the autumn he is gaining strength every day: it is life whose hold is\nbeing loosed. And that is not exhilarating to watch. True, it is only a\nmimic death-bed, but personally we don't want to sit by the bedside. In\nLondon there is no bedside. The shorter the day, the earlier the lamps\nare lit. Those avenues of shining eyes, which are not shocked whatever\nthey see.... And the fogs--the mysterious fogs! I suppose we are\nCockneys.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nHelen gave out first in the matter of bulbs, and came and sat by me.\n\n'How very dirty you are!' she said. 'And have you been planting bulbs\nwith your nose?'\n\n'Not at present. But it tickled, and so I rubbed it.'\n\n'Well, let's stop now. I want to go for a walk. My back aches with\nbending, and though I haven't got toothache, I feel as if I might have,\nand the kitchen-maid has given notice, and I don't think anybody loves\nme, and if Legs marries that awful girl, I will never speak to you\nagain. And they are coming to dinner to-night! I pray Heaven that Legs\nmay miss his train, and not get here till late.'\n\n'So do I. Yes; let's go for a real tramp on the downs. Hadn't I better\ngo and wash my face first?'\n\n'Oh no; what does it matter? But are you sure you don't want to go on\nbulbing?'\n\n'Quite sure. I think we won't go by the road, do you know. We can strike\nacross the meadows and up the beacon.'\n\nHelen gave a little purr--a querulous rumble of the throat.\n\n'I have the blues,' she said, with great distinctness. 'I was as happy\nas possible till ten minutes ago, and then they came on like--like a\nthunderstorm. Everything ached. I groaned aloud: my mind hurt me like\nlumbago. It hurts still. Oh, do rub something on it.'\n\nThat is one of the heavenly things about Helen. If she 'feels bad,' she\ncomes and tells me about it like a child. She scolds me for all sorts of\nthings of which I am perfectly innocent, because she knows I don't mind\none scrap (I love it, really, but I don't tell her that), and it makes\nher feel better. She scolded now, even when we had passed the\nwater-meadow and began a really steep ascent of the flanking hills.\n\n'I knew the kitchen-maid wouldn't stop,' she said, 'because those London\ngirls hate the country. So do I. And it was all your fault. You engaged\nher; I had nothing to do with it. And we never _had_ such a\nkitchen-maid. She cooks better than the cook, and does everybody else's\nwork as well. You might have known she wouldn't stand the country.'\n\n'Go on,' said I. 'My fault entirely. So is the toothache, isn't it?'\n\n'I haven't got one, but I might have. And that's your fault, too. I\nwanted to go to the dentist as I passed through London, and you\npersuaded me to come down here without stopping. It did ache just\nthen--it did.'\n\nThe hill got rather steeper.\n\n'Go on,' said I. 'How slowly you walk!'\n\n'Yes, but I have to do all the talking. You have no conversation. Oh\ndear, what a devil I am! Aren't I?'\n\n'Yes.'\n\n'There! I told you nobody loved me. Oh, look! we are going to have a\nreal red sunset. All the hills are getting molten, as if they were\nred-hot and glowing.'\n\nShe was feeling a little better--not much, but a little. We had come up\nthe two hundred feet of steep down-side as if we had been storming a\nbreach. To walk very fast up a hill makes all proper people feel better,\nunless they have heart disease, in which case they die, and so, we hope,\nfeel better also. But for those who have not heart disease, and want to\nfeel better, the prescription is confidently recommended.\n\n'And then that awful girl!' she went on. 'You insisted on being\nneighbourly, as you call it, with the Ampses, and this is the result.'\n\n'There has been none at present.'\n\n'No; but you tell me to ask the family to dinner on the very day that\nLegs comes down. Oh dear, what a heavenly evening! I should so enjoy it\nif everything wasn't wrong. Look at the sky! Fifty thousand little pink,\nfluffy angels floating about in it! Do you want to go right to the top\nof the hill?'\n\n'Yes, right to the top. Then I shall begin to answer you back.'\n\nHelen laughed.\n\n'Oh no, don't,' she said. 'It is no fun plaguing you if you dispute my\nfacts. So tell me quickly: isn't everything your fault, and not mine?\nPlease pull me, if you intend to go that pace.'\n\nSo I pulled her, she holding the end of my stick, and we arrived at the\nvery top of all. Sunset was below us, evening stars were above us, and\non the huge expanse of down there was no one else. It was the loneliness\nI love.\n\n'The devil has gone,' she said, after a while. 'You are rather nice to\nme. And I don't think I have toothache, and--well, you thought that\nCharlotte was a little Ampsy before I did. And even if nobody loves\nme--oh, how dirty your nose is!'\n\nThat was true, anyhow.\n\nAn extraordinary phenomenon in country towns is that, though nobody has\nanything to do, everyone feels extremely busy; whereas in town, though\nyou have got an enormous deal to do, you never feel busy at all, and\ncan, without fail, find time for anything else. I think there must be\nsome microbe which cannot live in London, but thrives elsewhere, which\nproduces the illusion of being rushed. Personally, I know it well: it is\nnot an old enemy of mine, nor is it an old friend, but it is a pleasant\nold humbug, which I am afraid I rather encourage. This evening, for\ninstance, when I went to my room after tea, I encouraged it, and argued\nthat one never had a moment to oneself. I had two hours in front of me\nnow, as a matter of fact, in which I should be undisturbed; but the Old\nHumbug said that it was all very well to think about the future. All he\nknew was that he--that is, I--had been rushed--yes, rushed--all day and\nall yesterday, and ever since we came down to this dear, sleepy old\ntown. To-day was Tuesday, and people were coming to dinner. We had gone\nout to lunch yesterday, and had dined out twice last week. Also, there\nwas the garden to attend to, and a little golf (almost every day, as a\nmatter of fact) was necessary for the health, and what with letters to\nwrite and cigarettes to smoke, and the Meistersinger overture to learn,\nin order to play it with Legs, I was a victim of this hurrying, bustling\nmode of life, which in a generation or so more would assuredly send\neverybody off their heads.\n\nI made myself quite comfortable in my chair, and proceeded to think\nabout it seriously, because I had two hours in front of me. It was all\nquite true (I was encouraging the Old Humbug, you will understand), and\nthe modern mode of life was insane. London, anyhow, was insane, and in a\nlittle while I should probably get to agree with the Old Humbug that I\nwas rushed and driven in the country also. But, to encourage credulity,\nI took London first. There one certainly was busy--all the hours, that\nis to say, of a day that began quite early and ended next morning were\nfull, and I reconstructed one such as I often spend, and hope to spend\nmany times more. I do not give it, because it seems to me the least\nedifying, and all stern moralists (the Old Humbug is an awfully stern\nmoralist) would--as, indeed, they have done--shake their heads over it,\nand say, 'To what purpose?' I will tell you that afterwards.\n\nI was called, let me say, at half-past seven, and after a few\nincredulous groans got up. I shaved, washed a little--not much, for\nreasons that will appear--drank some tea, and in a quarter of an hour\nwas wildly bicycling towards the Park. When things flourished very much,\nand money flowed, Helen and I rode champing steeds; but just now things\nwere what is called fluctuating, and I rode a bicycle, and she stayed\nin bed. An hour and a half of frantic pedalling on a hot June morning\nproduces excellent physical results; and at half-past nine I was in the\nswimming-bath at the Bath Club, where I became cool and clean. I changed\ninto another suit of flannels there, rode sedately home, and had\nbreakfast at precisely a quarter-past ten. By eleven I had eaten\nbreakfast, read the _Daily Mail_, and smoked a cigarette, and was about\nto spend a quiet, studious morning until half-past one (for we were\nlunching out at two), when Helen came in.\n\n'Do come to Lord's,' she said; 'it's Gentlemen and Players, and we can\nsit there till lunch. We can't go this afternoon, and you are playing\ngolf at Woking to-morrow.'\n\n'I can't. Not time.'\n\n'Oh, just this once.'\n\nJust this once, then, we went. It was too heavenly, and we were late for\nlunch.\n\nIt was one of the rather long lunches, and it was nearly four when we\nleft the house. Then, as we had neither of us seen the Sargents at the\nAcademy, we went there, since the afternoon was already gone, and got\nhome about six; and as we had been given a box at the opera for\n'Tristan,' which began at half-past seven, it was necessary to dine at\nhalf-past six--a terrible hour, but true. At the opera Legs picked Helen\nup to go to a ball, and I went home to answer my morning's post, which I\nhad not yet read.\n\nBut, it will be objected, Gentlemen and Players, and the one necessary\nvisit to the Academy, and 'Tristan' does not occur every day. Quite\ntrue; but something else always does, and the Old Humbug, who had got\nquite large and important during this short survey, said in those\ncanting tones which I knew so well: 'You are wasting your life over this\ninsensate rush and hurry. And you do no better down here. What have you\ndone to-day? Planted bulbs, and written two or three pages of your silly\nbook. What will you do to-morrow? You won't even write your silly book,\nbecause you are going to play golf with Legs in the morning, and you say\nyou can't work after lunch. And the days will make themselves into\nmonths, and the months into years' (here he dropped into poetry), 'and\nyou will ever be a name of scorn--at least, you would if ten minutes\nafter you were dead anybody remembered what your name was. But you will\nhave gone to your account.'\n\nWell, I join issue with the Old Humbug over this. For my part, I assert\nthat it was perfectly right for me to go to the Gentlemen and Players,\nand to the opera, and to plant bulbs, and to play golf with Legs\nto-morrow morning if fine. And as for his objection to what he calls\n'rush,' why, I fling it in his face, since I must rush. If I set apart a\ncertain time every day for private meditation, I should be simply bored.\nI should get--I suppose this must be the proposed practical effect of\nthe plan--no great and ennobling thoughts out of my solitary\nmeditations, and instead of feeling that I had spent the morning to some\nserious purpose, I should feel, and I think rightly, that I had merely\nwasted it. But if I have planted bulbs all morning, I haven't wasted it.\nI will assert that on the Day of Judgment; for I have been busy walking\nalong the path I feel sure I was meant to walk on. There are a thousand\nother paths all leading to the central and celestial light, and they\nare for other people to walk on. It would, of course, be a terrible\nwaste of time for one who by nature was a meditative recluse to go to\nthe match between the Gentlemen and Players, or for a deaf man to go to\n'Tristan,' or for a blind one to lie on his back and look at the\nfiltering sunlight between the leaves of beech-trees in June. But the\npoint for everybody is to get into touch with life as continually as he\ncan, and at as many points as he can. This is gospel. I would I had the\npalate of a wine-taster to get into touch with life there; the\nprehensile toe and sense of balance of a tight-rope walker to get into\ntouch there, the mathematical head of the astronomer to learn the orbit\nof a star that has never been seen, but only conjectured; or I wish very\nmuch indeed that I had the missionary spirit. Indeed, then I would go to\nthe nearest cannibal islands and (probably a good thing, too) be\ncheerfully devoured; or, again, if I had it in a lesser degree, I would\ngo and teach in the Sunday-school, and have a class for boys in the\nevening. I did try the Sunday-school when first I lived here, and for\nfour unhallowed Sundays I passed a feverish hour surrounded by mystified\ninfants and intolerable lithographs. You never saw such a failure as I\nwas: I dreaded those hours so much that I thought my reason would be\nunhinged. And the children used to regard me, I am sure, as they would\nhave regarded some queer, though harmless, creature of the menagerie. I\ncouldn't do that sort of thing.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nI neither made them happy nor could I teach them anything. That latter\nwas quite proved when, on the Sunday succeeding my fourth lesson, an\nArchdeacon came round and examined all the classes in turn. I think I\nshall never get over the nightmare horror of that scrutiny when he sat\nin my arm-chair at the desk, and I, the trembling instructor, stood by\nthe side while he asked my idiot flock who Adam and Eve and Cain and\nAbel ware, and other really elementary things. One child said that Eve\nwas God's wife, and I wished the earth might open and swallow me up.\nThen he came to the Catechism, and it really seemed as if nobody knew\nhis own name. And it was for that nightmare that I had spent four\nfeverish Sunday afternoons and a parody of days between, for every\nmoment Sunday was coming nearer.\n\nNo; I give more happiness to Legs by being soundly beaten by him at\ngolf, or by wasting (so says the Old Humbug) a morning in taking Helen\nup to Lord's to see the Gentlemen and Players. Also--I hasten to\nforestall criticism--I like it much better myself; and though you may,\nif you like, call it selfish, I hereby state that to like doing anything\nis a very good and Christian reason for doing it. Behold the gauntlet!\n\nFor we poor folk who really cannot teach in Sunday-schools, and are not\nemployed in making discoveries which will alleviate painful diseases,\nand do not serve our constituency or our King, and sneakingly throw\npamphlets about the Education Bill into the fire without reading them,\nbecause we know we don't actually care one pin what happens, and are in\nevery single respect quite unsatisfactory and useless and unornamental,\nhave yet, somehow (there can be no doubt of this), to add if we can to\nthe happiness, anyhow, of those dear folk among whom our lot has been so\ngraciously cast. We have no great gifts of any description; we are\nneither wise nor witty, and there has been only one talent given us,\nwhich is the power of enjoyment. Well, that is a very little one, you\nmay say, and a very selfish one to cultivate, but if we have nothing\nelse at all, had we not better try to make some use of that?\n\nFor the fact remains that it can be made some use of. Every one feels\nbetter for seeing one of these drones, who are neither soldiers, nor\nsailors, nor politicians, nor teachers, enjoy himself. Enjoyment in the\nair is like oxygen in the air: it quickens everybody, and in its way\nmakes them happier. The poor drones can neither teach nor fight, nor\nmake anybody good, but they can in their humdrum way make people a\nlittle more cheerful for a few minutes. For they have--this is what I\nmean by drones--a happy temperament, and as they are no good at all in\nany other direction, it is indeed time that they should be done to\ndeath by the workers of the hive if they do not exert themselves in the\nmere exercise of their temperament. And just as the drone of the hive\nlives immersed in the honey of his flowers and in the garnered stuff\nthat the workers have brought home, so the drone man must continue to\ntake active and continual pleasure in all the delightful things of this\nworld. He must pounce on enjoyment with eager zeal, and glut himself on\nit till he reels with the stupefaction of pleasure; he must keep himself\nkeen and alert for the smallest humorous or engrossing detail that is\nwithin his horizons: it is shameful if he does not go to bed every night\ntired with his own laughter and enjoyment. And woe to him if he invests\nhis pleasures with the serious garb of duty! The leader of the\ndelectable life who says that he plays golf because he finds exercise so\nimportant for his health, or who sits out all afternoon to watch other\npeople playing other games, and explains that his doctor (his doctor,\nforsooth!) tells him to have plenty of fresh air, or who drinks his\ndelicious wine and says that it is good for his digestion, is a mere\nscampish hypocrite. He plays games because they are such fun; he\nwatches other people play because it amuses him; he drinks wine because\nit tastes so nice.\n\nAnd he must never falter on his primrose path; the high gods have given\nhim but one little talent, and all that is asked of him is that he\nshould enjoy life enormously. He has got to do that, then. The soldier\nand sailor may not, perhaps, enjoy life, but they are useful in other\nways. The drone is only useful in this one. He must never remit his\nefforts, and must never want to; he must 'rush,' as the Old Humbug said,\nall the time, for if he ceases to rush he ceases to justify his\nexistence at all. And--a heavenly destiny, one, too, beyond all desert\nof his--he does, if he is at all a conscientious drone, make other\npeople a shade more cheerfully disposed than they would otherwise have\nbeen.\n\nThis breathless dissertation on drones requires at this point, as\nprinters say, 'paragraphing.' In other words, I began to talk about one\nthing, and without pause talked about another. It was really the fault\nof the Old Humbug, who said that I wasted those days in which I didn't\ndo something for somebody. I then justified my position on those days by\npleading the desire to be a drone--a life which, as I have sketched it\nout, seems to me to be wholly admirable. I wish to Heaven I could be in\nthe least like those adorable people. Misbegotten industry stands in my\nway, and a deep-rooted, but equally misbegotten, idea that if I am very\nindustrious I shall one day write a good story. Also, I have not the\ndrone temperament necessary for dronage. I am not, in fact, any longer\ndefending myself, but extolling other people.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nLoafers there are in plenty in this world, but personally I have no use\nfor them. They lead the same external lives as the lover of life leads,\nbut how different is the spirit that animates them! The loafer may have\nbeen side by side with the life-loving drone all day, at the same\nparties, at the same games, at the same music, but the one goes to all\nthese things in order to get through the hours without boredom, while\nthe other wishes the hours infinitely multiplied so that he might go to\nmore. The one sucks enjoyment of but a stupefied sort from them; the\nother catches the iridescent balls and bubbles of joy that are cast like\nsea-spray over the tides of time, only to throw out double of what he\nhas received. He is like some joyful juggler: a stream of objects pours\ninto the air from his flashing hands; he catches them and hurls them\ninto the air again, so that the eye cannot follow the procession of\nflying joys. And at the end, at the close of each day, he stands still\nfor a moment, his hands full of them, his memory stored with them, eager\nfor the next day.\n\nHow different is the loafer! Have you ever seen the chameleon feed on\nflies? It is just so that the loafer, who wants only to get through the\nhours, feeds on the simple, silly joys of life. In expression the\nchameleon is like a tired old gentleman with the face-ache, though the\nimpression of face-ache is chiefly produced by cheeks swollen in other\nways, for he rolls up his tongue in a ball in his mouth when he is going\nto feed. Then, with an expression of bored senility, he moves very\ncautiously to where a fly is sitting. When he is within range, he shoots\nout his tongue, and the fly sticks to the adhesive tip of it. There is a\nslight swallowing motion, and the chameleon again rolls about his greasy\neye, looking for the next victim. The loafer, in a metaphysical sense,\nhas got just such an adhesive tongue as the chameleon. He puts it out,\nand pleasures stick to it like postage stamps. Then he swallows them.\nObserve, too, when he has to make occupations for himself, how heavily,\nand stupidly he passes the hours! He will read the morning paper till\nmidday, then totter out into his garden, sadly remove one weed from the\npath, and totter back to the house to throw it in the fire. Then he will\nre-read a page of his paper, and write an unnecessary note with\nunnecessary care, probably wiping his pen afterwards. It will then be\nlunch-time. How different would the drone's morning have been! Even if\nhe had been compelled to spend it on the platform of Clapham Junction,\nhe would have constructed some 'dome in air' out of that depressing\nsuburb. The flashing trains would have allured him (especially the\nboat-trains), and his mind would have gone long journeys to the sunny\nSouth. He would have built romance round the signals, and found a\nfairy-tale in the advertisements.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nAnd what is the practical side of all this? for is it not temperament\nwhich makes the magic of these wonderful persons, and temperament is a\nthing which is supposed to be quite outside the power of its possessor\nto alter or amend?\n\nBroadly speaking, I suppose that is true, and we who do not possess the\nmagic would bungle terribly if we attempted to rival the flashing hands\nof the true conjurer. I do not suppose, at any rate, that it is worth\nwhile for the meditative recluse to spend his days and nights at festive\ngatherings, since he will never enjoy them himself, and, what is more\nimportant, he will, in his small way, eclipse the gaiety of those\nparties on which he sheds the gloom of his depressing countenance. Yet,\nsince I believe with my whole heart that joy and simple pleasure, so\nlong as they hurt nobody, are things wholly and entirely good, it\nbehoves every one to look sedulously in the garden of his mind to see\nwhether he cannot find there a few little seedlings of that species of\ntemperament which I have tried to indicate. His garden may be the most\nstrenuous and improving plot--a regular arboretum of high aspirations\nand earnest endeavours with the most beautiful gravel paths of cardinal\nvirtues leading by the thickets and shrubberies of spiritual strivings,\nbut, should he happen to find a few of these seedlings, and be able to\nraise them, they will not spoil the effect of the wholly admirable grove\nof moral purpose. To be quite candid, I think a little colour 'sets\noff,' as they say, the grandeur of high endeavour. It--well, it\nbrightens it up.\n\n\n\n\nNOVEMBER\n\n\n'I' remarked Helen, 'am the rose of Sharon, _and_ the lily of the\nvalley.'\n\nShe laid great stress on the 'and,' which gave a perfectly new\nsignificance to the verse.\n\n'The French for lily of the valley is _muguet_,' said Legs, with an\nintolerably superior air.\n\n'Oh, don't show off!' said she. 'The great thing in walking along a rail\nis to keep your balance.'\n\n'Through the looking-glass,' said I. 'Upon which the White Knight fell\nhead foremost into a hole----'\n\n'And kept on saying \"Plenty of practice,\"' said Legs.\n\n'It's easier if you wave your arms,' said she. 'Oh, there's a train\ncoming. Where's the gum?'\n\nLegs had the gum--a small penny bottle--and Helen hastily gummed a\npenny to the rail, and we all retired to the side of the line.\n\nIf you merely lay a penny on the rail, the chances are that the first\nwheel that goes over it causes it to jump, and it falls off, whereas if\nyou gum it----\n\nThere was a wild maniac shriek from the engine, suddenly dropping an\noctave as it passed us, and the huge train, towering high above us,\nthundered by with rattle of wheels and the throbbing oscillation of very\nhigh speed. A dozen bits of paper came trundling and dancing after it.\nThe rear of the van telescoped itself into a tiny square, and the signal\njust above us, which had been down to let the train pass, shot up a\nwarning, right-angled arm.\n\n'Oh, well over sixty,' said Legs, with deep appreciation, 'and there's\nthe penny sitting as tight as, as--I don't know. Lord, how hot!'\n\nThe penny had already been under half the wheels of four trains, and was\nso flattened that it was of knife-edge sharpness.\n\n'If you stropped it a little, you could shave with it,' said Helen.\n'What babies you are!'\n\nLegs was already busy on the up-line, arranging two pins crossways on\nthe gummed rail, so that they should be flattened and welded together,\nmaking an entrancing object closely resembling a pair of scissors.\n\n'The up-train will be through in five minutes,' he said. 'Chuck me the\npenny, Helen.'\n\nI had another object of interest--namely, a threepenny piece with a hole\nin it. I had tied a long string to this, the far end of which I held in\nmy hand. The reason for this was that the coin was beginning to crack,\nbut it would stand a wheel or two more, though it was already bigger\nthan a sixpence; after a wheel or two I could pull it away.\n\n'Gum!' said I.\n\nWe moved to the far side of the up-line, and waited. Soon from the\ntunnel a hundred yards below came a wreath of smoke, and the\nblack-fronted engine raced towards us. Everything went right on that\ndivine afternoon, and after four wheels had passed I jerked my\nthreepenny piece away. The scissors were adorable also, and it would be\nscarcely necessary to strop the penny. Of course, we made a _cache_ of\nthese objects, burying them in a small tin box with the addition of a\npiece of paper recording our names, weights, and ages. Legs also wrote a\nshort confession of how he murdered his two infant children, and hid the\nbodies in a bramble-bush ten paces from the _cache_. There was no such\nbramble-bush really, which would make it more puzzling to the inquiring\nmind. He represented himself as being perfectly impenitent, and ready to\ncommit similar crimes should opportunity occur. He signed it, Benjamin\nYates of 21A, Park Lane, W. Then we went home to tea.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nLegs had been in for his Foreign Office examination, and had come down\nto spend the next two days with us, before we all moved up to town;\nalso, to our deep-felt and secret joy, he had shown no desire to visit\nthe Ampses, or talk any more German with Charlotte. The process of\ndisillusionment began, I think, on the evening in October when he was\nhere last, and the Ampses dined with us; for I saw him overhear Mrs.\nAmps ask Helen who 'was the heir to all our beautiful property.' At that\nmoment I almost pitied Mrs. Amps. She had begun by making jam, but I\nfelt that she had gone on to cook Charlotte's goose. Legs, anyhow,\nstopped in the middle of a sentence, and took a couple of seconds to\nrecover himself. I am sure I don't wonder. You require to recuperate\nafter that sort of remark. I felt that I knew all about Mrs. Amps when\nshe asked that simple question. I felt as if I had known her parents and\ngrandparents, and could prophesy about her children and grandchildren;\nand Legs' eyes, which till that moment had been quite shut, began to\nopen, just to blink.\n\nNext day, however, he lunched with them. What happened I do not know,\nsince he has not told me; but he was rather silent in the evening, ate\nlittle, but drank four glasses of port after dinner. I think the\ninstinct of the drowning of care was there, and he was slightly cynical\nand Byronic afterwards. I love Legs.\n\nI hasten to add, lest I may appear unfeeling, that Charlotte has for the\nlast week or two been kind and encouraging to another young man, who is\nthe heir to far more beautiful property. I saw him at the golf-links\nyesterday in a bunker. He was arranging her hands so as to grasp her\nniblick properly. They seemed to want a great deal of arranging.\nBy-and-by they allowed my opponent and me to pass. Charlotte seemed not\nto recognize me, or else she was really so much employed in making her\nhat stay on that she did not see me. I mentioned, however, to Legs that\nI had seen her, but that she had not seen me. It seemed to interest him\nvery little.\n\nBut this morning, as Legs and I played golf over the grey back of the\nhuge down that rises from our happy valley, it seemed a sheer insanity\nthat we should all go up to London the next day, so blithe was the air,\nso invigorating to the whole sense. The short, springy turf seemed to\nput its own vitality into one's feet; they were shot forward\nautomatically without conscious effort. And--ah, the rapture!--(it\noccurred more frequently to Legs than to me) of seeing a clean white\nball scud for a hundred yards or so low over the ground, and then rise\nswallow-like against the ineffable blue! Golfers, I am told, reck\nnothing of their surroundings, provided only they drive far, approach\ndead, and hole their puts; and so I must conclude--indeed, I conclude\nit for other reasons--that I am no golfer. But I am an epicure in my\nsurroundings when I go a-golfing, and though the grey dunes and sandy\nhollows of the seaside course are most to my mind, I place very near\nthose perfect joys the hugeness of scale which you get only on the\nuplands. To-day no whiff of vapour flecked the whole field of the\nshining heavens, and the country, grey and green, with fire of autumn\nbeech-wood here and there, stretched map-like round us. But to the west\nthe view was even more stirring to that desire of the infinite which\nlies so close to the heart of man. There fold after fold of downs, the\nknitted muscles of the huge, kind earth lay in unending interlacement.\nAnd it was all empty. There were no trees, no lines of hedgerows to\nbreak the void, and lend a scale to the eye. From the immediate green\nforeground <DW72> after <DW72> melted into grey, and from grey to the blue\nof distance, which fused itself into the tender azure of the sky's\nhorizon, so that the line between earth and air indistinguishable. It\nwas as empty us the desert, yet one knew that from every inch of it a\nthousand lives rejoiced in the sun of November. Yes, even the knowledge\nthat there would be but few more of such hours before winter hurled its\narmoury of squalls on to the earth added, perhaps, to their joy. None\ncould have expected such a November as has been ours. We have snatched\nit from winter; it is our possession.\n\nYet the colour of the grass, no less than the underlying keenness of the\nair, savour of the sunless months. It is scarcely green; it has been\nbleached by the torrid months, and Nature is too wise to let it shine\nforth in a fresh coat of colour when so soon it will sleep, waiting for\nthe spring. High up in the liquid blue, too, of the sky there is the\nsparkle of frost, for all the warm strength of the sunlight. It is not\nsummer that floats above our heads, soon to descend earthwards, but the\nfrost and cold. Yet they bless the Lord also.\n\nBut though I feel all this, feel it in every bone and fibre of my body,\nI know that I feel it more when I am doing something else--as, for\ninstance, playing golf. I think it must be that one pleasure quickens\nothers. The fact of attempting to keep one's eye on the ball as one\nhits it makes the whole of one's perceptions more alert. If I was taking\na solitary walk here, with no occupation except that of walking, I know\nquite well that I should not be conscious of the same rapturous\nwell-being as I am now, when the object of my walk is to hit a small\npiece of indiarubber for three or four miles, hitting it, too, as seldom\nas possible. So it is not the mere hitting it that gives rapture, else\nthe rapture would be increased by the frequency of the operation. Oh, I\nhave been talking on the stroke! This will never do. But it was my own\nstroke, and Hampshire flew about in fids in consequence.\n\nThis was at the twelfth hole, and it made the match square. Legs, I need\nhardly remark, was playing a pitiful game for him. But on the\nmoment--this is one of the inexplicable things about those foolish\npeople who play games--- my whole mood changed. I cared no more at all\nfor the empty, glorious downs. I did not mind whether the grass was\nblue, or grey, or green, or magenta. I saw no more flaring beech-woods,\nno more mapped counties. There was one desire only in the entire\ncontents of my soul, and that was to beat Legs. I did not feel as if I\neven wanted anything so much as that, and if Mephistopheles had appeared\nat that moment to bargain for my salvation as the price of my victory, I\nshould have signed in my blood or any other blood that was handy. But\nMephistopheles was probably otherwise engaged. At any rate, after being\nstill all square at the seventeenth, I drove into a silly irrational\nbunker that ought never to have been there at the eighteenth. I took\nthree to get out. But we had a heavenly morning. If only ... well, well.\nAnd Legs told Helen that he only just won, because he was completely off\nhis game! The tongue is an unruly member. Mine is. Had I won, I should\nhave certainly told Helen that Legs played a magnificent game and I had\nonly just won. That sounds more generous than his remark, but if you\nthink it over, you will see that it comes to exactly the same thing.\n\nYes; it seems an insanity to leave the country just now, especially\nsince there is no earthly reason for our doing so. Divine things, it is\ntrue, are going on in town, for our matchless Isolde is conducting\nsymphony concerts, and a perfect constellation of evening stars are\nsinging together at the opera; but, after all, Legs and I play the\n'Meistersinger' overture arranged for four hands on the piano; while,\nfor the rich soup of Sloane Street mud and the vapour-ridden sky, we\nhave here the turf of the downland and the ineffable blue. In fact, I am\nsorry to go, but should be rather disappointed if I was told that I was\nnot going. Helen characterizes this state of mind as feeble, which it\nundoubtedly is, and says that she is perfectly willing either to go\nto-morrow or to stop on another week, if I will only make up my mind\nwhich I want to do. But there is the whole difficulty: I haven't the\nslightest idea which I want to do. You might as well say to a dog which\nis being called from opposite quarters by two beloved voices: 'Only make\nup your mind which of us you like best.' If it knew, the question would\nbe solved.\n\nWell, the question was solved by tossing up, and then, of course, doing\nthe opposite to what we had decided the arbitrament of the coin should\nindicate. If it was heads, we were to stop in the country; and since it\nwas heads, that helped us to decide that we would go to town. That, too,\nmay seem a feeble proceeding, but I do not think it really is. To do\nanything as irrational as tossing causes the mind to revolt from the\nabsurdity of abiding by the result. The consequence is that a weighty\nfactor for doing what the coin did not indicate is supplied; for you\nnever toss unless you are quite unable to decide.\n\nSo for the last afternoon the garden claimed me, for not only is the\ngarden the symbol and embodiment of the country, but to me it is a sort\nof diary almost, since the manual acts of planting and tending have got\nso interwoven with that which made one's mind busy while the hands were\nthus occupied that the sight of this plant or that, of a new trellis, or\nthe stacked sticks of the summer's sweet-peas, are, when one looks at\nthem as now, retrospectively, on the eve of departure, retranslated\nback, as are the records of a phonograph, into the memories that have\nbeen pricked and stamped into them. All I see--croquet hoops,\nflower-beds--without ceasing to be themselves, have all become a secret\ncipher. By some mysterious alchemy, something of oneself has passed into\nthem. Secret fibres of soul-stuff are woven into them. Through the touch\nof the hands that tended them, something from the being of that which\ndirected those hands has entered into their life, so that next year, it\nmay be, some regret belonging to an autumn day will flower in the\ndaffodils of our planting. Hope, I am sure, will flower too; and with\nhow vivid a wave of memory do I know what silent resolve went into the\ncutting back of that Gloire de Dijon! Thus, when in June its fragrance\nstreams in the air, one must trust that some fragrance not its own, but\nof a fruit-bearing effort, will be spread about the garden.\n\nThere, for instance, are the croquet-hoops still standing, though it\nmust be a month since we had played. A few withered leaves of the plane\nhave drifted against the wires, and the worms have been busy on the\nneglected lawn, that speaks only of November. But that corner hoop has a\nsignificance beyond paint and wire. It is the record of the telegram\nthat came out to me one morning in late September which I showed Legs.\nAfter that we abandoned the game, and went to the house. It may have\nmore for us yet, that corner hoop--more, I mean, than that memory of\nwhich I have spoken. Joy or sorrow may be so keen, so poignant on some\nday yet hid behind the veil of the future, when I shall be looking at\nit, that till the day of my death it will never again be seen by my\nmortal eye without rousing an immortal and imperishable memory. It is\nthus, in a manner antimaterialistic, so to speak, that men, material\nthings, are woven into the psychical web of life, so that, almost before\nthe eye has seen them, they have sent the message of their secret\nsignificance to the brain.\n\nEverywhere, wherever I look, the tangle of these subtle threads is\nspread, even as on summer dawns the myriad spinning of gossamer makes\nnetwork on the grass, so that each is crossed and intertwined with a\nwoof of others. There is the bank where I lay all one hot July day doing\nnothing, thinking nothing, just lapped in the tide of living things.\nThat has gone home. That bank and the hours I passed there are part of\nme now, even as I feel that I am part of it, and I have but to look at\nit now to bask again in the absorbing stupor of the midsummer. There, in\nits blades of grass and shadowed turf, is written my doing for the day.\nThe bank holds it in kind, safe keeping, so that when God inquires of me\nwhat I have done with that day that He gave me, the bank will be able to\nanswer for me. Nor does it tell my secret to the croquet-hoop that holds\nanother, nor to the clematis that on that day was a heaven full of\npurple stars spread over the trellis. There was nothing in all the\ntreasure of the summer so beautiful, so triumphant as that; but what to\nme now is the memory of the clematis? The memory of a friendship that is\nover. At least, I was looking at it when I know that somebody I had\nloved and trusted was neither trustworthy nor lovable. It was as if a\nfriend had pushed back the carpet from the boards of the room where he\nand I had so often been merry and intimate together, and showed me, with\na sort of secret hideous glee, that a sewer flowed beneath the floor.\nPoor clematis! it is sick at heart. Its thin, bare stalk shivers\nmournfully as this golden afternoon begins to turn a little grey with\nthe chill wind of evening.\n\nAh, if only he had said he was sorry! If only he had said that he knew\nit was wrong, but that the flesh was weak! If only he had even\ncontemplated the step, which to some extent undoes the wrong that has\nbeen done, I do not think the clematis would have shed a single one of\nits purple stars. All of us, saints or sinners, do dreadful things, the\nmemory of which is sufficient to make us long to sink into the earth for\nshame. But he only smiled behind his hand, and with whispered gusto told\nme about it, licking the chops of memory. It is _that_ which matters.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThat corner of the garden had delayed me long, and it was already\ngetting dark when I had gathered up and fingered the gossamer threads\nthat lay so thickly down the border that led to the gate from which\ndescend the steps of the rose-garden. There were so many messages there.\nThe bare stalks of phloxes and campanulas, Oriental poppies and\nhollyhocks, Japanese anemone and iris--all had something to say. Some\nmemories were a little vague, faint, and dim even as the odour of the\nphloxes; some were tall and resplendent like the hollyhocks; some were\nvivid as the poppies. And then I went through the gate of the\nrose-garden and stood there. There was nothing there but the rose-trees;\nthere was no one there but Helen.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nSo the tale of the garden was told, and by the time it was finished dusk\nhad begun to deepen, and cheerful beckoning lights were gleaming from\nthe house. It was time to go in to take up, and with what love and\nalacrity, the pleasant hour of the present again; for it is not ever\ngood to linger too long over memories, or for however short a time to\nindulge in regrets, unless those regrets are to be built into the fabric\nof the present, making it stronger and more courageous. All other\nregrets, all other regarding of the past, which says, 'It is past; it is\nirretrievably done,' is enervating and poisonous, and but paralyzes our\nenergies. Indeed, it is better not to be sorry at all for the unwise,\nunkind, and mistaken things we have done if our sorrow tends to unfit\nus for doing better in the future.\n\nBut just as I crossed the lawn, going towards the house, another memory\nstarted up out of the dusk so clearly that I almost thought that I heard\nmy name called from the garden, and almost expected, when I got indoors,\nto hear again the sound of shuffling, unshod feet on the stairs. The\nmemory of that mysterious midnight hour, though I have not spoken of it\nagain, is seldom out of my thoughts. It does not sit, so to speak, in\nthe front row, but in the dimness that lies at the back of one's mind,\nout of which come those vague vapours which are, if they have body\nenough, eventually condensed into thought, just as out of thought is\ncoined speech and action. There in that dark kitchen of the mind I know\nthat the thought of that night has ever been simmering on the fire.\nSomething within me is not content with the fact that even at the moment\nthat the voice cried from the garden, at the moment when Legs saw the\nwhite face smiling at him, that dear soul passed to the other side.\nThere is more to come yet. Else--here is the vapour taking the shape of\nthought at last--else why did Legs, who scarcely knew her, receive that\nwarning? No echo of any memory of that night, strangely also, has ever\ncome back to him. He knows no more about it now than he did the next\nmorning, when he asked me if I had been sitting up late talking.\n\nI have told Helen all about it; I have told her too--for there is\nnothing so wild and fantastical that I would not tell it her--that there\nis some uneasy guest sitting at my hearth who stays in the shadow, so\nthat I cannot see his face. And she answered with a serenity that was\nalmost reassuring, saying that, if something more was coming, there was\nstill, whatever it was, nothing to fear; if otherwise, the uneasy guest\nwas moonshine of the imagination. That seems to cover the whole ground.\nBut the fact is that I am afraid of my fear--a thing for which it is\nidle to try to find excuses.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWe are leaving quite early to-morrow morning, so, when I entered the\nhouse that evening after the tour of the garden, I had definitely\nfinished with the country for some weeks to come. So, too, had Helen\nand Legs, for tea had already gone into the drawing-room. And even as I\nlocked the garden-door behind me, I heard a sudden gust of wind come and\nshake the panes, as if this calm, golden day had been sent just for us,\nand that the moment we had finished with it the winds, overdue, but\nkindly waiting for us, began to drive their cloud-flocks out of the\nsouth-west. Nor was the coming of the rain long delayed. Even while we\nsat at tea, a sheet of it was flung with a sudden wild tattoo against\nthe panes, and there hissed on to the logs of the open hearth a few\nstray drops. Legs paused, with his mouth full of crumpet.\n\n'It makes me feel twice as comfortable as I was before,' he said. 'It\nmust be so beastly out of doors.'\n\nLegs had just uttered this thoroughly Lucretian sentiment, when--\n\nThe door opened, and Mr. Holmes was announced. I have refrained from\nmentioning Mr. Holmes before because I expected he would come in about\nnow, big with purpose. He is a kind little gentleman, about forty-five\nyears old, who lives with his sister, and does not do anything\nwhatever. He is generally known as the Bun-hander, because no tea-party\nhas ever been known to take place for miles round at which Mr. Holmes\nwas not handing refreshments to the ladies. That is his strength, his\nforte. His weakness is just as amiable--though, perhaps, hardly so\nuseful--for his weakness is Rank.\n\nHe constantly comes to see Helen--about once a fortnight, that is to say\n(for in the autumn he is very busy going to tea-parties)--for the\nreason, so Legs and I believe, that she is the daughter of the younger\nson of a peer. Helen will have none of this, and maintains that he comes\nto see her for Herself. Personally, I can behave beautifully when Mr.\nHolmes finds Helen and me alone, but I am rather nervous if Legs happens\nto be in the room, for he is quite unable to take his eyes off Mr.\nHolmes, but stares at him in a sort of stupor of wonderment. Once (that\nis a year ago now) he left the room very suddenly. Choking and muffled\nsounds were heard from the hall and the stamping of feet. Helen and I\ntalked very loud to overscore this, and I trust Mr. Holmes did not\nhear. But when Legs is there, I am afraid (it is a sort of nightmare)\nthat I shall be overtaken, too, with helpless giggling. If I begin,\nHelen will go off, and I can imagine no way of satisfactorily\nterminating the interview. Because if once I began laughing at Mr.\nHolmes, I do not see how I could ever stop. His appearance, his voice,\nhis conversation, are all quite inimitable.\n\nHe is small and inclined to stoutness, and has a fierce little\nmoustache, so much on end that it looks as if it had just seen a ghost.\nNot long ago he had no teeth to speak of; now they are as dazzling and\ncontinuous, as Mr. Wordsworth said, as the stars that shine. He has\nrather thin brown hair, which I will swear used to be streaked with\ngrey, but is so no longer, and he wears three rings with stones in them.\nOne is an emerald, so magnificent that it is almost impossible to\nbelieve in it. He is dressed in the very height and zenith of provincial\nfashion, and would no more be seen in shabby clothes than he would be\nseen without stays. Yes; I maintain it, and even Helen, who was a\nperfect St. Thomas about it for long, has admitted that occasional\ncreaks proceed from Mr. Holmes's person for which it is difficult to\noffer any other explanation. It was a creak, in fact, more than usually\nloud that made Legs leave the room on the occasion I have referred to.\nDown his trousers he has the most beautiful creases, and all his clothes\nnearly fit perfectly. He wears brown boots with cloth tops, above which\nwhen he sits down you can see socks with clocks on them stranglingly\nsuspended. In the winter he wears a hat with a furrow in it, and in the\nsummer a panama. He wears a knitted tie (just now it is rather the\nfashion here for young men to have ties knitted for them by their\nfriends), which Helen says is certainly machine-made, with a pin in it.\nHis shirt always has some stripe or colour in it, and his links are\ninvariably the same colour as the stripe. To-day the links were\nturquoise and the stripe light blue. And from top to toe it is all a\nlittle wrong, though since I do not know how clothes are made, I cannot\ntell you what is wrong. The effect, however, is that, though so\ncarefully arrayed, Mr. Holmes looks like a rather elderly shop-assistant\ngoing out on Sunday afternoon.\n\nMr. Holmes goes out much oftener than that, for he may be seen in the\nwindow of the club every morning from about half-past eleven till one. I\nhave often seen him sitting in the window there looking at illustrated\npapers, and smoking a cork-tipped cigarette, ladies' size. Then he goes\nhome to lunch, and after lunch either drives with his sister in a hired\nfly, or else, if it is very fine, goes round the ladies' golf-links,\nwhich are a good deal shorter than the men's. He has tea at the club and\nsits there till dinner. Then, after a blameless day, he goes home to\ndine and sleep. I suppose no one in the world has ever done less of any\ndescription.\n\nI have alluded to his weakness--rank; he has another, which is gossip.\nHe knows who was dining at the Ampses last Wednesday, and who lunched\nwith the Archdeacon on Sunday, and how the Bishop's wife is. It is he\nfor whom also the fashionable intelligence is written in the daily\npapers, and, though he never goes there, he knows who is in town, and\nwho lunched at Prince's last Sunday, or walked in the Park, and how the\nMarquis of God-knows-what is after his operation. (He always refers to\na Marquis _as_ a Marquis, to an Earl _as_ an Earl.) But, best of all,\nperhaps, he loves infinitesimal intrigue, especially if it concerns\nRank.\n\nAnd here my portentous secret must burst from me. For the fact is that\nfor the last three days the town has been convulsed, and I have been\nholding it all back, assuming an unnatural calm, so that it might all\ncome in a deluge. For three days ago a Duchess came here to open a\nwindow, or shut a door in the town-hall, which had been put up in memory\nof something, and was entertained to luncheon afterwards by the\nCorporation. And on this eye-opening occasion Helen was sent in before\nthe wife of the younger son of a Baronet. And in consequence the wife of\nthe younger son of the Baronet cut her afterwards, as with a knife; yet\nknife was no word for it: the averted eye was more like a scimitar.\nBefore the assembled company, when Helen went to shake hands with her\nafter lunch, she cut her, and she turned from her, revolving on her own\naxis like the eternal stars. Upon which, very properly, after two days'\nheated discussion, and a great demand for Debrett, public opinion sided\nwith the wife of the younger son of the Baronet, on the ground that\nHelen took her husband's rank, which in this case happened to be none at\nall. What made it worse was that the Duchess, who should have known\nbetter, being an old friend of Helen's, came to tea with her afterwards\nin a motor-car covered with coronets for all the world to see.\n\nYou may imagine that the fat was in the fire after that. Helen had no\nidea why the wife of the Baronet's younger son had cut her, and perhaps\nmight never have known had not Mr. Holmes dropped in only yesterday and\ntold her, adding that he was sure he could clear it up. I was not at\nhome when this interview took place, but when he entered the room this\nafternoon, after having called only yesterday, it was certain that he\nmust have come on this subject. He had a book in his pocket, which made\nan unusual bulge.\n\nLegs was steeped in wide-eyed contemplation as Mr. Holmes had his tea.\nFrom time to time I glanced at him, and saw that the corners of his\nmouth were faintly twitching. His eye travelled from Mr. Holmes's face\nto his jewelled hands; it lingered about his clothes, but came back,\nloverlike, to his face. In a few minutes we had learned about\neverybody--how the Lord-Lieutenant of the county had driven through in\nhis motor--not the Daimler, but a new Panhard--yesterday afternoon,\nstopping only at the fishmonger's, and taking the London road\nafterwards; how there had been a party at the barracks last night, at\nwhich there was music; but not very good music, Mr. Holmes was afraid;\nhow the Bishop had not influenza at all, but only a bad cold; how The\nPines had been taken by the Hon. Alice Accrington, who had a cork\nfoot--so sad. A rhinoceros had trodden on the original one.\n\nI had ceased to be able to look at Legs, but here I heard him give a\nlittle whimper, as a dog does when it wants a door to be opened for it.\nHelen all the time had been of impeccable behaviour. She had asked just\nthe right questions, and appeared so genuinely interested that I felt I\nhad never known before of what depth of hypocrisy she was capable. Then\nMr. Holmes's wealth of information began to grow thin, even as the\nstars burn thin at daybreak, and I knew that he was going to dawn, and\nthat the true reason for which he came was going to break forth. He put\ndown his cup on the tea-table, took a cigarette, and suddenly creaked.\n\nIf you can imagine a sneeze, a cough, a spit, the strangled wheeze\ncaused by a fish-bone in the throat, and the noise an empty siphon of\nsoda-water makes when you press the handle, all combined, you will\nfaintly grasp what Legs did. His effort to swallow the whole of this\nmixed convulsion was most praiseworthy, though I should think dangerous,\nand it came to my ears only as if someone had done it half a mile away.\nMr. Holmes, I am sure, heard nothing this time, and Legs left the room\nwith his handkerchief to his mouth in the manner of mourners in the\nsecond coach at a funeral. There was no sound outside, but soon after a\nmuffled tread overhead, where is his bedroom. Then for a moment I caught\nHelen's eye. She looked so inexpressibly grave that I nearly asked her\nwho was dead. Then dawn came. Mr. Holmes has a high cackling voice, and\nthe bulgy volume in his pocket was 'Whitaker's Almanack.'\n\n'I should have come before,' he said, 'but I wanted to come to you last,\nand really the afternoon has flown. About Tuesday now. Dear lady, you\nonly took your right place. There is no question about it. I have been\nto the Mayor, I have been to the Archdeacon. Look.'\n\nHe found a page in Whitaker, and gave Helen the volume. It was a table\nof precedence. I saw 'Eldest sons of younger sons of peers' underlined.\n\n'Look at the next column,' he said. 'The sister takes the rank of her\nhusband _or_ her elder brother. Now see where younger sons of Baronets\nand their wives come!'\n\nFar away below eldest sons of younger sons of peers, in an outer\ndarkness below even members of the fifth class of the Victorian Order, I\nsaw that obscure relationship. My emotions of various kinds almost\nsuffocated me. Helen was justified before all the world. It was _her_\nturn to cut the wife of the younger son of the Baronet if she chose.\n\nSo we talked very pleasantly for a quarter of an hour about the\nmovements of the aristocracy, and then Mr. Holmes 'rose to go.' His cab\nwas waiting, and I helped him on with a very magnificent fur coat in the\nhall, which in the somewhat indistinct light seemed to be made of the\npurest rabbit skin. In the dimness of the landing above I thought I\ncould see an obscure shadow leaning over the banisters which resembled\nLegs.\n\n'I hope, after this, your wife will take her proper place,' said Mr.\nHolmes. 'Of course, everyone knows the Duchess came here to tea.'\n\nHe lit a cigarette, and I heard the banister tremble slightly, as if\nfrom an infinitesimal earthquake.\n\n'It is so kind of you to have taken so much trouble,' said I firmly.\n\n'It was nothing. I am sure you need have no further anxiety.'\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nI went back to the drawing-room. Helen's face was buried in a\nsofa-cushion, and Legs came downstairs in three jumps.\n\nSo we laughed till it was time to dress for dinner. Occasionally we\nseemed to be recovering, but then somebody said 'Creak,' or 'Baronet,'\nand a fresh relapse took place.\n\nI pity all poor souls who do not know Mr. Holmes. It is so sad for\nthem--sadder than the lady with the cork foot. Oh, think of it! This\ntriumphant vindication of Helen (which is all wrong, by the way) will\nlast him a long, long time. It has been a campaign, triumphantly\nconcluded, and I should not in the least wonder if he has half a bottle\nof champagne to-night. And after a time the excitement will die away,\nfading like a golden sunset, and he will settle down to his ordinary\nlife again, and read the paper in the morning, and go for a little drive\nin the afternoon, and have tea and toast at the club afterwards. And in\nthe spring the Panama hat will come out, and the rich fur coat be put\naway, and he will hand strawberries instead of buns, and iced coffee\ninstead of tea, and perhaps play a little croquet. But this week has\nbeen a great week for him--it really has. If you want to understand the\ngloriousness of Mr. Holmes, you must take my word for it that nothing so\nengrossing has happened to him for months.\n\n\n\n\nDECEMBER\n\n\nThis once-happy family has suddenly returned to the pit whence it was\ndigged, and it is impossible to imagine any more depressing spectacle\nthan we present. Dawn in faint flickers is beginning to shine on the\nwreck, and occasionally for a moment or two, though we may be\nover-sanguine, Helen and I can dimly imagine being happy again. Legs\ncannot do that yet; it is still midnight gloom with him.\n\nThe intelligent reader will scarcely need to be told that it is the\ninfluenza that has blackened the world like this. Helen began, and Legs\nand I followed within twenty-four hours. That, somehow, is a relief to\nher, since she feels she did not give it us. As if it mattered where it\ncame from! Besides, personally I would rather catch it from her than\nanyone else. Legs has had the worst visitation, because, after it was\nquite certain he had got it, he persisted in attending the last night of\nthe autumn opera season, did not enjoy it at all, of course, by reason\nof a splitting headache, and was really ill for a day or two. I was\ninfinitely wiser. As soon as the nymph touched me with her fairy hand I\nwent firmly to bed, turned my face to the wall like Hezekiah, and\nstopped there till the fever was over. After five days I tottered\ndownstairs to find an old, old woman sitting by the fire. It was Helen.\n\nI think that was the most dreadful day I ever remember. She told me\nagain and again how ill I looked until I was goaded into a sort of\ndepressed frenzy, and said I couldn't possibly look as ill as she. We\nboth had beef-tea in the middle of the morning, and to my horror, when\nit was brought, it was brought not by Raikes, my man who is as\nindispensable to this house as is the carburetter to a motor-car (for it\nwon't run without), but by an Awful Thing that I never saw before. In\nanswer to an inquiry, I was told that Raikes felt very ill, and had\nasked the Awful Thing to bring us our beef-tea instead of him. So I sent\nher back to Raikes with a thermometer that he was to be so good as to\nput under his tongue for one minute, and then return. It came back\nrecording 102 degrees. I gave the Awful Thing the thermometer to wash,\nand she instantly dropped it on the floor. It was, of course, broken\ninto twenty million fragments, but I remembered that, though I was a\nworm, I was a Christian worm, and said: 'Never mind. Please tell Raikes\nthat he is to go to bed instantly.' I then picked up the twenty million\nfragments, and cut myself severely. I said 'Damn!' quite softly.\n\nHelen winced, which was merely intended to annoy me, and it succeeded\nadmirably.\n\nSo there we sat exactly like that awful picture called 'Les Frileux,' in\nwhich an old man and an old woman sit apart under a leafless tree. The\nground is covered with the dead leaves. Soon they will die, too.\n\nIt is impossible to depict the dreariness of that morning. Outside a\nsort of jaundiced day showed the soupy mud that flooded Sloane Street,\nthrough which motor-buses, which once I thought so fine, splashed their\nway. A few sordid people under umbrellas bobbed by the windows, and as\nthe darkness increased a man with a long stick began to turn up the\nlamps. Then it instantly got rather lighter, and another man (not the\nsame one) with another long stick came and turned them down again. Upon\nwhich Egyptian darkness settled down over the town, and I must suppose\nthat the first man had caught the influenza, for he never turned them up\nany more.\n\nHelen was not reading; she was sitting by the fire looking mournfully at\nthe coals. This would not do at all, and in the intervals of a paroxysm\nof coughing I asked:\n\n'How is Legs this morning?'\n\n'Worse,' said Helen.\n\nI took up the _Daily Telegraph_, and read the list of the people who\nwere dead. I knew one of them slightly. Then my cut finger began to\nbleed again, which reminded me of the Awful Thing.\n\n'Servants are so ridiculous and tiresome,' I said. 'I should think your\nmaid might have found time to bring up our beef-tea, instead of that\ndreadful girl. I don't know where you get your servants from.'\n\n'Barton went to bed yesterday with influenza,' said Helen wheezily. 'She\nis very feverish--worse than Legs.'\n\nI can't say why, but this news made me feel rather better, so I lit a\ncigarette. It tasted exactly as if it had been made of the green weed\nwhich grows on stagnant horse-ponds. I felt much worse again at once,\nand was quite sure my temperature was going up. But I could not have the\nmournful satisfaction of knowing that this was true, because the\nthermometer was broken. And my finger continued to bleed. The blood was\nvery bright red--probably arterial. Yet, whatever was happening, it\nseemed impossible that things were as desperate as I thought them, and I\nmade the excellent determination to do something.\n\n'Will it disturb you if I play the piano?' I asked Helen.\n\n'Not the least.'\n\nI attempted to play the 'Etudes Symphoniques,' beginning with the last\nvariation, by reason of the sky-scraping spirits of it. I don't think I\nplayed any correct notes at all, and Helen (again to annoy me) made the\nnoise which tiresome people make to show that a wrong note gets on their\nhighly sensitive nerves. It consists of a whistling intake of the\nbreath. Though I had only played a dozen bars, the white notes in the\ntreble were spotted with blood, as if I was a Jew and the piano was the\nlintel of the door on Passover night. It was absurd to go on playing on\na blood-boltered piano, even if I could play the right notes, which I\ncould not. So again, with the laudable idea of doing something, I\nstaggered upstairs, brought down a moistened towel, and proceeded to\nclean the keys. I struck notes from time to time, and Helen kept on\nwincing.\n\n'Is that necessary?' she asked at length.\n\n'Yes, because I have bled over the piano. Besides, I'm cleaning it with\nthe soft pedal down.'\n\nThe door was flung open, and the Awful Thing appeared.\n\n'Dinner,' she said, and left the door open.\n\nWe went downstairs. 'Dinner' in Raikes' indisposition was huddled on to\nthe table. There were pieces of moist fish under one cover. There was a\nginger pudding under another. There were large potatoes under a third;\nand under the fourth a rich and red beef-steak. Then despair descended\non me.\n\n'Is the cook ill, too?' I asked of the Awful Thing.\n\n'Yes, sir.'\n\n'Who cooked this? Or, rather, didn't?'\n\n'Please, sir, I did.'\n\nThen quite suddenly, both for Helen and me, dawn began to break for a\nlittle. Here was three-quarters of the establishment incapacitated, and\nthe Awful Thing was calmly doing everybody's work as well as her own,\nwhich was that of a housemaid. Helen cheered up at once.\n\n'Please give me some fish,' she said to me. 'It looks quite excellent.'\n\nI helped her largely and sumptuously. We both understood each other at\nthis moment, and I put a thumping helping on to my own plate.\n\nHelen, greatly daring, took a greedy mouthful, and spoke to the Awful\nThing, who was beginning to beam largely on us.\n\n'Delicious,' she said to her. 'I had no idea you could cook so\nbeautifully. You needn't wait; we will ring. And you must have help in\nat once. Will you telephone to Mrs. Watkins' agency, asking for a--(she\npaused, and I know she was going to say 'cook')--a housemaid?'\n\nThe Awful Thing smiled from ear to ear, and a moment afterwards we heard\nthe insane ringing of the telephone.\n\n'Oh, I _couldn't_ send for a cook just this moment,' said Helen, when\nthe girl had left the room. 'She was bursting with pride at having\ncooked this. But if I eat it I shall be sick. What are we to do?'\n\nThe girl in her enthusiasm had built the fire three-quarters of the way\nup the chimney, though the day was muggy and warm beyond all telling.\nInto the heart of the blaze we stuffed large pieces of fish, which\nburned with a blue and oily flame.\n\n'Now ring,' said Helen.\n\nThe girl returned after a long pause.\n\n'Please 'm, Mrs. Watkins hasn't a housemaid to send, by reason of so\nmuch illness. But she can send a cook,' she said, and her face fell.\n\n'It's such a pity, when you can cook so well,' said Helen; 'but we must\nhave somebody. You can't do all the work.'\n\n'A char and I could manage, 'm,' she said, changing the plates with an\nawful clatter.\n\n'Oh, not with Mr. Legs ill,' said Helen. 'We shall have you knocked up\nnext, and where should we be then?'\n\nThe radiant smile returned to the girl's face.\n\n'Give me some steak, Jack,' said Helen, 'and a potato. How delicious it\nsmells!'\n\nThe Awful Thing again left the room, leaving, as it were, the fragrance\nof her smile behind her.\n\nWe made no attempt to eat any of the second course, but put two large\nslices of steak, two potatoes, and a big spoonful of perspiring\ncauliflower into the fire. Pieces of ginger-pudding followed it to the\nburning ghaut, and soon the door again opened, and coffee was brought\nin. This was an after-thought, I fancy, though ill-inspired and gritty.\nBut there was a coal-scuttle.\n\nI am afraid we both relapsed again after lunch, though for a time the\nshining example of the housemaid who had done the work of everybody else\ninspired us to attempt to play piquet, bezique, and the piano. But these\nwere all hopeless: it did not seem worth while dealing, and, in point of\nfact, the attempt at a duet came to a conclusion at the end of the first\npage, for Helen only groaned and said:\n\n'I can't turn over.'\n\nBut that, I am thankful to say, was our low-water mark.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nSunshine began to shine more strongly on the wreck when Legs, two days\nafterwards, came downstairs, with the cheering remark that he felt so\nill that he was sure he couldn't be as ill as he felt. Soon after he\nburst into hoarse laughter.\n\n'I shall cheer up when I have counted ten,' he remarked.\n\nWell, on the whole, when it was put simply and firmly like that, it\nseemed the best thing to do. Legs took change of the cheering process,\nand ordered a basin, soap, and three churchwarden pipes, and we blew\nsoap-bubbles, which, though it may not be in itself a work of high\nendeavour, had at least the result of making us do something, which is\nalways a good thing. So, when that was over, in order to contribute to\nthe wholesome atmosphere of employment, I brought in and read to him and\nHelen what I had written that morning, and had designed to appear in the\nbook you I are now reading. It was--I will not deceive you--a string (a\nlong one) of cheap and gloomy reflections on the mutability of life, the\nreality of suffering, and the certainty of death. I had taken some\ntrouble with it, but the most poignant and searing sentences made Legs\nsimply roll in his chair with laughter that was noiseless merely because\nhis throat was in such a state of relaxation that it could not make\nsounds. But with eyes streaming and in a strangled whisper he said:\n\n'Oh, do stop a moment till I don't hurt so much with laughing, and then\nread it again.'\n\nI looked at Helen. She had a handkerchief to her face, and her shoulders\nshook with incontrollable laughter.\n\n'It's much the funniest thing you ever wrote,' she said. 'Isn't it, now?\nBegin again at \"All the pain and sorrow with which we are\nsurrounded\"--oh, no, before that--something about \"It is when we are\nracked with suffering ourselves.\" Oh, Legs, isn't it heavenly?'\n\nLegs had recovered himself a little, but still drummed with his feet on\nthe carpet.\n\n'I never knew I could feel so much better so quickly,' he said. 'I felt\na mere worm when I proposed soap-bubbles. I want it all again from the\nbeginning, where what you thought was sunlight was barred with strange\nshadows. O Lor!'\n\nSo I gave them this intellectual--or should I say spiritual?--treat once\nmore, and then threw the manuscript into the fire, amid the shrill\nexpostulations of the others. Legs made heroic attempts to save it, but\nfruitlessly, or, indeed, I would print it here, as a warning to those\nwho do not feel very well to postpone their meditations upon life and\ndeath until they feel a little better. Also, I do not think that one's\nreflections on any subject are likely to be of much value unless they\nare founded on some sort of experience, and, to be quite honest, I had\nfounded my views that morning on the mutability of life and the anguish\nof the world on the depression which was the result of a feverish cold.\nThey were depressing enough, but I do not think that they were of\nsufficiently solid foundations. They proved, it is true, extraordinarily\ncheering to Helen and Legs, but one cannot be certain that the rest of\nthe world would be equally exhilarated. They might be taken seriously,\nthough Helen says I need not have been afraid of that.\n\nEvery man, even a pessimist, is supposed to have a perfect right to form\nhis own opinions, but if I had my way (there is not the least likelihood\nof it) I should establish a censorship of the press, which should be in\nthe hands of six young and cheerful optimists, who should decide whether\nsuch opinions were fit for publication. Quite rightly literature of an\nindecent nature, and work which may be supposed to have a tendency\nencouraging to criminals, is not allowed to be disseminated. I should\nput a similar prohibition on the dissemination of discouraging books,\nbooks which might be expected to suggest or foster the opinion that the\nworld is a poor sort of place, and that God isn't in His heaven at all.\nEven if this was proved to be true, I would count it criminal to attempt\nto convince anybody of it; it would be a murderous assault on the\nhappiness of private individuals. The law does not allow one to poison a\nman's bread with impunity, so how much more stringently should it forbid\nthe poisoning of the inward health of his soul! Nothing but harm ever\ncame from the dissemination of depressing truths, nothing but good from\nthe dissemination of innocent and joyful beliefs, even should it be\nproved that they had no foundation whatever. For if the world is a\ndreary and painful place, so much more need is there of courage and a\nhigh heart to render it the least tolerable, and if we are to be snuffed\nout like candles when we come to the end of our few and evil years, how\nmuch more is it the part of wisdom to snatch a little happiness out of\nthe circumambient annihilation!\n\nAnd to think that only this morning I had actually tried to commit this\ncrime, and was only saved from it by Legs' unutterable laughter. To be\ntruthful, I felt a little offended when he first began to laugh, and\ninwardly hoped that he would soon grow depressed and thoughtful as I\ncontinued to tell my rosary of discouraging things. But I need not have\nindulged that hope; it was forlorn from the beginning.\n\nInstead, it made both him and Helen feel much better. I am so content to\nleave it at that. I had hoped--I had, indeed--when I wrote those\ndepressing pages (which I wish to Heaven I had not burned) that possible\nreaders might see part of the serious side of things under the\ndiscouragement of my winged words. But now--two days later--I am far\nmore content that those two darlings should have laughed at what was\nwritten with such seriousness, than that all those into whose hands the\nprinted record of that manuscript might have fallen should have sighed\nonce over my jaundiced views about life and death, and sickness and\nmutability.\n\nOf course, death is an extremely solemn affair, but it seems to me\nnow--we are all recovering fast, and are drinking hypophosphates, and\nbeginning to be greedy again--that the solemnity of it ought to have\nbeen discounted long ago, if it is going to be solemn at all. Everyone,\nof course, is at liberty to take life solemnly from the time he begins\nto think at all. But whatever our attitude towards life is, the same\nought to be our attitude towards death, whether we believe that there is\na continuance of life afterwards, or whether we are so unfortunate as to\nbelieve that there is the quenched candle. For in the one case death is\nbut the opening of a door into a fuller light, a thing, it is true, that\nmay affect one for the moment, since from the weakness of the flesh we\ncling to what we know, while in the other death is just extinction, a\nconsummation which no pessimist should fear, since while he lived he\nhad held so poor an opinion of life. So whether we regard life as a\npleasant interlude in something else, or whether we regard death--a\nthing unthinkable to me--as the extinction of consciousness, I cannot\nbelieve that he is not a guest who is welcome when he comes. Personally\nI do not want him to come for a long time, since I am delighted with the\nworld, and it would be most annoying to die now when one is just\nrecovering from influenza, and hopes to go to the Richter concert\nto-morrow. But whatever one's belief about the future is, I cannot see\nthat there is an essential horror about death. I can conjure up horror\nof some kind about going to the dentist, about looking up trains in a\nBradshaw, since the print is so execrable and the connections so unruly,\nbut I go my journey, or I go to the dentist, and get to my destination,\nor am relieved of a troublesome tooth. Life does not seem to me the\nleast troublesome, it is true, but let us take it that by death I get to\nmy destination, or in any case get nearer it.\n\nBesides, how frightfully interesting!\n\nI did not die, but went to the Richter concert instead. Legs wished to\ngo, too, but that was clearly idiotic, and so Helen and I tossed up as\nto which of us should go, and which remain at home. I won, and went.\n\nThere was Isolde in his high chair. (Probably an intelligent critic will\nsay that Isolde was a woman, and I mean Tristan. But I don't.) He waved\na little wand, and the spirit of the Meistersingers filled the hall. It\nwas not, so it struck me, a remembrance only of their harmonious\njoviality, a mere picture of them; it was they who rollicked and made\nprocessions in the great thumping triads of their march. There they sat,\neach with his business, town clerk, and vintner burgomaster, and lawyer,\nand, best of all, the old tender-hearted shoemaker, on whose kindly face\nupturned to the sky one feather of the bird of love had fallen, though\nit had never come and nestled in his bosom. But it was not with\nbitterness that so great a loss had filled him; it had but refined him\nto a mellow kindliness that made all young things love him. There they\nall sat, so the band told me, over their songs and their sober\ncarousing, till the others went home, and Sachs was left alone with\nmusic yet unsung echoing in his kind old head, and throbbing in his\nyouthful heart. But he knew that such Divine melody was not to be\nrealized by him; some master of music had yet to come and put into notes\nand audible harmony that which existed but in the temple of his dreams,\nin the garden of things a man may conceive, but may not realize. Then\ncame there the gracious young knight, and Sachs heard that of which he\nhad dreamed, the song taught by the birds and the choirs of Nature to\nthe ardent heart of youth.\n\nThe triumph took wings and soared, lifting Sachs with it, him and his\nyearnings, and that fine old music, too, which was his. Inextricably\nmingled, they were knit one into each other, soaring into the sunrise.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThereafter we were taken to the bleak mountain, where should gather the\nmaidens of storm, who did the will of Wotan. It was high and exposed\nabove the region of the trees, and shrill blew the winds over it, and\nthe heavens streamed above it. Fast and thick rode the army of menacing\nclouds, for the tempest in which the Valkyries rejoice, riding their\nuntamed steeds down the swift roadway of the winds, was broken out in\nmad fury. Yelling and screaming, it drove in mad circles of wrath round\nthe place where the nine maidens should foregather that evening, each\nwith the fruit of her day's quest slung across her saddle, each with a\nhero who should drink that night of the wine of the gods, which should\npour into his veins the fire of eternal life in place of the faint\nmortal blood that had beaten there before. Yet it was not love the\nmaidens sought. It was danger and death and heroic enterprise that bore\nthem so swiftly on their errands, and lit in them a fire brighter than\nlove has ever kindled. Their wine was the buffet of the tempest, their\nmeat the strong winds of God.\n\nThen there was heard, faint at first, the beating of the immortal hoofs\nin the rush of flying steeds; from east and west there shone out remote\nfires in the bedlam of the clouds, increasing, getting nearer and more\nblinding, till through the darkness of the tempest could be seen the\nfigures of the maidens gathering to their trysting-place, some at the\ngallop, some flying, and all drunk with adventure and swift deeds. Each\nthat day had prospered, each had a hero at her saddle, swooning now in\ndeath, but soon to be restored to the fuller life.\n\nSo gathered they, but as yet one was still missing--Br\u00fcnnhilde, the\nswiftest and best of them all, the dearest to the heart of Wotan, for,\nindeed, she was none other than his heart and his inviolable will. And\nwhile yet the others wondered at her tarrying, she came. But no hero had\nshe. She but led a woman into the midst of her sisters, for pity had\ntouched her fierce heart with so keen and intimate a pang that she had\ndisobeyed the behest of Wotan, and saved her of the race which he had\ndoomed to destruction.... The sorrow and the pain of the world had\nentered into her. Henceforth no more there would be for her the starry\nsplendour of Valhalla, throned on the thunder and rosy with the light of\neternal dawn. Soon for this her deed should another light shine on\ntower and palace wall--the light of the flames that consumed it.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nTempest, and love, and sorrow, and the doom of the immortal gods all\nmade audible in the eternal kingdom of the air! How is it that, when\nonce one has heard a miracle like this, one can ever so far forget it as\nto go back to the meanness of little miry ways? There are so many big\nthings in the world, and though one knows that, and has, according to\none's scale, seen and understood their size, yet we can still be so\ngross of perception that one can sit down, blear-eyed of vision, to\nwrite two-penny-halfpenny reflections about sorrow and mutability! (And\nbe rather pleased with them, too, until Legs and Helen laughed\nthemselves all out of shape.)\n\nHow large a place, too, in that which makes for size and the breeziness\nof living, does Art in some form or other occupy for most of us! Music\nand painting, literature and drama, are great doors flung wide to admit\none to the sunshine of God. Often, even to the spiritually-minded, the\navenues of prayer and directer communion seem somehow blocked; to\nothers, the majority, they are never wholly open. But to any who have an\nappreciation at all of what is beautiful, it must be a dark hour indeed\nwhen that approach is altogether shrouded and black, when neither\nAngelo, nor Velasquez, nor Shelley, nor Wagner, has a candle to give one\nto light the way. Millions of beautiful minds have their approach here.\nTo millions all idea of a personal God, to be approached directly, seems\ninconceivable, but it seems to me to be one of the perfectly certain\nthings in this very uncertain world that the passionate worship of\nbeauty, in whatever sort manifested, is no less a direct invocation than\nprayer and the bent knee. The study and the love for 'whatsoever things\nare lovely' is as royal a road, perhaps, as the other, for the passion\nfor what is beautiful is no less than the passion for the only\nBeautiful, and by such as feel that, all that is filthy is as unerringly\ncondemned as it is by those who call 'filthy' by another name--'sinful.'\nFor the perception of anything beautiful has to the perceiver a force of\npurging, while to the gross sense it is a sealed thing.\n\n    'O world as God has made it, all is beauty;\n     And knowing this is love, and love is duty,\n     What further can be sought for or declared?'\n\nAnd to that I say 'Amen.'\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe 'kennel,' as that same magician of words said, is 'a-yelp' at this.\nArtists, of whatever sort, are supposed to be loose of life. Where that\nextraordinary delusion arose I have no idea, unless it had its origin in\nsome superficial observer of the manners and ways in the Latin quarter\nof Paris. That things not technically parochial may have occurred there,\nwho would deny? But for my part I think it just as un-Christian to nag,\nand to vex, and to be unkind as to be anything else under the sun. In\nfact, to put it broadly, I would as soon be a drunken and kind man as be\na sour and total abstainer. Sour and total abstainers will turn on me\ntheir eyes of smiling pity and horror, but perhaps it is only a matter\nof taste.\n\nBut to be 'nice' to people seems so immensely important. You may lecture\non the Lamentations of Jeremiah for hours together, with a battery of\nhistorical facts to help you, and yet do no particular good; but if you\nhelp a lame dog, canine or human, over a stile, you have been a far\nbetter Christian. I dare say that word offends some people, so I will\ncancel it, and say that you have been of far greater service in a world\nthat has fortuitously come into being, and will as fortuitously go out\nof being. Whatever may be the truth about things seen and unseen,\nhappiness is quite certainly better than misery, and laughter is better\nthan the most edifying tears.\n\nThe finger of the gloomy moralist is pointed at me. I knew it was going\nto be pointed--and in a sepulchral voice he says: 'What about death?'\n\nThe fact is that I don't know (nor does he), and it is not my affair.\nWhile I am alive I prefer to drink deep of the joy of life than to\nspeculate about what may come next. I can conjure up my death-bed as\noften as I choose, and make it a scene of moving pathos and dim vexed\ndoubts. There is nothing so easy. I can without the slightest effort\nadvance really profound problems as to 'what it all means,' since there\nis nothing so easy as asking unanswerable questions. What of the death\nof the wasp which I killed gleefully last August with a tennis-racquet?\nI haven't the slightest idea. All I know is that if next August another\nventures to buzz round my head when I am having tea on the lawn after a\nperspiring set, I shall, if possible, kill it again.\n\nIf only the gloomy moralist could give me a reasonable theory to show\nwhy I could not exterminate wasps, I would accept it. But he can't. He\nonly says it puzzles him. It puzzles me, too, but in the interval I kill\nthe wasp.\n\nThe fact is (degrading though it may sound) that I do not really believe\nthat we are any of us capable of understanding the mind of the Infinite\nGod. Philosophers try to explain little bits of it, and in their\nexplanation of the little bit of it bang their heads together like\nchildren playing hide-and-seek in the dark. _Hinc ill\u00e6 lacrim\u00e6_. The\npoor children have terrible headaches. I am extremely sorry, but it is,\nafter all, their fault. Instead of playing hide-and-seek in the dark,\nthey should go out and play in the light; then no heads would be hit\ntogether.\n\nIt is quite maddening to think of the energy expended over this\nhide-and-seek, when all the time the garden of the world's beauty is\nready waiting outside the door. If you have the instincts of a beast,\nperhaps it is better to grope in the dark; but if you have the rudiments\nof any other condition, go and play. All the beauty that the world holds\nis at your command. All that really matters in this world is to be\nenjoyed very cheaply. Most things worth reading can be bought for a\nshilling or two, and if that is not 'handy,' look at a tree instead, and\nabsorb the life that shines in each growing twig of it. Or if you are\nmusically minded, hear, as I have just heard, the glories of the maidens\nof the storm.\n\nOf course, no one thing is the least more wonderful than any other. All\nthat happens, if we look at it at all closely, is a marvellous\nconjuring-trick. Why don't ducks come out of hen's eggs? Is it not\nmarvellous that chickens invariably issue? If you go a step farther\nback, and learn something about the continuance of type, it becomes even\nmore wonderful. 'How' can be told us, but never 'why.' And so I am\nconfident in the unanswerableness of my riddle. Why do sounds like those\nof the violin and the brass in the 'Ride of the Valkyries' convey the\nessence of storm and tempest?\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nAnother conjuring-trick of the most delightful kind occurred next\nmorning. At twelve o'clock last night the streets of London had, without\nasking (thereby reversing the sad tale of Oliver Twist), been given a\nsecond helping of brown porridge. It was ankle-deep on the roadway of\nSloane Street, thick brown porridge of mud; then during the night the\ntemperature went down, and it froze. The result is that for the copious\nsoup we are given a clean, dry roadway. There is no mud of any kind, not\neven frozen mud. The street is clear and dry, as if Oliver Twist had\nlicked it. But where has gone that two inches of obfusc lather? Has the\nwood-pavement drunk it in? Has it gone into the air? Has some celestial\nhousemaid, like the Awful Thing, been set to sweep the streets, even as\nshe has swept the sky, and given us the invigoration of frost in\nexchange for the wet blanket of chilly cloud? Coming back from Richter\nlast night, the streets were swimming; eight hours later (or it may be\nnine) one might walk barefoot across the road, or spread one's dinner\nthere, and get no taint. How it will be sparkling on the grasses and\nbrave evergreens at home, turned to diamond spray by the red sun of\nfrosty mornings!\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n'O world as God has made it!'... How often involuntarily, as if coming\nfrom without, that line rings in my head! And how very little we, with\nall our jealousies, and depressions, and bickerings, and follies, are\nable to spoil or dim the beauty that is cast so broadly there. Puny as\nare our efforts for good, it really seems to me that our attempts at\nbeing evil are even more impotent and microscopic. We are often as\ntiresome and unpleasant as we know how to be, yet all the time we are\nswimming against that huge quiet tide of the beauty of the world as God\nmade it, the knowledge of which is love, and beyond which there is no\nfurther declaration possible. Sometimes, if we are very active indeed,\nand exert ourselves very much, we can stand still or even move a little\nway in opposition to the great tide, but soon our efforts must relax,\nand we are swept down again with the current that eternally flows from\nthe heart of the Infinite, and returns there again in those pulsations\nthat are the life and the light of the world.\n\nIt is impossible, indeed, unless we say that evil is the vital principle\nof the world, to think otherwise. War there is between the two huge\nforces, but it is just Satanism, and nothing else whatever, that makes\npeople say that the world is going from bad to worse. If you are so\nunfortunate as to be a Satanist, there is nothing more to be said, and I\nhope the devil will give you your due; but if otherwise, there can be no\nother conclusion than that good, all that is lovely and fine, is\nsteadily gaining ground. For it does not seem reasonable to suppose that\nGod contemplates some swift heady man\u0153uvre which shall suddenly take\nevil in the rear, and in a moment rout the antagonism. At any rate, as\nfar as we can possibly judge, it is by quiet processes that He deals\nwith the sum of the world, even as He deals with the units that make\nit. For just as nobody has any right to expect that the evil in his\nnature will be suddenly expunged, even though the moment should be one\nof blinding revelation, so we should acquiesce in the slow progress of\nthe sum-total. For there are only three possible alternatives--the first\n(namely, that the progress is from bad to worse), which is Satanism; the\nsecond, that there is now in the world (and will be) exactly the same\namount of evil and good as there has always been, in which case you are\nconfronted with the absurd proposition of two absolutely equal forces\nhaving made this scheme of things, which will war to all eternity; and\nthe third, that good is stronger than evil, and is quietly gaining\nground.\n\nThe objection to the first alternative is that it is Satanism--a very\nfatal objection. The objection to the second is that it is so\nstupendously dull. There cannot possibly be any point in anything if the\ntwo forces are equal. There can be no struggle in the mind as to whether\none ought or ought not to do certain things, if whatever you do or don't\ndoes not make any difference. There remains the third alternative. The\nobjection to that is ... well, I can't see there is any.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nHours ago this house has been asleep, the house in which I write on this\nearly morning of the New Year, the house which is home to me, even as my\nown is; for it is the house--you will have guessed--where lives she who\nis neither dearer nor less dear than Helen, and where we always spend\nthe week and a little more that begins before Christmas and finishes a\nlittle after the New Year has been swung from the voices of mellow\nbells. Before midnight we sat in the oak-panelled room and played the\nmost heavenly games, charades, and insane gymnastic exercises, and\ntable-turning, with terror when the dreadful table turned in a really\nunaccountable manner, all consecrated by love and laughter; and then,\nwhen the Old Year was to be numbered by minutes that the fingers could\nreckon, we drew nearer to the log fire and wished each other that which\nwe all wanted for each. Legs' triumphant entry into the Foreign Office\nwas no longer capable of a wish, since it was already accomplished, so\nhe was wished a wife; and--you will understand that we were all very\nintimate--my mother was wished freedom from all anxiety of whatever\nkind; and the old nurse of ninety years who had acted charades with us\nwith astonishing power was wished her century; and I was wished the\nholding of the frost, so that I might skate--they were flippant\nagain--and two cousins were respectively wished a microscope--one is of\ntender years--and a motor-car; and then, just as the clock jarred,\ntelling us there was but a minute more to the New Year, it was Helen's\nturn to be wished, and somebody said, 'Your heart's desire'; and she\nunderstood.\n\nImmediately afterwards the clock struck, and everybody kissed everybody\nelse, and said 'Happy New Year,' and no more. For you must not say\nanything more than that: you _must not_ even say 'Good-night,' else the\ncharm is broken. So in dead silence we lighted bedroom candles, for the\nritual was well known, and separated. And who knows but that all about\nthe house, as in the 'Midsummer Night's Dream,' the dances of the\nfairies circled up and down by the light of drowsy fires?\n\n\n\n\nJANUARY\n\n\nA hundred pounds have suddenly and unexpectedly appeared on the horizon.\nPeople who are very rich have not the slightest idea what that means to\nus. People who are very poor have not the slightest idea either, because\nthey would probably buy a public-house, or goodwill, or something of\nthat nature, and never have any fun out of it at all. But to people who\n'jog along' a hundred pounds is a treat which neither rich people nor\npoor can form any conception of. To those who just pay their way, as we\ndo, it means several weeks somewhere. The only question is 'Where?' At\nthis point in our argument it was impossible to proceed. Helen and I\nwere both being so unselfish that we couldn't go on. She said she longed\nto have two or three weeks in Switzerland; I said that what I really\nwanted was to go to the Riviera for a fortnight. Then, as always\nhappens, these subterfuges broke down, and we both confessed that we\nneither of us really wanted to go where we said we did. She wanted to go\nto Nice; I wanted to go to the high altitudes. So, with the\nunderstanding that we were to go where the coin said we should, and not\notherwise, we tossed up. It was high altitudes.\n\nHis country put in a claim for Legs at the Foreign Office,\nunfortunately, and he should not come with us; but we felt, when we\nobserved the urbanity of the French customs-house officials, who\nobligingly shut their eyes to the presence of large quantities of\ntobacco, and the politeness of the railway officials, that Legs had\nprobably made himself felt in our foreign relations already, and that he\nwas responsible for all this very civil behaviour. At B\u00e2le, however,\nwhere we had to change at the awful hour in the morning which is neither\nnight nor day, we found that Legs' diplomacy had not yet had time to\nmake itself felt, for we were subjected to a searching scrutiny. Luckily\nI had had experience of the manners and customs-house officials of B\u00e2le\nbefore, and had transferred my tobacco into my coat pockets, thus\nfrustrating the baffled Teuton. But I am afraid it gave certain secret\nglee to observe that my travelling companion of the night before--a\nstout white man, with a name on his labels so long that I could not read\nit, who had snored all the time--was caught, and his rich stores of\ncigarettes taken from him, to be sent, I suppose, to Berne, for the\ndelectation of the President of the Republic.\n\nSwitzerland is a land that always arouses curiosity as to how it came\nabout that a country in which the people are so small, so 'toy,' should\nin itself be on so gigantic and marvellous a scale. Is it that the\nliving among these stupendous surroundings has somehow dwarfed the\npeople, or has Nature, by one of her inimitable contrasts, made the\nhuman part of Switzerland so insignificant in order to set off the\nvastness of peak and snowfield? Certainly the glib commonplace that\nnational character is influenced and formed by national surroundings is\nhere gloriously contradicted, since, as far as I am aware, no Swiss has\never attained to eminence in anything. They are a little toy people,\nwho live in little toy towns, and make excellent chocolate, and run\ninnumerable hotels on the most economical principles. But even then they\ndo not (as one would expect) get very rich. They are never 'very'\nanything. 'But the chocolate is excellent,' said Helen to these\nspeculations.\n\nIt requires faith this morning to believe that in a few hours we shall\nbe crunching the dry, powdery snow beneath our feet, and before sunset\nbe skating or gliding down the white frozen road, with puffs of snow\ncoming from the bows of the toboggan, for here all down the shore of the\nLake of Thun the country is brown and grey, with scarce a streak of\nwhite to show that it is winter. Low overhead are fat masses of\ndirty-looking cloud, but between them (and this is the door where faith\nenters) are glimpses of the perfect azure which we expect up above. Now\nand then the sun strikes some distant hillside, or, like a flashlight,\nis turned on to the waters of the lake, making of them a sudden\naquamarine of luminous green. But the weather is undoubtedly mild; the\neaves of the wooden toy-stations drip with discouraging moisture, and\nInterlaken, when we reach it, wears a dreadful spring-like aspect, and\npeople are sitting out of doors at the caf\u00e9s, and appear to find it\nrelaxing.\n\nThen the first of these wonderful winter miracles happened. There was\nthe flat alluvial land at the end of the lake, across which ran the\nfussy little light railway which should take us above (so we hoped) the\nregion of cloudland. Grey and puddle-strewn was it, with here and there\na patch of dirty snow stained through with the earthy moistness beneath.\nA low-lying mist was spread over the nearer distance, which melted into\nthe thicker clouds of the sky itself. It was just such a view as you\nshall see anywhere in the English fen-land during February.\n\nWe were looking at this with, I am bound to say, a certain despondency.\nIt seemed almost certain that we should find dull weather (which means\nthaw) up above, when a sudden draught from some funnel of the hills came\ndown, making agitation and disturbance both among the low-lying mist and\nthe higher clouds. The former was vanquished first, and, torn to ribbons\nby the wind, and scorched up by a sudden divine gleam of sun that smote\ndownwards, disclosed in its vanishing the long, piney sides of an\nupward-leading gorge. The higher clouds, being thicker, took longer to\ndisperse, I suppose, for at its farther end the gorge was still full of\nscudding vapours. Then suddenly they cleared, and high, high above, a\nvignette of fairyland--the Jungfrau herself, queen of the snows--stood\nout in glacier, and snowfield, and peak, against a sky of incredible\nblue. There she stood in full blaze of sunshine, the silver-crystal\nmaiden, donned in blue, enough to open the eyes of the blind and make\nthe dumb mouth sing.\n\nThen afterwards, as the little Turkish bath of a train went heavenwards,\nhow magical and divine a change happened! Inside the steamy carriages,\nsmelling of railway-bags, and rugs, and forgotten sandwiches, it was not\npossible to see through the condensation on the window-panes, but the\nblood that trots through the body knew the change, and took a more\nstaccato note. Then--I suppose that travelling stupidity had seized us\nboth--it suddenly occurred to Helen that we might, without fear of\nprosecution, put the windows down, though by a printed notice of\nby-laws of the railway it was still defended that we should not agitate\nourselves out of it. Once a ticket-puncher, exactly like a figure out of\nNoah's ark, put them scowlingly up again; but with the boldness that\nthis whiff of mountain-air supplied, we again lowered them, after a\nfurther consultation of the by-laws.\n\nThe ineffable change had begun. Soon for the moistness of the lowland\nthere was exchanged a hint of frost--something that made outlines a\nlittle more determinate, a little crisper. Then, as we mounted higher,\nthere was further change. For dripping twigs of the trees there were\ntrees that showed a hard, white outline of frost; for the sullen muddy\nstream there was clearer water, that went on its way beneath half-formed\nlids of ice; and thinner and thinner above our heads grew the grey\nblanket of cloud.\n\nThen that, too, was folded away, and above is was the sun and the\nsparkling of the unending firmament. Below it had been like a London\nfog, when you cannot see the tops of the shrouded houses; now we saw the\nroofs of the world, the Queen Anne's mansion of Europe, all clean, all\nclear, just as they were when I saw this land three years ago. No tile\nhad slipped, no chimney-pot required repairs. The top of the world was\ngood. Oh, how good!\n\nThe clear dry air, the sunset lights on the peaks, the liquid twilight\n(keen as snuff to the nostril), from which the sun had gone! There was\nthe rose-tinted Wetterhorn, black Eiger, flaming finger of\nFinster-Aarhorn; or, on more human plane, the hiss of skates over the\nperfect ice, the passage of a toboggan, with a little Swiss girl holding\nin front of her a baby sister, and steering with her heels, and shrilly\nshouting '_Achtung!_' There was 'Madame' who keeps a restaurant (I do\nnot know her name), standing to see the train-passengers come in, and\nshaking hands, and saying, 'You shall have wings to-morrow, no legs'\n(alluding to an amiable altercation of three years ago, when I drew a\nkind but firm sort of line about eating chickens' legs for lunch on four\nconsecutive days); and there was the beerman, whose admirable beverage I\nalways drank at 11.30 a.m., being thirsty with skating; and there was a\nskater I knew, who attempted a rather swift back-bracket for the\nadmiration of the new arrivals by the train to see, and fell down in a\nparticularly complicated manner in the middle of it; and there was the\nbarrack of an hotel which always smells of roasting leather, because\npeople put their skates and boots on the hot-water pipes, and right\nabove it was the Mettelhorn; and to the left was the Lady Wetterhorn;\nand to the right the smooth, steely-looking toboggan-run down into the\nvalley. 'Oh, world----' I beg your pardon.\n\nI have omitted to mention the magic word on our luggage-labels,\n'Grindelwald.'\n\nThree years ago, I must tell you, among other foolish and futile deeds,\nI made a _cache_ underneath a particular tree on the path leading to the\nScheidegg, consisting, as far as I remember, of chocolate, coins, and\nmatches. These insignificant facts I published in another place, and\nsince then I have received every winter mysterious letters from\nGrindelwald, showing that other people are as absurd as myself. My\n_cache_, in fact, has been found (I gave directions which I hoped would\nbe sufficient), and it has been, so these letters tell me, enriched by\nother secret and beautiful things. There has been placed there, on\nseparate occasions, by separate passionate pilgrims, all manner of\nstore, and the very next morning, instead of going to skate, Helen and I\nskulked off with a toboggan to see what we should find. A poem on the\nWetterhorn, so I had been informed, was there, to form the nucleus of a\nlibrary; there were a tin of potted meat and some caramels for the\nlarder; and furniture had been added by a third person in the shape of a\nlead soldier and an ink-bottle; while the exchequer, I knew, also had\nbeen enriched by at least half a franc in nickel pieces. We had debated\nearnestly last night as to what to add to the establishment, if we found\nit, and eventually decided on a handkerchief, which is to be regarded by\npassionate pilgrims as a tablecloth, a reel of cotton, and a copy of\n'Shirley' in the sixpenny edition, to swell the library shelves. This\nlatter was in a small linen bag, to keep it from the wet.\n\nOf course, we did not expect to find all the objects that I had been\ninformed had been placed there from time to time, for the rule of the\n_cache_ is that you may use what you find there, provided only you\nreplace it with something else. The potted meat, for instance, one could\nnot expect to go undiscussed, and I cannot personally conceive leaving\ncaramels uneaten. But in place of those, if only passionate pilgrims had\nplayed the game, we should find other objects. Thus the _cache_ becomes\na sort of exchange and mart--a reciprocal table laid in the wilderness,\nwhere you take one dish and replace it with another.\n\nHow it all savours of romance to the childish mind! With agitated\nfingers you scoop away the earth and moss which form the entrance to the\n_cache_, under a pine tree on the empty, frozen hillside, and you know\nyou will find treasure of some kind, but what it is you cannot possibly\ntell. And inviolable secrecy must surround and embellish your man\u0153uvres;\nthe _cache_ should not be mentioned at all except discreetly to the\nelect, for it partakes of Freemasonry, the masons of which are those who\ndelight in idiotic proceedings. But just as three years ago I gave the\ninventory of the _cache_ as it was then, so in the minds of the idiotic\nthere may be felt some interest as to its inventory when the founder\nagain revisited it. _Caches_, of course, are socialistic in spirit, and\nanybody may appropriate whatever he chooses; but I should be glad if the\ncopy of 'Shirley' is left there. It is such a pleasant book to read\nafter lunch, if you are tobogganing alone. A book, at any rate, is\nrather a good thing to have in a _cache_, and the wishes of the founder\nwill be satisfied if another book is put there instead. But let us have\na book. I should prefer that it should not be the 'Encyclop\u00e6dia\nBritannica.'\n\nThe morning, I think, must have been ordered on purpose, for I can\nimagine nothing so exquisite being served up in the ordinary way, _\u00e0 la\ncarte_; such weather must have been specially chosen. Not a single\nripple of air stirred; an unflecked sky was overhead, and the sun, as we\nset off, just topped the hills to the south-east, and sat like a huge\ngolden bandbox on the rim of them. The frost had been severe in the\nnight, but in this windlessness and entire absence of moisture no\nfeeling of cold reached one. There was in the air a briskness of\nquality more than magical; it was as if made of ice and fire and wine,\nand in a sort of intoxication we slid down into the valley. Then,\ncrossing the stream, since there was water about, it suddenly seemed\ndesperately chill; but no sooner had we mounted a dozen yards of ascent\nagain than the same dry kindling of the blood reasserted itself.\nToboggans will not run of their own accord uphill, so I put ours under\nmy arm, and for a hundred yards we danced a _pas de quatre_ up the\ntrodden snow. We both sang all the time, different tunes, when suddenly\nwe saw a clergyman observing us from a few yards ahead. He had a wildish\nand severe eye, and we stopped. David before the Ark would have stopped\nif he had unexpectedly come on that man. He was sitting in the snow, and\nwore a black hat, black coat, and black trousers, but he had yellow\nboots. He kept his eye on us all the time that we were within sight, and\nseemed to have no other occupation. We neither of us dared to look round\ntill we had left him some way behind, neither did we dare to dance\nagain. Eventually I turned my head to look at him from behind a tree.\nHe was still sitting in the snow, not on a rug, you understand, nor on a\ntoboggan, nor on any of the things upon which you usually sit in the\nsnow. He was not breakfasting or lunching or looking at the view. He was\nsitting in the snow, and that was all. I have no explanation of any kind\nto offer about this unusual incident. Helen thinks he was mad. That very\nlikely is the case, but it is an interesting form of mania. Perhaps\nby-and-by we shall have an asylum for snow-sitters. Or is it a new kind\nof rest-cure?\n\nIt is astonishing how you can argue about things of which you know\nnothing. Indeed, I think that all proper arguments are based on\nignorance. If you know anything whatever on the subject of which you are\ntalking, you produce a fact of some kind, which knocks argument flat. It\nis only possible to reason rightly on those subjects concerning which no\nfact, except the phenomenon itself, is ascertainable. Had we asked the\nclergyman why he sat in the snow, he would probably have told us, and\nthe subject would have ceased to interest us conversationally. As it\nwas, we held heated debate upon him, just as if he was the Education\nBill, for a long time. But the unusualness of it merited attention and\nconjecture. And think how divine an opening for conversation at\ndinner-parties, if you know nothing of your neighbour, and have not\ncaught her name.\n\n'Did you ever see a clergyman sitting in the snow?'\n\nThat, in fact, was the outcome of our argument. No theory about him\nwould really hold water. He was probably a conversational gambit, which\nmight lead to much. For instance, in answer to your question, your\ninterlocutor might reply in five obvious ways:\n\n1. 'I once saw a clergyman, but he was not sitting in the snow.'\n\n2. 'I have seen snow, but I never saw a clergyman sitting in it.'\n\n3. 'I once saw a clergyman being snowballed.'\n\n4. 'Yes. What are your views about the best treatment for the insane?'\n\n5. 'Such strange things happen at Grindelwald. Did you know----'\n\nYes; he was probably a conversational opening made manifest to mortal\neyes. Anyhow, when we returned he was not sitting there. If he had been\nreal, he probably would have been--at least, if you once sit in the snow\nthere is no reason why you should ever get up. Obviously it is your\n_m\u00e9tier_.\n\nNow, everybody who lives in fogs and rainy places will fail to\nunderstand anything of these last deplorable pages. But if they go to\nthe thin clear air of Alps in winter, they will know that this sort of\nthing (given you have the luck to see a clergyman sitting in the snow)\nis invested with supreme importance. When the hot sun shines on ice, it\nproduces some kindly confusion of the brain; there is no longer any\npoint in trying to be clever or well-informed, or witty, or any of those\nthings that are supposed to convey distinction down below to their\nfortunate possessors: you go back to mere existence and joy of life. It\nis a trouble to be consecutive or conduct a reasonable argument;\ninstead, you open your mouth and say anything that happens to come out\nof it. Most frequently what issues is laughter, but apart from that, the\nonly conversation you can indulge in is preposterous and the only\nbehaviour possible is childish. That is why I love these roofs of the\nworld. The intoxication of interstellar space is in the air. Everything\nis so light--you, your body, your mind, your tongue, your aims and\nobjects. The only things that you take seriously are the things that do\nnot matter: the snow-sitter was one, the _cache_ was another. But as we\ngot nearer the _cache_, we became even more solemn than on the question\nof the snow-sitter. There was no telling what we should find there, even\nif we found the place at all. The tree might have been cut down since\nlast year; the whole _cache_ might have been rifled by some imperceptive\nhand. There was no end to the list of untoward circumstances that might\nhave despoiled us.\n\nAnd so we went through the wood: we came to the end of it, and there was\na tree--'of many one,' as Mr. Wordsworth prophetically remarked. On its\nroots were cut my humble initials: it was certainly The Tree.\n\n'Oh, quick, quick!' said Helen; 'let us know the worst!'\n\nThe root had arched a little since I saw it last. Moss and snow were\nplastered on it in a manner scarcely natural. I plucked the bandage\naway with hands that trembled. We found:\n\n1. A pencil.\n\n2. Something sticky, which I believe to have been the caramels.\n\n3. An empty potted-meat tin, with a wisp of paper inside it, on which\nwas written: 'I ate it. Quite excellent.'\n\n4. A candle-end.\n\n5. The famous poem on the Wetterhorn done up in canvas. (How laudable!)\n\n6. A Jock-Scot, salmon-trout size.\n\n7. A paper on which was written: 'What's the point?'\n\n8. A cigarette, very sloppy.\n\n9. A five-franc piece, wrapped up in paper, on which was written: 'I\ntook 4.50 away.'\n\n10. A little wooden pill-box containing a very small moonstone.\n\nI think we were very moderate in our exchanges, which is right, since\nyou must always leave the _cache_ richer for your presence, and we\nmerely took away the pencil and the poem on the Wetterhorn, leaving our\nhandkerchief, the reel of cotton, and the copy of 'Shirley.' Below the\nquestion 'What's the point?' we wrote, 'None, if you can't see it,' and\nadded, 'The founder and his wife visited the _cache_ on January 12,\n1907. They saw a clergyman sitting in the snow. Selah.'\n\nThen an awful thing happened. Even while these treasures were openly and\nsumptuously spread round us, down the path there came a merry Swiss\npeasant about a hundred years old. He looked at us and the treasures\nwith curiosity and contempt, and then burst into a perfect flood of\nspeech, of which neither of us understood one single word. When he\nstopped, I said politely, 'Ich weiss nicht,' just like Parsifal, and he\nbegan it, or something like it, all over again, with gesticulations\nadded, and in a rather louder tone, as if he was talking to a deaf man.\nUntil this torrent of gibberish was let loose on me, I had no idea how\nmuch there was in the world that I did not know; so with the desire to\nreduce _his_ opinion of himself also, I addressed him in English. I said\n'God save the King' right through, as much as I could remember of 'To be\nor not to be' from the play called 'Hamlet,' and had just begun on 'When\nthe hounds of spring are on winter's traces,' when he suddenly turned\npale, crossed himself (though it was a Protestant canton), and fairly\nfled down the path. I make no doubt that he thought he had met the\ndevil. Anyhow, he had met his match at unintelligible conversation.\n\nBut it was clearly no use running risks, for more of the merry Swiss\nmight come down the path, who, it was conceivable, might not be so much\nimpressed by unintelligible sounds, and we hurriedly reburied the\ntreasure, ate our lunch, and turned the bow of the toboggan homewards,\nsince we proposed to skate all afternoon. It was a year since I had been\nshod with steel. I burned for the frozen surface. But it was right to\nsee to the _cache_ first. There are some things you cannot wait for.\n\nWe spent three weeks in these divine futilities, if anything so utterly\nenjoyable can be considered futile. For my part, I do not believe it\ncan, since, as I have already said, to enjoy a thing very much,\nsupposing always that it does not injure anybody else, is a gilt-edged\ninvestment of your time; for enjoyment is not (as is falsely supposed)\nfinished with when the thing itself is done and over, for it is just\nthen that the high interest of it (though gilt-edged) begins to be paid.\nUntil one forgets about it (and by a merciful dispensation one remembers\nwhat is pleasant far longer and far more keenly than what is painful),\nsubsequent days and hours are all enriched, and therefore made more\nproductive, by these pleasurable memories. It is here, I think, that a\nwonderfully fresh and vivid student of the human mind--namely, R. L.\nStevenson--goes all wrong when he says that the past is all of one\ntexture. It seems to me--one is only responsible for one's own\nexperience--to be of two textures, one strong and the other weak; and\nthe strong one is the memory of things you have enjoyed, of happy days;\nthe other of times when, for some reason or other--pain, or anxiety, or\nfear--the lights have been low, and the sound of the grinding not low,\nbut loud. The human mind, in fact, is more retentive of its pleasures\nthan of its pain. In the moment of the happening either may seem the top\nnote of acuteness, but the echoes of the one indisputably live longer\nthan the echoes of the other; and though our consciousness, if you care\nto look at it that way, is largely a haunted house of the dead hours,\nyet happy ghosts are in preponderance, and seem solider than the shadows\nof its dark places; also (and this, I think, too, is indubitable) the\nanticipation of happiness is more acute than the anticipation of a\ncorresponding pain. In the future there are two textures also, as in the\npast.\n\nSince our return this contrast has been rather markedly brought before\nme. There are many things I much look forward to; at the same time,\nthere is something ahead which I am dreading. What it is I do not know.\nI think I should dread it less if I did. But it is, though quite\ncertain, quite vague. I connect it, however, with that evening in\nSeptember when I heard my name called, and when Legs saw something which\nhas since been expunged from his memory. And here is the contrast: the\nhappiness that lies stored for me in the hive of the future is more\npotent than the bitterness that is there. Both are coming--of that I am\nsure--and among the many very happy things which I know and expect, I\nfeel there is something I do not yet know which is happier than any. It\nis futile to guess at it. One might make a hundred guesses, and each\nwould seem feasible of accomplishment. But there, at the back of my\nmind, are these two transparencies, so to speak--one sunlit, the other\nstormy--and it is through them that the events of the day are seen by\nme. They colour--both of them--all I do; but the happy one is the\npredominant one. They do not neutralize each other; they are both there\nto their full. But I despair at giving coherently so elusive a picture\nas they make in my own mind. But, though elusive, it is intensely real,\nand for the first time I neither can, nor do I desire to, speak to Helen\nabout this thing which is so often in my mind. It is incommunicable.\n\nBut after these Swiss weeks there was not much time for me to think\nabout this, as it was imperatively demanded, by reasons over which I\nhave no control, that I should exercise my mind on the extremely\ndifficult art of the composition of English prose, which incidentally\nimplies doing two things at once; for not only have you to invent your\nlively and inspiring tale, but you have to tell it in a certain way. You\nmay choose at the beginning any way of the hundreds that there are of\ntelling it; but in the key in which it is originally pitched, in that\nkey it has to remain all the time. As a matter of fact, it probably does\nnot, and goes wandering about in other modes and scales; but every book\nought to be in the one key in which it opens, just as a picture ought to\nbe in one key. It is within the writer's liberties, of course, to write\nother books in other keys, and I think he is perfectly justified in\nlargely contradicting in one work what he has unhesitatingly affirmed in\nanother, but in each his point of view has to be consistent throughout.\n\nThe thing is not quite so easy as it sounds, and it is further\ncomplicated by a very real difficulty. Every story that is worth reading\nat all is bound to record change in the characters and general attitude\nof the people with whom it deals. The jaded author has to keep his eye\non each, and see that he behaves after some atrocious battering with\nwhich fate has visited him in a different manner than before this\nvisitation took place. If he is living in any sense of the word, the\nevent will have altered him. He will view things differently, and\ntherefore behave differently. Yet all the time he is the same\npersonality. It were better for him that he should be as adamant to the\nblows of circumstance than that the inner essence which is individuality\nshould be uncertainly rendered; and, like the dexterous Mr. Maskelyne\nwith his spinning-plates, the scribe has to keep his eye on all his\npuppets to see that none lapse into stagnation, and to poke them up with\nhis industrious pen.\n\nIt is here that the complicated question of consistency comes in which\njust now is worrying me to bewilderment. Dreadful and stinging events\nare happening to a most favourite puppet of mine. Providence is dealing\nwith her in a cruelly ironical manner, in a way that makes the poor\ndistracted lady take quite fresh views of a world she thought so warm\nand kindly. Yet it must be the same personality which has to be shown\nsitting behind these changed feelings and directing them all. That is\nthe consistency that has to be observed. Otherwise it ceases to be one\nstory, but becomes a series of really unconnected short stories, with\nthe technical absurdity that the heroine in each has the same name.\n\nYet there is this also: it takes all sorts to make a world (at least, a\nworld otherwise constructed would be an extremely dull one), but It, It\nitself, Life, lies somewhere in the middle of us all, and is the centre\nto which we approach. We, the all sorts which make the world, view it\nvery differently, though we are all looking at the same object. And here\na simile, a thing usually unconvincing, may assist. What if in the\ncentre there is something like a great diamond, blazing in the rays of\nthe sun? I, from the south, see soft blue lights in it; you, from the\nwest, see a great ruby ray coming out of the heart of it; another on the\nnorth says, 'This diamond is emerald green'; while from the east it\nseems of transcendent orange. So far, it is quite certain that we are\nall right, for the world, so to speak, refracts God, making Him\nmany-hued, even as white light is refracted by the triangle of a prism.\nAnd then let us suppose circumstances enter and shift me, who have been\non the south, where I saw blue, to the west, where I see red. The whole\ncolour of the world is changed to me, and yet there is no\ninconsistency. The same Ego honestly sees a changed colour. There would,\non the other hand, when my place was shifted by circumstance, be grave\ninconsistency if I continued to declare that I still saw blue. I do not.\nMy eyes tell me it is red. Just now my eyes told me it was blue. But _I_\nhave not changed, nor has the great diamond changed; it is merely that\nthe refracted light has taken another colour.\n\nIt is just that which one must perceive in the telling of a story. A\nperson who sees blue all his life probably sees nothing at all, nothing,\nanyhow, in the least worth recording. He is bound as the wheel of\ncircumstances goes round to see things in other lights. But that is not\ninconsistency; it is the truly consistent. Who wants, after all, for\never to draw the same conclusion from the same premises? Only fossils,\nand possibly molluscs.\n\nBut pity the sorrows of the story-teller! The _quality_ of the red has\nto be of the same quality as the blue. The same fire which strikes to\nthe south will indubitably strike to all other points of the compass,\nand when X is wheeled north, he will not see the same green as Y sees\nthere. He saw it through the alchemy of his own mind; it will be green,\nbut nobody else's green. Or if it is, he has no individuality to speak\nof. At least he belongs to a type that sees everything through the eyes\nof others. That is generally labelled conventional, and there seems no\nreason to change the name.\n\nHow I laboured during those last ten days of January, and how little\nresult there seems to be! Only--I console myself with this--the real\nlabour of writing does not chiefly consist in the effort of putting\nthings down, but in the moral effort of rejecting them. There is nothing\neasier than to fill pages and pages with improving reflections or\ninspiring events. But having done that, it is necessary to sound the\ntuning-fork and see if, as I said at first, the story is in tune, if the\nkey is kept. Usually it is not. On which the fire ought to make to\nitself a momentary beacon, or the waste-paper basket be replete. But the\npile of numbered pages should in any case be starving. That, as a matter\nof fact, is my sole argument that I have justified my existence during\nthese ten days. I have really worked a great deal, and the waste-paper\nbasket could say how generous has been its diet. I have really left out\na very great deal, and I hasten to forestall the critic who will say\nthat I should, in order to act up to this excellent standard, have left\nout the rest. I do not agree with him.\n\nThe key of which I have spoken has to be preserved, not only in matters\nof consistency in character-drawing, but in style as well. If you lead\noff with verbiage from the Orient, the East must continue, I submit, to\ndye your paragraphs till the last page is turned. Though you may have\nalso at your command pure wells of the most limpid simplicity, you will\nhave to reserve them for some other immortal work; they will not mix\nwith the incense and heady draughts from the East. Or should you fancy a\nmysterious Delphic mode of diction, Delphic you must be to the end.\nBut--as if all this was not so difficult, that, like Dr. Johnson, we\nalmost wish it was frankly impossible--interwoven in your Delphic or\nOriental narrative there must be a totally different woof--namely, the\nthread of the spoken word, the speeches that you put into the mouths of\nyour various characters. And the written word, be it remembered, is\nnever like the spoken word: the two vocabularies, to begin with, are\ntotally distinct, and though I would not go so far as to affirm that the\nspoken word ought to be ungrammatical, it should, if it is to recall\nhuman speech, be colloquial, conversational. In interchange of ideas by\nmeans of the mouth real people do not use fine language, especially when\ntheir emotions are strongly aroused. Then, instead of becoming\nhigh-flown and ornate in their speech, real people go to the opposite\nextreme, and instinctively use only the very simplest words. When this\nis stated, it seems natural enough, but you will find it very seldom\npractised. Novelists have a tendency to let their puppets employ\nmagnificent high-sounding words to express the intensity and splendour\nof great emotion; in fact, you may gauge the strength of their emotions,\nas a rule, by the sonorous quality of their adjectives. I believe the\nvery opposite to be the truth of the matter: people in the grip of\npassion do not use beautiful or highly- words; above all, they\ndo not, like Mr. Wegg, 'drop into poetry.' Yet nothing is commoner than\nto find prose degenerating into blank verse in the spoken records of\nemotional crises, as if blank verse was a sublime form of prose. Little\nNell is continually half-way between prose and poetry, so also is\nNicholas Nickleby when his indignation is roused. In fact, in some of\nhis scenes with Ralph they both forget themselves so much in their\npassion that torrents of decasyllabic lines flow from their lips. But,\non the other hand, the language of narrative should undoubtedly grow\nmore , more vivid in such descriptions as are the setting of\nsome very emotional scene. Yet it should not depart from its original\nkey.... Well, as Mr. Tulliver said, 'It's puzzling work talking.'\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nBut though the days have been so full, I have seen everything,\neverything through the two transparencies that seem drawn between\nexternal happenings and me.\n\n\n\n\nFEBRUARY\n\n\nThe seasons, according to the literary and artistic view of things, have\nbeen rather out of joint this year. The autumn was not a time of mellow\nfruitfulness at all, because all the green things upon this earth had\nexhausted themselves in the long hot summer, and had no more spirit left\nto be fruitful with. Then January in England had been of the usual warm\nmugginess and mist which poets say are characteristic of autumn, but\nwhich in reality characterize winter. Indeed, I doubt if winter was ever\na time of hard frosts and sparkling snow, which is the artistic ideal,\nand I am disposed to believe that that version of it was really brought\nfrom Germany by the Prince Consort, and popularized by Charles Dickens.\nThen after the mists came the mellow fruitfulness, for I myself saw\nstrawberries in flower on February 2, and on February 9 Helen came in\nsaying she had found a real strawberry. That was strange enough, though\nperhaps the finding of an unreal strawberry would have been stranger\nstill, so I said, 'Where?' and she said, 'On the strawberry beds,\nsilly.'\n\nTherefore I started up, leaving a most important and epoch-making\nsentence unfinished (and I have never been able to remember what the end\nof it was going to be), because I wanted to see the strawberry, and\nwrite to the _Field_ about it. So she said, 'Are you going out already?'\nand I said, 'Yes, just to see the strawberry, and write to the _Field_,\nsaying I have.'\n\nThen she pointed to half-way down her person (since we are so abstemious\nof words that indicate the anatomy below the throat), and said:\n\n'Would X rays help?'\n\nBeing extremely clever that morning, of course I understood, and reviled\nher for eating an unnatural phenomenon. It was criminal; she might as\nwell have found the sea-serpent or the North Pole, and eaten it. But as\nusual she was artful, and led the conversation away to daffodils, which\nwere behaving in a manner nearly equal to that of the strawberry-plant.\nOne, indeed, was in bud (a thing incredible, but true), and I supposed\nshe had eaten that, too. That led us back to the strawberry again, which\nshe was not even sorry about, for she said it was far more interesting\nto be able to write to the _Field_ to say she had eaten a strawberry on\nFebruary 9 than that I should be able to say I had seen it. So I very\nkindly gave her my pen, and said:\n\n'Write quickly.'\n\nShe said:\n\n'Oh, but I am only a woman; I can't. They wouldn't put it in.'\n\n'I wish you hadn't put the strawberry in,' said I.\n\n'I think I shall wish that, too, before long,' said she.\n\nI only mention this in order to show the utter unreasonableness of my\nwife. If I want to write to the _Field_, and say there was a strawberry\nin my garden on February 9, she will allow me to say that though I did\nnot see it, she ate it. (She certainly would not have eaten it if I\n_had_ seen it.) But she will not write to say she ate it, like a true\nwoman. She says it does not matter, but added with a changed voice that\nshe was afraid it might. It did, for the fruitfulness of the season was\nnot so mellow as might have been wished.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nYes, once again spring has begun to stir in the fiery heart of the\nworld; once again the breath of Life blows the embers that seemed all\nwinter to be but grey and lifeless cinders, and from the centre the glow\nspreads, till that grey surface of ash is alive with flame again. And as\nthe flames shoot upwards they are like rockets, rising from over the\nwhole face of the world. At present they are but going upwards, those\nslender lines of flame, which are the sap that is rising through branch\nand leafless stem until it reaches the very ends of the twigs. Then\nthese rockets will burst in stars of leaf and opening flower, till the\nvast illumination is again complete. But in the warm soft February\nmorning, though I feel and know that this is so, I cannot help my\nthoughts going back to the other side of things. What of the\nillumination of last year? It is quenched dead, and even while the world\nis getting ready for the next one there still lie broadcast the ashes\nand fallen sticks of the last rocket-shower. However many more gladden\nthe world, even though to all infinity life was incessantly and\nbeautifully renewed, yet I cannot forgive the perishing of a single\nflower. I know well that the material is indestructible, that of life\nand the death of it is born fresh life, so that we are quite right to\nsay that life cannot be destroyed. But what of the individual rose, what\nof that one purple star of clematis that twinkled on the end of the stem\nI hold in my hand? Though it may be transformed, and will be\ntransformed, into a myriad other things, so that by its death it is\ntransfused into a hundred other flowers, and courses through the veins\nof life for ever, yet it, that individual object, will be seen no more.\nIts individuality is completely lost; it figures in new forms, not its\nown.\n\nIt is quite certain also that the same things happen to our bodies. The\ngrass grows thick on the graves of those we have loved, and the roots of\nthe roses penetrate deep. I saw once on the crumbling, sea-devoured East\nCoast of England the thing itself under my very eyes, which made it real\nto me in a way that nothing had ever done before. For a churchyard\nstood there on the very edge of the sandy cliff, and one night, with\nnoise of huge murmurous thunder, an acre of it slid down into the sea.\nNext morning I visited the place, and there, sticking out of the cliff,\nwere the bones of the dead that had been buried there. A ruin of roses\nthat had sprawled and trumpeted over the churchyard gate, which had been\nplucked in half by the fall, lay on the ground, and I wondered how the\ntrees had not slipped with the rest of the landslide, until I saw. Their\nroots had lain just where the fracture of the earth occurred, and in the\nexposed face of the new cliff I saw their anchorage. One was wrapped\nround a thigh-bone, another had made a network among ribs ... it was all\nhorrible and revolting. And that has happened to the million dead who\nhave lived and loved, whose limbs have been swift to move, who have\ndrawn rapturous, long breaths of this keen sea-scented air, whose eyes\nhave been bright and mouths eager when they met, lover and beloved. This\nis all--this ruin of red roses on the grass.\n\nThere is nothing in the world more certain than this, and one may as\nwell face it. Helen will die, and I shall die, and one of us will die\nfirst. And the other will sometimes see a grave with the grass green\nover it, and roses triumphant thereon. For we have settled most things\nat one time or another, she and I, and the manner of our funerals and\nwhat happens after has passed under discussion. We have decided\ndefinitely against cremation, because it seems such a waste of tissue,\nand we are both of us going to be properly buried, the one close to the\nother so that the same rose may bloom from us both. But she _will_ have\nroses and strawberries on her grave, so that the Sunday-school children\nmay pluck and eat them, while I, on the other hand, am going to be a\nspring-man, and have daffodils, for I feel no leaning, as I have said,\ntowards Sunday-schools. Here lies the difficulty: she wants a rich\nclayey soil for her roses and strawberries, and my daffodils will demand\nnot clay but sand. Also she is going to plant purple clematis by my\nhead, and clematis likes sand too. We have not yet perfectly decided\nwhere we are going to die, but it seems probable that the survivor will\nstay in the same place as the survived. But I want purple clematis,\nsince it was when I saw that that I knew somebody whom I had thought to\nbe a friend was false. Indeed, I have done all I could to forgive, but I\nthink a clematis that feeds on me may make it surer.\n\nOur funerals will shock the neighbourhood, I am afraid. I am going to\nhave the A flat Fugue and Prelude blared on the organ (it is time\nsomebody began to learn to play) at that distressing moment when my\ncoffin is wheeled out of the church, simply to show that I have enjoyed\nmyself enormously. Great Heaven! I should as soon think of having a dead\nmarch of whatever kind played over me as I should let them play the\nworks of Mr. Mendelssohn. I shall have had (whatever happens) an\nimmensely good time. It seems to me much fitter to return thanks for\nthat than to remind people that my poor body is dead, which they knew\nalready, or why did they come to my funeral service? As for requiems, I\nwill have none of them. Whatever happens, _I_, my body at least, cannot\npossibly lie quiet in my grave. The dear flowers planted there will see\nto that.\n\nOh, my God, my God, what unanswerable riddles you set us! Even this\nbody, and what happens to it, is so occupying a subject. I don't really\ncare what happens to mine: it may be set up in an anatomical museum if\nit will teach anybody anything; but Helen's.... Somehow, when I come out\nof the valley of the shadow, something of that must wait for her; or, if\nshe has gone through that passage first, I shall not know myself unless\nat the end of it, when the darkness lifts a little, I shall see grey\neyes looking at the procession of those passing over, and meeting mine,\nand saying somehow, 'I am here.' She must be there (is it not so?)\nwaiting on the eternal shore for me.\n\nThere she must be. I can't help what I believe; that is the one thing in\noneself which one can never change. And Dick will be there, and Margery\n... what a splendid day!\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThen the one horrible certainty descended on me again. In so few years\nwe shall all--our bodies, I mean, the appearance by which we recognize\neach other--not be our bodies at all, but part of the fibre of other\nliving things which are having their day, even as we have had ours. It\nis so now with Dick and Margery, so how shall I _know_ them? Are they to\nbe just voices in the air, presences that are felt? Is that all? Shall I\nnever see again that quiver on Margery's mouth, which means that a smile\nis ready to break from it? I don't want incorporeal presences. I want\nDick and his crooked nose, and Margery's smile....\n\nThen, on this warm February morning I must suppose that I went down into\nHell. Dead leaves and flowers, it was certain, were transformed into\nfresh living forms, the bones, too, and flesh of dead animals, and of\nmen and women, passed again into the great machine of life, and were\nserved up in new transformations, so that of the individual body nothing\nat all was left. That is bad enough; I shall never see Margery and Dick\nagain as I used to see them. Helen will pass, too, into other forms ...\nthat is bad enough. But this is infinitely worse. What of the individual\nsoul, the spirit that we love? Will that, too, as analogy grimly\ninsists, be put back again into the principle of eternal life from which\nit came, so that its identity, too, is lost, and lives but only as the\nautumn leaves of last year live in the verdure of the next spring? With\neverything else that happens; the bodies of those we love even, a cruel\nthing surely, but certainly true, are used up again to make fresh forms\nof life. Why should we suppose that God makes any exception in dealing\nwith the souls of men, the individuals? Every other form of life He uses\nand re-uses ... the world is but a lump of modelling clay, with which He\nbeguiles the leisure of eternity, making now one shape, then crushing it\nall up and making another.\n\nSo this is all that the promise of Eternal Life amounts to, that we\nshall pass back into the crucible, and issue forth again as bits of\nsomebody else! It seems to me a very mean affair; frankly, it seems a\nswindle. It is a poor trick to make us puny little creatures love one\nanother, and try to be kind, and console ourselves for the evil days and\nthe sorrows of the world with thoughts of the everlasting day that shall\ndawn for us all, if that everlasting day is nothing more than the day\nthat is here already; if the souls whom we have believed are at rest in\nsome ineffable peace and content, or, on the other hand, through further\nsuffering are getting nearer, ever nearer, to the perfection and flower\nof their being, have already passed into other forms of life, so that\nDante and Beatrice are themselves no longer (as we should call\n'themselves'), but have been infinitely divided into soldiers, sailors,\ntinkers, and tailors. In that sense they may be said to be alive still,\nbut it is a very paltry sense. _They_ (what we mistakenly call 'they')\nare as dead as if they had never been.\n\nIt is all very well to say that Dante is immortal by reason of his\ndeathless verse; that is all very well for us, but how is it for that\nfiery soul which is split up into a thousand other bodies? When he\nthought to open his eyes on the Mystical Rose as the dark waves of death\nslowly drew back from his emancipated spirit, it was all a dismal\nmistake. No Beatrice awaited him; she, too, is split into a million\nother forms of life. They were absorbed back into the central fire, and\na spark of Dante's soul went into this man, and another into that, so\nthat in this sense there is eternal life for him. But in no other; the\nDante which we mean was formed out of other lives, and into other lives\nhe went. The man is there no more, and there is no Beatrice. There will\nbe nothing of us either, unless you mean that at some future time I am\nalive because part of me has become perhaps a murderer, and another part\na politician, and another a housemaid, for all I know.\n\nThe February sun was warm; you might almost call it hot. A little wind\npregnant with spring moved through the bushes; the snowdrops, those pale\nheralds of the triumphant march of the new year, were thick in the grass\nwhere we had planted them, Helen and I, last autumn, so that they should\ngive us the earliest news of the returning tide of life. And to me this\nmorning they brought but bitter news, for they spoke not of the\nreturning of life, but of the thousand deaths which made them alive.\nThey pointed not forwards towards the glory of the many- summer,\nbut back to the innumerable decay of the autumn. And the quiet garden\nwhich I loved, the tiled mossy roof which I had called home, became the\nplace of death, even as last autumn death had called to me from it, and\nhad been seen by Legs, and had made the dog howl. Was it this that was\nhinted at by those dim forebodings which for months had never been\nabsent from me? Was the fear that crouched in the shadow ready to spring\ntaking form now? It seemed to me that the logic which had turned the\nworld to hell was irrefutable; I expected some shattering stroke that\nshould blot out sunshine and sensation from me for ever, proving that I\nand my logic were right. I had guessed the horrid secret of the world; I\nwas like a spy found with the plans of the enemy's fortress on me, and\nmust die, lest I should communicate them. I said that to myself; I said\n'Enemy's fortress,' meaning the world where I had loved and been loved.\n'Enemy,' mark you; I knew what I meant. The world was the enemy's\nfortress.\n\nAnd then, thank God--oh! thank God!--before that which was impending\nhappened, I said to myself that I was wrong. I did not at the moment see\nwhere I was wrong, but I knew that I must have made some gross and awful\nmistake. Things could not be as I had imagined them. And the moment I\nsaid that to myself the darkness lifted a little. It was all dark\nstill, but the quality of the darkness changed. And then, unbidden as a\ntune that suddenly rings in one's head, a few words made themselves\nrecollected. And they were, 'If I go down into hell, Thou art there\nalso.'\n\nAt that I caught a glimpse again of this dear garden and house, as I had\nseen and known them. I do not suppose that this blackness and loneliness\nof spirit which I have tried to indicate could have lasted more than a\nfew minutes, as measured in the world of time, but time has nothing to\ndo with the spirit. In a second, as computed by the unmeaning scale of\nhours and days, the soul may live a thousand lifetimes or die a thousand\ndeaths. Redemption may be wrought there in an infinitesimal fraction of\na moment, or in that same fraction a soul may damn itself. For it is not\nthe moment which is anything: it is the instantaneous choice which\ntherein sums up the infinite series of deeds which one has already done,\nand thoughts which one has harboured. And the message that leaps round\nthe world on electric wires is a sluggard to choice. My choice at this\nmoment was between the truth of what I had been elaborately thinking out\nand the truth of the words that rang in my head. There was reason on one\nside; there was just It on the other. And what was 'It'? Just that\nwhich, very faintly, but quite audibly, said that I had come near to\nblasphemy. There are many names for it: we all know its visitation,\nthough it is obscured sometimes because we encourage the Devil, who\ncomes to us all in many forms, and can take the most respectable\ndisguises, like those of intellect and mind. But perhaps the simplest\nname and the truest for It is the Grace of God.\n\nThen, in the same moment (I am lumbering in words, and trying to express\nwhat I know cannot be said), I saw that Helen was already half-way\nacross the grass, coming towards me. She held a telegraphic sheet in her\nhand, and there was in her face a gravity infinitely tender, and quite\nquiet, and quite normal. I had seen it there once before, when the news\ncame of her father's death, which was sudden.\n\n'Legs won't come down this afternoon,' she said gently. 'We have got to\ngo up to him.'\n\nAnd then she showed me the telegram.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIt was not many hours before we knew all there was to be known. Legs had\nstarted to ride down from town, and turning into the King's Road from\nSloane Square his motor bicycle had skidded, and he had fallen under an\nomnibus. A wheel had passed over him.\n\nHe had a letter or two, which identified him, in his pockets, and he had\nbeen taken, since it was so near, back to the house in Sloane Street.\nWhen we got there he was still alive.\n\nHis room was at the back of the house, and we were allowed to go in at\nonce. He lay there, quite unconscious, and in no pain, for the only\nthing that could be done for him was to keep him like that. The\nbedclothes were not allowed to touch him, and a round wooden frame was\nunder them. There was no hope at all.\n\nHis bed ran out into the middle of the room, and Helen and I sat one on\neach side of it, while a little distance off was the doctor, who just\nwatched him. Sometimes he got up and looked at him, sometimes he softly\nleft the room, returning as quietly. And in those hours of waiting, for\na long time I was conscious of nothing except the trivial details of the\nroom itself. I suppose I had been there before--ah! yes, of course, I\nhad, when Legs had the influenza in the winter--but it was not familiar.\nYet it was just like what I should have expected Leg's room to be, and\nin a moment I found I knew it as well as I knew him. There was a pile of\nletters on the writing-table, a bag of golf-clubs in the corner, an\nenormous sponge on the washing-stand, and on the dressing-table a most\nelaborate shaving apparatus--a metal bowl, a little Etna for hot water,\na half-dozen razor blades in a neat case, with a sort of mowing-machine\nhandle. He had not packed them, since he was only going to be with us\nfor a couple of days, and he could never have used all those blades once\neach on that smooth chin....\n\nHe had been, as I remembered now, to a fancy-dress ball the night\nbefore, and his wardrobe, gaping open, showed the hose and ruffles of\nthe Elizabethan period, while hanging up by them was a small pointed\nbeard and a high head-top, with long and rather scanty brown hair. 'For\nthe point is,' Legs had said rather shrilly, 'everyone will say,\n\"Shakespeare, I presume?\" and I shall say, \"How dare you! I am Hall\nCaine!\" And if some people are a little cleverer and say, \"'The\nBondman,' I suppose?\" I shall say, \"You seem to have forgotten William\nShakespeare.\" Perhaps you don't think it funny. But then, you see, you\nare not going to the ball.'\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nNo; we had not thought it very funny, and Legs had been rather ruffled.\nHe told us we had spoiled his pleasure, but if so, it must have very\nquickly become unspoiled again, for--it was only a week ago that he had\nconceived that idea--he spent a boisterously hilarious evening\nafterwards. But, how I wish we had not spoiled his pleasure even for\nthat moment! As if it mattered whether it was funny or not, so long as\nit amused him. Helen had said it was rather a cheap sort of joke.... And\njust then her eyes, too, saw the fancy dress hanging up in the wardrobe,\nand the moment afterwards she looked across to me. And then she left\nthe room for a little while. She, too, I am sure, had thought of that.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nI had a friend once who was killed in a railway accident. A year\nafterwards I was staying with his mother, and one evening, when we were\nalone, she began crying gently. 'Jim took his lunch with him to eat in\nthe train that day,' she said to me soon, and he had asked me to put him\nup an orange. But I forgot.'\n\nThat is the pathos of little things. Yes, you dear soul, weep a little\nover the forgotten orange, and let Helen weep a little because she said\nLeg's joke was cheap. And then let us think of the bigger things--the\nlove and the loving-kindness that have been ours, that bright, boyish\nspirit that made mirth in the home. Even now let us try to thank God for\nwhat has been. You know what Legs was to us--a sort of son, a sort of\nbrother.\n\nAll that afternoon we sat there, hearing London rumble distantly around\nus, and little stirrings and creakings came from different parts of the\nroom. Now the blind flapped, now a curtain sighed, or, as often happens\nin spring-time, a board of the flooring gave a little sharp rap, some\ninfinitesimal particle of sap still lingering in it, perhaps, and\nhearing the heralds of spring blowing their horns outside. Only from the\nbed there came no sound at all: he was still sunk deep in that sleep\nwhich the doctor hoped would join and be one with death. If he woke at\nall, there was a chance that he would suffer blinding, excruciating\npain. On the other hand, he might come to himself, just at the last\nmoment of all, when pain would be already passed.\n\nThe doctor was saying this in the hushed whisper with which we speak in\nthe chamber of death, though there may be no real reason why we should\nnot speak openly, when I heard a little stir from the bed, and, looking\nround, I saw that Leg's eyes were open, and that he was moving them this\nway and that, as if in search of something. Helen had seen, too, and\nnext moment she was by him. He recognized her, for there was welcome in\nhis eyes, and then, turning his head a little, he saw me. The doctor\nmeantime had moved to the head of the bed and looked at Leg's face very\nintently. Then he made a little sign to me that I should come up to the\nbed, and he himself went and stood by the window, looking out.\n\nAnd I understood.\n\nThen Legs spoke in his ordinary voice.\n\n'Wasn't it bad luck?' he said. My bicycle skidded, and the omnibus----\n\n'What is happening to me?' he asked quickly. 'Is it----'\n\nHelen laid her hand on his head.\n\n'Yes, my darling,' she said. 'But you are not afraid, are you?'\n\nFor a moment the pupils of his eyes contracted; then they grew quite\nnormal again.\n\n'No,' he said quickly. 'I've had an awfully good time. Oh, and it was a\ngreat success--Shakespeare, you know.'\n\nThen a shadow seemed to pass over his face and his eyelids fluttered.\n\n'Now? Is it coming now?' he said.\n\n'Yes, my darling,' said she again, and kissed him.\n\nLegs lay quite still for a moment with closed eyes. Then he quickly\nopened them again, and made as if he would raise his head.\n\n'Buck up, you two, won't you?' he said.\n\nFrom outside there came the dim roar of London, and little noises crept\nabout the room. But from the bed came no sound at all.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nTwo days afterwards we went down home again, arriving in the evening,\nand the body rested that night in his own room down here, to be taken\nnext day to the churchyard, which the sun blesses more than any other\nplace I have ever seen, and over which the grey Norman tower keeps\nwatch. His last charge to us had been to 'buck up,' and I do not know\nhow it was, but it seemed to us both as if he was still liking us to\n'buck up.' So, in so far as we found it possible, we did what Legs\nwished us to do.\n\nBut to-night he would have been here, making the third of a merry table,\nand when the servants had come in for the last time, bringing us coffee,\nit was not possible not to remember that, and Helen rose. And when she\nspoke, her voice trembled.\n\n'Is it very foolish of me?' she asked. 'And do you think Legs will mind?\nBut I feel as if I can't face to-morrow, unless I go and look at the\nplace where we shall put him. It is quite warm outside, Jack. Oh, let us\ngo out and look at it. It will seem more natural then. I think I shall\n\"buck up\" better if I see it first.'\n\nSo we went across the garden, and through the place of roses, and\nthrough the gate on the far side, and through the field which bounded\nthe churchyard. There was a great yellow moon just risen, and shadows\nwere sharp-cut, so that there was no doubt when we came to the place\nthat had been so newly dug. His uncle, Helen's father, lay there; the\ntwo graves were side by side.\n\nSo we sat there in silence for some time, very still, for a rat ran on\nto the mound of earth by the graveside, and sat there, smartening itself\nup, brushing its face and whiskers with nimble paws. The shadow of the\ntower swung just clear of the place, and sharp-cut in the light was that\noblong hole in the ground. There was nothing as yet to be said, for\nHelen was crying quietly to herself, and I could not stay those loving\ntears. Once she said to me: 'Oh, let us buck up!' But then she silently\nwept again.\n\nYou see, I know Helen. I knew that there was nothing of bitterness in\nher crying. Tears of that sort were not opposed to the bucking up. Legs\ndid not mean that he wanted us not to miss his dear companionship. He\nonly wanted us to stand up and be cheery, not be bitter or broken. But\nsince Helen felt she could face to-morrow better if she faced the scene\nof it, why, that was all right; it was bucking up.\n\nThen in a few little sentences we talked of the next day. There should\nbe the A flat Fugue--no funeral march--and we would have no funeral\nhymns, but just one Psalm, 'The Lord is my Shepherd,' and one hymn after\nall that had to be done was over; so then we would sing 'Adeste\nFideles,' Helen thought, for it is always Christmas since the first\nChristmas Day.\n\nHelen just moved as she sat there on the edge of his grave when we had\nsettled this as if to go home again, but----\n\nAnd then I told her all that I had thought three mornings ago--all the\ndoubts that merged into certainty, all the logical conclusions. Whether\nI then at that moment inclined more to the side of the Devil or of God\nI do not know, but in any case I told her all; and then she put her arms\nround me.\n\n'Yes, dear,' she said, 'but in hell He is there also. And we are all\nthere sometimes, and it is but the lowest step of the beautiful stair to\nheaven.'\n\nThe moon had swung behind the tower, and we sat in the darkness of its\nshadow.\n\n'It is all so simple,' she said. 'It all depends upon what you believe,\nnot what you think or what you reason about. Do you believe that we bury\nLegs to-morrow? Do you believe that he is dead, or that he has ceased to\nbe an individual? You may reason about it, and ask me, as you asked\nyourself, how you will recognize him if his body has become grass and\nflowers? I am quite content to say that I have no idea. You see, one\ndoesn't know all God's plans quite completely, and sometimes we are apt\nto think that if one doesn't know plans about a certain thing He hasn't\ngot one. We put our intelligence above His. That is a mistake.'\n\nAnd we sat in silence again; then Helen spoke asking me an extremely\nsimple question.\n\n'What does faith mean if you are right about it?' she said.\n\n'It means nothing. It is without meaning.'\n\n'And are you prepared to abide by that?'\n\nAgain there was silence. She sat a little apart from me, so that her\nquestions came from the darkness; they were put impersonally, so to\nspeak, not by Helen, but just by a voice.\n\n'Do you believe that Margery and Dick are nothing now except grass and\nflowers, and perhaps a little bit of the lives of other people? Do you\nreally believe it? And is Legs nothing now?'\n\nIt was quite still. We had come to a very sequestered corner of the\ngreat house of life to talk about these things. In front was the shadow\nof the grave, and over it now lay the shadow of the tower. Once from the\ngrave's side a few pebbles detached themselves and fell rattling to the\nbottom, and I had no answer to this. Three days ago I had asked myself\nthe same questions, and what I call my brain answered them; but now it\ngave no answer. Something, I suppose, had made it uncertain.\n\n'How can the wheel of an omnibus hurt Legs?' she asked. 'It can do no\nmore than hurt his body.'\n\nThen she came closer to me again.\n\n'And what does love mean?' she said.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nI think Legs must have enjoyed his funeral next day, because it was so\nextremely funny, and I think by this time that you know enough about him\nand Helen and me to allow us all to be amused at it. We had sent a note\nto our Vicar saying that we should like the A flat Prelude, and the\nPsalm, and the hymn which I have mentioned. He came in person, not to\nremonstrate, but to put on to us the correcter attitude. Death was a\nsolemn occasion. There was none so solemn, and the Hymns Ancient and\nModern provided some very suitable verses to be sung--'Now the\nlabourer's task is o'er,' for instance. (Legs a labourer, who was the\nmost gorgeous player at life that has ever been seen!) Besides, surely a\nChristmas hymn was out of place, when it would be Ash Wednesday in no\ntime. I said feebly that a Christmas hymn was surely always in place;\nbut dear Mr. Eversley looked pained, and Helen at once yielded. She was\nsure that the 'labourer's task' was most suitable.\n\nThen about the Psalm. There were two Psalms already provided for the\nBurial Service, and surely '\"The Lord is my Shepherd\" struck a different\nnote.' So said our Vicar. That was undeniable. And when should we sing\nthat Psalm? Then Helen was firm, and said that we thought we should go\nback into church at the end of the service, and--well, just sing it. It\nwas rather good to end with. But Mr. Eversley looked even more pained\nthan before. He had never heard of such a thing being done. That point\nwas left undecided for the moment, for there was clearly something even\nmore crucial to come.\n\nIt came.\n\nEver since the organist had heard of Legs' death he had been most\ndiligent at Chopin's Funeral March, of which he had of his own\ninitiative bought a copy in order to be able to perform it. The organist\nin question, who was also the schoolmaster, had had a sort of distant\nadoration for Legs ever since a year ago he had seen him drive a\ngolf-ball two hundred and sixty measured yards. Since then Legs had\nplayed with him once or twice, giving him enormous odds, and the distant\nadoration had ripened into a nearer one. 'He was such a pleasant young\ngentleman,' was the upshot of it. And the dear man had bought Chopin's\nFuneral March, since he wanted to play something 'more uncommon' than\nthe Dead March in 'Saul'!\n\nHere Helen and I were completely at one. There should be no A flat\nPreludes; it was to be Chopin's Funeral March.\n\nThere remained the question of the Twenty-third Psalm. Oh yes, it would\nstrike a different note, that was quite true; so there would be no going\nback into church, but we should have Chopin's Funeral March and 'Now the\nlabourer's task is o'er.'\n\nThe Vicar did not exactly beam when these things were settled, but he\nwas visibly relieved. He shook hands with us both, and said:\n\n'Terribly sudden, terribly sudden. At two precisely.'\n\n(Oh, Legs, how you would have enjoyed that! We did, too, for you told us\nto buck up. And it was so funny, after all we had planned!)\n\nThe Vicar's call had been made quite early, and it was scarcely twelve\nwhen he went away; but to us both it seemed as if Legs had been waiting\nsomewhere upstairs till he went in order to laugh over it with us. It\nwas as if he had been waiting on the landing, fresh from his bath, with\njust a dressing-gown on, so that he could not appear when other people\nwere there, but might come down barefooted when they had gone. He must\nhave been so amused at it. How he would skip into the drawing-room,\nafraid of prowling housemaids, to find us alone, and say, 'Sorry I\nhaven't got much on, but I had to come down after my bath.' Yes, after\nhis bath. It was so that it seemed to us. That wholesome spirit had been\nwashed, we thought, by what is called death. It was fresher, more\njubilant than ever. And on the Vicar's departure down he came to join us\nagain. I have no other words for it.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThere was more to come, for hardly had the Vicar gone when it was\nannounced to us that Mr. Holmes had called, and might he see one of us\nfor a moment only. I felt that Legs was cornered now. He would have to\nstop here, hide behind the piano or something. I hoped he would behave\nhimself, and not make me laugh. So Mr. Holmes came in.\n\nI never saw anybody so wonderfully attired. He was all in black,\nincluding his gloves and his stick, and above his small neat buttoned\nboots when he sat down I saw a black sock. That may only have been\naccidental, but no accident would account for the fact that his cuffs\nhad a neat black border about half an inch wide. I wondered if he had\nblacked himself all over like the enthusiastic impersonator of Othello.\n\nHe had ventured to intrude on our grief, but only for a moment. Here\nHelen dropped her handkerchief, and they both bent down to pick it up\nand knocked their heads together, and I almost thought I heard a little\nstifled gasp from behind the piano. But Mr. Holmes had received no\nnotice of the funeral, which he had understood was to be to-day, and did\nnot know if we wished it to be quite private; if not, he would esteem it\na privilege to be allowed to pay his last respects. And here little Mr.\nHolmes gave a great gulp, and could not get on.\n\n'I did like him so much,' he said, after a moment. 'Two. Thank you, I\ncan let myself out!'\n\nAnd he walked away on tiptoe, as if it was most important not to make a\nnoise.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIt was one of those sparkling February days, sunny and windless, and the\nair was full of the chirruping of birds. There was a moment's pause at\nthe gate of the churchyard, a moment's silence. Inside the church the\norgan ceased; then came great simple words:\n\n'I am the Resurrection and the Life.'\n\n\n\n\nMARCH\n\n\nHelen and I have a failing, though you may not have thought that such a\nthing was possible. It is a foolish weakness for old bits of rubbish. We\ncan neither of us without anguish and unutterable rendings bear to throw\nold and useless things away. The weakness has to be got over sometimes,\nbut we keep putting the work of destruction off, just as one puts off a\nvisit to the dentist, with the result that when it comes to pass we find\nthat it would have been far better to have done it long ago. However, if\nwe did not occasionally tear things up, and throw things away, the house\nwould become uninhabitable, so this morning we vowed to each other to\nspend the hours till lunch in the work of destruction. Our rubbish\ncollects chiefly in the room that is called mine, where she has a\nknee-hole table with nine drawers. She opened these one after the\nother. They were all full, and despair seized her.\n\n'I can't,' she said. 'Here are nine drawers all quite full of heart's\nblood. O Jack, look!'\n\nAnd she brought across to me a photograph I had taken of Legs jumping\nthe lawn-tennis net. He was sitting in the air apparently in an easy\nattitude. One knee seemed crossed over the other, and his mouth was wide\nopen.\n\n'It will be harder than ever this year,' she said, half to herself. 'And\nthere are nine drawers full!'\n\n'Circumscribe the drops of heart's blood as they come,' said I. 'Don't\nthink there are nine drawers full. Only keep thinking of the particular\nthing that has to be kept or thrown away.'\n\n'Oh, but it's only the fact that there are nine drawers full that makes\nit possible to throw anything away at all,' said she.\n\n'Hush, woman!' said I.\n\nPersonally, I am extremely methodical over the work of destruction. I\nclear a table and dump upon it a pile of heart's blood. This I sort\ninto three heaps, one of which is for destruction, one for preservation,\nand one for further consideration. I proceeded to do so now.\n\nThere were many pieces of string. Throughout the year I keep pieces of\nstring, because I know I shall use them. As a matter of fact, when I\nwant a piece of string I cut it off Helen's ball, and never use any of\nthe bits that I have saved, because I don't know where they are, and\nthey would prove to be the wrong length if I did. So on the day of\ndestruction I consign them to the dust-bin, and begin to collect again\nimmediately. Then there was a pill-box full of soft yellow powder, which\nLegs and I had collected from the little cedar-cones at some house where\nwe were staying in the autumn. That I put on to the heap of destruction,\nbut transferred it to the heap of consideration. Then there were a dozen\nlittle bits of verd-antique which I had picked up years ago on the beach\nat Capri, and which I had periodically tried to throw away. But I never\ncould manage it, and this morning, knowing it was useless to strive\nagainst the irresistible, I made no attempt whatever to steel myself to\ntheir destruction, but put them at once into the pile that was\npredestined unto life. There was a chunk of amber that I had picked up\nat Cromer, equally imperishable; yards and yards of indiarubber tape\nthat is the filling of a rubber-cored golf-ball; a small bottle with a\nglass stopper, clearly impossible to throw away, since it might come in\nuseful any day, and how foolish I should feel if this afternoon I wanted\na bottle with a glass stopper, and had to send into the town for one,\nwhereas, if I had been less iconoclastic, I might have airily produced\nthe exact thing needed out of the left-hand top drawer. Then came a\nlittle tin box full of pink powder, which I concluded was rouge. This\nwas puzzling.\n\n'When did I use rouge?' I asked Helen.\n\n'I don't know. Was it Legs', do you think, when he acted the Red Queen\nlast year?'\n\nNo, I couldn't throw that away. The Red Queen had been a piece of\ngenius. And next came the telegram from him to me saying that he had\npassed into the Foreign Office. Then there was a vile caricature of\nmyself at the top of my so-called swing at golf--quite unrecognizable,\nI assure you, but....\n\nThen came a mass of letters, receipted bills, and accounts rendered.\nAccounts rendered always fill me with suspicion, and I have to hunt\namong unpaid bills to find the items of the account rendered, as I feel\na moral certainty that this is an attempt to defraud me. But they are\ninvariably correct. But these and the receipted bills, which had to be\ndocketed and tied up together in a bundle, took time. Probably, however,\nI could tie them up with one of those many pieces of string which I had\nso diligently collected. By a rare and happy chance I found one that\nwould do exactly, and tied them up with a beautiful hard knot, and put\nthem on the predestination heap. A moment afterwards I found several\nmore to join the same packet, split my nail over trying to untie my\nbeautiful knot, and had to go upstairs for nail-scissors to cut it\nsmooth, and brought them down to cut the knot. No other piece of string\nin my collection would do, and so I cut a piece off Helen's ball, for\nshe had left the room for the moment.\n\nThen I came upon a large quantity of boxes of fusees, all partly empty.\nHow it happens is this: I go to play golf on a windy day, and, of\ncourse, have to buy at the club-house a box of fusees. These, on my\nreturn, or what remains of them, I methodically put in a drawer on\nreaching home. By an oversight I forget to take them out again when I\nplay next day, and so buy another box, which I similarly place in a\ndrawer. And if you play golf four or five times a week on these downs,\nwhere there is almost always a high wind, it follows that in the course\nof a year the amount of partly filled boxes of fusees which you collect\nabout you is nothing short of prodigious. I did not know how great a\nsupporter I was of home industries.\n\nMy methodical mind saw at once how these had to be treated. Of course,\nthrowing them all away was out of the question, and the right thing to\ndo was to produce out of every dozen of partly filled boxes some eight\nor nine completely full. This plan I began to put into practice at once.\n\nIt was necessary, of course, to find how many matches a full fusee-box\ncontained, but they are awkward to pack, and some seemed to hold ten and\nothers only seven; so when Helen came back, the table was covered, among\nother things, with fusees. So I waved my arms violently, and said: 'You\nshall not!' This was because the female nose, and the male nose if it is\nunaccustomed to tobacco-smoke, likes, positively likes, the smell of\nfusees; but to anyone who smokes tobacco the smell of them is, for some\nreason, perfectly nauseating, and that is why we only use them in the\nopen air.\n\nThen Helen's mean nature asserted itself. She said, 'Oh, I forgot you\ndon't like the smell,' and soon after (not at once, mark you) called my\nattention to some non-existent object of horticultural interest out of\nthe window. I turned, and in a moment she had lit a fusee, and\npositively inhaled the sickening perfume of it. I only wished she had\ninhaled it all.\n\nThe upshot was that we took a turn on the lawn, while the room with open\ndoor and windows recovered from its degrading odour.\n\n'How were you getting on?' she asked.\n\n'Not very well. I decided to destroy some string. I nearly destroyed a\npill-box with some cedar-flower dust in it. But I reserved that. At\nleast, I think I did.'\n\n'Why?'\n\n'Legs and I collected it, and I know Legs wouldn't have thrown it away,\nso I can't.'\n\nHelen was silent a moment; then,\n\n'Do you miss Legs very much?' she asked. 'His bodily presence, I mean,\nof course.'\n\n'Of course I do, just as you do. I miss him all the time. Oh, he is in\nthe room, and he laughs at us, or with us. I know that.'\n\n'Then what do you miss?' she asked.\n\n'The young body about the house.'\n\nThen Helen said: 'Oh, you darling!'\n\nThat sort of remark is always extremely pleasant, but I had no notion of\nher artfulness. I am glad to say that she has often said it before, so\nthat it was not particularly stupid of me not to guess that it meant\nanything especial. And with her artfulness she changed the subject to\nthat which I happened to be thinking about, thus making no transition.\n\n'I gave up,' she said. 'I found all my things were so connected with\nLegs that I couldn't destroy them. It is just what you said. We want to\nkeep the young thing in the house, since we are getting old--yes, it's\nno use saying \"Pouf!\"--and I can't destroy anything connected with him.\nSo shall we move our rubbish straight into Legs' room, and make a sort\nof young museum? Then, when we feel particularly middle-aged, we can go\nup there and sit among the young things. If we don't do that, we must\nclear out his room as well, and I can't see how we can. There are rough\ncopies of letters to that dreadful Charlotte; there is a letter in his\nhandwriting, there on his table, beginning----'\n\n'Beginning \"You're a damned fool!\"' said I, '\"but I don't intend to\nquarrel with you.\" Did you mean that one?'\n\n'Then you have been there, too?' she said.\n\n'Why, of course, every day. I go when you attend to household affairs\nafter breakfast; you go when you say you are going to bed. Didn't you\nknow?'\n\n'Certainly I did, but I thought you didn't know that I went there,' she\nsaid.\n\n'Ditto,' said I.\n\nThere was a huge rushing wind out of the south-west, and we stood a\nlittle while inhaling the boisterousness of it. All spring was in it,\nall the renewal of life.\n\n'How Legs is laughing at us!' she said.\n\n'I don't care. Let's have the museum of young things. Let's put there\nall the things we can't throw away. Oh, Helen, there are photographs,\ntoo! There is one of him in his last half at Eton.... There is one of\nyou and me when the Canadian canoe sank gently, and as we stood dripping\non the shore he photographed us. And I photographed him and you when you\nsaid you would skate a rocking-turn together, and fell down. Heart's\nblood, heart's blood! There ought to be a law which makes it a penal\noffence to keep photographs,'\n\nI suppose I had got excited, for Helen took my arm and said:\n\n'There, there!'\n\nBut even that did not do.\n\n'Oh, the pity of it,' I cried--'the pity of it! Why didn't he take a\ntrain to come down? Why didn't that omnibus pull up? He was ours, and\nhe would have married, and still been ours, and there would have been\nyoung things about the house again.'\n\nI suppose I had torn away from her, for now we were apart, facing each\nother, at the end of this; and she smiled so quietly, so serenely.\n\n'Do you think that I don't feel that, too?' she asked. 'Can't you see\nthat the wife who is mother of nothing must feel it more than the\nhusband who is father of nothing? Besides, you make your books--you are\nfather to them. What do I do? I order dinner.'\n\nAnd yet--it seems to me so strange now--I did not see. There was\nbitterness in her words, but all I thought was that there was no\nbitterness in her voice, or her face, or her smile. I did not quite\nunderstand that, I remember, but Helen has told me since that she did\nnot mean me to. She wanted--well, her plan evolves itself.\n\nAnd then she took my arm again.\n\n'It is nearly a month since dear Legs went away,' she said, 'since we\nhave actually heard and seen him. The last we heard was that he wanted\nus to buck up. Do you know, I think we have bucked up. But we have been\ndoing that singly; we have somehow lived rather apart, dear. Surely it\nis better to buck up together. I think the idea of a young museum is a\nvery good one. Let us put all the things we can't throw away into his\nroom. We have never used the room before, because Legs might always rush\ndown and want a bed; and so let us keep it like that. We might call it\nthe nursery.'\n\nAnd so the young museum was started. Helen had all manner of tender\ntrifles for it, all connected with Legs. She had all sorts of things I\nhad known nothing of: little baby garments, Legs' bottle, some baby\nsocks. Then there were child things as well: 'Alice in Wonderland,' the\ndepressing Swiss family called Robinson, a far better Robinson called\nCrusoe.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nAnd thus the nursery grew. 'Treasure Island' went there; a\nrocking-horse, which I remembered of old days, was brought down from an\nattic. Oh, how well, when I saw him again, I remembered him! He had a\ngreen base, nicely curved, on which he pranced to and fro, and my foot\nhad once been under it when he pranced, so that I lost a toenail, and\nwas rewarded with sixpence for stopping crying. He had a hollow\ninterior, the only communication with which were the holes of the\npommels, and on another dreadful day my sister had dropped a\nthree-penny-bit into one of them, with some idea of making a bank. A\nbank it was, but the capital was irrecoverable. The coin was still\nthere, for now I took up the whole horse with ease, that steed which had\nso often carried me, and heard a faint chink from his stomach. He had a\nwild eye, too, and flaming red nostrils, and the paint smelt just the\nsame as ever. And Helen produced a Noah's ark, in which the paint was of\nfamiliar odour, but different, and there was Ham without a stand, and\nMrs. Noah in a neat brown ulster, and Noah with a beard, and one good\nfoot, but the other was a pin. Elephants were there with pink trunks (I\nnever could understand why), and enormous ducks with pink bills (which\nnow threw a light on the colour of the elephants' trunks, since I\nsuppose that a brush full of pink was indiscriminately bestowed), and\nsmall spotted tigers, and nameless beasts which we called lynxes,\nchiefly because we did not know what they were, and did not know what\nlynxes were, so they were probably the ones. The ark itself had Gothic\nwindows, and a mean white bird, with a piece of asparagus in its mouth,\npainted on the roof, probably indicated the dove and the leaf.\n\nWe must have spent two days over the nursery, and during those days we\nconcentrated there all the young things of the house, and when it was\nfinished it was a motley room. There were photographs of Legs\neverywhere; all his papers were kept; everything that had any connection\nwith Legs and with youth was crammed into it. And when it was finished\nwe found that we sat there together, instead of paying secret visits to\nthe room, and we played at Noah's ark, sitting on the carpet, and played\nat soldiers, clearing a low table which had been Helen's nursery-table\n(for you cannot play soldiers on the floor, since they stagger on a\ncarpet), and peas from pea-shooters sent whole rows of Grenadiers down\nlike ninepins. But we could neither of us ride the rocking-horse, so\ninstead we tilted him backwards and forwards, and pretended he was\ncharging the foe.\n\nOf course, all reasonably-minded readers will say we were two absurd\npeople. We both of us disagree altogether. For you have to judge of any\nproceedings by its effects, and the effect in this case was that Legs'\ninjunction that we should 'buck up' became a habit. That inimitable\nyouth which Legs gave the home, he, his bodily presence, had gone. But\nsomehow the atmosphere was recaptured. We played at youth, at childhood,\ntill it became real again. For a household without youth in it is a dead\nhousehold; a puppy or a kitten may supply it, or an old man of eighty\nmay supply it. But youth of some kind must be part of one's environment.\nElse the world withers.\n\nAnother thing has happened to me personally. I have said that at the\nbeginning of the year I looked forward into the future through two\ntransparencies, one sunlit, the other dark. But now the dark one (I can\nexpress it in no other way) had been withdrawn. Dear Legs' death was not\nquite identical with it, for it was not withdrawn then. But during the\nmonth that followed it gradually melted away. I can trace just two\ncauses for it.\n\nThe first was this: In ineptitude of spirit I had reasoned to myself\nthat the death of the body logically implied the merging of the life\ninto the one central life. But after his death Legs became to my spirit\nmore individual than ever. And the second cause was this establishment\nof the nursery. Though youth might have passed for oneself, it still\nlived. One was wrong, too (at least I was), in thinking it had passed\nfrom oneself. Else how did I feel so singularly annoyed when Helen shot\ndown with a wet pea a whole regiment of my Life Guards? I was annoyed; I\nam still. It was a perfect fluke that the Colonel on horseback fell in\nsuch a way that he more than decimated his own regiment. And I am sure\nHelen shook the table, else why should the Brigadier-General, posted in\nthe extreme rear, have fallen off the table altogether? She won.\n\nMeantime in this first week of March the winds were roaring out of the\nsouth-west, and for a while, days together sometimes, squalls which the\nValkyrie maidens might have bridled to make steeds for their swift\ngoing came in unbroken procession from the Atlantic. Helen is a lover of\nthe sea, and these gales coming out of the waste of waters touch\nsomething within her as mysterious as the sixth sense of animals, who\nfeel and are excited by things that the five-sensed mortal is unaware\nof. To-day, however, was quiet and calm, and we stormed the steep ascent\nof the downs till we stood on the highest point of the Beacon, which\nlooks down on all other land towards the south-west, so that the river\nof wind that flows from the Atlantic comes here unbreathed and untamed\nby traverse of other country, and you get it fresh and salt as it was\nwhen it left the ocean.\n\nIn that interval of quiet weather there was nothing to be perceived by\nthe ordinary sense, but she sniffed the air like a filly at grass.\n\n'Wind is coming,' she said, 'the great wind from the sea. I don't care\nwhether your little barometer has gone up or not; what does it know of\nthe winds? We shall be at home before it comes, but I will tell you\nthen, as we sit close to the fire, what is happening in the big\nplaces.'\n\nShe was quite right; though the silly barometer had gone up, we were but\nhalf through dinner when the wind, which had been no more than a breeze\nall afternoon, struck the house as suddenly as a blow. The wood fire on\nthe hearth gave a little puff of smoke into the room, and then, thinking\nbetter, suddenly sparkled as if with frost, as the passage of the air\nabove the chimney drew it up. At that Helen's eyes were alight. She ate\nno more, but sat with her elbows on the table, while I, who have not the\nsixth sense, went gravely through mutton and anchovies on toast and an\norange. Then they brought in coffee, and she shook her head to that.\nMeantime that first warning of the wind had been justified; a Niagara of\nair poured over us, screaming and hooting, and making a mad orchestra of\nsound. At times it ceased altogether--the long pause of the\nconductor--and then, before one heard the wind at all, a tattoo of the\ndrums of rain, sounded on the window-pane. Then, heralded by those\ndrums, the whole mad orchestra burst into a great _tutti_ of screaming,\nhooting, sobbing. So much I could hear, but Helen was _of_ it somehow.\nSomething secret and sensitive within her vibrated to the uproar.\n\nI have seen her in the grip of the wind, as she expresses it, perhaps\nhalf a dozen times, and it always makes me vaguely uneasy. It is no less\nthan a possession, and yet I can think of no one whom I would have\nimagined less liable to such a thing. I can imagine her surrounded by\nthe terrors of fire or shipwreck, or any catastrophe that overthrows the\nreason, and makes men mere panic-stricken maniacs, keeping absolutely\ncalm, and infecting others by her self-possession. But now and then the\nwind takes possession of her, and she becomes like the Pythian\nprophetess.\n\n'Oh, to be alone with the sea and the gale to-night!' she said. 'Jack,\nwhat splendid things are happening in the great empty places of the\nworld! This has been brewing out on the Atlantic for a couple of days by\nnow, and there are thousands of miles of great white-headed waves rising\nand falling in the darkness, and calling to each other, and dancing\ntogether. Up above them, as in the gallery of the ball-room, is the\ngreat mad band of which we hear a little in our stuffy house, and it\nwill play to them all night and all to-morrow, and the waves will dance\nwithout ceasing, growing bigger as they dance, like some nightmare. Oh,\nyou can imagine nothing! But I see so clearly Mr. and Mrs. Wave and all\ntheir family dancing, dancing, all young, though white-headed, and\ngrowing bigger as they dance. They are cannibals, too, and a big wave\nwill eat up a little one, which makes it bigger yet. The wind loves to\nsee that. He gives a great blare of trumpets when he sees a cannibal\nwave. Oh, it must have happened this moment! That scream meant, \"Well\ndone, wave! That was a big one you swallowed!\"\n\n'Sometimes they see a ship coming along, and they love playing with\nships, because all proper ships like being out in the Atlantic\nball-room, and the waves crowd towards it, seeing which can lift it\nhighest. Whiz! Can't you hear the screw racing, as the wave that lifted\nthe stern runs away from under it? How the masts strike right and left\nacross a thousand stars, for the sky is quite clear! The winds have\nturned out the clouds as you turn out the chairs and tables from a room\nwhere you dance.'\n\nWe had gone up to Legs' room after dinner, and as she talked she went\nquickly from place to place, now pausing for a moment to look at a\nphotograph, now putting coal on the fire, or drawing aside the curtain\nto look into the night.\n\n'Oh, there is the eternal youth of the world,' she said--'the song of\nthe winds and the dance of the waves. I think all the souls of the\nlittle babies that are born come to land in the blowing from the sea. It\nis by that that vitality burns higher, and the fruitfulness of the world\nis renewed. Millions of blossoms of life are rushing over the land\nto-night, ready to drop into lonely homes----'\n\n'Ah, don't, don't,' I said. 'Helen, come and sit down and be quiet.'\n\nShe paused for a moment opposite me, looking at me with her wonderful\nshining eyes.\n\n'Not I, not I,' she said.\n\nShe still paused, still looking at me, still waiting for me to join her,\nas it were. And in that pause a sudden faint far-away light broke on\nme. She had said words which must have awoke in her, even as they awoke\nin me, the most keen and poignant sorrow that can touch those who love\neach other, and yet she was still smiling, and her eyes shone.\n\nI got up. Something of that huge joy that transfigured her was wrapping\nme round also. The thrill, the rapture in which she was enveloped, began\nto encompass us.\n\n'What do you mean?' I asked.\n\n'It is for you to tell me,' she said. 'It must be done that way.'\n\n'You said \"ready to drop into lonely homes,\"' I said.\n\n'\"So that they are filled with laughter,\"' said she.\n\nThen I knew.\n\n'It is here,' I said--'the nursery.'\n\nAnd at that the excitement, the exultation slowly passed from the face\nof my beloved, for there was no room there for more than motherhood.\nThough the wind still bugled and trumpeted outside, she heard it no\nmore; the wildness of the dancing waves, grey-headed, growing waves,\npassed by outside her.... The blossom ready to drop filled her heart\nwith the tenderness of the infinite deep love of the mother that shall\nbe.\n\nShe sat there on the floor at my feet, with her arms round my knees and\nher head pillowed there.\n\n'I have got to confess, too,' she said, 'though I am not ashamed of my\nconfession. But don't allow yourself to be hurt, Jack. Just hold on for\na minute without being hurt, and you will find that you are not. Now I\nshall hide my face, and speak to you like that. I have known it quite a\nlong time: before Legs died I knew it.'\n\nWell, I had to hold on for a minute or two, and not be hurt. If you\nthink it over, you, will agree it was rather a hard task that I had been\nset. On the other hand, about big things, about things that really\nmatter, you must take my word for it that Helen is never wrong. But I\nhad not been forbidden to ask a question.\n\n'Then why did you not tell me?' I said.\n\nHer head with the sunlit billows just stirred a moment, but she did not\nlook up, but spoke with a hidden face.\n\n'Because through all these weeks, my darling, you have been struggling\nagainst some bitterness of soul. You have made light of it to me, but I\nhad to be quite sure it had gone from you before I told you this. I know\nwhat it was--it was the doubts you talked about to me when we sat one\nnight at the edge of dear Legs' grave--when it was dug, but empty. And I\nhad to be quite sure it had all passed from you before I told you this.\nI have not been sure till now, and--and I wanted you so much to guess.\nYou nearly guessed, I felt, when we arranged this heavenly nursery.'\n\nThen again there was silence, and I think I never knew till then how\ndesperately difficult it is to be honest with oneself. It is so much\neasier to be honest with other people. At the first glance I told myself\nI had got over the bitterness and blindness of which she had spoken when\nwe talked together over Legs' grave, but gradually I became aware that I\nhad not. Somewhere deep down, so that while the days passed it concealed\nitself from me, that bitterness had still been there. In this book,\nwhich has tried to be honest, you will, I dare say, find no trace of it\nsince that night, but I had not probed deep enough. It had been there,\nand I think the days when we arranged the nursery finally expelled it.\nTo-night, at least, I believed it was gone, and since Helen believed so,\ntoo, perhaps we are right about it. She, the witch, the diviner, had\nknown me so much better than I had known myself all along.\n\nAll this took time, for the processes of honesty with me are slow. But\nthere is no difficulty about the matter, perhaps, if the head you love\nbest in all the world is pillowed on your knee. That is a stimulant, one\nmust imagine. So at last I said:\n\n'Yes, it's done.'\n\nShe came closer yet, and, like Mr. Holmes, we talked below our breath,\nin whispers, as if afraid of disturbing this great joy that had come\nfloating down on us, borne on the sea-spray, borne on the wind-tide,\nborne as you will, so that only it came here.\n\nThen, very soon after, she went to bed, and I was left sitting in the\nnursery, with its new significance. Yet it was not quite new. I had, as\nHelen said, 'half guessed before,' and I but wondered, now I knew, how\nmy imagination had halted half-way, and had not clearly seen the star on\nwhich Helen's eyes were fixed. Yet who would have known? She had been so\nfull of art in her wording; even that master-word she had used,\n'nursery,' seemed but to have slipped in, and I had thought she meant\nonly--as, indeed, she had said--that it was to be the room of young\nthings, where she should sit when the shadow of childlessness was chill,\nand with the aid of the memories of youth and play keep the mists of\nmiddle age from closing round us, and the frosts of old from settling\ntoo stiffly on the later years of our travel. The room was to be but a\npalliative or a tonic, as you will, a consolation for the things that\nwere not to be for us, and now it showed another face. It was not the\npast of which it spoke, but the future.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nI suppose I sat long over the embers of the fire, but these were hours\nthat had escaped from the hand of Time, and were not to be computed by\nhis scale. Sometimes I threw a log into the open hearth of the fireplace\n(ah, but that open hearth must be altered now; it would never do in the\nnursery), and sometimes I plied an industrious pair of bellows, but for\nthe most part I sat idle, looking into the fiery heart of the blaze; for\nthe news that Helen had made me guess was at first unrealizable. Though\nI knew it to be true, I had to absorb, digest it, since a great joy is\nas stunning a thing as the stroke of sorrow. And gradually, as gradually\nas the workings of the process of beauty, I began to feel, and not only\nto know, the name of the room where I sat. It was the nursery.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nBut Helen was wrong about one thing. She had said that the wind would\nplay to the dancing of the waves all night and all next day, but before\nI went to bed that wild orchestra of the storm had ceased. Its work was\ndone for us. It had blown the bud of the blossom of life into the house\nthat so longed for it.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIt is strange how quickly the events of life become part of one. Next\nmorning I woke in full possession of the new knowledge. There was no\nquestion or uncertainty as to what that was which made a rapture of\nwaking. And with the same suddenness all real knowledge of what life had\nbeen before I knew this had passed from me. I could no longer in the\nleast realize what I had felt like before the moment came when Helen had\nmade me guess. Though that moment was so few hours away, yet I could no\nmore conceive existence without it than one can form any mental picture\nof what life would be without the gift of sight or hearing. It is not\nthat any huge event destroys all that went before it, but it so stains\nback through the turned pages of the past that they are all  and\nsuffused with it.\n\nHow the blackbirds and thrushes sang on that March morning! I had awoke\nbefore dawn to hear the early tuning-up going on in the bushes, and\nbefore long, since I was too happy to sleep, I got up, dressed quietly,\nand went out. The tuning-up was just over, and the birds were all busy\nwith breakfast, for you must know, as soon as they wake, they get in\nsinging-trim for the day before their bright-eyed quest, listening, with\nhead cocked as they scuttle over the lawn, for the sound of a worm\nmoving. They are so close to the ground themselves that they can\nlocalize this to within a fraction of an inch, and then in goes the\nspear-like beak, and the poor thing is dragged out of the soft,\ndew-drenched earth. They are not quite tidy eaters, these dear minstrels\nof the garden, for the point is to get your breakfast inside you beyond\nrecall, with the least possible delay. Swallow, gulp, swallow, and the\nthing is done. Then you give one long flute-like note of satisfaction,\nand listen again for the second course. But one cannot exactly say that\nthey have bad manners at table, for the extreme sensibleness of the plan\nexcludes all other considerations. Also, bad manners at table\nirresistibly suggest greediness, and no bird is ever greedy. They have\nexcellent appetites, and when they have had enough they stop eating, and\ninstantly begin to sing.\n\nIt was just at the end of birds' breakfast that I got out--that is to\nsay, it still wanted some minutes to sunrise. The lawn was all\ngossamer-webbed and shimmering with dew, as if some thin layer of\nmoonstone or transparent pearl had been veneered over emerald, and I\nfelt it almost a vandalism to walk over it, removing with my clumsy\nfeet whole patches of thin inimitable jewellery. The three-hour gale of\nthe night before had vanished to give place to a morning of halcyon\ncalm, and I augured one of those rare and exquisite days which March\nsometimes gives us--days of warm windlessness and the promise of spring.\nStraight in front of me rose the Beacon, still submerged in clear dark\nshadow, but high in the heavens above dawn had come, for it made a\ngolden fleece--one such as never Jason handled--of the little cirrhus\nclouds that the gale had forgotten to sweep away. Dawn would soon strike\nthe Beacon, too, but before that I hoped to stand on its top, and see\nthe huge embrace of day and night, the melting and absorption of\ndarkness into light. Even the river, with its waving water-weeds and\naqueous crystal, did not detain me, and I gave but ten minutes to the\nascent, for I wanted to welcome the dawn from a high place, to stand on\nthe roof of the hills to greet it.\n\nSlowly dawn descended from the sky, quivering and palpitating with\nlight. The great golden flood came nearer and nearer the earth, which as\nyet caught but the reflection from the radiant heavens. It hung a moment\nhovering, the bright-winged iridescent bird of dawn, just above my head,\nand then the sun leaped up, vaulting above the eastern hills. The level\nshafts of light swept across the land, a mantle of gold, while in the\nvalleys below the clear dusk still lay like tideless waters. But down\nthe hill-sides strode the day, throwing its bright arms about the night,\nenfolding and encompassing it in miraculous embrace, and I looked to\nwhere home was. Already the big elms in the garden were pillars of\nflame, then the roof burned, and suddenly the windows blazed\nsignal-like. Dawn had come.\n\nThat was not half the miracle. Light had awoke, the hills were gilded\nwith the sun, but at the touch of the gilding larks innumerable sprang\nfrom the warm tussocks of down-grass and aspired. A hundred singing\nspecks rose against the sky, each infinitesimal, so that they seemed but\nlike the little motes that swim across the eyeball, but these were\nliving things with open throat that hailed the sunrise. Perpendicularly\nthey rose, wings quivering, and throat a-tremble with song, till the\neye lost them against the dazzling azure of day, and only enraptured\nvoices from the air made the heavens musical, as if the morning stars\nsang together. Heaven made holiday. Its company of sweet singers and the\ngold of sunrise were one thing--the dawn.\n\nDear God, dear God, how I thank You for that indestructible minute! I\nknew now what the sunlit curtain that lay between the future and me was,\nand the very morning after I had known You let me see from this high\nplace the birth of day. In this physical world there was reproduced that\ngolden sunlit curtain. You made visible to me what my heart knew. And to\nme on the top of the Beacon the windows of my home flashed a beacon to\nme. And all was of Your making--the sun and the mounting skylarks, and\ndown below the trees of the garden, and the beaconing, flushing window\nof my beloved, and the fruit of the womb. When I come to die, I want to\nremember all that. Truth and Life were there, and the Way also. And what\nis the sum of those three things?\n\nYet was I content even then? Good heavens, no! There were many beautiful\nthings yet to be, and the glory of His gifts just lies in this--that\nthere is always something better to come. This great bran-pie of the\nearth never gives to our little groping hands its best present. There is\nalways something more. Your heart's desire is given you, but at the\nmoment of giving your heart is enlarged, and you ask for something\nbetter yet. And if you want it enough, you get it. The only difficulty\nis to want enough. For you are not given, so I take it, things that you\nhave not really desired. All sorts of bonuses come in, pleasant\nsurprises, but the solid dividend is for the man who wills. There are\nfluctuations, of course, but to look upwards, without doubt, is a\ngilt-edged affair. I correct that. The edge is gilt, and so is the rest\nof it, and the gilt is laid over gold.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIt was thus that I looked from the top of the Beacon, with the mist of\nthe song of the invisible skylarks all round, and the blazing reflection\nof the windows of our room in the valley; and there among the skylarks\nit seemed that Legs joined me. It was of no use to deny he was there,\nsimply because it was silly to deny it. There is a French\nword--_revenant_--to express his presence, but even the solidity of that\nword failed to do justice. He had never gone away, and so he could never\nhave come back. He was with us all the time, and rejoiced in the\narrangement of the nursery, even as he had been so hopelessly amused at\nthe correctness of Mr. Holmes on the morning of his funeral.\n\nAnd at the moment of this I expected the 'open vision.' Life, and death,\nand birth, the three great facts, were so near realization. Again I\nexpected to see Pan peep over the brow of the Beacon, and to hear a\nflute-like song that was not of skylarks. I was ready--dear God, I was\nready.\n\nSo I thought for the moment, but before the next had beaten I knew I was\nnot. I wanted more--more of this divine world, more of what the next few\nmonths will bring. Should all be well when summer comes, I think I would\nchoose to die now. And the moment I thought that I knew its unreality. I\nwant to live through the beautiful years that will come. I want to have\na son at Eton or a daughter who turns the heads of eligible youths. I\nwant both, and more than both. Die! Who talked of that? I want to have a\nfull nursery. I want to see Helen old and grey-headed, with\ngrandchildren round her, and herself the youngest of them all. I want to\nlive through the whole of this beautiful life till old age; and though\nthat is called the winter of life, there is no need that it should be\nso. The last day of a man of eighty should be the most luxuriant of\nautumn, before the touch of winter has blackened the flowers; for it is\nonly the thought of death that makes us think of old age and winter\ntogether, and the thought that does that conceives falsely of death.\n\nSo, anyhow, it seemed to me on this midsummer morning of March. I knew\nthat all that was was kind. Pan smiled without cruelty, and if he smiled\nfrom the cross, it was from the throne of ineffable light that he smiled\nalso.\n\nOne by one the skylarks, sated with song, dropped down again to the\nsunlit down. Dawn had passed, and day had come, and--oh, bathos of\nbathos!--I was so hungry. If I had given but ten minutes to the ascent,\nI made but five of the reversed journey, and designed an early\nbreakfast to make existence possible till Helen came down; for it was\nyet not long after seven, and a Sahara of starvation lay between me and\nbacon. Yet, though I have said that this was bathos, I do not know that\nI really think so, since in this delightful muddle of life everything is\nso inextricably intertwined that bathos of some kind invariably is the\nsequel of all high adventure. The great scene is played, the sublime\nthing said, and then you have tea or take a ticket for somewhere. So I\nconfess only to literary bathos, and to disarm the critic I may state\nthat these quiet chronicles are not supposed to be literary at all, but\nmerely the plain account of quiet things as they happened.\n\nSo I lingered for a moment after the knee-shaking descent was over to\ntalk for a little, but not for long, with the river. There was a great\ntrout just below the bridge, and I am sure he knew it was still March,\nfor he wagged his impudent head at me, saying: 'I am perfectly safe. I\nshall eat steadily till April, and then observe your silly flies with a\ncontemptuous eye.' And though he was a three-pounder at least, I bore\nhim no grudge. I don't think I wanted to kill anything that morning.\n\nThen I crossed the further field, and came down into the rose-garden,\nstill meditating on the immediate assuagement of hunger. But then I saw\nwho stood there, and I meditated on this no more; for she was there.\n\n'I got up early,' she said, 'and found you had already gone. Oh,\ngood-morning! I forgot.'\n\n'I shall never forget the goodness of this morning,' said I.\n\nThen I saw that her eyes were brimming.\n\n'Ought I to have told you before?' she said. 'Forgive me if I ought.'\n\nIn that first hour of day we came closer to each other than ever before.\nMy beloved was mine, and the time of the singing-birds had come.\n\n\n\n\nAPRIL\n\n\nI must remind the indulgent reader, lest Helen and I should appear\ntediously opulent, that our Swiss trip in the winter was due to a\nwindfall of a hundred pounds--a thing which may conceivably happen to\nanybody, and in this instance happened to us. Consequently, the fact\nthat we went abroad again in April does not, if it is considered fairly,\nargue aggressive riches. In any case, refuse to stoop to degrading\njustifications. We did not go because it was good for our healths, which\nwere both excellent, nor because foreign travel improves and expands the\nmind. As a matter of fact, I do not believe it does, for the majority of\ntravellers are always comparing the foreign scenes they visit with spots\nin their native land, vastly to the advantage of the latter, and the\nfarther and more frequently they go, the more deep-rooted becomes their\ninsularity. We went merely because we enjoyed it, and had formed a\ncareful plan of retrenchment afterwards, being about to let the Sloane\nStreet house for the three summer months. That was rather a severe\ndecision to come to, since we both hate the idea of strangers using 'our\nthings' and sleeping in our beds; but by these means this expedition to\nGreece became possible, and when once it was possible it had already\nbecome necessary.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nSo here we sat this morning on the steps of the little temple of\nWingless Victory, wingless, as the old sunlit myth said, because, when\nthe nymph lighted on the sacred rock of the Acropolis, she stripped off\nher wings, which were henceforward useless to her, since she would abide\nhere for ever, just below the great house of defence that the Athenians\nhad raised to the Wisdom of God, Athene, who was born full-grown and in\npanoply of shield, and helmet, and spear, from the head of Zeus. Out of\nhis head she sprang in painless birth, with a cry that was heard by Echo\non Hymettus, and rang back in Echo's voice across the plain, the shout\nof the wisdom of God incarnate.\n\nAnd then Poseidon, the lord of the sea, who coveted these fair Attic\nplains, challenged Athene for the ownership thereof. Each must produce a\nsign of godhead, and the most excellent should win for its manifestor\nall the plain of Attica. There, high on the rock, where the great birth\nhad taken place, were the lists set, and with his trident Poseidon\nstruck the mountain-top, and from the dent there flowed a stream of the\nsalt sea, which was his kingdom; and then the grey-eyed goddess of\nwisdom laid aside her spear, and from the waving of her white hands\nthere sprang an olive-tree, the sign of peace and of plenty. So Poseidon\nwent down to his realm again, where no man may gather the harvest; for\nnone could question which was the more excellent sign.\n\nIt was after this, after the Athenians had raised the great house to the\nWisdom of God, that Wingless Victory came to abide here. It was not fit,\nfor all her greatness, to build her a house on the ground that had been\ngiven to Athene, so just outside the gates they made this platform of\nstone, and raised on it the shrine that looks towards Salamis.\n\nFables, so beautiful that they needed no further evidence of their\ntruth, sprang from ancient Greece, as flowers from a fruitful field.\nWhether they were true or not, whether that peerless woman's form that\nstands now in stone in the Louvre, alighting with rush of windy\ndraperies on the ship's prow, ever was seen here by mortal eye, or\nwhether the myth but grew from the brain of this wonderful people,\nmatters not at all. Beauty, according to their creed, was one with\ntruth, just as ugliness was falsehood. They denied ugliness: they would\nhave none of it, and it was from the practice of that conviction that\nthere rose the flawless city of art. Never, so we must believe, during\nthat wonderful century and a half, when from the ground, maybe, of the\nlifeless hieratic Egyptian art there shot up that transcendent flower of\nloveliness, of which even the fragments that remain to us now, battered\nand disfigured as they are, are in another zone of beauty compared to\nall that went before or has come afterwards, was anything ugly produced\nat all, except as deliberate caricature. It was no Renaissance--it was\nNaissance itself--the birth of the beautiful. On every side shot out\nthe rays of the miraculous many- star: from the marble of\nPentelicus flowed that torrent of statues which make all others look\ncoarse and unlovely, for the speed of the Greek eye was such that they\nsaw attitudes which pass before we of slower vision have perceived them.\nSometimes they saw things that were in themselves ungraceful, but how\nPheidias must have laughed with glee when, among the seventy horses of\nthe great procession on the frieze, he put in one that, cantering, stood\nupon one leg, while the other three were bunched underneath it. Taken by\nitself, it is a grotesque; taken with the others, it gives to the\njubilant procession of youths and horses the one perfect touch. More\nthan two thousand years ago a Greek saw that; two thousand years later\nwe with our focal planes in photography can say he was right.\n\nIn all arts the Greeks were right; they cut through the onyx of the\nsardonyx, leaving the lucent image in the sard; in the less eternal clay\nthey made the statuettes of Tanagra--those sketches of attitudes so\nnatural and momentary that, looking, we can scarcely believe that they\ndo not move: where a woman has already made up her mind to take a step\nforward, but has just not taken it; where she is in act of throwing the\nknuckle-bones, but has yet not thrown them; where a boy has determined\nto push back his chiton (for the day is hot), but has just not made the\nmovement. You cannot hope to understand the Greek genius, unless you\nrealize that our eyes are snails as compared with theirs. They saw with\nthe naked eye what our instantaneous photograph now tells us is the\ncase.\n\nAnd of their paintings! We have none left (and there's the pity of it)\nwhich even reflect the Greek master at his best. But corresponding to\nour English paintings on china, we have the Greek vases of the fourth\nand fifth centuries. They were made by journeymen in potters' shops, but\nthere is not one that lacks the supremacy of knowledge and observation.\nIt is as if a china-shop in the Seven Dials suddenly displayed in its\nwindow examples of the nude figure which showed a perfect knowledge not\nonly of anatomy, but of the romance of movement. The sculptors and\npainters of Greece saw perfectly. Even our academicians themselves\nappear to us to be not flawless. But in Greece we are not dealing with\nthese great lords of colour and drawing: we deal only, as far as drawing\ngoes, with little people in back streets. The noble church of St. Paul\nin the City of London, which so few people visit, was lately decorated.\nAt this moment I look on a sketch of a fragment of pottery.... It is by\none like whom there were thousands. It happens to be perfect in\ndraughtsmanship.\n\nTo think of one day in ancient Athens! In the morning I went up (I feel\nas if I must have done this) to see the new statue of Athene Promachos,\nwhich Pheidias had just finished. We knew little then about his work,\nexcept that he had been chosen to decorate the Parthenon, and those who\nhad seen his sketches for the frieze (which we can see now in the\nBritish Museum) said that they were 'not bad.' So after breakfast my\nfriend and I strolled towards the Acropolis, talking, as Athenians\ntalked, of 'some new thing'--in fact, we talked of several new things,\nand, being Athenians, we got quite hot about them, since we had (being\nAthenians) that keenness of soul that never says 'I don't care about\nthat,' or 'I take no interest in this.' Everything was intensely\ninteresting. It was a hot morning, and the plane-trees by the Ilyssus\nlooked attractive, and there was a company of people there whose talk\nmight be stimulating, but to-day we were too busy: we had to see the\nAthene Promachos, a bronze statue by Pheidias, forty feet high, and\nafter lunch (lunch was going to be rather grand, because a new play was\ncoming out, and Pericles was going to be there, and perhaps Aspasia) we\nwere going to \u00c6schylus's new tragedy, called the 'Agamemnon.' And my\nfriend, who was Alcibiades, was giving a supper-party in the evening.\nSocrates was coming, and a man who was really very pleasant, only he\nlistened and made notes, but seldom talked. His name was Plato.\n\nAlcibiades was rather profane sometimes, and spoke of the great gods as\nif he did not really believe in them. I, knowing him so well, knew that\nhe did, and that it was only his Puck-like spirit which made him in talk\nmake light of what he believed. All up the steps of the Propyl\u00e6a he was,\nthough amusing, rather profane, and then we came through the central\ngate, which was yet unfinished, and straight in front of us was the\nstatue. And some jest--I know not what--died on my friend's lips, and\nhis great grey eyes suddenly became dim with tears at the sight of\nbeauty, and his mouth quivered as he said:\n\n'Mighty Lady Athene, my goddess!'\n\nAnd with that he knelt down on the rock in front of where she stood, and\nprayed to the wisdom of God.\n\nHe refused to go to the grand lunch after this, and insisted on our\nremaining up here till it was time to get to the theatre, quoting\nsomething that Socrates had said about the cleansing power of beauty;\n'so we will not soil ourselves just yet,' quoth he, 'with the intrigues\nwe should hear about at lunch, but go straight from here to the\ntheatre.' So we bought from a peasant some cheese wrapped up in a\nvine-leaf, and a bottle of wine, and a loaf of bread and some grapes,\nand then went down the rock to the theatre. And still that divine vision\nhad possession of Alcibiades, for he paid no attention to the greeting\nof his friends, and bade them be silent. And soon the actors were come,\nand the watchman went up to the tower, and looked east, and saw the\nbeacons leap across the land, to show that the ten-year siege was over,\nand that Troy had fallen. Then slowly began to be unfolded the tale of\nthe stupendous tragedy. Home came Agamemnon, with his captive, the\nPrincess Cassandra, riding behind him in his chariot of triumph.\nClytemnestra, his wife, met him at the palace door, and with feigned\nobeisance and lying words of love welcomed him in, leaving Cassandra\noutside. Then there descended on the Princess the spirit of prophecy,\nand in wild words she shrieked out the doom that was coming. Quickly it\ncame: from within we heard the death-cry of the King, and the palace\ndoors swung open, and out came the Queen, fondling the axe with which\nshe had slain him.... The doom of the gods was accomplished.\n\nThen afterwards we went round to the green-room, and found \u00c6schylus\nthere, and Alcibiades, in his impulsive way--I tell him he has the\nfeelings of a woman--must kneel and kiss the hand that wrote this\nwonderful play. Socrates was there, too, putting absurd questions to\neverybody about the difference between the muse of tragedy and the muse\nof comedy; as if anybody cared, so long as \u00c6schylus wrote plays like\nthat! However, he got Plato to listen to him, and soon made him\ncontradict himself, which is what Socrates chiefly cares about. Pericles\ncame in, too, with Aspasia, to whom he kindly introduced me. Certainly\nshe is extraordinarily beautiful, and has great wit. But she called\nattention to her physical charms too much, which is silly, since they\nare quite capable of calling attention to themselves.\n\nAfterwards, since only Alcibiades and I had seen the wonderful statue,\nwe all strolled up to the Acropolis again to look at it and the sunset.\nSocrates came, too, and after we had examined and admired the bronze\ngoddess again, we went and sat on the steps of the temple of Athene. He\ntried his usual game of asking us questions till we contradicted\nourselves, but before long all of us refused to answer him any more,\nsaying that we were aware that we were totally ignorant of everything,\nand that there was no longer any need for him to prove it to us. And\nthen--exactly how it arose I don't know, but I think it was from the\nquestions and answers that had already passed--he began to weave us the\nmost wonderful fable, showing us how all that we thought beautiful here\non earth was but the reflection, the pale copy, of the beauty which was\neternal. Round the outer rim of the earth and the stars, he said, ran\nthe living stream of a great river, which, indeed, was heaven, and\neverything that we thought beautiful here had its archetype there, and\nall day and all night the gods drove round and round on this river of\nbeauty in their chariots. It was our business, then, here on earth, to\nlook for beauty everywhere, and never falter in the quest of it, for so\nwe prepared ourselves for the sight of that of which these things were\nbut the shadow, so that the greater would be the initiation which would\nbe ours after death. More especially we must seek for the beauty of\nspiritual things, which was the real beauty, and so order our bodies,\nour words, and actions, that they were all in tune with it, with the\nbeauty of prudence, and temperance, and kindness, and wisdom, for it\nwas of these that heaven itself and the living stream was composed, and\nthese shone from the eyes of the immortal gods.\n\n'So there is my prayer,' said he, rising and stretching out his hands to\nthe great statue, while we all rose with him. 'O Athene, give me inward\nbeauty of soul, and let the inward and the outward man be at one.'\n\nSo the sun set, but on the violet crown of Athens--the hills there,\nHymettus, Pentelicus, and Parnes--the light still lingered, and shone\nlike the river of beauty Socrates had told us about, till it faded also\nfrom the tops, and above the deep night was starry-kirtled.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nHelen is the most delightful person in the world to tell stories to.\nHowever lamely you tell them, she is absorbed in them, and never asks\nabout the weak points, as other children do. She might, for instance,\nhave asked if I was correct about my dates; did the 'Agamemnon' come out\nin the year that the 'Promachos' was made? Instead----\n\n'And who was I?' she asked. 'Don't tell me I was Aspasia, because I\ndon't like what you told me about her.'\n\n'No; you were not Aspasia,' I said rather hurriedly; 'and I rather think\nyou had had your turn in Greece at some other time. I didn't know you\nthen, except, perhaps, in the myths, for I am not sure that you were not\nElectra.'\n\n'Was she nice?' asked Helen.\n\n'She was very nice to Orestes.'\n\n'Oh, don't! Who was Orestes? What a nice name!'\n\n'You were his sister. That's all about mythology just now.'\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe plain quivered under the sunlit haze of blue. To the south the dim\nsea was in tone like two skies poured together, and the isles of Greece\nfloated in it like swimmers asleep. Below, to the left, lay the theatre\nwhere I had seen the 'Agamemnon,' empty, but ready as if the play was\njust going to begin. Who knew what ghosts of those supreme actors were\nthere, what audience of the bright-eyed Greeks followed the drama? And\nabove us stood the presiding genius of Athens, the beautiful house\nbuilt for the virgin who sprang from the brain of God. A little more,\nand it would be her birthday again, and we should hear the sound of\nhorse-hoofs coming up the hill, and see the procession of the Athenian\nyouths, and the men with the bulls for sacrifice, and the wine-carriers,\nand the incense-bearer, and the priests of the great goddess. Another\ncompany would be there, too--the hierarchy of Olympus--come down on\nAthene's birthday to visit her in her beautiful home. With Zeus would be\nthe mother of the gods; and Aphrodite would be there, the spirit of love\nthat renews the earth; and Apollo, who makes it bright with sunshine;\nand Demeter, the mother of the cornfields; and Persephone, radiant, and\nreturned from the gate of death; and Hermes, the swift messenger whose\nfeet were winged; and Iris, who was rainbow, the sign of the beneficent\nseasons.\n\nAnd ... though we saw them not, there was not one missing. Love was\nhere, and below were the ripening cornfields, on which the sun shone;\nand beyond was the realm of Poseidon, and a squall of spring rain, that\npassed like a curtain in front of Hymettus, showed us Iris.\n\nThen it was time to go down townwards again, for the morning was passed;\nbut Helen paused at the doorway at the gate of the Acropolis, and looked\ntowards the temple.\n\n'Best of all, I like Socrates' prayer,' she said; 'and I must say it to\nmyself.'\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nSpring had been rather late this year, and a week ago, when we drove out\nto the foot of Pentelicus, to have a country ramble, the rubbish of last\nyear's autumn was still in evidence. Then the spring began to stir, and\ntwo days ago, when we had gone out again, all the anemones except one\nkind were in full flower. They are heralds, those mauve and violet and\npink and white chalices of blossom, to tell us that the great procession\nof Primavera has begun. But last of all come the trumpeters, the scarlet\nanemones, and if the sun has been warm, and no north wind has delayed\nthe procession, they blow their blasts over the land just two days after\nthe heralds have appeared. So to-day after lunch we went out to hear\nthe trumpeters; to-morrow we shall see Primavera herself.\n\nSpring herself, the goddess Primavera, was very near to-day, for on\nthicket and brake and over the flank of the hill-side her trumpeters\nwere blowing their shrill blasts of scarlet. Two days before, the land\nwas sober-; now, wherever you looked, the wonderful anemone,\nlast to flower, stood high with full-blown petals. The movement and stir\nof the new life was hurrying to its climax. To-morrow, instead of the\nmyriad buds of the cistus and the pale stalks of orchid, the flowers\nwould be unfurled at the final touch of the spring, at the advent of the\ngoddess herself. To-day a myriad folded bells hung from the great bushes\nof southern heath, like stars still cloaked in mist; to-morrow, with one\nnight more of warm wind and a morning of sun, they would blaze and peal\ntogether; for it is thus in this wonderful Southern land that spring\ncomes: a few heralds go before, and then the army of trumpeters. After\nthis, She crosses the plain with the ardour of hot blood, so that all\nflowers blossom together, and every bud and beast goes suddenly\na-mating. Here there is none of our limitative February, our pinched\nhopes of March; all is quiet till the heralding of the anemones and the\ntrumpets of their scarlet brethren. Then, in full panoply of blossom,\nPrimavera and summer, too, are there together. For a week or two the\nland is aflame with flower, and then already the maturing of fruit-trees\nhas begun.\n\nNortherners though we are, both Helen and I claimed some strain of\nSouthern blood in the ecstasy of those days. That for which we wait and\nwatch for patient weeks in the shy approach of spring in England was\nhere done with a flame and a shout. There was no hesitancy or delay; no\nweak snowdrop said that winter was coming to an end weeks before spring\ncame, to die before the crocuses endorsed its message. Here all was\nasleep together till all woke together. Ten days ago there was no hint\nof spring save in the strong sunshine: the wilderness of winter still\nspread its icy hands. Then faster than the melting of the snow on the\ntop of Parnes came the heralds in the wilderness, and spring was there.\nIt was like the winter of Kundry's soul, to whom one morning Gurnemanz\nsaid: 'Auf! Der Winter floh, und Lenz ist da.' And on that day came\nParsifal and her redemption, and the ransomed of the Lord returned with\njoy and singing.\n\nI have no skill to tell of those days: for the past, all that I knew of\nthe history of this wonderful land, and the present, all that love\nmeant, and the future, the dear event that was coming closer, were so\ninextricably mingled that no coherence is possible. But if you love a\nplace, and are there with your beloved, and know that she will bear a\nchild to you before many weeks are over, you may make a paradise of\nClapham Junction, and find the joy of it a thing incommunicable. And how\nmuch more difficult a material is the magic of this land to work\nin--this little Attic plain, peopled with the ghosts of that wonderful\nage, which are not dead at all, but instinct with life to-day, at this\nmoment when spring has come, so forcibly that even the slow tortoises on\nthe side of Pentelicus hurried breathlessly about, with deep sighs (I\nassure you) till they found a congenial lady. Then they ran--positively\nran--round her in ever-narrowing circles, still sighing. There were\ngrasshoppers, too--green gentlemen and brown ladies. The brown ladies\ngenteelly ran away, but they never ran far. The great hawks sought each\nother in the sublime sky, and the young men and maidens of Athens as we\ndrove back were taking discreet walks together into the country. And\nfrom the Acropolis the maiden goddess, who is the Wisdom of God, looked\ndown, and was well pleased.\n\nFor, thank Heaven! the Wisdom of God in no prude. To all has it given a\nsoul, and to all souls is desire of some sort given--to one the\nperfection of form, to another the perfection of wit, to another the\nperfection of colour, to another the perfection of truth. For each there\nis a way; each has got to follow it; and for many there are various\nways, and these many must follow them all. If a thing is lovely and of\ngood report, we all have to hunt it home. It is no excuse to say you\nhave no time, for you have all the time there is. Search, search: there\nis the Way everywhere.\n\nIndeed, this is no mystical affair: it is the plainest sense. Whatever\nhappens, God is somehow revealed. But, being blind, we cannot always see\nthe revelation.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nTo-night, as Helen and I sit on deck of the steamer that takes us back\nagain to Marseilles, we wonder what gives Greece its inalienable magic.\nWe saw the fading of its shores in the dusk, and though the\nphosphorescence of the sea was a thing to marvel at, it was no longer\nthe phosphorescence of Greek waters. That little fig-leaf-fingered land\nhas sentiment somehow in its soil; it cannot fail to move anybody. Its\nhistory since the Great Age--it is no use to deny it--has been tawdry\nbeyond description. It yielded to the Romans, it scarcely resisted the\nAlbanians; and though some flickering spirit of its old grandeur flamed\nagain when its people rose against the Turkish rule in the early part of\nlast century, what are we to say of the spirit of the people when,\ntwelve years ago, they again fought their ancient and ancestral enemy?\nThe Turks strolled slowly southwards from the North of Thessaly, and\nonly the intervention of the Powers prevented Greece again becoming a\nTurkish province. The Hellenic battle-cry went shrilly up to Heaven, but\nthe Hellenic army trotted like a flock of sheep before the foe, until\nthe Powers said that the war must cease. Only the year before there had\nbeen revival of the Olympic games, and there had been a race from\nMarathon to Athens in memory of Pheidippides, who bore the news of that\nstupendous victory, and died as he reached Athens, saying, 'Greece has\nconquered the Persians.' A Greek won that peaceful race from Marathon;\nthe same Greek won the peaceful race home, and arrived back in Attica in\nthe very van and forefront of the retreating army. The 'host of hares'\nwas the Turkish name for the foes they never had occasion to meet, who\nstarted from their fortresses like hares from their forms, and galloped\nquietly away. Meantime the Greek fleet cruised in the Adriatic, and sank\na fishing-boat. When the war was over, they came home with the spoils\nof their victory--a hat, a fish, a net. Perhaps it is best to say that\nthere was no war at all: the Turkish armies made peaceful man\u0153uvres over\nThessaly, until they came to Volo. Then the Powers of Europe said: 'We\nthink your man\u0153uvres have extended far enough: kindly go home.'\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nYet, somehow, the tragic futility of all this does not really touch\nGreece or the sentiment that the lovers of the lovely land feel for it.\nSupposing a Greek army, or a regiment of it, had met the Turk, and died\nin the cause of patriotism, that could not have added to the compelling\ncharm of Greece, and so the fact that none of these patriotic events\nhappened does not diminish it. In Greece, whatever may be done or left\nundone, you are in the country where once beauty shot up like the\naloe-flower, so that all else is inconsiderable beside that, since\nwhatever the world has achieved afterwards, whether in painting, or\nsculpture, or drama, or poetry, or in that eagerness of life which is\nthe true romance of existence, is measured, if only it be fine enough,\nby the standard set then. That is the haunting, imperishable charm of\nthis country, and, missing that, even the phosphorescence of waters by\nnight, divided by the swift keel of the lonely ship, was for a time a\nsoulless firework.\n\nThe magic of it--the magic of it!\n\nThereafter we staggered across the Adriatic, over the ridge and furrow\nof a grey and unquiet sea, till we found quiet below the heel of Italy.\nSoon to the south-west the horizon lay in skeins of smoke, and it was\nnot for hours afterward that the cone of Etna, uprearing itself, showed\nwhence the trouble came. Narrower grew the straits, till we passed out\nbeside Messina, and for the pillar of smoke which Etna had raised all\nday we sighted Stromboli, a pillar of fire by night. Next morning we\nwere in the narrows between Corsica and Sardinia, and saw the little\nvillages, tiny and toy-like, in the island whence sprang the brain that\nwas to light all Europe with the devouring flame of its burning. If the\ndead return, I think it is not in Elba of St. Helena, nor even in the\npomp of Paris, nor on the battle-field, that we must guess that Napoleon\nwanders. He sees the impotence of his destructive and untiring genius.\nThe lines of his new map of Europe have been gently defaced again by\ntime, and he sits quiet enough by the little house, where still the\ndescendants of his old nurse dwell, and sees the innocent campaigning of\nher grandchildren in their childish games. And when the time comes for\nunflinching justice to be done to that unflinching spirit, who spared\nnone, nor had pity so long as by any sacrifice the realization of his\nruthless imaginings came true, will not the spirit of his old nurse\nstand advocate, and remind Justice that, even in the midst of his\ngigantic schemes, he remembered her who had given him suck, and provided\nfor her maintenance? Somewhere in that iron soul was the soft touch of\nchildish days: he was kind who was so terrible, and that pen so unfacile\nand so bungling that he hated to write at all put a little paragraph of\nscarcely decipherable words to his will that showed (what would\notherwise have been incredible) how a certain gentleness of heart\nunderlay the iron.\n\nThough all these sights--the chimney of Etna, the furnace of Stromboli,\nthe island of Napoleon--were but milestones, passed before, to show us\nnow how far we were travelling from the magic land, yet each brought us\nnearer in time and space to the magic of home, and of the day, yet\nunnamed, which must already, like some peak of an unknown range, be\nbeginning to rear itself up in the foreground of the future.\n\nThen, as the magnet of Greece grew more remote, the magnet of home\ngained potentiality, until there was no question which was the stronger.\nWe had intended--that is to say, more than half intended--to stay a day\nor two in Paris; instead, we fled through Paris as if it had been a spot\nplague-ridden, meaning to pass the night in London. But even as we\nscurried from Gare de Lyon to Gare du Nord, so, too, we scurried from\nVictoria to Waterloo, with intention now fully declared to get down to\nthe dear home without pause. As far as I remember, we sustained life on\nthick brown tea and a Sahara of currant-cake; but at the end there was\nthe snorting motor waiting at the station, and a mile of sleeping\nstreets, cheered by the vision of Mr. Holmes going somewhere in a neat\nInverness cape and buttoned boots, a mile of spring-scented country\nroad, and then the little house, discreet behind its shrubbery, where\nwas the rose-garden, among other things, and among other things the\nnursery.\n\nThe night was very warm, and lit by the full moon of April, so, after we\nhad dined, and run like two children from room to room in the house,\nfirst to greet all the precious things of home, with Fifi, like an\nanimated corkscrew, performing prodigies of circular locomotion round\nus, we found that there was still a large part of home to greet, and so\nwent out into the garden, to see what April had brought forth there. No\nsudden riot or conflagration of leaf and flower, like that which we had\nseen blaze over the lower <DW72>s of Pentelicus, was there, but April day\nby day had done his gentle work, so that where we had left a bed still\nwinter-naked it was now mapped out into the claims of the plants.\nTo-morrow there would be disputes to be settled, for the day-lily had\npegged out more than her share, and between her and the iris a\ndelphinium would be crowded out of existence. But every plant--such is\nour rule--may claim all the ground it can get until the end of April;\nthen come round the judges of the court of appeal, and if any plant\ndistinctly says, 'I have not room to grow, because of these\nencroachers,' his appeal, if he promises at all well, is usually upheld,\nand the encroacher is shorn of his unreasonable encroachments. Even by\nthe moonlight it was quite certain that the court of appeal had a heavy\nday in front of it: there were lawsuits regarding land to settle, which\nwould require most careful adjustment, for the court hates depriving a\nrightful possessor of that which his vigor has appropriated. On the\nother hand, the slender aristocracy of the bed (for the aristocrat grows\nupwards rather than sideways) must not be elbowed out of existence. One\nplant only is allowed to do exactly what it pleases and when it\npleases--the <DW29>, which is 'for thoughts' that are always sweet, and\nso may roam unchecked and welcome, for who would set limits to the\nwanderings of so kindly and humble a soul? It but touches the ground,\ntoo (to be absolutely honest, I must confess that this has something to\ndo with the liberties we give it), as a moth still hovering and on the\nwing draws from the flower the sustenance it needs. It does not, so to\nspeak, sit down to make a square meal, or burrow with searching roots\ndeep into the earth, and drain it of all its treasure, but it is ever on\nthe move, like some bright-eyed beggar-girl, to whom none but the\nchurlish would grudge the wayside halfpenny. She will not linger and\nsettle and sponge on your bounty, but be off again elsewhere next\nmoment, just turning to you a smiling face, and whispering a murmured\nthanks in the bright language of flowers. So she is privileged to wander\neven in the sacred territory of the roses, where I hope she has already\nwandered wide. There, however, we did not penetrate to-night, for it and\nthe meadow we kept for the morrow. But on the top margin of the field\nagainst the sky I saw shapes that were unmistakable. To-morrow our\nhearts will go dancing with the daffodils.\n\nBut to-night we are content with the thoughts that the <DW29>s have\ngiven us, and can even forgive Milton for speaking of them as 'freaked\nwith jet.' Freaked with jet!--when Ophelia had said that they were 'for\nthoughts'! But, then, Milton speaks of the 'well-attired woodbine,'\nwhich is almost as bad. Imagine looking at <DW29>s, and finding it\nincumbent on one to say: 'I perceive they are freaked with jet'! But, as\none who had the highest appreciation of Milton remarked, to appreciate\nMilton is the reward of consummate scholarship, which was certainly a\nvery pleasant reflection for himself, and perhaps if I were a better\nscholar I should think with appreciation of the <DW29> 'freaked with\njet.' As it is, I merely conclude that Milton was flower-blind--a sad\naffliction.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nHelen is absolutely ultra-Japanese in her observance of the\nflower-festivals, of which she marks some dozen of red-letter days in\nthe year. They cannot, of course, be celebrated on any fixed day, since,\nowing to the vagaries of climate, there might not be a single lily to be\nseen, for instance, this year on the actual day which was Lily-day a\nyear ago. She waits instead, like the Japanese, until the particular\nflower is in the zenith of its blossoming, and then proclaims the\nfestival. Other flowers, naturally, sometimes are at their best on the\nred-letter day of another, but this, as she observes, is canonically\ncorrect, since St. Simon and St. Jude, and St. Philip and St. James, are\ncelebrated together. I was not, therefore, the least surprised next\nmorning, when, after a short excursion to the garden, she came in to\nbreakfast, saying:\n\n'It is Daffodil-day, and the day of its sisters of the spring.'\n\n'But we had the sisters of the spring in Greece,' said I.\n\n'Yes; that is the advantage of going to Greece: the Greek calendar is\ndifferent to ours. We had Easter Day before we started, and another\nEaster Day when we got there. Besides, it was Anemone-day, and the day\nof its sisters of the spring. The anemone's sisters were not the same\nas the daffodil's.'\n\nThis was convincing (even if I needed conviction, which I did not), and\nDaffodil-day it was.\n\nAfter the early heats of February the year had had a long set-back in\nMarch, and though April was nearly over, I doubt whether there had been\nany more gorgeous decoration in our absence than that which we found\nwaiting this morning in the church of the daffodils and its sisters of\nthe spring. It was not in vain that we had dug and delved last autumn\nwith such strenuous patience, for that half-acre of field beside the\nrose-garden was a thing to make the blind see. A rainbow of blossom lay\nover it all: the early tulips had opened their great chalices of gold\nand damask; the blue mist of forget-me-nots seemed as if a piece of the\nsky had fallen, and lay mutely under the trees; brown-speckled\nfritillaries crouched shyly in the grass, and their white-belled sister\nnestled beside them; narcissus was there, all yellow, and narcissus with\nthe eye of the pheasant; primroses still lingered, waiting for Helen's\nproclamation to take part in the festival; while some bluebells had\nhurried to be here in time; crocuses in the grass were like the dancing\nof the sun on green waters, or purple as the deep-sea caves; and\nanemones, greedy for more festivals, had hurried overland from Greece to\nbe here before us; and clumps of iris were like banners carried in\nprocession. These were the sisters of the spring. It was their day; but\nfirst it was Daffodil-day. Slender and single, tall and yellow, it was\nas if through the web of them, the golden net that they had laid over\nthe field, that you perceived their sisters. And the sun shone on them,\nand the great blue sky was over them, and the warm wind made them dance\ntogether.\n\nAfter a long time, Helen spoke.\n\n'Oh, oh!' she said.\n\nThat about expressed it.\n\n'My heart with pleasure fills,' she added.\n\n\n\n\nMAY\n\n\nIt always seems to me a matter for wonder why the astronomers, or Julius\nC\u00e6sar, or whoever it was who took the trouble to divide time up into\nmonths and years, should have made the day of the New Year come in the\nmiddle of winter. Probably it has got something to do with the solar\neclipse, or the lunar theory, or movements and motions quite\nunintelligible to the ordinary mind, which would easily have the point\nof beginning the New Year in spring--for instance, on May-day--when the\nseason is clearly suitable for beginning again. But to make a fresh\nstart by candlelight in a fog on the first of January implies a more\nvivid effort of the imagination and a sterner resolve of the spirit than\nmost of us able to manage. You might as well try to make up for misspent\nyears by selecting Blackfriars or Baker Street Station as a place to\nstart afresh in.\n\nPersonally, though I think the 1st of May would be a quite reasonable\noccasion on which to begin a New Year, I should prefer a rather later\ndate, when summer is more certain, and it was for this reason that when\nI formed this (I hope) harmless little project of putting down the quiet\nhappenings of a year of life, I began in June. Month by month I kept\nthis diary, and you will see when you come to the end of this month of\nMay that my plan was endorsed by what happened then, and that New Year\nmust, in the future, always begin for Helen and me on the first of June.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nEven with the early days of May summer descended on us, and Mr. Holmes's\nPanama hat and a neat new suit of yellowish flannel made their due\nappearance to confirm the fact. Soon, if this goes on, he will be\nhanding ices instead of buns at tea-parties, and I have often seen him\nlately on the ladies' links playing golf in his little buttoned boots.\nHe came to call yesterday, and told me of Charlotte's engagement, and\nannounced the fact that my Archdeacon (I call him mine because of what\nhappened at that dreadful Sunday-school) was giving a garden-party on\nthe 11th, and the wife of the younger son of our Baronet had not been\ninvited. The fact of the garden-party on the 11th was not new to us,\nbecause We Had Been Invited. Oh, revenge is sweet, and we gloated over\nthe discomfiture of the foe. Her mother had been a governess, too. That\nwas a new fact that Mr. Holmes had gathered in the last half-year--just\na governess, and not in a noble family even, but in the employment of a\nretired tradesman. That accounted for the fact that her daughter spoke\nFrench so well; no wonder, since the mother had to teach it. Her\nknowledge of that language, scraps of which she constantly introduced\ninto her conversation, had always puzzled Mr. Holmes; now he knew how it\nhad been acquired. Indeed, she had come rightly by it, poor thing! We\nnone of us grudged it her. And it was no wonder now to Mr. Holmes that\nshe looked so thin; probably she had never had enough to eat when she\nwas a child, and that indescribable air of commonness about her was\nperfectly accounted for. Indeed, Mr. Holmes became so sardonic that you\nwould have thought that his family was one (as I dare say it is)\ncompared to which the Plantagenets were parvenus; and Helen changed the\nsubject, which I thought was a pity, as I wanted to hear ever so much\nmore about the lady's obscure origin.\n\nWe chatted very pleasantly for a long time, and learned all that the\n_Morning Post_ had said in little paragraphs during the past week, and\nall that the Close and the County (I recommend that expression) and the\nMilitary were doing here. We were going to be very gay indeed; there was\nalready an absolute clash of entertainments during a week of cricket\nnext month, so that the Mayor was forced to give a luncheon-party one\nday instead of a mere tea, which he would probably not like at all,\nsince if ever there was a Mayor who collected candle-ends, this was the\none. Did I remember that which was called champagne at the famous lunch\nwhich has already been spoken of?\n\nIn fact, Mr. Holmes shook his head over the general trend of affairs,\nand spoke quite bitterly about the wave of Radicalism which was passing\nover the country. The County Club, so he said, which had always prided\nitself on being a little exclusive, was tainted with commonness now, and\nhad positively disgraced itself at the last election by letting in those\nthree new members. They were nobodies--local nobodies--one the son of a\ndoctor, another the father of a doctor; the third nobody at all.\nAnd--would I believe it?--there had been a veterinary surgeon up for\nelection as well. Luckily, the club had pulled itself together over him,\nand given him a smart shower of black-balls. No doubt the club was in\nwant of funds, but why, then, have built a new billiard-room? How much\nbetter to poke the butt-end of our cues into the chimney-piece, as we\nhad always done when playing from over the left-hand middle pocket, than\npurchase increased cue-room at the sacrifice of our standing as a County\nClub? If we did not draw the line somewhere, where were we to draw the\nline? That was unanswerable. We all said what is written, 'Tut!' and\nlooked very proud. Helen, I consider, looked prouder than Mr. Holmes,\nbut she disagrees with me, having seen her own face in the looking-glass\nover the mantelpiece. True, she had not the natural advantage that Mr.\nHolmes's aquiline nose conferred upon him, but the assumed curl of her\nlip was superb: she looked like a Duchess in her own right.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nHow slowly these beautiful days of May passed, for when one is very\nhappy and very expectant, time seems to stop. Exactly the opposite\nhappens when one is spending days that are full of pleasures, and living\nentirely in the moment, for then hours and days pass on unregarded, so\nthat it is Saturday again before you know the week has really begun. But\nhappiness--I but bungle with words over a thing that is obvious to\neverybody who knows the difference between happiness and pleasure--is a\nthing quite detached from the present moment, just as the sunlight which\nfloods these downs is not _of_ them. Happiness ever broods on the wing,\nand swings high above the things of the earth, like some poised eagle,\nor like the sun itself. It illuminates what it looks on, turning dew to\ndiamond, and striking sapphires into the heart of what has been a grey\nsea, but it is independent of material concerns; and were the world to\nbe withdrawn and extinguished, it would shine still. True, it shines on\nthe dewdrop and turns it into wondrous prismatic colours, and thus the\ncommon surface of life is always iridescent when we are happy. But\nhappiness--that golden, high-swung sun--does not, I think, particularly\nregard the jewels he makes out of common things: his own bright shining,\nperhaps, weaves a golden haze between him and what he shines upon.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIt was somehow thus, I think, that things were with us during that first\nfortnight of May. Below the golden haze were these entrancing facts\nwhich I have just recorded about the Archdeacon's party, the frightful\ndisclosures concerning the mother of the wife of the younger son of the\nBaronet, and the growing plebeianism of the County Club; but neither\nHelen nor I could focus our attention on them; for though, as I have\nsaid, time went so slowly, yet there was not time enough to regard them:\nthey belonged to a different plane to that on which we were living. We\ncould penetrate down into it and giggle, but then our attention\nwandered, and before we knew it, we had swum up again like bubbles\nthrough water to the sunlit surface.\n\nThere took place, in fact, a revision in our list of joyful and dreadful\naffairs. No one could appreciate the humour of Mr. Holmes more than\nHelen did, but, as I have said, she could not attend to him now. Nor\ncould she attend to the perfectly hideous fact that the greater part of\nthe ceiling in the dining-room in Sloane Street had fallen, and that our\ntenants had (quite reasonably) demanded to be released from their\ntenancy, of which there was still six weeks to run, since the house was\nuninhabitable. Nor did I think she would have cared if the ceiling had\nsmothered them as they sat at dinner. And the dreadful earthquake in\nChina failed to move her, and so did the church crisis in France. But\nfor certain other things she cared more than ever, though you would\nhave said they were little enough. All the growth of the spring-time\nmade her eyes brighten and ever grow dim again, and she would dream over\nthe tiny buds of the rose-garden with smiles that were sped to her mouth\nfrom the inmost spring of happiness. She spread fat Heliogabalian feasts\nfor the birds, since they wanted nourishment now that they were so busy\nover their nests, and many dyspeptic bachelors and spinsters, I expect,\nreeled daily from their table laid on the lawn to sleep off the results\nof their excess. She loved the sun, too, more than she had ever loved\nit, and the shade also, and day and night, and all the firm, great\nforces of the world.\n\nNot less, too, did she love the little things of little rooms, and now\nwe never sat in the drawing-room, with its Reynolds' prints, but went\nalways to the nursery, with its rocking-horse and its Noah's ark, and\nits lead soldiers, and its play-table. But when there--when playing\nthese silly games of soldiers, which Helen had been wont to play as if\neternal salvation depended on the nice adjustment of a small tin\ncannon, which, when you pulled a string, shot a pea--she had a change of\nmood most disconcerting at first. Now and again she shot down my\nGeneralissimo, posted, as he should be, out of possibility of attack\nalmost, in the very rear of my army, by some inconceivable ricochet\nwhich would a few weeks ago have filled her mouth with laughter. But\nnow, when these unspeakable flukes occurred, and she upset the heaviest\nsoldiers in my brigade, instead of being delighted, she was sorry, and\napologized. To injury, which was bad enough, she added insult, which was\nworse, and said: 'I am afraid I must win now.'\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThere is another curious thing (Helen looks over my shoulder as I write,\nand agrees) that, though she still loves to play soldiers, she wants me\nto win. Consider it: whoever before wanted to play a game (and the more\nchildish the game, the less worth while you would have thought to play\nit), if he did not care about winning? Besides, it is so exceedingly\nunlike her--she is looking over my shoulder no more--not to play any\ngame as if life and death depended on it. But now she applauds my skill\nand my luck, and apologizes for her own.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nAnd then, when the game is over, and the Duke of Wellington on one side\nand Julius C\u00e6sar on the other lie dead, she still sits on the ground\nbeside the low play-table, and looks round the room with wandering,\nhappy eyes. There are the playthings I have told you of--the Noah's ark,\nthe rocking-horse, the great dolls'-house, the front of which, windows\nand door and all, is unfastened by a neat latch in the wall of the\nsecond story, and swings open altogether, so that you must be careful\nnot to unlatch it early in the morning or late at night, else you would\nsee all the ladies and gentlemen at their toilet in an embarrassing\nstate of undress. I found Helen the other morning playing at dolls all\nby herself. She had laid a banquet in the dining-room, and had arranged\nthe ladies and gentlemen on the stairs, so that one could see at once\nthat they were going down to dinner. From their attitudes, and a\ntendency to lean against each other or the wall, you might have thought\nthat they were trying to get upstairs after the banquet. But that, Helen\ntold me, was foolish, since their faces were all turned in the direction\nof downstairs. The answer was that they had indulged even more freely\nthan I had supposed, and were trying to get upstairs backwards.\n\nYes; we did all these extremely childish things, and so far from being\nashamed of them, I set them all down here for you to laugh at if you\nlike, or merely to be bored with. Things like these--playing at soldiers\nor at dolls--retained their interest, just as did the spirit of the\nblossoming summer, when Mr. Holmes's discoveries or the fall of the\nceiling in Sloane Street lacked the calibre to interest us. And, if you\ncome to think of it, though I thought an explanation would be difficult,\nnothing in the world could be more simple. Things about children, and\nbirth, and growth were clearly the only affairs that could concern us.\nOne morning, I remember, it was found that the foundations of the\ncathedral were in a dreadful state, and that it would probably fall\ndown. I told Helen this as she was engaged on preparing a Gargantuan\nbreakfast for the birds. She only said:\n\n'Oh, what a pity!'\n\nThat was all she cared for the historic Norman pile, with all kinds of\nKings and Queens buried inside it!\n\nThere is nothing more to be recorded of this month, since the only\nthings that seemed to us to have any real importance were just the\nchildishnesses of which I have already given you such amplitude of\nspecimens, until the morning of the last day of May.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe rule of the house was that there was no rule of any sort as regards\nbreakfast. Anybody who came into the dining-room at most hours of the\nmorning would find the breakfast perennials (bread, butter, sugar, milk,\nthe morning paper and marmalade) on the table, and would, on ringing a\nbell, be given the annuals--_i.e._, fresh tea and a hot dish. Similarly,\nanybody who did not come into the dining-room was supposed to be\nbreakfasting either elsewhere or not at all. So on this last morning of\nMay, on coming down, I rang the bell, and read the paper till bacon\ncame. An hour before I had just looked into Helen's room, and seen that\nshe was still asleep.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe bacon was rather long coming that morning--I try to reconstruct the\nday exactly as it happened--and I had already skimmed the news, and\nfound there was not any, and in default of it was reading a superb\naccount of the visit of a member of the Royal Family to Naples, who in\nthe afternoon had 'honoured' (so said the loyal press) the volcano of\nVesuvius with a visit. How gratifying for the immortal principle of\nfire! One hoped it would not become swollen in the head. This fortunate\nvolcano, whose cone had been blessed----\n\nAt the moment I heard a step outside. It was not from the kitchen: it\nwas coming from upstairs, and it came very quickly. Then,\ninstantaneously, terror seized me, for time and place were no longer now\nand here, but it was the evening when I heard my name called in the\ngarden, and thereafter heard Legs running downstairs. And quickly as the\nsteps came, they seemed to me to go on for ever; yet I had only just\ntime to get up, when there came a fumbling hand on the door, and Helen's\nmaid came in.\n\n'If you please, sir, would you send at once,' she began. 'The nurse----\n'\n\nThere were quicker ways than sending, and next minute I was flying up\nthe road on my bicycle. My mind, as I think must always happen with any\nmind in such moments, seemed curiously inactive, though somewhere there\nwas inside me a little bit of tissue, so to speak, that agonized, and\nhoped, and prayed. But for the most I only thought of one thing--that\nonce before I had gone on just the same errand, from this same house, up\nthe same road, to fetch the doctor for her, my dearest friend. O\nMargery! I go quickly to God and tell Him.... We want Him.\n\nAnd then the tissue that agonized and prayed sank out of sight again,\nand I was just speeding up the sunny, dusty road, on which, as I got\nnearer the town, the traffic became denser. Once a butcher's cart pulled\nsuddenly out into the middle of the road in front of me, and I thought\ncollision was inevitable, except that I knew that it was not possible\nthat I should be stopped when going on such an errand as this, and\nseveral times I passed people I knew, yet, though I knew them, their\nfaces were meaningless: they conveyed names, but nothing whatever more.\nAnd then--whether very soon or countless ages later, I had no idea--I\nwas at the doctor's door in the quiet, decorous street, which also was\nmeaningless--neither strange nor familiar, but purely without\nsignificance. Everything I saw was detached; nothing had any relation to\nlife, except just one thing: his dog-cart, which was at the door,\nconcerned me.\n\nHe had not yet started on his rounds, and it was not five minutes before\nhe was ready. He had only to pick up a little bag, into which he put a\ncase of some kind, and something bright, that I turned my eyes from, and\na bottle which he wrapped up--it seemed to me very neatly and\nslowly--which clinked against that which was already in the bag.\n\nThen he turned to me.\n\n'Now, if you take my advice,' he said, 'you won't come back with me, but\nwill go for a ride on this beautiful morning. You will not see your\nwife, and for the next hour or so it is not possible that I should have\nanything to tell you. We don't want you in the house: we don't want to\nbe bothered with you.'\n\nHe got briskly into his dog-cart, nodded to me over his shoulder, and,\ninstead of driving himself, gave his servant the reins. I know I shouted\nsomething after him, telling him, I think, to be careful, and so found\nmyself on the doorstep, looking at a bicycle which was leaning against\nthe pillar of the porch, and was evidently not mine. But, like the\ndog-cart, it was not meaningless, for it was Helen's, which I must have\nused by mistake. I must take it back; it was careless of me.\n\nThen his advice occurred to me, but it sounded ridiculous, as senseless\nas some nursery-rhyme. And at the thought there suddenly started in my\nhead the first two lines of 'Humpty-Dumpty.' I could not remember the\nlast two lines, but the first went round and round in my brain, keeping\ntime to my pedalling.\n\nSoon after I was home again, only a moment behind him, for he was just\ngetting out when I came to the gate, and I waited till he had gone in,\nso that he should not know I had failed to follow his advice--at least,\nI believe that was the reason, but I am not sure.\n\nI went round by the back way into the garden, and sat down in the\nveranda outside my own room, where Fifi was lying in the sun. But I had\nto coax her silently indoors, for I could not bear that she should lie\nthere, lest suddenly she should again look out into the garden, and howl\nat something she saw there. She would not come in at first, and once she\npricked her ears at something she saw outside, and I stopped mine, lest\nI should hear her howl. And all the time 'Humpty-Dumpty'--the first two\nlines of it--went on and on. It was so terribly lonely, too--just that\nsilly rhyme, and I all alone. If only Legs were here, or\nanybody--anybody. You see, this was not expected to-day, nor for weeks\nyet. My mother was coming to stay with us next week, until....\n\nThen I heard the muffled sound of steps in the room just above my\nhead--Helen's room--and at that for a little the babble and confusion of\nmy troubled brain cleared, and 'Humpty-Dumpty' ceased, and I was not\nafraid of Fifi howling, for there was no room for anything except the\nthought of Helen, who lay there, and of the life yet unborn. And I could\nnot help--I could not bear any of it for her. I could not even be with\nher: birth was as lonely as death.\n\nOutside the garden lay basking in the heat of the early summer, and\neverywhere the expansion of life, which had seemed to us so wonderful\nand glorious a thing through all these weeks of May, suddenly became\nsinister and menacing. What travail may not go to the opening of a\nsingle flower, or the maturing of its casket of seeds? It would all be\nof a piece with the cruelty and the anguish that runs through life like\na scarlet, bleeding thread, beginning, as now, even before birth, and\nnot even ending with death, since those who remain have the wound of\nthat yet to be healed. Right through life goes the scarlet thread,\nknotted on the farther side at each end, so that it shall not slip.\nAnd--'Humpty-Dumpty sat on a wall.' Ah, yes! I had it all now. 'The\nKing's horses' was what I could not remember. And at that the crowd of\ntrivialities again came between my mind and me.\n\nWe had set up the croquet-hoops again only last week, and had argued\nover the position of that particular corner one by which my ball had\nrested when last autumn a telegram had been brought me from the house.\nHelen had said it was square with the corresponding corner; I knew it\nwas not, and from here it was perfectly easy to see that she had been\nwrong. I hate an awry disposition of hoops. 'All the King's horses' ...\nthey really should bring these rhymes up to date; it ought to be\nmotor-cars instead of horses.\n\nThese things passed very slowly through my mind, for it acted as if it\nwas numbed and half-paralyzed, and the croquet-hoop occupied the\nforeground of it for a considerable time. I had let Fifi out again, and\nshe was racing about the lawn in the attempt to catch swallows, a feat\nof which she never realized the unreasonableness, and I had left the\ndoors into my room, both from the hall and from here outside, open. And\nthen, with the same rapidity as they had come, all these nonsense\nthings passed away again, for I heard steps on the stairs, and, going\nin, saw the doctor standing on the landing above, talking in low tones\nto the nurse. He saw me, made a little movement of his hand as if to\ndetain me, and when he had finished what he had to say to her, came\ndownstairs.\n\n'I will have a word with you,' he said gravely; and we went into my\nroom. I saw him looking at me rather curiously, and was wondering why,\nwhen he suddenly seemed to lean up against me. Then I perceived that it\nwas I who was swaying on my feet. He put me in a chair.\n\n'I suppose you have not had breakfast,' he said. 'You are to eat\nsomething immediately; I will ring the bell. And now listen. It is going\nto be difficult, and, I am afraid, dangerous, and it is better that you\nshould know it now.'\n\nAnd then the dear, kind man just laid his hand on my arm.\n\n'I'm awfully sorry,' he said; 'you can't think how I hate to tell you\nthis. I hope it will be all right; there is nothing yet that forbids me\nto hope that. Please God, we shall pull her through, but--well, well.'\n\nHe broke off as the door opened, and a servant came in.\n\n'Just bring a tray in here,' he said. 'Tea? Yes, tea, and an egg and a\ncouple of bits of toast. Thank you.'\n\n'Remember, I still hope it will be all right,' he said. 'And even\nif--well, you are both young still. Now I shall be back here in an hour\nat the outside.'\n\n'You are not going,' I said. 'You mustn't.'\n\n'Yes, yes. I know what you feel,' he said. 'But there is nothing for me\nto do here yet, and I have to make arrangements so that I can come back\nand remain here till all--is satisfactory.'\n\n'You don't stir from this house,' I said.\n\n'Do you think I should go if there was the slightest possibility of your\nwife needing me?' he said quietly.\n\n'No; I beg your pardon.'\n\n'That's all right. Now when your breakfast comes, eat it, and read a\nbook if you can, or go and garden. I am sure those roses of yours want\nlooking after, and I tell you it's a hard thing for a man in your\nposition, and a thing which we doctors respect, to go and occupy\nhimself. If you can't, you can't, but you might have a try.'\n\nThe servant brought in a tray before many minutes, and with it the\nmorning paper. When I had eaten, I took it up and looked at it. There\nwas no news, but the middle page contained an account of a visit to\nVesuvius by an English Prince. He 'honoured' the volcano with a visit.\nAnd then I knew that I had seen the paper before. But when? Years and\nyears ago, or this morning?\n\nWhat the doctor had said to me needed no time or thought for realizing\nit. I felt as if I had known it all along--known it all my life.\nBut--what happened next, if that all happened long ago? Was the room\noverhead the chamber of death or the chamber of birth? Next door to it\nwas the nursery, with its Noah's ark and its soldiers and its\nrocking-horse. Who going to ride on that? And the dolls'-house, with its\ntottering inhabitants--who next was to play with those, and open the\nwall? Oh, Helen, Helen, you and your child, will it be? Or will it be\nyou and I again, but after a long time, hoping once more? Or--dear God,\nno, not that!\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nDaffodil-day, and its sisters of the spring! And Rose-day will come next\nmonth. Roses ... heaped for the beloved's bed. Dear God, not that: it\ndoes not mean that bed. Indeed--indeed it does not. You have so many\nsouls already in Your house of many mansions. Give us a few more years\ntogether, for they are so sweet, and a thousand years in Your sight are\nbut as yesterday. And we should so like a young thing, one of our own,\nin the house. But ... thank You very much for the years that have been\nso sweet. They have been--they have been. And, please don't let her\nsuffer or be frightened.\n\nThen I went across the lawn and into the rose-garden. Though we had been\nvery industrious there, I never saw yet the rose-tree on which there is\nnothing to be done, and for a little my hands made themselves busy. Then\nquite suddenly it all became impossible, and there was nothing in the\nworld except what the doctor had told me, and floating on the top of\nthat 'Humpty-Dumpty, Humpty-Dumpty.'\n\nSo it was within the hour that I got back again to the house, and the\ndoctor had not yet returned. I missed something familiar on the lawn,\nwithout at once knowing what it was, and then I saw that the birds'\nbreakfast was not there. That took me to the dining-room, where I found\nlunch was already laid, and with bread-crumb and little bits of cheese,\nand cold meat mixed, I made a plateful for them, though, as you know, it\nwas the last day of May, and I suppose it was but pauperism among the\nthrushes that I encouraged. But Helen all these days had done so. I knew\nshe would not like them to miss their provision.\n\nSoon after--so soon that the news of their belated meal had not yet\nbecome public among the birds--the doctor returned. I heard him go\nupstairs, and after that I crept into the hall, and sat down on the\nlowest step of the seventeen that led to the landing. Legs used to jump\ndown them in two bounds, taking eight steps first, and then nine, and\nget up (with a run) in three--two sixes and a five.... What am I\nmaundering about? And before very long I must have been sitting higher\nup the stairs, for I could see out of the window on the staircase. The\ndog-cart had drawn away from the door into the shade, and the groom had\ngot down, and was gently stroking the mare's nose. Then he laid his\nsmooth young cheek against it, and she stood quite still, liking it. I\nexpect he is kind to her.\n\nThe sun had swung round farther to the west, and it came in through the\nwindow. But now I was nearly at the top of the stairs; there were but\nthree above where I sat. The house was very still; below me on the\nground-floor there had been no step or sign of life, and there was\nnothing from behind the second door to the left just above me. Then came\nthe sharp tingle of an electric bell. There was only one room from which\nit could have come.\n\nI tapped very gently, though my heart beat so that I thought it must\nhave been a hammer-noise to those inside. The door opened a chink, and a\nlevel, quiet voice said: 'Some hot water, please--very hot.' Perhaps a\nminute afterwards I tapped again, and a hand took the can of hot water\nfrom me.\n\nI went back again, this time to the top step, and still waited. Since I\nhad done something, though it was but the handing of a can of hot water\ninto the room, that nightmare of incoherent thoughts began to clear more\ncompletely, and, like some remembered sunlight breaking clouds, and\nshining with the serene quietude of eventide, Helen--she herself, no\nintercepted vision, no vision even of remembrance only or\nanxiousness--shone out. Whatever happened, she was I, and I was she, and\nthe Will of God, whatever It might ordain for us, could not alter that.\nShe and I, I think, have never feared anything when we were together,\nand surely of all days that life or death could hold for us, we could\nnever be more together than to-day. So, surely, of all hours this is the\none when fear should be farthest from us, for never have we been\ntogether like this. Yet, O my God, my God, since Christ was born of a\nwoman, let Him go in there, the second door....\n\nAnd the next door, You know, is the nursery.... No, not the farther one,\nbut the one this side. Yes, yes, of course You know, but You might have\nforgotten. There's the Noah's ark there, and the dolls'-house, and the\nlead soldiers. We had hoped....\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nRed light came in through the window on the stairs--light of sunset.\nOnce more the stinging sound of the electric bell came to me; once more\nI took up a can of hot water.\n\nThen it grew dark; in the hall below the lamp had been lit, and from the\nwindow, after the last red of sunset had faded, there came the distant\nshining of stars, endlessly remote. Then the door opened again, and the\nnurse came hurrying out, forgetting to close it. From within came the\ncry of a child.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n_June 1._--I overstep the bounds of the year, but you may like to know.\nQuite early this morning I was allowed to go in and look. They were\nsleeping, both of them--she and he.\n\nAfterwards I went into the nursery.\n\n\n                               THE END.\n\n                   *       *       *       *       *\n\n                           ESTABLISHED 1798\n\n                            [Illustration]\n\n                               T. NELSON\n                               AND SONS\n\n                             PRINTERS AND\n                              PUBLISHERS\n\n                   *       *       *       *       *\n\n                                  THE\n\n                            NELSON LIBRARY\n\n                           OF NOTABLE BOOKS.\n\n              _Uniform with this Volume and same Price._\n\n                           _ALREADY ISSUED._\n\n\nLIFE AT THE ZOO.            C. J. Cornish.\n\n     The Zoo is one of our great national playgrounds, and Mr. C. J.\n     Cornish, who had few rivals as a naturalist, provides in this\n     volume a most instructive and fascinating guide.\n\nTHE FOUR MEN.      Hilaire Belloc.\n\n     What \"The Path to Rome\" did for Central Europe Mr. Belloc's new\n     book does in equally pleasant fashion for the south country of\n     England.\n\nTHE CRUISE OF THE \"FALCON.\"       E. F. Knight.\n\n     Mr. E. F. Knight's tale of his cruise in distant South American\n     waters in a small yacht is one of the classics of sea adventure.\n\n\n\n\n\nEnd of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Reaping, by E. F. Benson\n\n*** ","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}}
+{"text":"\n\nHealth Communications, Inc.\n\nDeerfield Beach, Florida\n\nwww.hcibooks.com\nThis book contains general advice and is not intended to be, nor should it be, used as a substitute for specific medical advice from a physician.\n\nLibrary of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data\n\nJames, Genie.\n\nThe fountain of truth : outsmart hype, false hope, and heredity to recalibrate how you age \/ Genie James, MMSc, with C.W. Randolph Jr., MD.\n\npages cm\n\nISBN 978-0-7573-1715-6 (pbk.)\n\nISBN 0-7573-1715-4 (pbk.)\n\nISBN 978-0-7573-1716-3 (ePub)\n\nISBN 0-7573-1716-2 (ePub)\n\n1. Longevity\u2014Popular works. 2. Aging\u2014Prevention\u2014Popular works.\n\n3. Medical misconceptions\u2014Miscellanea. 4. Medicine, Popular\u2014Miscellanea.\n\nI. Randolph, C. W. II. Title.\n\nRA776.75.J35 2013\n\n613.2\u2014dc23\n\n2013004587\n\n\u00a92013 Genie James.\n\nAll rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.\n\nHCI, its logos, and its marks are trademarks of Health Communications, Inc.\n\nPublisher:\n\nHealth Communications, Inc.\n\n3201 S.W. 15th Street\n\nDeerfield Beach, FL 33442-8190\n\nCover images \u00a9Fotolia.com, 2013\n\nInterior design and formatting by   \nLawna Patterson Oldfield\n\nE-PUB formatted by Dawn Von Strolley Grove\nBecause I want them to know now what\n\nI wish I had known then,\n\nthis one's for the girls, especially:\n\nShelley\n\nSarah\n\nDanika\n\nLulu\n\nAshley\n\nRilyn\n\nMeghan Grace\n\nMadelyn Hope\n\nBella\n\nOlivia\n\nJulie\n\nTovah\n\nand\n\nGirls Inc. of Jacksonville, FL, Nashville, TN and Northwest Oregon\nContents\n\nAcknowledgments\n\nPrologue\n\nIntroduction\n\n[PART ONE: Your Age   \nof Opportunity](PART_ONE.html#PART-ONE--Your-Age--of-Opportunity)\n\nCHAPTER ONE: How Old Are Your Ovaries?\n\nCHAPTER TWO: Step 1: Get Rid of Belly Fat for Good\n\nCHAPTER THREE: Step 2: Move and Groove\n\nCHAPTER FOUR: Step 3: Detox Your Home\n\n[CHAPTER FIVE: Step 4: Find a Doctor   \nWho Can Help](Chapter_5.html#CHAPTER-5--Step-4---Find-a-Doctor-Who--Can-Help)\n\n[PART TWO: More Natural Tips   \nto Dial Back Your Age](PART_TWO.html#PART-TWO--More-Natural-Tips-to-Dial-Back-Your-Age)\n\nCHAPTER SIX: Four More Belly-Blasting Secrets\n\nCHAPTER SEVEN: Super Supplements\n\n[CHAPTER EIGHT: What's Good for Your Waist   \nIs Great for Your Face](Chapter_8.html#CHAPTER-8--What-s-Good-for--Your-Waist-Is-Great--for-Your-Face)\n\nCHAPTER NINE: Pump Up Your Pelvic Power\n\n[PART THREE: A Fresh Look   \nat Anti-aging Truths   \nAs Old As Dirt](PART_THREE.html#PART-THREE--A-Fresh-Look-at-Anti-aging--Truths-As-Old-As-Dirt)\n\nCHAPTER TEN: Faith\u2014A Proven Path to Wellness\n\nCHAPTER ELEVEN: Girlfriends Are Next to God\n\nCHAPTER TWELVE: Lighten Up and Play More\n\nCHAPTER THIRTEEN: Play More Sports\n\nCHAPTER FOURTEEN: Partner with Care\n\nCHAPTER FIFTEEN: Matter, No Matter Your Age\n\nEpilogue\n\nAppendix A: Favorite Belly Flat Recipes\n\nBreakfast\n\nMain Dishes: Perfect for Lunch or Dinner\n\nSalads and Side Dishes\n\nAppendix B: Resources\n\nReferences\nAcknowledgments\n\nWith Gratitude\n\nMy mother, Betty Frank Sandusky Williams, always believed\u2014and told me emphatically\u2014that I could be and do anything I wanted. I wanted to please her, to make her proud, but for decades I waffled through more ambitions than boyfriends, never quite finding myself or purpose until my mid-thirties. Today at fifty-three, I have found my passion: writing for and speaking to women about health and aging. I am also increasingly jazzed about running a healthcare company while championing the growth of women-owned businesses. My life, my work and this book are embellished with my mother's fingerprints. I like to believe all are legacies she would relish.\n\nWriting this book has been an especial privilege. Conversations with hundreds of women created the framework for a fresh dialogue on aging. From that platform, many busy physicians and medical researchers took time to painstakingly walk me through how emerging optimal aging science can translate into day-to-day lifestyle choices. Foremost among these game-changing healers is my husband and business partner C.W. (Randy) Randolph, Jr., MD. Heart and hats off to you, babe!\n\nYet this book would still be only wishful thinking had it not been for the belief and tenacity of Jill Marsal, founding partner of the Marsal Lyon Literary Agency. Then, Health Communications, Inc. (HCI)\u2014our publisher for From Hormone Hell to Hormone Well and From Belly Fat to Belly Flat\u2014stepped up to move my idea from concept to print. Much gratitude goes to Peter Vegso, president of HCI, for believing this book could make a difference in women's lives. Deep felt thanks also to Allison Janse, gifted editor and wise counsel, for guiding me away from the banal towards new information women need to hear now.\n\nKudos too to Kim Weiss, HCI's director of Communications, and Nannette Noffsinger, our media and public relations consultant. For close to a decade, Nannette has proven to be a rare blend of media coach, cheerleader and friend . . . one I would have thought out-of-my-league as she produced NBC's Today Show for over ten years and continues to work extensively around the world for NBC News. Thank heavens she is so down-to-earth lovely and, also, believes in this message.\n\nFinally, my deepest gratitude goes to our medical professionals and staff of both Dr. Randolph's Ageless and Wellness Medical Center and our Natural Medicine Pharmacy. Each day your skills and commitment translate theory and academic medical science into a life-changing healing ministry for the patients we serve. You all are incredible.\nPrologue\n\nAt the supposed midpoint of my life, two events forced me to internalize a duo of heart-nuking truths. The first: Laura Randolph's death. The second: my first gray pubic hair. Both snuck up on me. Both sucked.\n\nI should have seen Laura's death coming. We were uncommon best friends, she being my husband's first wife. Nevertheless, from the very first encounter, I was enchanted by her bubbly laugh, off-cuff Nora Ephron wit, and wicked cool style. Laura struggled with a rare hybrid of ovarian cancer off and on for twenty-five years, yet her seemingly boundless tenacity buoyed hopefulness, even optimism in those who loved her. Those last months I refused to see my friend leaving us millimeter by millimeter.\n\nThe pubic hair, the gray pubic hair, is shallow by comparison. But that's me\u2014both deep and shallow. I sat on the toilet completely flummoxed. I rarely wear glasses when going to the bathroom. When I do, I seldom scrutinize down there.\n\nHow long has it been there? Do I pluck? Has Randy seen it?\n\nThere was no way around these two magnitudinous facts. I was aging; someday I would die.\n\nAt some juncture in time, all of us are brought to our knees by the undeniable truths that we are no longer young and we will someday die. However, my personal come-to-Jesus moment was ironic: as chief executive officer of Dr. Randolph's Ageless and Wellness Medical Center, I had skin in the game of our culture's American-Idolish search for the latest and greatest fountain of youth. Actually, I had more than financial security and a career path invested: Dr. Randolph is my husband, Randy.\n\nRandy's Ageless and Wellness Medical Center is internationally recognized as a center of clinical excellence in anti-aging medicine. Our medical professionals treat more than ten thousand patients each year. As CEO, information on the latest and greatest anti-aging procedures and products swamped my desk; I sorted it into one of three buckets:\n\n  * Mind-bending research written by highly credentialed physician pioneers typically housed in respected academic medical centers;\n  * Questionable studies written by medical researchers with financial ties to the fountain-of-youth potions they plug;\n  * Borderline-trashy marketing hype.\n\nA fact: In this millennium, medical miracles have the potential to reduce our risk of chronic disease while positively impacting our long-term health, sexuality, and longevity. These radical advances are retooling the healthcare industry. What this means to you, me, our children, and generations to come is that we can increasingly get a heads-up before trouble hits.\n\nDiagnostic tests can tell us whether or not we have heart disease, breast cancer, or Alzheimer's genes. New scanning technology displays if our brains are snappy-fit or in danger of turning to mush. Genetic blueprints sharply reveal how youthful debauchery or years of poor lifestyle choices can result in long-term damage to DNA, setting us up to age more rapidly.\n\nMore news (if you, like me, have a vain streak): The fields of cosmetic and dermatologic medicine have shifted into spheres of supreme artistry. Unlike our mothers and grandmothers, if you or I decide to have \"some work\" done, we are unlikely to come out from under the knife (or the end of a needle) looking like tightly pulled Saran Wrap or a squishy-cheeked Persian cat. Better yet, we have multiple options for a face-lift on a budget.\n\nStill, this exploding anti-aging industry isn't always something to Hula-Hoop about. According to Global Industry Analysts, a 70- to 80-million-member-strong consumer base, \"seeking to keep the dreaded signs of aging at bay,\" will push the US market for anti-aging products from about $80 billion in 2012 to more than $114 billion by 2015. Sadly, many of the glitzy antiaging products we shell out big bucks for are just plain junk; worse, some can be harmful.\n\nWhen marketing gets ahead of medical science, bad things can happen. Hopes are preyed upon and wallets drained. Some supposed \"fountains of youth\" have been associated with serious side effects. At greatest risk for disappointment and despair: women like you and me, devastated by cottage-cheese thighs, a lengthening neck waddle, and an increasingly dry vagina\u2014or a gray pubic hair.\n\nWhen marketing gets ahead of medical science,   \nbad things can happen.\n\nThere I was, overseeing a medical center called \"Ageless and Wellness\" while silently grappling with grief, my own fears about aging, and a growing sense of purposelessness. Then one day as I sat flipping through the latest oversized magazine crossing my desk, something shifted. The magazine's header read \"The Future of Beauty and Anti-aging.\" Four gorgeous twenty-something females (two in bikini tops) hovered on its cover. I cringed. Photoshopped beauty shouldn't be our standard for aging. That kind of beauty doesn't even look real. And, in fact, it isn't real.\n\nPhotoshopped beauty shouldn't be   \nour standard for aging.\n\nI am fifty-three years old. Sure, I miss my cellulite-free rump, smoking energy, and pie-eyed ambitions, but I don't want to go back in time. Like any woman living more than two decades, I have suitcases full of sadnesses, wish-I-hads, and would-never-agains. I've lost loved ones, chose career over childbearing, and made the mistake of mixing men I love with my money. Still, each time something has gone wrong or fallen apart, I've had to learn how to make different, better choices. The decades I have lived are the reason I have increasingly grown more alive, more real.\n\nI looked again at the magazine cover and thought, What exactly does anti-aging mean anyway? If you aren't aging, aren't you . . . well . . . dead? I wondered, What if every woman could know right now what only the experience of the next two to four decades could teach? What if it were possible to glean and transfer that wisdom? What if I could facilitate a forum where women in their thirties and forties got a one-up on positive aging and living? What if I could enable women fifty, sixty, seventy, and beyond to internalize \"now or never\" and act accordingly? What if I could find myself again in the process?\n\nI made a decision to write a book that cut through the clutter and confusion surrounding this anti-aging movement. I committed to entwine new, mind-popping medical science with stories of women who are exquisitely traversing the decades. I imagined a future where this book would ignite a movement, shifting the paradigm of what it means to cultivate a more beautiful interior with age. What it means to grow more real.\n\nBut what is the truth about aging? How can we cut through the hype, false hope, and even the baggage of our heredity to discern a future that women can desire and even be excited about? I wrote this book to find out. By interviewing dozens of pioneering medical researchers, I discovered:\n\n  * Which medical science advances have the potential to reverse or retard aging at a cellular level;\n  * The clinically proven \"superconditions\"\u2014for example, lifestyle choices\u2014that most impact health, well-being, and longevity;\n  * How much of this emerging medical science on aging is readily accessible and actionable for the everyday woman on a budget.\n\nI also personally interviewed hundreds of women ranging from age nineteen to ninety-three. I asked them all:\n\n  * What do you fear most about aging?\n  * What are your regrets?\n  * What excites you now?\n  * What are you most looking forward to?\n  * What is the most counterintuitive advice on aging you have to offer?\n\nIn just a few months I had a database of fabulous, make-it-happen women: women thumbing their noses at the notion that we must grow increasingly fat, dull, dried-up, and disconnected as we age; women in their twenties and thirties caught up in the debate of whether women really can have it all, all at once, or in stages; and older women considering elastic-waist jeans, plucking chin hairs, and suffering heartbreaking losses yet determinedly becoming more vital, vibrant, and relevant every decade.\n\nIntersecting science with real-life stories spawned something special: a fresh approach to recalibrating how we age boomeranging many preconceived notions. I became increasingly excited as I researched and wrote. Then something unforeseen occurred\u2014a collision of knee-buckling disappointments and sadness caused me to lose my sense of purpose, question the faith that has always been my compass, and avoid my face in the mirror. It took me a while to find my way back. I didn't do it alone. I needed the help of new wisdom and fresh tools. I share this with you, too\u2014my story\u2014from my heart to yours.\n\nTell me a fact and I'll learn.\n\nTell me a truth and I'll believe.\n\nBut tell me a story and it will live\n\nin my heart forever.\n\n\u2014Native American proverb\nIntroduction\n\nI'm imagining you picked up this book for one of three reasons:\n\n  1. You don't feel as vibrant as you once did. When you look in the mirror, you are not thrilled with the face and body staring back at you. The adage \"You are as young as you feel\" makes you nauseous.\n  2. You've had a wake-up call. Either you or a woman you love has had a brush with something feared\u2014cancer, heart disease, multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer's\u2014and you are newly motivated to do everything possible to protect your health and to live longer.\n  3. You are at that tipping point, probably somewhere in your thirties, when things you once took for granted in your twenties don't come easy, if they come at all: quickly losing three pounds after a weekend binge of margaritas, chips, and salsa; having enough unquestioned energy to cheerfully work, go for a run, hang out with friends, and\/or cook dinner and take care of preschoolers; wanting and having sex all the time to preferring an extra hour of sleep over frisky bedroom moves.\n\nYou wonder, Is there something, anything, I can do to slow down or turn back my aging?\n\nIs it possible my getting older could somehow equate to my becoming better, becoming someone more versus less as the years go by?\n\nMy answer is a resounding \"Yes!\" We can't stop aging, and we shouldn't want to. But the idea that we can age differently, with greater self-reliance and ever-swelling joy, is not the wine talking\u2014it's a medical fact.\n\nPhysically, biochemically, mentally, and sexually, women peak in our twenties, plateau in our thirties, and begin a sharp descent in our forties. According to aging expert Mark Houston, MD, between forty and fifty is the decade of vulnerability. During these years, women age the equivalent of 18.6 years, while men age 15.2. From fifty on, we can make choices that positively impact our health and how we age; however, the older we are, the harder and longer it takes to slow down the clock or undo damage from decades before.\n\nFrom conversations with thousands of women, I have grouped the female life stages like so:\n\nStage 1: The Age of Arrogance\n\nYou are between twenty and thirty and you are in good shape, have high energy, think like a lightning rod, and have a sizzling sex drive. You're not particularly motivated to shake up lifestyle choices that work for you now, and you feel sorry for older women with droopy boobies, big bottoms, and lackluster\n\nlives. You are certain your future will never morph into such a clich\u00e9.\n\nStage 2: The Age of Reality\n\nYou are between thirty and forty. You have gained five to fifteen pounds, feel a bit sluggish, and have sex once or twice a week but fake it more than you want to admit. You wonder if you need a prescription for an antidepressant. You have started reading health magazines and following Dr. Oz on Twitter. You call your mom for advice.\n\nStage 3: The Age of Vulnerability\n\nYou are between forty and fifty. Everything seems to be spinning out of control: your periods, weight, hot flashes, workload, family responsibilities. You doubt yourself a little to a lot, especially when scrutinizing your reflection in the mirror. You go to doctors for help and can recite your mom's health history as if it were your own.\n\nStage 4: The Age of Now or Never\n\nYou are over fifty. Sure, you would like to be thinner and look younger, but something more profound has your attention: mortality, yours and that of those you love. A corner of your mind recognizes that now is your make-it-or-break-it time. If you don't thrust forward immediately to reprogram lifestyle choices, your health and dreams may fall away for good. You regard your mom's foibles with awakened empathy.\n\nWhatever age you might be, sit up and take notice. Right now is your \"Age of Opportunity,\" your crucial moment. While results may come easier and quicker if you are in your thirties, it is never too late to reap the benefits. My recommended approach integrates Randy's expertise in the emerging science of age-management medicine with enviable women's perspectives on \"fountains of truths\" as old as dirt.\n\nPart 1 describes why lifestyle medicine, the science surrounding the cellular-level impact of everyday choices on health and hormone balance, must become your personal manifesto. The biggest variable accelerating your aging: estrogen-related belly fat. Randy and I offer hope and solutions for naturally rebalancing unhealthy hormone levels, which will allow you to lose unwanted pounds and inches once and for all.\n\nPart 2 offers more natural tips to burn off your fat and turn back your age. Super news: What is good for your waist is also great for your face. Even better, follow my guidance and your sexual nature will transform you into a cocreative powerhouse.\n\nPart 3 draws from conversations with hundreds of women, sharing six proven pointers for filling up and spilling over with the best your life has to offer.\nPART ONE:\n\n[Your Age   \nof Opportunity](Content.html#PART-ONE--Your-Age--of-Opportunity)\n\nWomen today have the opportunity to age very differently than our mothers and grandmothers. We are no longer doomed to become increasingly fatter, sexless, and senile as hormone levels diminish and we move through and beyond menopause. Emerging science, called \"lifestyle medicine,\" proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that daily habits influence not only how fast and well we age but whether or not our genes express health or disease, thinness or fatness, contentment or depression. More exciting, breakthrough medical research surrounding the still-controversial topic of hormone replacement is so revolutionary you probably have not heard of it before\u2014and quite possibly your busy primary care physician hasn't either.\n\nWith awareness comes opportunity for new action. This means you have to take the lead. If you want the next twenty, thirty, or forty years of life to be a hell of a lot better than your first twenty, thirty, or forty years of life, you must assume personal responsibility for understanding your options and making informed decisions. Begin right now to make choices that will recalibrate your chronological age and override any hardwired, negative genetic coding. Again, I am here to help.\n\nFor the last five years I have worked with Randy to refine a holistic approach to turning back your inner clock at a cellular level. We begin with a methodology for determining the age of your ovaries, or how much older you are without them, then provide a four-step plan to recover years while also decelerating ongoing aging. Our four steps are:\n\n  1. Our Belly Flat Diet\u2014including foods and supplements\u2014nutritionally engineered to eliminate age- and hormone-related belly fat and keep it off for good;\n  2. A fun exercise strategy to decrease the overabundance of estrogen and to counter fat-packing stress hormones;\n  3. A strategy for eliminating toxins in your home that dangerously mimic estrogen;\n  4. And, when lifestyle choices alone are not enough, a natural, medically supervised approach to restoring needed hormone levels eroded by age and stress.\n\nIf you stick to this plan indefinitely, you will feel and look better as the years roll by. It will improve your health, flatten your tummy, give your face a more youthful glow, and increase your zest for what's yet to come. Is there any reason you should not get started today?\nCHAPTER 1:\n\n[How Old Are Your Ovaries (or How   \nMuch Older Are You Without Them)?](Content.html#CHAPTER-ONE--How-Old-Are-Your-Ovaries-)\n\nWhen the second edition our book, From Hormone Hell to Hormone Well, was awarded the 2010 Bronze National Consumer Health Information Award, I was instantly a speaker in demand. At one private girls' high school alumnae luncheon, the audience nodded, laughed, passed tissues, took notes, and gave me a standing ovation. I was preparing to head to the airport when Hannah, dean of students, asked if I had a few minutes. The door to her office barely shut before she broke down.\n\n\"I'm only forty-two but I feel\u2014and know I look\u2014much older. I've been dean for seven years, every year setting an enrollment record. Early on I secured the opportunity for our school to participate in a national study examining the benefits and pitfalls of learning in a single-gender environment. Released in 2009, the results put this school on the map.\n\n\"The study showed girls graduating from single-gender schools expressed more confidence in their math, computer, writing, and communication skills than girls attending independent coeducational high schools. Overnight we shifted from being a well-respected local girls' school to one of the most sought-after educational destinations for young women across the United States.\n\n\"Now should be the high point of my career. Instead, I feel stale, and my performance is lethargic. At home, I'm short-tempered and unenthused. My mother was a gifted pediatrician, but once she turned forty, she got fat and depressed, eventually losing all steam about her life's purpose. Is that my future?\"\n\nMany women share this woman's fears. Your mother's experience does not have to dictate yours. Hormones are no slam-dunk anecdote for what you are going through, but based on medical science and clinical evidence, a combination of lifestyle choices and natural hormone replacement will likely be a critical variable in turning you around.\n\nHow Our Ovaries Age\n\nChronological age is not necessarily the age of our ovaries. This is an important differentiation because ovaries are the chief production plant for our sex hormones, that is, estrogen, testosterone, and progesterone. The \"older\" our ovaries are, the fewer sex hormones they can produce and the more rapidly we age.\n\nClinical studies evidence how hormones are chemical messengers needed for life. At different ages and life cycles, hormones foster puberty, contribute to fertility, and support reproductive health. While less well understood within the traditional medical community, breakthrough clinical research out of such respected medical schools as Harvard and Emory University prove that optimum hormone balance should be considered a critical variable in a lifetime strategy for breast, heart, bone, and brain health.\n\nInsufficient hormone levels do more than trigger the onset of menopause. When hormone levels begin to wane and sputter as early as a woman's thirties, the negative impact is physical, mental, and emotional. Ovaries age more rapidly, and therein begin to slow down hormone production earlier, if you had:\n\n  * Your first menstrual cycle before age twelve,\n  * Your first child in your late teens or twenties,\n  * Multiple children,\n  * Long-term exposure to xenohormones, for example, synthetic, biochemically foreign hormones commonly found in our environment.\n\nAging accelerates even more when your aging body's lagging hormone levels shift you into natural menopause, or if you experience the shock of sudden menopause after a partial or complete hysterectomy.\n\nHow Many Damn \"Pauses\" Are There?\n\nThirty-six-year-old Lily sat down in Randy's office. \"I feel as if I am having an out-of-body experience. I snap at the kids, don't give a crap about work, and daydream about dark chocolate bars with sea salt rather than when my husband and I can have an evening alone. My oldest sister suggested I get my hormones checked, but she is fifty-two and through menopause. My periods are still regular, but a girlfriend said I might be premenopausal or perimenopausal. Just how many damn 'pauses' are there?\"\n\nAfter scrutinizing Lily's lab results, Randy revealed that her hormone profile and symptoms validated that she had moved from her \"reproductive years\" to a cycle medically termed \"premenopause.\" Many women and their doctors misdiagnose this life cycle because periods remain regular. In five to ten years, a shift in Lily's hormone level profile, along with irregular menstrual cycles, will shift her from \"premenopause\" into \"perimenopause.\"\n\nWhether you are a regularly menstruating, slightly pudgier, more irritable, low-libido-suffering premenopausal gal; a hot flashing, night sweating, irregular bleeding perimenopausal lady; an increasingly depressed menopausal woman experiencing loss of bone density, painful vaginal dryness, and increased risk of heart disease; or a postmenopausal matriarch doing crossword puzzles to ward off dementia, it is essential you understand how cellular-level shifts in hormone balance dictate your health and well-being.\n\nAs women, we physically, biochemically, mentally, and sexually peak in our twenties, plateau in our thirties, and begin a sharp descent in our forties. Recall, between age forty and fifty is \"the decade of vulnerability.\" Age fifty and beyond, the harder we have to work to reverse negative trends already in motion. Now let's examine the role our hormones\u2014or lack of them\u2014play.\n\nIn the Age of Arrogance, our twenties, hormone production is typically jamming, meaning levels of all sex hormones\u2014estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone\u2014are optimum. You start the negative aging trend when, as you move into your thirties, your ovaries are unable to produce as many needed hormones as they once could.\n\nAge of Reality thirty-something women are particularly at risk for a medical condition termed \"estrogen dominance.\" Because progesterone levels are the first to slow down, declining 120 times more rapidly than estrogen levels, the ovaries are producing way more estrogen than can be balanced by diminished progesterone levels. Common symptoms of estrogen dominance in the thirty-something woman include worsened premenstrual syndrome (PMS); weight gain around the belly, butt, hips, and thighs; decreased energy, loss of sex drive, and onset of headaches or migraines around the period. Clinical studies show lack of progesterone also negatively impacts breast, heart, bone, and brain health.\n\nPremenopausal women in their thirties and early forties having regular periods are most likely to be misdiagnosed. Rather than recognize the symptoms, test hormone levels, and treat hormone imbalances accordingly, many medical professionals miss the boat. Instead they Band-Aid the underlying issue with a prescription for an antidepressant or diet pill. In the United States, ob-gyns\u2014not mental health professionals\u2014are the number-one prescriber of antidepressants.\n\nDuring the Age of Vulnerability, the forties, hormones act in a stop-go, up-down hormone popcorn popper. Women in their forties having irregular periods are perimenopausal, literally meaning \"around menopause.\" During these years, progesterone levels decline even more significantly while estrogen levels become sporadic, sometimes high peaks, other times low troughs. Without stable estrogen, menstruation doesn't occur regularly and vaginal tissue can atrophy (weaken), making lubrication difficult and intercourse painful.\n\nTestosterone levels also begin to decline in our \"decade of vulnerability.\" When testosterone production sputters, usually mid- to late forties, women suffer loss of energy, decreased sex drive, loss of muscle tone, and less experience of sexual pleasure.\n\nFifty-one, the official launch of our \"Now or Never\" years, is the average age women in the United States enter menopause. Clinically, menopause is defined as not having had a period for a year or more. Our aging ovaries may still sporadically sputter, but levels of all three sex hormones\u2014estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone\u2014are in the toilet. We do not look or feel as good as we once did. Skin becomes dry and wrinkly; vaginas do not lubricate easily. Worse, health risks increase. Ongoing\/untreated hormone-level decline is clinically linked with an increased risk of breast and endometrial cancers, heart attack, stroke, osteoporosis, and Alzheimer's disease.\n\nDo nothing to boost lagging hormone levels and you stack the cards for a fatter, more disease-prone, emotionally labile, increasingly sexless, and potentially senile future.\n\nLike Mother, Like Daughter   \n. . . or Not?\n\nLike Hannah, I spent years worrying my menopause would mimic my mother's. Mother was the baby in a family of five children. Her daddy, Franklin Kingsley Sandusky, ran mills, first in Alabama and later Florida, that manufactured the tops of wooden barrels. At some point there was an accident. The fingers of his right hand were cut off on the assembly line. He was soon out of work. Granddaddy Sandusky then took up farming outside a little hiccup town called Bonifay, Florida. There was not much money. As a teenager, my mother was a hot one to handle, smoking cigarettes at school and sneaking out of her bedroom window at night.\n\nMother wanted to go to college but they couldn't afford it. She got a scholarship to a secretarial training program and lined up a waitress job to cover expenses. Sadly, Granddaddy Sandusky wouldn't allow it. I'm told Grandmother Sandusky didn't have much say. At nineteen, Betty Frank married her high-school sweetheart, June Terry.\n\nAt twenty, Betty Frank Terry gave birth to a six-pound gumdrop named Sheila. At twenty-four, she learned June had testicular cancer. At twenty-five she was a widow . . . with a five-year-old and a $110-per-month life insurance check.\n\nNow what? Not much money, no education or skills, living in a town without a stoplight. What were her options?\n\nYou guessed right. At twenty-seven, my mother wed my father, Angus Douglas Williams, Jr., becoming Betty Frank Williams. Four years later, I was born.\n\nFor the next ten years, we were a happy family. We moved to Panama City, Florida, where Daddy worked as an Allstate Insurance salesman. I was severely asthmatic in my early childhood, and my pediatrician advised Mother that I shouldn't play any running games or sports. I was so overprotected, I had few playmates but entertained myself with a menagerie of pets\u2014including a chicken named Bambam and a skunk named Violet\u2014in our backyard.\n\nSometime in her early forties, something inside Mother soured. She began complaining of bruising headaches and had frequent, extreme mood swings and violent outbursts. After some of the worst, she seemed dazed and perplexed by the havoc in her wake. I've since learned, sadly from personal experience, that something of an amnesic fugue can occur with severe migraines.\n\nTo the outside world, we continued to be that \"happy family\" involved in the community and attending church. Yet from about ten years old until I escaped to college at seventeen, my life was a terror-breathing house of mirrors. Some days Mother was my most loving advocate, instructor of beauty, and strategic life coach. Too often, however, she was an irrational, raging shrew . . . a woman of whom I was afraid.\n\nIn Mother's early fifties, she calmed down and came back to herself, as if an exorcism had occurred. At first shyly, then diligently, she made peace with the women she loved most: Sheila, me, and her sister. There were emotional scars, but over time and with love we rediscovered faith in family and the magic of memory-making. Mother and I even went on a three-week girl-trip cruise to Greece. Then Mother, at only sixty-four, had a sudden heart attack and died.\n\nToday I fully believe my mother was literally a victim, a marionette, of her hormones\u2014or lack thereof. It is also clinically probable that an underlying hormone imbalance contributed to her heart disease. All evidence points to her suffering an extreme hormone disorder at a cellular level that jettisoned with the onset of perimenopause. The fact that her extreme behavior abated after menopause supports this premise.\n\nI am determined that my life will be calmer and longer and have a happier ending. Mother's story is my motivation to understand all I can about how hormone levels shift with age and what can be done to turn that around. The next chapters share with you what I know now.\nCHAPTER 2:\n\n[Step 1: Get Rid of   \nBelly Fat for Good](Content.html#CHAPTER-TWO--Step-1--Get-Rid-of-Belly-Fat-for-Good)\n\nYour belly fat is aging you right now. It is also increasing your risk of developing a chronic disease. If you are overweight, advice to \"eat less and exercise more\" probably makes you want to either cry or spit. Sadly, if you are older than thirty-five, you are likely in this crowd. Medical statistics show that women will gain an average of one to two pounds every year from the age of thirty-five to fifty-five.\n\nConsider both Wendy's and Almeda's frustration: Forty-three-year-old Wendy sobbed in the shower. Tonight she and Saj were attending an Athena Awards ceremony where Saj's mother Almeda was an honoree, but despite starving herself for weeks, Wendy still couldn't zip up a single pre-baby outfit. If she wore a maternity dress, people were bound to ask, \"When are you due?\" She would feel the fool telling them, \"My baby's two years old.\"\n\nWomen will gain an average of one to two pounds every year from the age of thirty-five to fifty-five.\n\nA few miles away, sixty-one-year-old Almeda stepped into her evening-out uniform, a plus-size 18 Eileen Fisher black pantsuit. She looked in the mirror, sighed, and reached for a brightly colored shawl. Maybe this shawl will hide my rolls of back fat. A few more years of unstoppable weight gain and I'll be buying clothes from a custom tent store.\n\nWendy and Almeda are not alone. A study funded by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and released May 2012 indicates that more than 30 percent of American adults are now overweight and 34 percent are obese. By 2030, a projected 42 percent of American adults will be obese and 11 percent will be severely obese.\n\nWhat is the link between getting older and fatter? More critically, is there anything to be done to reverse this trend? Our medically proven premise is this: Those extra pounds creeping up and cementing around your middle have little to do with your inability to diet properly, limit carbs, walk an extra mile, or do more crunches; they have everything to do with an age-related shift in hormone production. And, yes, this book can help you turn that around.\n\nHormone Imbalance   \nSabotages Your Waistline\n\nOdds are you were most fit and svelte in your twenties. Your \"reproductive years\" is the season of life when your hormones are in optimum balance, biologically stimulating you to procreate and conceive. The mix of essential hormones includes the sex hormones (estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone), as well as FSH (follicle-stimulating hormone), LH (luteinizing hormone), and GnRH (gonadotropin-releasing hormone). These interact as if in an intricate symphony, each playing a unique yet interdependent function within your body and brain.\n\nWithin the ovaries are follicles that store eggs, or ova. In her early twenties, a woman has approximately four hundred thousand follicles. By the mid-thirties, the number of follicles has fallen from four hundred thousand follicles to approximately twenty-five thousand. Each follicle releases another chemical messenger, Inhibin B, whose function is to literally \"inhibit\" the ovaries' production of estrogen. The fewer follicles, the less Inhibin B in your system, the more estrogen produced by the ovaries, sometimes up to 30 percent more than what was produced by the ovaries in the reproductive years. Simultaneously, progesterone production begins to decline at a rate 120 times faster than estrogen levels. As described in Chapter 1, this imbalance between rising estrogen and declining progesterone levels is clinically termed \"estrogen dominance.\"\n\nEstrogen dominance fosters weight gain around the belly, butt, hips, and thighs, and then\u2014double whammy\u2014body fat produces even more estrogen.\n\nThis cycle continues throughout the thirties, forties, fifties, and beyond. Even during and after menopause, estrogen dominance is still a concern.\n\nMany women make the mistake of thinking that if they are no longer having regular menstrual cycles, they no longer have to worry about sabotaging hormone levels or the lack thereof. This is wrong. It is a misconception to believe that once you stop having periods, your ovaries turn off like a light switch.\n\nAlthough menopause indicates a drastic shift in your body's hormonal equilibrium, it does not mean that your sex hormones have completely evaporated from your body. The ovaries of a menopausal woman are still quite active, producing 40 to 60 percent of the estrogen produced in younger years. Progesterone and testosterone production, however, will continue to decline.\n\nIf you are a woman who has entered an abrupt, artificial menopause as a result of a complete or partial hysterectomy, you can still be estrogen dominant. Even though you no longer have ovaries, your body fat is still producing estrogen.\n\nAs your body's progesterone production decreases with age and estrogen becomes dominant, your body releases insulin more rapidly and more often. Insulin is the hormone within your body primarily responsible for metabolism and fat storage. Most of the actions of insulin are directed at metabolism (control) of carbohydrates (sugars and starches), lipids (fats), and proteins. When fluctuating hormones unnaturally stimulate insulin release, you get hungry faster and often crave sugar. In fact, insulin-triggered food cravings can sometimes be uncontrollable, causing you to ingest more calories and pack on even more pounds.\n\nEstrogen Dominance   \nTies Up Testosterone\n\nAge-related hormonal discordance gets worse for your waistline. Estrogen levels that are too high stimulate an increase of sex hormone binding globulin (SHBG) two to three times the normal levels. SHBG then circulates through your bloodstream, tying up free testosterone like Velcro, therein negatively impacting healthy weight and body mass composition. Sexual desire and experience of pleasure also decrease. In your late forties and early fifties, the ovaries further decline in testosterone production, predisposing you to an even bigger, bulging middle.\n\nEstrogen Dominance   \nDisrupts Thyroid Function\n\nThe thyroid gland is best known for its metabolic function, which affects weight. Statistics show that one in eight women between the ages of thirty-five and sixty-five, and one in five women older than sixty-five, have some form of thyroid disease. Hyperthyroidism results from the body producing too much thyroid hormone, but far more common is hypothyroidism, the result of not making enough thyroid hormone. Of similar impact at a cellular level, estrogen dominance renders the thyroid dysfunctional, causing your body's metabolism to slow down. The resulting condition is called relative hypothyroidism.\n\nUndetected and untreated, thyroid disorders can not only cause weight gain, they can lead to heart disease, osteoporosis, and other serious health problems. About 26 percent of women in their mid- to   \nlate forties are diagnosed with some type of thyroid condition. Younger women are also at risk. Ten percent of women will have thyroid dysfunction following pregnancy. New mothers often ignore their symptoms, attributing them to postpartum depression\u2014just as middle-age women attribute their symptoms to menopause. Consider thirty-two-year-old Cassie and fifty-one-year-old Ruth: six months after Olivia was born, Cassie continued to feel low, not like herself. Looking in the mirror made it worse. Her once-shapely form remained in a pudgy caterpillar shape. She cried continuously but snapped Duane's head off when he asked how he could help. Not sure what to do, Duane called his mother to come.\n\nInstead of helping Cassie with the baby, however, Ruth ran between unfinished projects and the bathroom, where she constantly filled diaper pails with blood-soaked maxipads. She was so irritable that Cassie kept Olivia in a portable crib in her bedroom and only came out to fight with Ruth over the thermostat.\n\nDuane confided to his best friend, \"The baby is great, but when it comes to Mom and Cassie, I don't know whether to call a doctor, personal trainer, or a shrink.\"\n\nBottom line: age-related hormone imbalance, particularly estrogen dominance, is fueling the elastic jeans industry. Five pounds can quickly morph to twenty, thirty, or more. If this is happening to you, you've got bigger issues than elastic versus zippers. Your health is in jeopardy.\n\nEstrogen Dominance Is a Health Risk\n\nThe trouble with estrogen-related belly fat is that it not only makes you unhappy with how you look, it makes you feel lousy, puts your health at risk, and accelerates your aging. Estrogen-related belly fat is not limited to the extra layer of padding located just below the skin (subcutaneous fat). It also includes visceral fat, which lies deep inside your abdomen, surrounding your internal organs. Although subcutaneous fat poses cosmetic concerns, visceral fat is associated with far more dangerous health consequences. This is because an excessive amount of visceral fat produces hormones and other substances that can raise blood pressure, negatively alter good and bad cholesterol levels, and impair the body's ability to use insulin (insulin resistance). All of this can increase the risk of serious health problems, including:\n\n  * Breast cancer\n  * Cardiovascular disease\n  * Stroke\n  * Type 2 diabetes\n  * Colorectal cancer\n\nRecent research also shows that women in their forties who have belly fat are more likely to get Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia in their seventies. Other studies link belly fat to an increased risk of premature death\u2014regardless of overall weight.\n\nSpeaking of Aging Too Fast . . .   \nEstrogen Dominance and   \nPrecocious Puberty\n\nAbout 1 in 5,000 children experience early puberty. Studies suggest that, on average, kids are starting puberty earlier than they once did. Could the rise in obesity be playing a role? Many experts think so, at least when it comes to girls.\n\n\"I think it's quite clear that some of the early puberty we're seeing is related to obesity,\" says Paul Kaplowitz, MD, PhD, chief of the division of endocrinology at Children's National Medical Center in Washington, DC. \"It's not the whole story, but it's a factor.\"\n\nThe excess fatty tissue produces higher estrogen levels, which leads to greater insulin resistance, causes girls to have more body fat, and then produces more estrogen. Just as with older women, the estrogen-belly-fat-estrogen cycle feeds on itself, speeding up aging for preadolescent girls.\n\nBelly Flat Diet Eliminates   \nEstrogen Dominance\n\nOver the last decade, I have worked with Randy to hone in on the link between an underlying condition of estrogen dominance and age-related belly fat to offer women a solution. Our Belly Flat Plan begins with our Belly Flat Diet. Our clinically vetted, nutritional approach is biochemically engineered to eliminate the fat-generating extra estrogen in your system.\n\nOur Belly Flat Diet is a unique version of the Mediterranean way of eating, with extra emphasis on foods proven to decrease your extra estrogen load. The traditional Mediterranean diet emphasizes healthy fats from nuts, fish, and vegetable oils; fruits, veggies, whole grains, beans, nuts, legumes, olive oil, and flavorful herbs and spices; eating fish and seafood at least a couple of times a week; enjoying poultry, eggs, cheese, and yogurt in moderation; and saving sweets and red meat for special occasions. Like Randy, most doctors agree it is fine to top off with a splash wine in moderation (if you want).\n\nWe recommend adding to the Mediterranean diet specific \"belly-blaster\" foods proven to melt away unwanted pounds and inches. Follow our diet and you can lose those extra pounds around your middle once and for all. If you are in your thirties and just beginning to worry about a muffin top or love handles, our Belly Flat Diet can put your fears to rest for life.\n\nYour smaller waist will be one very noticeable benefit. Another less obvious but very real bonus of losing those pounds once and forever will be decreasing your risk of the previously named chronic diseases and very likely extending your life span.\n\nDaily Belly Blaster Foods\n\nCruciferous Vegetables and Indole-3-Carbinol (I3C)\n\nEating a variety of cruciferous vegetables is key to losing and keeping off belly fat. How estrogen is metabolized in the body is determined by an individual's biochemical makeup, with some people producing more 2-hydroxy derivatives (the \"good\" estrogens) and others producing more 4- and 16-hydroxyesterone (the \"bad\" estrogens). Consuming large amounts of cruciferous vegetables, such as broccoli, asparagus, cauliflower, spinach, Brussels sprouts, celery, beet root, kale, cabbage, parsley root, radish, turnip, and collard and mustard greens, has been shown to improve the production of \"good\" estrogen and foster an optimum 2\/16 estrogen ratio.\n\nBiochemically, here's what happens: cruciferous vegetables contain a phytonutrient called indole-3-carbinol (I3C). I3C has been shown to act as a catalyst to pull estrone down a benign pathway to 2-hydroxy estrone, thus decreasing levels of the carcinogenic 4- and 16-alpha-hydroxyestrone. To put it simply, this means that cruciferous vegetables can help decrease the body's load of unhealthy estrogens and reduce an overall unhealthy condition of estrogen dominance.\n\nCitrus Fruits: D-Limonene\n\nD-limonene, found in the oils of citrus fruits, has been shown to promote detoxification of estrogen. Common citrus fruits include oranges, grapefruit, tangerines, lemons, limes, and tangelos. Research also found that, when administered an extract of D-limonene, both male and female lab mice evidenced lower body weight.\n\nInsoluble Fiber\n\nThere are two types of fiber: soluble and insoluble. Soluble fiber dissolves in water and is degraded by bacteria in your colon. It forms a gel in your intestines, which regulates the flow of waste material through your digestive tract. This type of fiber is found in oatmeal, oat bran, dried peas, beans, lentils, apples, pears, strawberries, and blueberries. Soluble fiber is good for you, but no matter how much of it you eat, it won't influence your hormonal equilibrium.\n\nInsoluble fiber, on the other hand, can directly impact your hormone balance by helping decrease estrogen overload. Insoluble fiber binds to extra estrogen in the digestive tract. This extra estrogen is later eliminated in the body through the feces. According to the Harvard School of Public Health, sources of insoluble fiber include whole grains, whole-wheat breads, barley, couscous, brown rice, whole-grain breakfast cereals, wheat bran, seeds, carrots, cucumbers, zucchini, celery, and tomatoes.\n\nLignans\n\nGround or milled flaxseed, sesame seeds, and flaxseed oil are part of a food group called lignans. The friendly bacteria in our intestines convert plant lignans into the \"human\" lignans, primarily enterolactone, that have a weak estrogenlike activity. When there are low estrogen levels in the body, these weak lignan \"estrogens\" make up some of the insufficiency. When the body is estrogen dominant, however, the lignan \"estrogens\" bind to the human body's estrogen receptors, thereby reducing human estrogen activity at a cellular level.\n\nOily Fish\n\nFish oil, rich in omega-3 fatty acids, assists with the production of many hormones. Oily fish, such as salmon, sardines, and herring, all have high levels of omega-3 fatty acids, which have been shown to have a weak estrogenic effect. Cellular binding of omega-3 fatty acids \"tricks\" the body into reducing an underlying condition of estrogen dominance.\n\nThe role of omega-3 fatty acids is of particular note in the production of testosterone. According to a 2011 study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, eating a diet rich in oily fish can improve body-fat ratio by promoting muscle protein synthesis.\n\nYou will find tasty recipes in Appendix A. Follow our Belly Flat Diet Plan for just four weeks for a tighter tummy, rebalanced body, and recharged life.\n\nBLAST AWAY YOUR BELLY FAT: Foods that Reduce Your Extra Estrogen Load\n\nCRUCIFEROUS VEGETABLES: Eat 2 to 3 servings a day (broccoli, asparagus, cauliflower, spinach, Brussels sprouts, celery, alfalfa, beet root, kale, cabbage, parsley root, radish, turnip, collard and mustard greens)\n\nCITRUS FRUITS: Eat 1 serving a day (oranges, grapefruit, tangerines, lemons, limes, and tangelos)\n\nINSOLUBLE FIBER: Eat 2 servings a day (whole grains, whole wheat breads, barley, couscous, brown rice, whole-grain breakfast cereals, wheat bran, seeds, carrots, cucumbers, zucchini, celery, and tomatoes)\n\nLIGNANS: Eat 2 to 3 tablespoons a day (ground or milled flaxseed, sesame seeds, or flaxseed oil)\n\nOILY FISH: Eat 2 to 3 servings per week (salmon, herring, mackerel, and sardines)\nCHAPTER 3:\n\n[Step 2:   \nMove and Groove](Content.html#CHAPTER-THREE--Step-2--Move-and-Groove)\n\nStep 2 of the Belly Flat Plan requires you to get up and get moving. While you are likely well aware of how exercise burns calories, you may be startled to review the science proving how regular, strenuous exercise helps reduce estrogen dominance, decrease health-risky stress hormones, and decelerate aging at a DNA level.\n\nExercise Decreases   \nEstrogen Dominance\n\nIn 2007, the Penn Ovarian Aging Study showed that the more women exercised, the healthier their estrogen-progesterone ratio. Studies in such respected medical publications as the Journal of the National Cancer Institute and Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers Preview have shown that after twelve months of regular exercise (thirty minutes\/five days per week), unhealthy estrogen levels drop an average of 13 percent.\n\nIn another 2010 study, postmenopausal women who regularly did intense exercise for a year had lower levels of estrogen compared to women who didn't exercise. Before joining the study, most of the 320 postmenopausal women ages fifty to seventy-four were overweight and did very little or no exercise. The women were randomly split into two groups: half the women kept up their usual level of activity during the one-year study; half the women did intense aerobic exercise for about 225 minutes (4 hours and 45 minutes) each week during the study.\n\nThe women in the exercise group usually worked out for about forty-five minutes three to five days per week. At least three sessions each week were done with trainers at a fitness center and the rest of the exercise was done at home. The exercise was intense and raised the women's heart rates to a target level above resting heart rate.\n\nThe researchers measured the women's levels of several hormones and a related protein at the beginning of the study, in the middle of the study (six months), and at the end of the study (one year). At the end of one year, the levels of estrogen were 7 to 9 percent lower in the women in the exercise program compared to the women who kept up their usual slack activity level.\n\nExercise Counters   \nFat-Packing Stress Hormones\n\nStress can make you tense and sick. It can also make you fat. Exercise counters all three.\n\nYour adrenal glands produce three stress hormones: adrenaline, cortisol, and DHEA. Short-term, urgent stress\u2014such as seeing your five-year-old reach for a hot skillet or having your husband ask you to watch him skydive\u2014triggers a rush of adrenaline. Long-term, chronic stress has a different impact at a cellular level.\n\nChronic stress is defined as a circumstance that exists for three months or more. Some more common chronic stressors for women include ongoing financial pressures, single motherhood, caring for an ill and aging parent, attempting to juggle a heavy workload and home life, or attempting to discipline an irascible teenager. Chronic stress causes the adrenal glands to first produce an overabundance of cortisol, then, once this supply is exhausted, cortisol levels plummet. Too high or too low cortisol levels pack even more pounds around your waist.\n\nNumerous studies in the last several decades have confirmed that regular physical activity relieves feelings of stress and, at a cellular level, regulates cortisol production. Being active on a regular basis helps eliminate the threat that surging cortisol levels will contribute to an ever-expanding waistline.\n\nExercise Releases   \nFat-Burning Hormone\n\nA hormone released by the muscles during exercise transforms white cells into brown cells, according to research findings published in the June 2012 Harvard Health Letter. The hormone, known as irisin, also appears to overcome insulin resistance, a condition leading to type 2 diabetes. White cells simply store fat. Brown cells, in contrast, actually burn fat. And brown cells keep burning fat even after you have stopped exercising.\n\n\"Irisin travels throughout the body in the blood and alters fat cells,\" explains Dr. Anthony Komaroff, editor of the Harvard Health Letter. \"If your goal is to lose weight and keep it off, you want to exercise with the objective to increase the number of brown fat-burning cells and decrease the number of white fat-storing cells.\"\n\nExercise Turns Back   \nYour Cellular Clock\n\nIn heartening research published in 2011 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, exercise reduced or eliminated almost every detrimental effect of aging in mice. The study followed a group of mice from birth. By the time they reached eight months, or their early sixties in human terms, the animals were extremely frail and decrepit, with spindly muscles, shrunken brains, enlarged hearts, shriveled gonads, and patchy, graying fur. Listless, they barely moved around their cages. All were dead before reaching a year of age\u2014except the mice that exercised.\n\nHalf of the mice were allowed to run on a wheel for forty-five minutes three times a week, beginning at three months. These rodent runners were required to maintain a fairly brisk pace, the equivalent of a person running a fifty- or fifty-five minute 10K (a 10K race is 6.2 miles). The mice continued this regimen for five months.\n\nAt eight months, when their sedentary lab mates were bald, frail, and dying, the running rats remained youthful. They had full pelts of dark fur, no salt-and-pepper shadings. They also had maintained almost all of their muscle mass and brain volume. Their genitalia had not shriveled, and their hearts were as good as new.\n\nEnough about rodents . . . what about women? What does new science say about exercise and aging? A study published in the January 2008 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine confirmed the beneficial impact of exercise at the cellular level. The London-based study was founded on the observation that telomeres (regions of repetitive DNA at the end of a chromosome) in white blood cells erode and shorten during the aging process. Thus, their length and quality are biological indicators of human aging, sort of an internal lifeline. Researchers compared the length and quality of the telomeres in 1,200 sets of twins; within each set, one twin exercised regularly and the other was sedentary.\n\nResearchers found that the longer, healthier telomeres of the active twin indicated a younger biological age\u2014sometimes by as much as nine years\u2014when compared to the biological age indicated by the shorter, degraded telomeres of the sedentary twin.\n\nSix Tips to Move More\n\nDo a Rooski\n\nElaine's morning routine of ten minutes of yoga followed by a brisk four-mile walk had kept her trim for twenty-plus years, but between forty-seven and fifty-four, her waist ballooned from size 8 to size 12. She tried leaving jam off her toast, forgoing afternoon cheese and cracker snacks, and walking an extra mile every day\u2014all to no avail. Her dejection was palpable.\n\n\"Please tell me there is something else I can do. I can't stand the idea of being stuck with this swollen body for the rest of my life.\"\n\nMetabolism slows down by 5 percent each decade. Women also lose 6 to 8 percent of muscle mass per decade. This is bad news because muscle burns the most calories. The final kicker: If, like Elaine, you always have the same workout routine, your muscles will adapt. This means that over time your favorite exercise routine will burn fewer and fewer calories.\n\nMy approach to outsmarting my muscles is rooski play. \"Rooski\" is a football term meaning \"trick\" play. By constantly switching up exercise routines with a variety of new muscle-building, strength-training, and heart-pumping activities, you can keep your muscles constantly guessing\u2014and those calories consistently churning and burning. Sure, you can continue to walk and run, but with options like water aerobics, Zumba dancing, hot yoga, paddleboarding, and rollerblading, there is even more fun to be had.\n\nBuddy Up\n\nLet's face it. Exercising can be boring. Add a friend, spouse, partner, or lover to the mix and suddenly being on the treadmill becomes a lot more interesting. Working out together is not only a great way to catch up, but it makes your calorie-burning time go by a lot faster. Whether you're trying out a kickboxing class, running on the track, or logging time on the elliptical trainer, doing it next to a friend means you have someone to talk and laugh with while you sweat.\n\nTake Up a New Sport\n\nIn grammar school, no one ever picked me for their kickball team, and my college tennis instructor told me I would be better off playing board games. At fifty-three, could there still be hope that I might find a sport that motivated me more toward fitness? Consider these role models: Academy Award\u2013winning actress Geena Davis has stated that she was not an athlete growing up and that her introduction to archery was in 1997. Two years later, Davis was one of three hundred women who vied for a semifinals berth in the US Olympic archery team to participate in the Sydney 2000 Summer Olympics. Don't think of archery as stationary. While it may not be an aerobic sport, it is a great workout for shoulders, back, and abdominal core muscles.\n\nKathy Martin, a busy working mother who had never competed at a track meet, started running in her late forties. In September 2011, she turned sixty. In the year that followed, Kathy ran in thirteen highly competitive races, including the Chicago Marathon and a cross-country championship in Seattle, and she set nine American and two world records.\n\nIn 2012, ninety-three-year-old Tao Porchon-Lynch was awarded the Guinness Book of World Records title of world's oldest yoga instructor. Tao's been teaching yoga for sixty-one years, and it has kept her in amazing shape. She loves doing it, saying, \"I am going to teach yoga until I can't breathe anymore. Then it's going to carry me to the next planet. I love yoga. It brightens my day, and it makes everybody smile.\" Even after having a hip replacement, Tao's still more nimble than many of her students. Oh, if you think yoga is not a \"team sport,\" Tao has more to offer. She's also a competitive dancer in tango competitions and partners with a man who is a whopping sixty-nine years younger.\n\nPost Goals for Friends and Followers\n\nTelling your mirror about your exercise plan may not keep you as focused as posting the proclamation to all 248 of your Facebook friends or tweeting it to dozens of followers. For New Jersey resident Colleen Lange, forty-one, what started out as a little weight-loss contest between a few close friends on Facebook grew into a group of more than twenty participants from four states\u2014some of whom she's never met. \"We post daily\u2014sharing recipes, supporting one another, even talking a little smack for extra motivation,\" she says.\n\n\"Connecting with people who share the same goals is like having your very own cheering section,\" says Rachel Meltzer Warren, RD, a New York\u2013based nutritionist. \"There's always someone there to celebrate when you drop those first ten pounds or help you get back on track if you regain three.\" Personal stories show it works, and the scientific community is paying attention: government-funded studies are under way looking at how technologies like social networking can help young adults achieve healthy weights.\n\nStay in Your PJs\n\nWhen I used time as an excuse, my cardiologist, Pam Rama, MD, said, \"Work out in your pajamas. Forgo the time and trip to the gym by plugging in a DVD or checking out the On-Demand channel on your television to access a variety of fun, fit exercises. I do it all the time.\"\n\nWhile you are in your pjs, consider . . .\n\nSexercise\n\nSex burns calories and can fuel weight loss. The average lovemaking session burns between 50 and 100 calories. Having sex three times a week burns 7,500 calories per year. That's the equivalent of jogging seventy-five miles. The more intense the sex, the more calories burned: up to 15,000 calories annually, which equals more than four pounds of fat burned away. In addition, certain sexual positions will strengthen your core, increase flexibility, and tone tummy, tush, and thighs. For details on a few frisky bedroom moves, check out Chapter 9.\nCHAPTER 4:\n\n[Step 3:   \nDetox Your Home](Content.html#CHAPTER-FOUR--Step-3--Detox-Your-Home)\n\nDisturbing studies show that everyday toxins in your home can disrupt hormone balance, accelerate your aging, and make you and your family sick. Exposure to environmental toxins, called xenohormones, is also emerging as a possible contributor to our fat epidemic.\n\nHow Toxins Make You Fat\n\nThe body accumulates weight-inducing toxins from air and water pollution, toxic foods, medications, and many other elements with which we come into contact. When toxins accumulate in the body, the liver and other organ systems try to filter them out of the body as rapidly as they come in. When the liver is overloaded, the body resorts to using fat to insulate the toxins from damaging the body's tissues.\n\nWhen a person tries to lose weight, it becomes difficult to remove fat that the body is using to protect itself. If a person does find a way to lose the weight, they often will see it come back more quickly, as the body will immediately try to conserve more fat where it was lost. Those who consume the most toxic foods, take medications, and exercise the least will gain weight the fastest.\n\nToxins Are Stealthy Dangers\n\nDanika, Randy's daughter and mother of our granddaughter Lulu, called, sounding worried: \"I thought breast-feeding Lulu was the best way to get our baby off to a healthy start, but I finished reading this book today. Now I'm scared.\"\n\nThe book, Breasts: A Natural and Unnatural History, by Florence Williams, tells the author's story of discovering her own breast milk was loaded with toxins. She says many toxins, including the flame retardants found in her breast milk, leach in from ordinary household items like couches and electronics, which often contain flame retardants. Animal studies have shown certain types of flame retardants interact as xenohormones.\n\nToxins in Danika's breast milk?\n\nThe idea floored me. Nevertheless, I suspected it could be true. While the possibility greatly concerned me, Randy and I encouraged Danika to examine this new information with pragmatism. The short- and long-term health benefits of breast-feeding have long been clinically established. The disturbing reality that xenohormones abound in our everyday environment, potentially accumulating in our bodies and particularly our breasts, should be a call to action. Rather than stop breast-feeding and forgo the proven benefits thereof, a better option could be to determine how women like Danika (and you and me) can decrease exposure to these toxic chemicals on a daily basis.\n\nHidden Estrogen Mimickers\n\nPersons living in the United States and Western Europe have been found to have much higher estrogen levels than persons living in underdeveloped countries. Environmental estrogen-like hormones in the foods we eat and the chemicals we use are often hidden causative agents of estrogen dominance. Estrogen mimickers in the form of chemicals (xenoestrogens), and foods and plants (phytoestrogens), mimic the action of estrogen produced in cells.\n\nAccording to Virginia Hopkins, coauthor of Dr. John Lee's What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Menopause, \"Most of our exposure to xenohormones comes in very small amounts and any one tiny dose won't have a significant effect. The problem is that most of us are exposed to many tiny doses every day, all day and that has a cumulative effect.\" The additive effect of years of chronic exposure to environmental estrogens can contribute to a condition of estrogen dominance.\n\n\"Xeno\" literally means \"foreign,\" therefore xenoestrogens equal foreign estrogens. Xenoestrogens can be found in certain pesticides, herbicides, plastics, fuels, car exhaust, and drugs. Over time, these substances can increase the estrogen load in the body. Xenoestrogens can also be found in many meats and dairy products in the form of chemicals and growth hormones given to the animals.\n\nSome Beauty and Cleaning Products May Harm\n\nMany general hygiene consumer products\u2014such as creams, lotions, soaps, shampoos, perfume, hair spray, and room deodorizers\u2014contain petrochemicals. These compounds often have chemical structures similar to estrogen and can act like estrogen when introduced into the body. Some shampoos targeted at the African American community even advertise their estrogen content. A 2007 cosmetic industry's chemical safety assessments revealed that 57 percent of baby soaps, 34 percent of body lotions, and 22 percent of all personal care products contained petrochemicals. Need I say more?\n\nSimilarly, industrial solvents are another source of xenoestrogens. Industrial solvents are commonly found in cosmetics, fingernail polish, fingernail polish remover, glues, paint, varnishes, cleaning products, carpet, fiberboard, and other processed woods.\n\nDon't Drink the Water\n\nRandy and I reported in From Hormone Hell to Hormone Well how just drinking water from a faucet can raise your body's level of xenohormones. According to Marcelle Pick, ob-gyn NP, \"Researchers worldwide have observed that fish in our lakes and rivers are actually switching gender due to the high levels of effluent estrogens. Even though mainstream media has only begun to recognize this as 'news,' experts have been discussing the problem of pharmaceutical pollution for more than twenty-five years and have known about 'gender-bent' fish for more than ten years now! Some surmise these changes to be caused in part by excessive levels of steroids\u2014largely excreted by humans using birth control pills and synthetic hormonal replacement therapy (HRT). Our water treatment facilities are not designed to remove hormonal pollutants.\"\n\nPlastic Disrupts Hormone Balance\n\nBisphenol A (BPA) is another insidious danger. BPA is a weak synthetic estrogen found in many rigid plastic products, food and formula can linings, dental sealants, and on the shiny side of paper cashier receipts (to stabilize the ink). Its estrogen-like activity makes it a hormone disruptor, like many other chemicals in plastics. Hormone disruptors can affect how estrogen and other hormones act in the body by blocking them or mimicking them, which throws off the body's hormonal balance.\n\nBPA also seems to affect brain development in the womb. In 2011, a study found that pregnant women with high levels of BPA in their urine were more likely to have daughters who showed signs of hyperactivity, anxiety, and depression. The symptoms were seen in girls as young as three.\n\nLimit Consumption of Genetically Modified Organism (GMO) Foods\n\nMost corn and soybean crops grown in the United States are genetically modified, meaning their DNA has been altered to make them more resistant to viruses, bacteria, or insects. GMOs allow farmers to produce larger, healthier crops and make them available at more affordable prices. The uptick in crop production is needed to support rising food demand for a burgeoning populace. The downside is that several studies suggest that GMO foods can have a long-term toxic health impact.\n\nA December 2012 Kaiser Permanente newsletter spoke out against GMOs. The article cautioned that consumers should limit exposure to them by avoiding processed food and, when possible, by choosing organic or \"non-GMO\" labeled produce.\n\nWhat Now?\n\nA few years ago Randy and I   \ntrademarked Protect the Girls\n\nwith the goal of setting forth straightforward steps every woman could do to support her optimum hormone balance, healthy weight, and breast health. Our excellent news is that these same lifestyle actions also support healthy weight and reproductive development for little \"girls\" in our lives.\n\n  * Stick with our Belly Flat Diet for life.\n  * Exercise more with your daughter(s) and all the little girls you love.\n  * Buy organic and non-GMO foods when at all possible. Avoid hormone-treated meats and \u00adpoultry at all costs.\n  * Drink filtered water. Researchers worldwide have observed fish switching gender due to the high level of effluent estrogen in the water. The problem is attributed to high levels of synthetic hormones excreted by women using synthetic HRT or birth control pills. Our water treatment facilities are not designed to remove hormonal pollutants.\n  * Drink water from BPA-free containers.\n  * Never microwave in plastic containers. Avoid using plastic wrap to cover food for \u00admicrowaving.\n  * Detox your diet, home, and beauty regimen. \"Natural\" alternatives can sometimes be pricey. You'll find several terrific resources for money-saving tips for natural and organic living in Appendix B.\n\nCHAPTER 5:\n\n[Step 4:   \nFind a Doctor Who   \nCan Help](Content.html#CHAPTER-FIVE--Step-4--Find-a-Doctor--Who-Can-Help)\n\nForty-nine-year-old Esmeralda was confused. Over the last ten years her once-fit runner's physique had become mushy around the middle. Revving up for an extra mile and chomping on more celery sticks had no sustainable impact on her midriff flab. Now, constantly miserable with hot flashes and night sweats, she was beginning \"The Change.\" She knew she didn't like how she looked or felt. What she didn't know was what to do about it.\n\nDr. Ellison, her family's primary care physician for more than two decades, encouraged her to sweat it out but said, \"If you must have something, I can write a prescription for a synthetic conjugated estrogen with medroxyprogesterone acetate, but I would want you take it the shortest amount of time possible because of potential side effects.\"\n\nLizbeth, her forty-two-year-old sister, thought she had a better answer: \"Stay away from those drugs. I just read an article in a magazine while getting my nails done. It said take a supplement called Mexican Wild Yam.\"\n\n\"All bunk,\" declared best friend Phoebe. \"You need to see a doctor who understands and prescribes bioidentical hormones. I've been on them for seven years and have never felt better. But don't take my word for it. Go get your hormone levels tested.\"\n\nWhat Our Mothers Couldn't Tell Us and Many Doctors Still Don't Know\n\nNo wonder Esmeralda's frustrated. At some point in her life, many women will experience a reality where no matter how committed they are to our Belly Flat Diet, how much they exercise, or how conscientiously they detox their home, unwanted body fat glams back onto the belly and backside, and other uncomfortable symptoms emerge. When this occurs, it means the balance of sex, thyroid, and adrenal hormones has become so off-kilter that lifestyle alone is no longer enough to keep your hormones in balance. It's time for professional medical intervention. If this is your current situation, you must carefully vet the physician or medical professional you choose to help.\n\nFor the most part, mainstream medicine continues to view imbalances of life-sustaining hormones as \"normal.\" Most doctors rarely test for hormone levels and blindly reject the idea that restoring hormone profiles to youthful ranges is preventive health and a sound wellness strategy. Years before irregular bleeding, hot flashes, and\/or night sweats, symptoms of estrogen dominance can include anxiety, depression, fatigue, headaches (including migraines), worsened premenstrual syndrome (PMS), fuzzy thinking and\/or memory loss, breast tenderness, and low libido. As previously described, the consequence of this uninformed viewpoint is that many women are misdiagnosed and prescribed diet pills, diuretics, and\/or antidepressants. Others suffer discomforts and diseases largely correctable and preventable.\n\nThe reason for the confusion is this: Physicians are not adequately educated in medical school about hormone issues associated with the aging ovary. They have been trained to prescribe synthetic hormone replacement therapy drugs (HRT) that multiple studies in the last ten years have been shown to increase a woman's risk of breast cancer, heart attack, stroke, and dementia. Many physicians are unaware that they have other options to prescribe for their patients.\n\nIn the last several years, hormone replacement therapy (HRT) has frequently been in the news, sometimes as the grim reaper of death, other times as the panacea for ageless youth and sexuality. Magazine articles, television shows, and celebrities bandy about terms like \"natural,\" \"bioidentical,\" \"synthetic,\" or \"pharmaceutical\" as if they were interchangeable. They are not.\n\n\"Natural\" hormones are those hormones produced within the body by the ovaries, the testes, the adrenal glands, and the hypothalamus. These hormones travel through the bloodstream to fit into specific hormone-receptor sites located throughout the body and brain. Each hormone receptor site will recognize the specific molecular structure of a single type of hormone. This means that a receptor site for progesterone will not recognize estrogen or testosterone; it will only recognize the molecular structure of progesterone.\n\nHormones produced within your body attach to their receptor sites like keys fitting into locks. The chemical term for this key-and-lock phenomenon is called relative binding affinity (RBA). The hormones your ovaries make have a 100 percent RBA for their respective receptor sites.\n\nWhy Bioidentical Hormones   \nAre Safe and Synthetic   \nHormones Are Dangerous\n\nBioidentical hormones are derived from plants (soybeans or wild yams) using biochemistry processes. The biochemical process assures that the molecular structure of bioidentical hormones is identical to that of the natural human hormones once produced by your body. Just like the hormones your ovaries once made, bioidentical hormones have a 100 percent RBA for those hormone-receptor sites throughout your body and brain. When they plug in perfectly, your body and brain once again receive essential chemical messages that only hormones can deliver. Because our bodies recognize, accept, and respond to bioidentical hormones just as they would to hormones from our ovaries, bioidentical hormone replacement therapy (BHRT) is not only safe, it is extremely effective.\n\nIt is important to realize that the molecular structure of natural human hormones cannot be patented. Consequently, neither can the identical molecular structure of bioidentical hormones be patented. Without a patent, how could a pharmaceutical company protect its formulation and, most important (to the company), its profits? The answer: They can't. Consequently, for almost three quarters of a century, pharmaceutical companies have been developing, patenting, and marketing hormones that have a slightly different molecular structure from natural human hormones and bioidentical hormones. The pharmaceutically produced and patented hormones should be referred to as synthetic hormones. The list of synthetic hormones on the market today includes such brand names as Premarin, Prempro, Menest, Orthoest, Activella, and Femhrt, among many others.\n\nSynthetic hormones have shapes not seen in nature. Synthetic hormones' poor fit with the body's hormone receptors produces unnatural chemical reactions and striking alterations in biologic activity. As a result, their RBA is less than 100 percent, resulting in side effects and health risks. Premarin, for instance, is metabolized horse estrogen with a low affinity for binding with any human hormone receptor. Premarin is also composed of 49.3 percent of the cancer-promoting estrogen estrone (E1). This is almost ten times the ratio that occurs naturally within the body.\n\nIn July 2002, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) halted a large, in-progress study examining the effects of the widely used synthetic hormone replacement therapy medication Prempro, which combines the altered molecular structures for both estrogen and progesterone. (Note: synthetic progesterone is referred to as \"progestin.\") The study, one of five major studies that made up the large clinical trial called the Women's Health Initiative (WHI), was discontinued because the synthetic hormones were found to increase a woman's risk of breast cancer, as well as heart disease, blood clots, and stroke. Later findings linked synthetic hormone replacement to an increased risk for Alzheimer's disease. Findings were published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).\n\nOver the last decade, irrefutable data substantiating the dangers of synthetic hormone replacement has continued to mushroom. The following is excerpted from Prempro's product label warning:\n\n\"Using [synthetic, conjugated from horse urine] estrogens with [synthetic] progestins may increase your chance of getting heart attack, stroke, breast cancer or blood clots.\n\nUsing [synthetic, conjugated from horse urine] estrogens with [synthetic] progestins may increase your chance of dementia. Using [synthetic, conjugated from horse urine] estrogen alone, e.g., Premarin, may increase your chance of getting cancer of the uterus. What is the most important information I should know about PREMPRO and PREMPHASE (combinations of estrogens and a progestin)?\n\nDo not use estrogens with progestins to prevent heart disease, heart attacks, strokes, or dementia (decline of brain function)\n\nUsing estrogens with progestins may increase your chances of getting heart attacks, strokes, breast cancer, or blood clots\n\nUsing estrogens with progestins may increase your chance of getting dementia, based on a study of women age 65 years or older\n\nDo not use estrogen alone to prevent heart disease, heart attacks, or dementia\n\nUsing estrogen alone may increase your chance of getting cancer of the uterus (womb)\n\nUsing estrogen alone may increase your chances of getting strokes or blood clots\n\nUsing estrogen alone may increase your chance of getting dementia, based on a study of women age 65 years or older\n\nYou and your healthcare provider should talk regularly about whether you still need treatment with PREMPRO or PREMPHASE.\n\nIf bioidentical hormone replacement is safe and has been proven to have multiple, positive, long-term health benefits, you may wonder why more physicians continue to recommend and prescribe synthetic hormones versus BHRT. The answer is a mix of ignorance, confusion, and marketing hype.\n\nRandy's Story\n\nLike every other physician of his generation, Randy was trained in medical school to prescribe synthetic hormones, the then-popular Premarin and Prempro, and he did for his first few years after he opened his medical practice. Early on, however, he became greatly concerned by the side effects he observed in his patients, for example, the weight gain, fibrocystic breasts, and increased mood swings. Convinced these could be early road signs for later health disasters, he began to research a safer alternative.\n\nPrior to attending medical school, Randy was a compounding pharmacist specializing in pharmacognosy, that is, natural, plant-based medicines. He drew on this background and also reached out to physician researchers, including Dr. John Lee (author of What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Menopause and What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Breast Cancer) and Dr. Joel Hargrove, then chief of the Department of Reproductive Medicine at Vanderbilt University.\n\n\"After reading Dr. Lee's books and reviewing Dr. Hargrove's research, I was fully convinced BHRT was the safest and most efficacious therapeutic option for my patients suffering symptoms of hormone level decline. This was 1996. I was certain that in a year or two, BHRT would be as common a protocol among my physician peers as performing routine pap smears or washing hands before and after a patient's physical exam.\"\n\nUnfortunately, the traditional medical community was slow to wake up. For more than a decade, Randy's peers ostracized him for prescribing \"that bioidentical snake oil.\" Their unfounded derision cost him more than his pride. In 2003, Randy called me one night from his truck. He was crying. \"They said if I don't stop prescribing BHRT, I'm out.\"\n\nRandy had just left the board meeting of North Florida OB\/GYN, a physicians' group-practice-without-walls of which he was a partner. These types of organized physician groups benefit members by centralizing business functions (such as billing, human resources, and payroll), using their combined purchasing strength to negotiate lower costs of medical supplies and negotiating higher reimbursement, for example, payment from insurance companies.\n\nIn the 1980s I served as executive vice president for PrincipalCare, a company that bought and sold ob-gyn practices, so I was readily familiar with how these organizations work. I understood immediately that if Randy exited this group and went solo, the financial impact would be humongous.\n\n\"Randy, this is a big deal. Maybe you should reconsider. If you have to take on responsibilities for all those business functions, I can guarantee your overhead costs are going to increase by a minimum of 30 percent, and how much insurance companies will pay you will decrease by 40. That's a 70 percent negative financial hit.\"\n\nHe did not hesitate.\n\n\"My patients matter more than money. Synthetic hormones harm women, put their lives at risk. BHRT is literally life-giving. I don't have a choice. I'll have to figure the business stuff out on my own.\"\n\nBy choosing to continue to prescribe BHRT for his patients despite looming detrimental business and financial implications, Randy stayed true to the spirit of the Hippocratic Oath by not harming his patients.\n\nIn 2008\u20139 two unlikely champions shifted the science of BHRT into the spotlight. Soon, many of those same physicians who had shunned Randy were calling for advice.\n\nTwo Unlikely Bedfellows\n\nThe about-face in how the traditional medical community diagnoses and treats hormone imbalances has been galvanized by two unlikely bedfellows: respected Republican senator Charles Grassley and revered Democrat Oprah Winfrey.\n\nIn December 2008, Senator Grassley wrote pharmaceutical giant Wyeth about the company's practice of medical ghostwriting. The senator then initiated an investigation and obtained documents from recent lawsuits involving Wyeth's synthetic hormone therapy products, for example, the Premarin and Prempro family of drugs, showing how Wyeth hired a medical communications and education company, DesignWrite, to draft review articles regarding the breast cancer risk of hormone therapy. In other words, Wyeth paid DesignWrite to produce legitimate-appearing medical articles saying only those things the company wanted doctors to believe.\n\nDid you just gasp? If you didn't, consider this: because doctors across the United States were fed inaccurate information about the safety of synthetic hormone drugs, millions of women's lives were put at risk\u2014very possibly your own or that of a woman you love.\n\nSenator Grassley had the gonads to take on Big Pharma. He and the US Senate Special Committee on Aging chairman and Wisconsin Democrat Herb Kohl drafted the Physician Payments Sunshine Act, signed into law in 2011. This law now requires public disclosure of all financial relationships between physicians and the pharmaceutical, medical device, and biologics industries, a big step toward pharmaceutical company transparency and truth in advertising.\n\nIn 2009, Oprah brought the conversation to a crescendo. \"The veil has been lifted,\" she declared on air, describing her personal experience with BHRT. \"If you are planning on living past thirty-five, this is something you need to know.\"\n\nOprah interviewed medical expert Christiane Northrup, MD, board-certified ob-gyn and internationally recognized author of multiple trailblazing books, including Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom and The Wisdom of Menopause, and Robin McGraw, author of What's Age Got to Do with It? Women across America took note and called their doctors. Those doctors pooh-poohing BHRT soon discovered once-loyal patients hanging up and dialing a doctor who would listen.\n\nHow to Avoid a   \nThelma and Louise\u2013style Plunge\n\nWe have now firmly established that with age, hormone levels shift and decline. This does not happen in one fell swoop. It takes years and sometimes decades. Without help, you set yourself up to be a living metaphor of Whack a Mole. If you do not frequent a Chuck E. Cheese pizza parlor, you may not know this game. Here's how it's played: A child holds a mallet over a tabletop with multiple holes the size of a large coffee can. When the motorized mole pops up through a hole, the child squeals, attempting to slam its head. If the mallet hits the mole, the child scores a point. The metaphor: Age is the mallet. Without the right mix of the right kinds of hormones, you are the mole. BHRT can be your escape from this fiendish cycle.\n\nBHRT is a personalized medical approach to restoring optimum hormone balance. Specimens of saliva, blood, or urine can be analyzed to determine exactly which hormones you are deficient in. Then, based on your personal hormone level profile, a prescription can be individualized to give you back exactly what you are missing. These one-size-does-NOT-fit-all prescriptions are compounded onsite in a special compounding pharmacy.\n\nEven with BHRT, what works for you today will likely not work for you sometime in the future. Why? Because with age, levels will continue to shift. The following is a synopsis of my personal experience.\n\nI was forty-three when Randy and I met. I knew nothing about BHRT and was skeptical. Since turning forty, I had gained two to three pounds per year, making me ten pounds over my preferred weight. I was also having difficulty sleeping.\n\nRandy tested and analyzed my hormone levels, quickly diagnosing me as \"estrogen dominant.\" He recommended his over-the-counter bioidentical progesterone cream. Within a month, I dropped the extra pounds and was sleeping through the night. I must admit, I was surprised.\n\nAt forty-five, my periods had become irregular, my energy low, and I had once again moved my skinny jeans to the back of my closet. More advanced blood analysis determined progesterone levels had dipped even lower. I now needed prescription-strength bioidentical progesterone. I had now also become deficient in estrogen and testosterone, so Randy also prescribed a bioidentical prescription for each. With my new triumvirate of hormones, I thought I would be \"fixed\" for good.\n\nWrong.\n\nThree months following my forty-eighth birthday, I morphed up two pant sizes without any change in eating or exercising habits. New blood work analysis diagnosed a kerflooey thyroid system. A prescription for natural thyroid was added to my regimen.\n\nToday, at fifty-three, I no longer have periods, meaning I am officially postmenopausal. Over the last year, forgetfulness has nagged me, and, as my daddy would say, \"My get-up-and-go got up and went.\" Recent hormone level testing identified a pregnenolone deficiency.\n\n\"What the heck is pregnenolone?\" I asked Randy.\n\n\"Pregnenolone is an essential hormone for women of all ages. The average young adult produces about 14 mg per day. As with other hormones, however, pregnenolone production declines with age. At age seventy-five, the body produces about 60 percent less pregnenolone than it did at age thirty-five. This has led scientists to consider pregnenolone supplementation as a way to turn back the clock on aging and counter the consequences of this dramatic drop in hormone levels.\"\n\nI now have a bottle of pregnenolone next to my toothpaste and swallow a capsule every morning.\n\nPassionate About Progesterone\n\nCan you identify one hormone consistently deficient in all women over thirty-five? The answer is progesterone. Like a middle child, this second hormone in your sex hormone trilogy is often overlooked and its importance underestimated. I am passionate about helping women understand the critical importance of bioidentical progesterone supplementation. Here's why:\n\nProgesterone is often called the \"feel good\" hormone because of its calming, positive effect on moods. It also has a relaxation response that helps you sleep better. Wondering about your always-pooching tummy? Too much estrogen causes abdominal bloating while progesterone is a natural diuretic.\n\nAt a cellular level, progesterone does much more for our overall health and well-being. Evocative clinical studies by Drs. Kenna Stephenson and Helene Leonetti give evidence of progesterone's benefit to both heart and bone health. Researchers at Emory University have found a link between progesterone levels and long-term, optimum cognitive functioning.\n\nMost electrifying are the scientific studies investigating progesterone's role in cancer protection. Progesterone balances, or neutralizes, estrogen's propensity to promote cell growth. Unchecked cell growth is a precursor to cancer. Many studies validate how restoring optimum progesterone levels to eliminate an underlying cellular condition of estrogen dominance can have a cancer-protective effect.\n\nIf you want to support your body's optimum hormone balance for life, I recommend you consult a medical professional trained in the intricate endocrinology of hormone balance, preferably one board-certified by the American Academy of Antiaging Medicine (A4M).\n\nHowever, if you do nothing else, review all the clinical evidence underscoring the long-term health benefits of progesterone and consider using an over-the-counter bioidentical progesterone cream. Never, ever, ever take any form of estrogen\u2014even bioidentical\u2014without pairing it with bioidentical progesterone.\n\nTrust Your Instincts\n\nWhen you need a doctor or medical professional skilled in restoring hormone balance, do your due diligence regarding their training and board certifications in age-management medicine, as well as their clinical reputation for patient satisfaction. Ultimately, trust your gut: Is this someone who will listen to you? Is this someone you want on your team?\n\nMore advice on finding a medical professional trained and certified in hormone-level analysis, a compounding pharmacy, and a listing of vetted over-the-counter bioidentical progesterone creams are also included in Appendix B.\nPART TWO:\n\n[More Natural Tips to   \nDial Back Your Age](Content.html#PART-TWO--More-Natural-Tips--to-Dial-Back-Your-Age)\n\nOur Belly Flat Plan described in Part 1 is a great start to looking and feeling younger. Now I want to help you see and feel more positive impact more quickly. Chapter 6 describes four more belly-blasting secrets (I am betting three out of four of these you are really going to like). Chapter 7 provides a list of super supplements to accelerate weight loss at a cellular level and fill in any remaining nutritional gaps. Chapter 8 explains why what is good for your waist is also great for your face. Chapter 9 reveals why sexually vital women have decisively better quality of life and then gives options for rejuvenating aging private parts, restoring sexual vitality, and tapping into your innate feminine creative energy.\nCHAPTER 6:\n\nFour More Belly-Blasting Secrets\n\nYou love spending time with your girlfriends, but did you realize the power you have over each other when it comes to your weight? Your chances of being overweight or obese increase half a percent with every friend in your network who is obese, finds a November 2010 study from Harvard. That more than adds up: Your chances of obesity double for every four obese friends you have, say researchers. Even if that friend lives thousands of miles away, your chances of gaining weight still go up, according to a 2007 New England Journal of Medicine study. That may be because your perception of being overweight changes\u2014living larger seems acceptable since the heavy person is a friend.\n\nHang Out with Fit Girlfriends\n\nExperts believe your fit girlfriend's lifestyle and behaviors subconsciously rub off on you, but you don't have to ditch overweight friends to lose weight. In fact, research from Oxford finds making a pact to get fit and trim together is a bonus. Once a friend starts to lose weight, you have a greater chance of losing your unwanted pounds as well. According to Holli Thompson, women's health author and founder of NutritionalStyle.com, \"Some interesting studies have been released lately about how integrative those gal-pal relationships are and how they affect our size and ultimately our health.\"\n\nStudies out of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) confirm that common lifestyle, body weight, and body mass index are consistent in groups of girlfriends. Healthy friends tend to stick together and support one another's healthy lifestyle choices through exercise, better food choices, and even their optimistic outlook. Makes sense, doesn't it?\n\nHarvard University published studies in 2007 confirming that obesity spreads among friends, and that your chances of becoming obese or gaining weight is in large part dependent upon who you're hanging out with. Arizona State University recently went further with Harvard's study and published more findings, investigating three different pathways toward behavior that might attempt to explain this phenomenon. They found the \"monkey see, monkey do\" behavior to be the strongest; people don't necessarily think about body weight when they make decisions based on what their group of friends is doing. It seems to be very much a pack mentality when it comes to food, which is why you often see people of the same size together.\n\nYou've seen that in action. Your friend says, \"Forget the diet; I'm diving in for the ribs and chocolate cake.\" You're pulled. She's doing it\u2014why can't you? You want to have fun too. You find yourself eating more and more, \"having fun,\" and twenty pounds later, wondering what happened.\n\nThe MIT study shows that the opposite can be true. Your girlfriends can support you and lift you up to better choices. Use the power of the \"monkey see\" mentality to make a date with your girlfriends\u2014go for a power walk, check out the local vegetarian restaurant, meet at Barre class, and try not to make it all about the food. You need those girlfriends, and they need you. Realize the importance of their lifestyles and work toward healthier foods and activities for yourself and all your BFFs.\n\nPour a Small Glass of Wine\n\nSadie adjourned her last meeting as Temple board chair by inviting the entire board to lunch. Seated outside at the Sunset Grille, the women kvetched about the latest market tumble, gubernatorial fund-raising, and the pluses and minuses of long-wearing nail polish. Overhearing Sadie request a wine-by-the-glass list, conversation screeched to a halt.\n\n\"Celebrating?\" Kendra queried, disapproval in her eyebrows.\n\n\"Just sticking to my diet,\" Sadie smiled.\n\n\"Your diet?\" Neta squealed, tugging at her too-tight knit top.\n\n\"Yes, my diet. A few months ago our daughter Amy attended a medical conference in Boston on obesity and health risks. A paper was presented showing that women who were light to moderate drinkers were less likely to gain weight over time. Amy knows how frustrated I've become watching my weight creep up so she e-mailed the link to the study and urged me to give it a try. For two months now I've been having a little bit of wine every day. Without doing anything else different, I'm down eight pounds.\"\n\nStaying well hydrated catalyzes weight loss and staves off poor brain function, lethargy, and low moods. Water, herbal teas, broth-based soups, low-fat milk, and fresh produce all boost hydration.\n\nWine, though not hydrating, provides antioxidants and has been clinically correlated with less weight gain for women as they age. As stated earlier, Randy and most doctors agree that, a \"splash of wine\" is a healthful component of our Belly Flat Diet. Studies back them up: In 2010 researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston published the first long-term study on women's drinking habits and weight gain. The study involved 19,220 women over the age of thirty-eight who were of normal weight. After thirteen years, women who consistently consumed a moderate amount of alcohol per day were 30 percent less likely to be overweight and nearly 70 percent less likely to be obese than nondrinkers.\n\nOnce again, there's a hormone connection. The relationship between alcohol consumption and insulin resistance evidences a U-shaped curve: insulin resistance was shown to be minimal in women with regular mild to moderate (3 oz.) alcohol consumption and higher in both heavy drinkers and women who never had a drink.\n\nFinally, for ladies loving the vine, a weight loss solution to toast!\n\nEat Some Chocolate\n\nA 2012 study found that people who frequently ate chocolate had a lower body mass index (BMI) than people who didn't. Is it time to ditch fat-free for fudge?\n\nFor the study, published in the March 26 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, researchers examined more than one thousand healthy men and women who were free of heart disease, diabetes, and cholesterol problems. They were all enrolled in another study that measured the effects of cholesterol-lowering statin drugs, but for this study researchers assigned them questionnaires that gauged how often participants chowed down on chocolate.\n\nThe researchers found that the participants\u2014who were an average age of fifty-seven\u2014ate chocolate an average of twice a week and exercised roughly 3.5 times per week. But the more frequent chocolate-eaters had smaller BMIs, a ratio of height and weight that's used to measure obesity.\n\nWhat explains the effect? Even though chocolate can be loaded with calories, it's full of antioxidants and other ingredients that may promote weight loss. Research also shows that a little bit of chocolate can be good for your health. Compared with people who rarely ate chocolate (about one bar per month), the people who ate the most chocolate (slightly more than one bar per week) had a 27 percent and 48 percent reduced risk of heart attack and stroke, respectively.\n\nPlease don't read this section and believe I am giving you carte blanche to eat a chocolate bar a day. As with the recommendation on wine, the key is moderation, but researchers' definition of \"moderation\" can vary. After reviewing the scientific literature and clinical studies, Randy recommends an average amount of 6.7 grams of chocolate per day, corresponding to a small square of chocolate twice or three times a week.\n\nChew\n\nDr. Pam Rama is a superb cardiologist who has risen to the zenith of her career as the medical director of Baptist Health System's HeartWise program while also raising four children. I don't think I could tie her shoelaces. Add that to the fact that she is drop-dead gorgeous, and it would be easy to be intimidated, except she is down-to-earth and fun.\n\nWhen we scheduled dinner to talk about this book, I didn't realize until the menu was in my hands that I would be intimidated about what to order when eating with my cardiologist. I chose a green salad, grilled salmon, and steamed broccoli.\n\nActually, I thought, that is exactly what I would have ordered anyway.\n\nOur food arrived. I took a couple of bites, still chatting away. Pam stopped me.\n\n\"Chew.\"\n\n\"Huh?\"\n\n\"Chew more. Chew each bite at least thirty times, forty is better.\"\n\n\"Really?\" I responded, imagining with this new directive we could be at the restaurant until dawn. \"Why?\"\n\n\"New research shows chewing to have many health benefits, including weight control. Check it out.\"\n\nResearchers from Iowa State University (ISU) presented findings at April 2012's Experimental Biology Conference demonstrating that Dr. Rama's tip of taking your time by chewing longer and slower during a meal really can help you eat less. This weight loss tip is based on the fact that the longer you chew, the more the hunger hormone, called ghrelin, is suppressed, while another hormone, called leptin, whose role is to stimulate feelings of fullness, increases.\n\nIn the study, twenty ISU students were given a metronome and told to chew every time it ticked. The students were divided into two groups where the metronome ticked for fifteen times with one group and forty times with the other group before the two groups were allowed to swallow their chewed food. During the study, plasma glucose and hormone levels were measured, as well as the students' sense of appetite. What the researchers discovered was that the students who chewed more actually ate less than the students who chewed less.\n\n\"When people chewed the pizza forty times before swallowing, there was a reduction in hunger, preoccupation with food, and a desire to eat,\" said James Hollis, an Iowa State assistant professor of food science and human nutrition who coauthored the study.\n\nThe reason why chewing longer is healthier is this: The longer you chew your food, the more the food will be exposed to saliva, and as a result more nutrients will be absorbed. This is especially true for nuts and seeds, as well as fruits and vegetables, as they contain hard cellulose fibers that cannot be broken down anywhere but in the mouth. This is why when you eat nuts, corn, or other vegetables, they just seem to pass through your system if they are not properly chewed.\n\nWhen your body is able to absorb all the nutrients from the foods that you eat, you will have much higher energy levels. On top of that, no energy will be wasted on eliminating foods that the body cannot digest or break down.\nCHAPTER 7:\n\nSuper Supplements\n\nIn cages at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, sits a group of mice who don't act their age. Unbelievably, they don't seem to be aging at all. For several years, the Canadian mice have been drinking a cocktail of thirty dietary supplements and vitamins. The concoction seems to be keeping the rodents young.\n\nScientists say the mice that were given the anti-aging cocktail had an unusual spring in their step. They had no loss of physical activity compared to a group of mice who didn't imbibe. In fact, those mice showed a 50 percent decrease in physical activity. Astonishingly, the combination of vitamins and supplements lengthened the life span of the rodents that took it by 11 percent. Did the Canadian scientists discover the legendary Fountain of Youth? If you are a mouse, they did.\n\nForget the mice, what about us girls? Can certain supplements keep us healthier? Can swallowing some pill truly help balance our hormones? Is there solid medical science to validate how nutritional supplements slow down or reverse our aging, or could our health and wallets be preyed upon by some vitamin and supplement manufacturer promising to turn back our inner clock?\n\n\"Yes\" is the correct response to all the questions above. Succinctly, yes, there is solid medical science to support the benefits of nutritional supplementation\u2014and yes, you could easily spend way too much money on anti-aging supplements that provide no true health benefits. This chapter provides a framework to help you sort through the hype and clutter to help you make your best informed choice about whether or not supplements are right for you.\n\nWho Needs Supplements?\n\n\"In an ideal world, no one would need dietary supplements,\" says Randy. \"Our Belly Flat Diet would provide all the vitamins, minerals, and nutrients your body needs no matter your age. Unfortunately, even women who do their best to 'eat right' will likely need some nutritional supplementation, because with age our bodies lose the ability to metabolize and store needed nutrients.\"\n\nStatistics indicate that dietary supplement use is widespread among US adults age twenty and older. The percentage of the US population who use at least one dietary supplement increased from 42 percent in 1988\u201394 to 53 percent in 2003\u20136 (Figure 1). Women were found to be more likely to use one or more dietary supplements than men. More recent industry survey results, many of which point to usage in 2011, settle around the 70 percent mark. Vitamins and dietary supplements (VDS) enjoy broad acceptance in the United States, where nearly half of all users reported using more than one supplement daily, and nearly 10 percent took five or more supplements a day.\n\nOne might argue that the growing trend of supplement use is a result of a baby-boomer consumer-driven frenzy to ward off the Grim Reaper, but guess what? Odds are, like Randy, your doctor and nurse are not betting on the food on the table to provide all the nutrients he or she needs.\n\nAn online survey administered in October 2007 to 900 physicians and 277 nurses by Ipsos Public Affairs for the Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN), a trade association representing the dietary supplement industry, found that 72 percent of physicians and 89 percent of nurses used dietary supplements regularly, occasionally, or seasonally. Regular use of dietary supplements was reported by 51 percent of physicians and 59 percent of nurses.\n\nThe most common reason given for using dietary supplements was for overall health and wellness (40 percent of physicians and 48 percent of nurses), but more than two-thirds cited more than one reason for using the products. When asked whether they \"ever recommend dietary supplements\" to their patients, 79 percent of physicians and 82 percent of nurses said they did. Also, almost all said they recommend supplements to their patients, whether or not they took them themselves.\n\nMelt Belly Fat More Quickly\n\nDrawing on his original training as a compounding pharmacist specializing in pharmacognosy (plant-based medicine), Randy continuously researches and tests hordes of nutritional supplements to ascertain their true mechanism for influencing estrogen metabolism. In concert with our Belly Flat Diet, he recommends a select group of supplements that he has found to expedite the elimination of too much circulating estrogen, thereby enhancing healthy hormone balance and promoting weight loss and weight management more quickly. They are:\n\nCalcium D-Glucarate\n\nCalcium D-glucarate is a natural substance that promotes the body's detoxification process and supports hormonal balance. Calcium D-glucarate facilitates the detoxification process by inhibiting the reabsorption of estrogen-like toxins into the bloodstream, allowing them to leave the body and be excreted in the feces. In animals, calcium D-glucarate has been found to lower unhealthy estrogen levels and thereby inhibit the development or progression of cancer.\n\nDiindolymethane (DIM)\n\nDIM is a phytonutrient akin to the indole-3-carbinol (I3C) found in cruciferous vegetables. DIM has unique hormonal benefits. It supports the activity of enzymes that improve estrogen metabolism. DIM helps support PMS symptoms, fat loss, and healthy estrogen metabolism.\n\nThe B Vitamins\n\nThe B vitamins, such as B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, B12, and folate, do a lot within your body to support estrogen detoxification. Conversely, if your body is deficient in B vitamins, you will have higher levels of circulating estrogens. By now, you definitely know that increased estrogen levels lead to estrogen dominance, and estrogen dominance will most certainly lead to weight gain and the inability to get that weight off.\n\nB vitamins also impact estrogen activity for the hormone receptors at the cellular level. Clinical studies have shown that high levels of intracellular (e.g., within the cell) B6 can decrease the binding response at the estrogen hormone receptor site. What happens at the cellular level is sort of like an internal game of musical chairs: if the music stops and B6 sits down in the \"estrogen chair,\" then the estrogen molecule is out of the game.\n\nVitamin B complex supplements also may help with a variety of health conditions, including anxiety, depression, fatigue, heart disease, premenstrual syndrome, and skin problems. In addition, many people take a vitamin B complex to increase energy, enhance mood, improve memory, and stimulate the immune system.\n\nBecause the B vitamins work together to perform such vital tasks at the cellular level, Randy recommends you take the entire B complex, not just one or two of the B vitamins.\n\nVitamin E\n\nVitamin E has been shown to reduce PMS-related breast tenderness, nervousness, depression, headache, fatigue, and insomnia. Low vitamin E levels were linked to estrogen dominance. Furthermore, vitamin E deficiency has been found to inhibit estrogen detoxification.\n\nCalcium-Magnesium Combo\n\nMagnesium is another supplement that helps the body eliminate excess estrogen. For women, magnesium levels tend to fall at certain times during the menstrual cycle. These shifts in magnesium levels can upset an optimum calcium-magnesium ratio. In proper balance, the body better absorbs and assimilates the calcium it needs and allows calcium to migrate out of tissue and organs where it doesn't belong.\n\nWithout magnesium, calcium may not be fully utilized. Underabsorption of calcium can lead to menstrual cramps. Similar to a vitamin E deficiency, when the body does not have enough magnesium to support calcium absorption, many women report PMS symptoms, such as mood swings, fatigue, headaches, and sleeplessness.\n\nPremenstrual chocolate craving is a phenomenon that has puzzled a great many physicians. They have been unable to explain why some women have this overwhelming urge to eat lots and lots of chocolate right before their periods, yet at other times of the month, their chocolate cravings remain under control. Women find their PMS-related chocolate cravings abate when taking a calcium-magnesium combo.\n\n7- Keto Dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA)\n\nDehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) is one of the hormones produced by the adrenal glands. After being secreted, it circulates in the bloodstream as DHEA-sulfate (DHEAS) and is converted as needed into other hormones. Since it is a precursor to testosterone, DHEA may help build muscle. It is very unusual for anyone under the age of thirty-five or forty to have low DHEA levels. As we age, however, the body's production of DHEA declines, so people older than forty can most definitely become DHEA deficient.\n\nWhile many anti-aging enthusiasts are familiar with DHEA, far fewer are likely to be as aware of its metabolite, 7-Keto DHEA, which functions within the body to safely boost immune function and help reduce body fat. The term 7-Keto DHEA is, in fact, a brand name for the chemical compound 3-acetyl-7-dehydroepiandrosterone. Human blood levels of both 7-Keto DHEA and DHEA tend to rise and fall in a similar pattern with age: increasing until the twenties, beginning to decline in the thirties, and continuing to decline until the levels are reduced by about 50 percent by age fifty. Clinical studies have shown that as 7-Keto DHEA levels go down in middle age, body weight tends to go up.\n\n7-Keto DHEA stimulates weight loss through a process called thermogenesis. This term refers to the creation of heat at a cellular level. The more thermogenesis, the higher the metabolic rate and the more fat that is literally burned up as energy. Studies have also demonstrated that 7-Keto does not accumulate in the body over time and is free of unhealthy side effects.\n\nBecause 7-Keto DHEA is a natural hormone metabolite, it benefits the body in two ways: (1) it helps restore hormone balance while, at the same time, it (2) works internally to melt away those unwanted pounds.\n\nChitosan\n\nChitosan is processed from the shells of crustaceans such as shrimp, lobster, and crabs. Basically stated, chitosan acts as a superfiber. The swelling action of chitosan creates a sensation of feeling full, thereby serving to suppress the appetite. In addition, the superfiber characteristics of chitosan foster a natural cleansing process that is extremely vital to weight loss.\n\nChitosan is also able to absorb between six and ten times its weight in fat and oils. It then converts the fat molecules into a form that the human body does not absorb. When chitosan causes less fat to enter the body, the body has to turn to previously stored body fat to burn for energy. The net result: weight loss.\n\nSix Vitamins and Supplements to   \nSupport Hormone Balance\n\nCalcium D-glucarate: Take 1,000 mg twice per day\n\nDiindolymethajne (DIM): Take 200 mg per day\n\nB-Complex: Take 1 capsule per day\n\nVitamin E: Take 400 IU per day\n\nCalcium-magnesium combo: Take a ratio of two parts calcium (1,400 mg) to one part magnesium (750 mg)\n\n7-Keto DHEA: Take 100 mg per day\n\nChitosan: Take 750 mg three times a day\n\nEvery Woman Also Needs . . .\n\nI take more than a dozen supplements a day. That sounds like a lot to swallow, but my approach to nutritional supplementation is not hit or miss. I rely on my team of physician experts\u2014Randy and Drs. Lori Leaseburge and Pam Rama for guidance. Their shared medical opinion is that every woman older than thirty-five should also take the following supplements:\n\nMultivitamin\n\nThe Harvard School of Public Health suggests a daily multivitamin, calling it a \"great nutrition insurance policy.\" But what about the Wall Street Journal article \"Study Finds Multivitamins Don't Cut Risk of Heart Attack\" (November 5, 2012)?\n\n\"No single pill should be intended to replace diet and exercise,\" says Dr. Leaseburge. \"There is no magic bullet, but a good multivitamin will help even out the ups and downs of women's sometime irregular diet and lifestyle habits. And, with regard to that article and the studies cited within, I would question the quality of the multivitamin used in the study.\"\n\nNot all vitamins are manufactured equally (see more on how to choose quality supplements in the pages that follow).\n\nVitamin D\n\nAccording to Randy, \"Most people\u2014and even their physicians\u2014are unaware of the important role that vitamin D plays in retarding aging, promoting energy and health weight maintenance, boosting the immune system, and reducing your risk of cancer. And, unfortunately, most people are unaware that their body is deficient in needed vitamin D levels. Though vitamin D is naturally produced by the human body when exposed to sunlight, most American adults spend most of their time indoors, and when they are outside, they usually wear sunscreen. Even though my medical practice is in the sunny state of Florida, I routinely test my patients' vitamin D levels.\"\n\nRandy is not alone in his medical opinion. Dr. Oz states that \"it is commonly believed that over 50 percent of Americans are vitamin D deficient.\" When unrecognized and untreated, vitamin D deficiency can lead to more serious conditions, including osteoporosis, high blood pressure, heart and inflammatory problems, multiple sclerosis, and chronic pain, among others.\n\nCoQ10\n\nOur bodies produce CoQ10, a substance that's necessary for cells to function. It helps produce an important molecule known as adenosine triphosphate, or ATP. ATP is the fuel that helps power the energy-producing center of the cell known as mitochondria. As we get older, our body produces less CoQ10, and as a result, our cells don't function as they should. According to the Mayo Clinic, those who suffer from chronic diseases such as Parkinson's, cancer, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease have lower CoQ10 levels than healthy people.\n\nResearchers also believe that taking CoQ10 as a supplement can help prevent heart disease. It helps prevent blood from clotting and may act as an antioxidant, which protects our cells against the effects of free radicals that can damage cells and cause heart disease. Moreover, researchers suspect CoQ10 supplements may improve the health of diabetics by managing blood sugar, cholesterol, and blood pressure.\n\nOmega-3 Fish Oil\n\nFish oil helps reduce internal inflammation in the body. According to the American Heart Association, omega-3 fatty acids decrease cardiac arrhythmias, reduce risk of sudden heart attack, and lower blood pressure, triglycerides, and cholesterol levels. The essential omega-3 fatty acids help to alleviate pain, depression, and uterine cramps and pain at the onset of menstruation. One of the main causes of PMS appears to be excess production of pro-inflammatory eicosanoids. Fish oil contains high quantities of eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), which helps the body produce anti-inflammatory eicosanoids, providing relief.\n\nOmega-3 fish oil helps to energize and hydrate cells of the body, adding shine, gloss, and health to skin and hair. It also protects the skin against the harmful ultraviolet rays of the sun. Consumption of omega-3 fish oil has also been found to act as a stimulant for hair growth.\n\nWhen patients complain of burping up a fishy taste when taking fish oil supplements, Dr. Rama says, \"Store them in your freezer. The temperature won't change your ability to swallow or digest them, but the fishy taste goes away.\"\n\nProbiotics\n\nProbiotic products contain bacteria and\/or yeasts that assist in restoring the balance in our gut. Probiotics are believed to protect us in two ways. The first is the role that they play in our digestive tract. We know that our digestive tract needs a healthy balance between the good and bad bacteria, so what gets in the way of this? It looks like our lifestyle is both the problem and the solution. Poor food choices, emotional stress, lack of sleep, antibiotic overuse, other drugs, and environmental influences can all shift the balance in favor of the bad bacteria.\n\nWhen the digestive tract is healthy, it filters out and eliminates things that can damage it, such as harmful bacteria, toxins, chemicals, and other waste products. On the flip side, it takes in the things that our body needs (nutrients from food and water) and absorbs and helps deliver them to the cells where they are needed.\n\nThe idea is not to kill off all of the bad bacteria. Our body needs both bad and good bacteria. The problem occurs when the balance is shifted and we have more bad than good. An imbalance has been associated with diarrhea, urinary tract infections, muscle pain, and fatigue.\n\nThe other way that probiotics help is the impact that they have on our immune system. Some physicians believe that this role is the most important. Our immune system is our protection against germs. When it doesn't function properly, we can suffer from allergic reactions, autoimmune disorders (for example, ulcerative colitis, Crohn's disease, and rheumatoid arthritis), and infections (for example, infectious diarrhea, Helicobacter pylori, skin infections, and vaginal infections).\n\nCaution: Be Certain of Quality\n\nDietary supplements are regulated by the FDA, but not as drugs or as foods. The rules for dietary supplements are as follows: Manufacturers don't have to seek FDA approval before putting dietary supplements on the market. In addition, companies can claim that products address a nutrient deficiency, support health, or are linked to body functions\u2014if they have supporting research and they include a disclaimer that the FDA hasn't evaluated the claim.\n\nManufacturers must follow good manufacturing practices to ensure that supplements are processed consistently and meet quality standards. These regulations are intended to keep the wrong ingredients and contaminants, such as pesticides and lead, out of supplements, as well as make sure that the right ingredients are included in appropriate amounts.\n\nOnce a dietary supplement is on the market, the FDA is responsible for monitoring its safety. If the FDA finds a product to be unsafe, it can take action against the manufacturer or distributor or both, and it may issue a warning or require that the product be removed from the market.\n\nThese regulations provide assurance that dietary supplements meet certain quality standards and that the FDA can intervene to remove dangerous products from the market. The rules do not, however, guarantee that supplements are safe for everyone. Because many supplements contain active ingredients that have strong effects in the body, these products can pose unexpected risks. For example, taking a combination of herbal supplements or using supplements together with prescribed medications could lead to harmful, even life-threatening results. For this reason, it's important to talk with your doctor about the supplements you intend to take.\n\nAnd not all supplements are of equal quality. Manufacturers of supplements are responsible for ensuring that the claims they make about their products aren't false or misleading and that they're backed up by adequate evidence. However, they aren't required to submit this evidence to the FDA.\n\nAccording to Randy, \"Supplement manufacturers often add in a variety of fillers to their vitamin and mineral supplements for numerous reasons: easier and faster production, colorants to make products more eye-appealing, coatings to make pills and capsules easier to swallow. The reasons for using fillers aside, the real problem lies in how these fillers impact your body and health. Simply put, it's not good. Just as processed foods are loaded with additives and fillers, the same goes for vitamins. Any supplement that has additives and fillers may be harmful to your health in the same way those processed foods are. Some unhealthy fillers include hydrogenated oils, artificial colors, and magnesium stearate, which is used as a lubricant so that the vitamins don't stick to one another or the equipment being used. The controversy surrounds a few studies on magnesium stearate. One study links this compound to creating a suppressed immune system. Other studies show that this 'chalk' creates a biofilm in the body. This biofilm blocks the body from absorbing any of the needed nutrients. Titanium oxide is another filler widely used as a pigment in vitamins. However, the research is now showing that exposure to this metal (along with other metals) can lead to problems with the immune function in the body.\"\n\nHow Do You Choose?\n\nWhen it comes to choosing which and what brand of supplement, I want you to be a smart consumer and do your homework. Don't just rely on a product's marketing. Look for objective, research-based information to evaluate any health or medical claims. To get reliable information about a particular supplement, I recommend you:\n\n  * Ask your doctor or pharmacist. Even if they don't know about a specific supplement, they may be able to point you to the latest medical guidance about its uses and risks. Today there are proven higher-quality supplement companies whose integrity is enhanced because they choose to only be sold through medical professional offices. We offer Randy's signature brand in our National Medicine Pharmacy and on our website, www.agelessandwellness.com. Metagenics, Xymogen, and OrthoMolecular brands are three others in this league.\n  * Look for scientific research findings. Two good sources include the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) and the Office of Dietary Supplements. Both have websites that provide information to help consumers make informed choices about dietary supplements.\n  * Contact the manufacturer. If you have questions about a specific product, call the manufacturer or distributor. Ask to talk with someone who can answer questions, such as what data the company has to substantiate its products' claims.\n\nCHAPTER 8:\n\nWhat's Good for   \nYour Waist Is Great   \nfor Your Face\n\nMy grandmother used to say that a smiling, kind, and well-mannered woman will dazzle no matter the age or shape of her features. Good news: That truism did not go out with hats and gloves. When I consider all the women interviewed for this book, the one that stands out to me as hands-down most beautiful is Susan Eister Estes of Richmond, Virginia. A glorious blond with an enigmatic smile and ready laugh, Susan will likely continue turning heads no matter her age. What makes Susan's beauty especially astonishing, however, is that she maintains such a countenance while devotedly caring for a husband with Alzheimer's disease in their home.\n\n\"I try to never feel sorry for myself or slump around,\" says Susan. \"I get up, get dressed, get busy and always put on lipstick.\"\n\nBut, as we age, we may need more than a great smile and bright tube of lipstick to look our prettiest. Good news: our Belly Flat Plan will not only help you lose those pounds and have more energy, it can help turn back the clock on your face! Here's how:\n\nBelly Flat Diet   \nRejuvenates Your Face\n\nA study published in March 2010 in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology supports the idea that certain vitamins help to protect our skin. Better yet, many of the same foods that can boost your defenses against skin cancer (the most common type of cancer) will also help keep your skin looking younger and smoother and ward off wrinkles. Our bonus: they are all belly-blaster foods! Here's how they promote youthful beauty from the inside out:\n\nVitamin C\u2013Rich Foods\n\nIn 2007, research published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition showed that eating more vitamin C\u2013rich foods, such as citrus fruits, strawberries, broccoli, and red peppers, may help ward off wrinkles and age-related dryness. Vitamin C's skin-smoothing effects may be due to its ability to mop up free radicals produced from ultraviolet rays and also its role in collagen synthesis. Collagen is fibrous protein that keeps skin firm, and vitamin C is essential for collagen production.\n\nPink grapefruit is a vitamin C\u2013rich, super skin-beautifying food. Pink grapefruit gets its pink-red hue from lycopene, a carotenoid that may help to keep your skin smooth. In a study published in 2008 in the European Journal of Pharmaceutics and Biopharmaceutics, researchers found that of the twenty individuals studied, those who had higher skin concentrations of lycopene had smoother skin.\n\nOmega-3-Rich Fatty Fish\n\nOmega-3-rich fish may help keep your skin looking youthful and prevent skin cancer. The omega-3 fatty acids DHA and EPA (docosahexaenoic and eicosapentaenoic acids, respectively) found in salmon, tuna, sardines, and mackerel may shield cell walls from free-radical damage caused by UV rays, according to a 2009 study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Researchers followed the eating habits of more than 1,100 Australian adults for approximately five years and found that for those who ate a little more than 5 ounces of omega-3-rich fish (such as salmon) each week, the development of precancerous skin lesions decreased by almost 30 percent.\n\nEPA has been shown to preserve collagen, a fibrous protein that keeps skin firm. EPA in combination with DHA helps to prevent skin cancer by reducing inflammatory compounds that can promote tumor growth, according to Homer S. Black, PhD, professor emeritus in the Department of Dermatology at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.\n\nWhole Grains\n\nWhole-grain bread, pasta, and cereal are surprisingly high in antioxidants (whole-wheat cereal, for example, contains a comparable amount to most fruits and vegetables), and eating additional antioxidants is key to youth-proofing your complexion, says Lisa Drayer, RD. \"The levels of the body's natural antioxidants decrease with age, so adding them to your diet becomes even more important.\"\n\nAlmonds\n\nEating a handful of almonds (a one-ounce serving is about 20 to 24 whole nuts) every day boosts levels of vitamin E, one of the most important antioxidants for skin health.\n\nRed Wine and Dark Chocolate\n\nThe magic effect red wine and dark chocolate can have on our skin comes from antioxidants. The dark skin and seeds of the grapes in red wine are rich in polyphenols, a type of antioxidant that includes resveratrol. The antioxidants in red wine soak up damaging free radicals that play a role in aging. Dark chocolate also has a high concentration of polyphenols and provides the same benefits of protecting cell membranes with anti-inflammatory properties.\n\nConsider Farm to Face\n\nWe've talked about why you should choose organic foods when possible and, also, the importance of detoxing your home from chemicals that can silently sabotage your health while accelerating your aging and putting children at risk for precocious puberty. Now consider the potential benefits of 100 percent natural skin care.\n\nWhile the previously quoted statistics linking petrochemicals in common skin care and beauty products are disturbing, I must admit I have personally struggled for years to find an organic skin-care line that not only feels and smells good but works to decrease lines and signs of aging. My good news is that today there are a growing number of excellent organic lines on the market with dynamic women leading this skin-care revolution. Several excellent companies are listed in Appendix B, but here I want to give a shout-out to two women who started their companies motivated by personal experience.\n\nKelly Teegarden created her organic line after a long struggle to regain her health after a near-terminal bout of thyroid cancer. Kelly says, \"I am convinced that Kelly Teegarden Organics (KTO) is my 'why' for getting cancer. I thank God I am still here to help as many people as I can on their crusade to health.\" KTO products are available online and at Whole Foods.\n\nSimilarly, while pregnant and helping care for her stepfather with cancer, Tata Harper determined to do everything she could to keep toxic petrochemicals out of her beauty regimen. \"Beauty was and is a priority for me, but health is an even bigger one. Nevertheless, I did not think women like me should have to sacrifice one for the other.\"\n\nTata drew from her training as an industrial engineer to work with a team of chemists, biologists, botanists, agriculturists, and aromatherapists from around the globe to create her proprietary 100 percent natural products.\n\nTata says, \"Beauty is a way of living, not a product. What a woman puts on her face and the skin of her body should match who she is on the inside, as well as how she chooses to live. If our eyes are the mirrors of our souls, then our faces and skin are a reflection of our choices. Why wouldn't every woman choose natural, healthy skin-care products that can help increase our visible beauty versus those that can make us sick? Why wouldn't we make natural beauty an inside-out nonnegotiable priority?\"\n\nExercise Helps You Look Younger\n\n\"Anything that promotes healthy circulation also helps keep your skin healthy and vibrant,\" says dermatologist Ellen Marmur, MD, author of Simple Skin Beauty: Every Woman's Guide to a Lifetime of Healthy, Gorgeous Skin and associate professor of dermatology at Mount Sinai School of Medicine. By increasing blood flow, exercise helps nourish skin cells and keep them vital.\n\n\"Blood carries oxygen and nutrients to working cells throughout the body, including the skin,\" says Marmur. \"In addition to providing oxygen, blood flow also helps carry away waste products, including free radicals, from working cells. Contrary to some claims, exercise doesn't detoxify the skin. The job of neutralizing toxins belongs mostly to the liver. But by increasing blood flow, a bout of exercise helps flush cellular debris out of the system. You can think of it as cleansing your skin from the inside.\"\n\nThe boost in blood flow and oxygen to the skin cells also carries nutrients that improve skin health. Also, when you exercise, your skin begins to produce more of its natural oils, which helps skin look supple and healthy.\n\nGet More Beauty Rest\n\nMost people have experienced sallow skin and puffy eyes after a few nights of missed sleep. But it turns out that chronic sleep loss can lead to lackluster skin, fine lines, and dark circles under the eyes. When you don't get enough sleep, your body releases more of the stress hormone cortisol. In excess amounts, cortisol can break down skin collagen, the protein that keeps skin smooth and elastic.\n\nA person may look a decade older in response to stress-induced changes in facial tissues that often accompany insomnia. Few people are aware, however, that chronic insomnia inflicts significant damage to skin tissues, from premature aging to disorders like eczema, psoriasis, and atopic dermatitis.\n\nLack of sleep also upsets the balance of two more hormones: ghrelin and leptin. When you sleep less than eight hours, ghrelin levels go up and leptin levels go down. Ghrelin is the hormone that makes you feel hungry while leptin signals the brain that you are full. Sleep-deprived women frequently say, \"I am hungry all the time,\" but their drive to eat has nothing to do with a big appetite or weak willpower and everything to do with their hormones.\nCHAPTER 9:\n\n[Pump Up   \nYour Pelvic Power](Content.html#CHAPTER-NINE--Pump-Up-Your-Pelvic-Power)\n\nAging research indicates sexually vital women have decisively better quality of life indicators and self-report a more positive aging experience. Many women make the mistake of equating sexual vitality to sexual activity and carnal mirth, particularly intercourse. Don't! No matter your age, sexual vitality is our inner, God-given energizer for joy and creative juiciness. If you have fun in the sack, enjoy the bonus while burning the calories.\n\nMultiple factors dim sexual vitality and dampen creative juiciness, including aging private parts. The good news: we can fix those.\n\nWhen There's a Drought Down There\n\nMary Nell parked her car across the street and looked in the rearview mirror, making certain her hat, scarf, and sunglasses obscured most of her face, then took a deep breath to wind up her courage. A few years back, she would never have imagined stepping into a shop that sold adult movies and sex toys, but she was desperate. Intercourse had become painful, often with skin tearing and bleeding. She had embarrassingly bought a lubricant from the drugstore, but it itched and burned, and the day after using it, she woke up with a nasty urinary tract infection. That night Nigel began sleeping in the guest room down the hall.\n\nIronically, the next week Pastor Duncan asked her and Nigel to host a small group of five couples in their home every Wednesday. \"I can think of no better twosome to lead this six-session video-based study on how intimacy in marriage is part of God's plan. Nigel and Mary Nell, will you do it?\"\n\nMary Nell wasn't sure if God looked less favorably on hypocrites or loose women, but crossing the street and walking into a store with a purple neon penis in its window, she felt like both.\n\nLack of vaginal moisture and lubrication does not mean you are entering the life stage of the dried-up crone, nor does it correlate to lack of love or lust. If your vagina is so dry that intercourse is uncomfortable or painful, no lingerie, sexy video, hours of foreplay, or amount of prayer or meditation will get your juices flowing.\n\nVaginal dryness is more common for perimenopausal and menopausal women but is often a surprising and depressing issue for younger, regularly menstruating women. Studies cited by the National Institutes of Health also show that, because estrogen levels fall after childbirth and remain suppressed while breastfeeding, vaginal dryness can be a problem for new moms. Also, women with premature ovarian failure, polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS), vulvar dystrophy (a condition where the outer part of the vagina becomes dry and the skin thickens) and vulvodinyia (a condition where there is pain around the opening of the vagina where there is no identifiable cause) are at risk.\n\nAnd if you think vaginal dryness is an issue for only the sexually active, think again. Women not having intercourse or engaging in manual or oral stimulation of the genital area often complain of vaginal dryness. Some say the soreness, burning, and itching makes them uncomfortable sitting, standing, exercising, or urinating.\n\nIf your vagina is as dry as an emery board, stop feeling damaged or just plain old. Evaluate recommended lifestyle changes and potential treatment options, and work with a knowledgeable medical professional as needed. Tips for improving vaginal lubrication include:\n\nReplace what's missing: Synergistic bioidentical estrogen, progesterone, and\/or testosterone replacement can reinvigorate and nourish fragile vaginal tissue.\n\nClean up carefully: Certain personal hygiene products, such as soaps, bubble baths, deodorants, and even douching with water, can contribute to vaginal dryness.\n\nWake up your clitoris: Arousal stimulates lubrication; however, a woman's clitoris (her primary genital organ of arousal) can become less sensitive with age, hormonal changes, or the aftereffects of a hysterectomy. Wake up your clitoris by embracing the miracle of masturbation. If you enjoy some variety, a vibrator can also be very handy. Good news for the accessory-loving diva: vibrators come in a variety of styles and colors. (Check out the Deluxe Rabbit Pearl Vibrator in pink.)\n\nPlay with toys: The vaginal wall can atrophy (weaken), causing foreplay and intercourse to become uncomfortable to painful. Try a sex toy such as a vaginal dilator or dildo to increase the diameter of your vagina.\n\nAdd foreign moisture wisely: Over-the-counter lubricants may be helpful, but read the labels before you buy. For instance, there is a difference between a lubricant to increase vulvo-vaginal comfort and a vaginal moisturizer hydrating the mucous membrane lining of the vaginal canal. Also, some ingredients in certain over-the-counter products are absolute no-no's because they create a medium for bacteria transfer and growth, thereby increasing risk of urinary tract infection. Recommended resources for over-the-counter lubricants are included in Appendix B.\n\nUrine Is Never an   \nAttractive Accessory\n\nFour blocks into her walk, Terri stopped, cagily adjusted her underwear under dark, baggy sweat pants, then sighed and turned home. Despite an absorbent liner, her panties were dangerously damp. Continuing around the golf course would, at best, mean uncomfortable chafing and, at worst, a full-fledged accident before she reached the clubhouse just six blocks down on her carefully mapped-out route of accessible restrooms. Tears seeped under her sunglasses.\n\nWalking four miles with my neighborhood gang used to be my favorite part of the day, she cried inside. Now even walking alone risks humiliation. This bathroom business is ruining my life. I'm afraid to go to church or a basketball game with Thomas. What if I leak and people around me smell pee pee? And when it comes to sex, Thomas has been patient, but how long can that last?\n\nUrine is unattractive, and damp panties are uncomfortable. Still, one in six women experience overactive bladder (OAB). While more common in older adults, OAB can strike women of all ages. For women like Terri, OAB puts the brakes on a great deal of joy and quality of life. But it doesn't have to be this way.\n\nDid you know that there is more than one kind of leaky bladder? \"Stress incontinence\" is when small amounts of urine escape when you sneeze, pee, laugh, or exert pressure on the bladder by lifting or exercising. \"Urge incontinence\" is when you have to go now and urine escapes before you reach the toilet.\n\nWhy urine leakage happens during sex is easy enough to understand. Sexual activity can place extra pressure on the abdomen, causing urine to leak. This causes many women to avoid sex, as it makes them feel unclean or unattractive. Women suffering from stress incontinence usually can tell when during intercourse they are most likely to leak. But urge incontinence occurs unpredictably, making it difficult to feel sensual and\/or fully enjoy sex. The chance of embarrassment is also greater\u2014much more urine leaks during an episode of urge incontinence compared with stress incontinence, and women with urge incontinence often leak during orgasm.\n\nWhichever type of incontinence you might suffer, an integrated approach can help get you out of the bathroom sans the absorbent pads in your panties. New surgical techniques (bladder slings, bladder neck suspension, the injection of bulking agents such as collagen, or sacral nerve stimulation via a small, pacemakerlike device surgically placed under the skin) may very well give you back your life. Before you make that decision to go under anesthesia, talk with your doctor about nonsurgical approaches, including physical therapy and pelvic-floor yoga exercises.\n\nYou and your doctor have most likely heard how Kegel exercises help strengthen the pelvic floor. I would wager that neither you nor your doctor knows that the National Institutes of Health recognizes an ancient and sacred yoga practice called \"Mula Bandha\" as a confirmed method to treat and even prevent stress incontinence, or that spring-loaded sex toys have been clinically proven to strengthen the interior pubococcygeal (PC) muscle surrounding the urethra and control the flow of urine.\n\nHave It Your Way\n\nYouthful romps in the hay are typified by easy erections, voluminous lubrication, surefire penetrative sex, and explosive orgasms. As the decades roll by, this sequence frequently loses its sizzle. Reasons may vary. Perhaps you just aren't as \"into it\" as you used to be. Maybe his erections aren't as quick or hard. Perhaps your lovemaking routine has gone stale. Never you mind. It's high time you move past male-oriented, wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am sexual encounters anyway.\n\nWhile women have been conditioned to regard lack of desire or any degree of sexual dysfunction as not-to-be-discussed disappointments, I encourage you to throw back the covers and consider this: The time it takes you to get in the mood or for his equipment to get into gear can be all yours. Most women need about twenty minutes of thinking about sex before their bodies are primed for full response. Now your precoitus warm-up can benefit you both. Ask for and receive all the snuggling, caressing, and oral sex you have craved for years and he'll have plenty of time to gladly oblige.\n\nConsider the following tips to spark a fresh attitude toward friskiness:\n\nRead a book or watch a video on tantric sex. The goal of tantric sex is not the big \"O\"; instead, the techniques are intended to prolong the sexual experience, increase sexual energy, and heighten the experience of intimacy with your partner. Some women report that by channeling the sexual energy that would normally leave their bodies during orgasm, they achieve a state akin to temporary enlightenment. According to Christiane Northrup, MD, author of Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom, \"Through the prolonged, intimate connection with another, women's nasty stress hormone levels lower while health- and life-enhancing oxytocin and serotonin levels shoot through the roof.\"\n\nTurn it off with a flare. Look him in the eye, kiss him fully on the lips (tongue preferred), then pull back and put your finger on the off button of your cell phone. Next, walk your phone into another room and leave it. Return and reach for his. Repeat. Then undress as you walk back. Odds are he won't worry about the messages he might be missing.\n\nExplore new regions. The base of your spine is erotica waiting, so turn over and let him touch and taste. Also ask him to gently stroke and kiss your belly just above the pubic hairline.\n\nGo to new heights. Hike to the top of a fire tower, book a room on the twenty-fifth floor with a floor-to-ceiling window, or make out in a hot-air balloon. The point is, when you have little between the two of you but sky, your sense of limitation falls away. And that breathless feeling of being almost off the edge will heighten the urgency and excitement of every touch.\n\nHave a mint. Place a jigger of peppermint schnapps or cr\u00e8me de menthe on your bedside table. Put your finger in the liquor, then in his mouth. Have him do the same with you. Then experiment with edible finger painting. The cool mint sensation plus breath and tongue on breasts and genitals guarantees a new kind of buzz.\n\nTeach him the joyful game of start and stop. This is a tried-and-true method of helping men last longer in bed. Pay attention to when he's approaching his point of no return, then use body language (or ask) to change positions. He'll calm down a bit and most likely oblige you with a few more minutes of oral or manual stimulation until he is fully aroused again.\n\nTrade report cards. So what if you can't get pregnant? You are never too old to contract sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). Recent statistics show a growing rate of STDs in the over-fifty crowd, even among the nursing home population. So, anytime you are sexually active with a new partner, don't be coy. Buy the condoms until he provides current lab work validating negative results for all STDs. And be fair\u2014give him yours.\n\nNo Sex, No Worries:   \nYou Are a Cocreative Powerhouse\n\nI hate bugs, particularly roaches and swarming things that bite. Consequently, a mid-August trip to a home on the banks of North Florida's Ichetucknee River was a guaranteed descent into personal purgatory.\n\n\"Tell me again why you're going to see some old lady in the woods?\" Randy asked.\n\n\"Kathleen told me this woman Dailey is an unbelievable artist who makes exquisite masks and figures out of dead animal bones. I'm interviewing her for my chapter on cocreation. You know, about how when you partner with the Divine, you can create new life even from things broken, decaying, or thought dead.\"\n\nRandy rolled his eyes. \"Sounds like modern-age voodoo, but whatever. If you're going to spend the night, you should take my pistol. What do you really know about this woman? Who knows what kind of weirdo she might be?\"\n\nForgoing the pistol, I loaded up on insect repellant, pen, paper, and a tape recorder. After two and a half hours on isolated roads, I stopped to pee behind a bush. Didn't occur to me to fear snakes, and, for the moment, bugs were on hiatus, so I walked through dense trees down to the riverbank. A white-tailed doe raised her head to stare at me before returning to drink from crystalline water. Unnerved, I hurried back to my ordinary car, turned on National Public Radio, and determined to find Dailey's house before sunset.\n\nSoon after, I pulled into a dirt driveway next to a petite red cabin nestled under oaks and pines. A note on the door read, \"Ran out for wine. Be back in a jiff. Come on in.\"\n\nI cracked the door and stood transfixed.\n\nWith light golden walls, a dusk blue ceiling, and sheer peach silk curtains, the last sunbeams through the windows transformed Dailey's studio into a veritable sunset. On the walls hung intricately jeweled, hand-painted animal skulls, as large as bison and as small as a cardinal. They, too, sent prisms of color across walls and floor. The fattest cat I had ever seen raised its head from a crimson pillow, blinked, then lowered back to sleep.\n\nA rich chuckle broke my reverie. \"I'm so glad you got here in time. Was afraid you would miss my nightly rainbow.\"\n\nI turned to face a wiry woman with short gray hair and dancing eyes\u2014one of the most enigmatic, sensual women I have ever encountered.\n\nAs with Dailey, art can be sensual outlet and expression for many women. Others express their innate sexuality through dance and movement. In fact, clinical data validates that women often go beyond intercourse to enliven their sexuality in a number of creative modalities.\n\nA survey of more than eight hundred women between the ages of forty to one hundred found that almost half of the women surveyed had not had sex in a month, yet they declared themselves \"sexually satisfied.\" On the surface, these findings in the January 2012 edition of the American Journal of Medicine appear contradictory, a conundrum. Then the fine print comes into focus.\n\nThe study's authors suggest that, for older women, the sexual experience moves far beyond literal intercourse. They suggest the experience of nurturing, affirming, and sustaining relationships become female-enlivened sexual activities. This new definition of sexuality embraces our ageless and ever-present creative power; in other words, our divinely derived, cocreative power.\n\nWomen are natural-born incubators and creators. In our reproductive years, our innate sexual vitality, plus copulating with a male, plus fertilization of the ovum (egg) can lead to children. This sequence, termed \"procreation,\" works properly for a limited number of decades. Also, a man\u2014or at least his sperm\u2014is requisite.\n\nOn the other hand, sexual vitality, plus an openness to partner with your Higher Power, combined with inspired action unifies Spirit and matter. This \"cocreative\" phenomenon can occur at any age but, typically, becomes richer and deeper with age.\n\nSometimes a woman's cocreative energy becomes tangible via art, music, writing, gardening, leadership development, new business ventures, sports enthusiasm, or philanthropic passion. Other times, a more subtle, interior birthing occurs, one evidenced by deeper joy and greater serenity regarding life's inevitable beauty and brutality.\n\nI was in my early thirties when my professional functioning in a male-dominated healthcare business environment had become flat, stale, and lackluster. A friend suggested I try something new to recharge my creative batteries: a drumming circle. The idea was way out of my comfort zone, but I decided to give it a roll. Intent on always being fashion-appropriate, I donned calf-high boots (in case of snakes or varmints), bought a flowered peasant dress from a vintage store, and put my hair in braids.\n\nI arrived at a farmhouse on the outskirts of Nashville looking like a past-my-prime, wannabe flower child. Thankfully, the other women in pressed jeans and button-down shirts didn't comment. They simply opened their circle a little wider. Then a beautiful redhead named Suchi Waters Benjamin (who now lives in Maui and is the founder of the Center for Co-Creative Living) handed me a small drum and began to sing. My master's level training in neural processing, for example, using right-brain rhythms to reprogram linear left-brain thinking, immediately (and for the very first time) shifted from academic to personal.\n\nWriting is something I never imagined doing or had any formal training in. Still, the sequence between inspiration and transcription merges my inborn feminine creativity with my more masculine inclination to get things done. Like a mother holding a newborn, I behold each word, page, and book a miracle. I fully believe Fountain of Truth was incepted two decades ago in my drumming circle on that Tennessee farm.\nPART THREE:\n\n[A Fresh Look at Anti-aging   \nTruths As Old As Dirt](Content.html#CHAPTER-THREE--Step-2--Move-and-Groove)\n\nForty-something Hollis Wilder appears to effortlessly bridge superbeautiful, supersavvy and supermogul. A wife, mother of two, successful businesswoman, and owner of cupcake stores Sweet! by Holly, Hollis is best known as two-time winner of Cupcake Wars and star of the Cooking Channel. She has also written a sure-to-be-bestseller cookbook, Savory Bites: Meals You Can Make in Your Cupcake Pan. Talk about a paradigm shifter: cupcake pans as our template for healthy portion control!\n\n\"Getting older is not easy but it's worth it. I like myself more every decade, and I'm told I look better and better with time,\" Hollis said firmly. \"I attribute my positive aging to three things. The first is that I am clear on the fact that I am a product, a consequence, of my choices. You know, the whole 'reap what you sow' philosophy. I clearly own the truth that who I am, who I become, is up to my attitude, my preparation, and my effort. My life continues to improve because I choose to be tenaciously positive regardless of setbacks or sad things that happen, and I work hard at the other stuff too . . . health and lifestyle choices upping my ante of being sharp, svelte, and super-fun at fifty, sixty, seventy, and beyond. The second is I have a tight group of girlfriends. They know me. They both have my back and call me on my crap. My girlfriends are my go-to lifeline. The third is I am honest about the squirrelly stuff.\"\n\n\"What does that mean?\" I put my pen down and leaned in.\n\n\"Let's first clarify what it means to get better, not older. Enviable women have lives that, on most days, overflow with meaning, love, joy, and good health. I say 'most days' because we all have bad days, live on a flawed planet, and know sad things happen to good people. For the most part, however, women who feel and look great no matter their age experience life on the upswing. My experience is that women aging poorly have individual versions of sad, squirrelly little secrets. They constantly blame their less-than-optimum personal circumstance on others or bad luck. They play life out as victims. They whine. Women aging poorly might say they want a fit body and good health, but their actions tell another story. Maybe it's drinking too much or food bingeing. Maybe it's choosing mindless television over an hour of exercise. Maybe it's staying in a dysfunctional marriage. Maybe it's overspending. It doesn't matter. I am convinced that the lies we tell ourselves and act out every day accelerate our decay.\"\n\nHollis mirrored what I heard from hundreds of women aging in enviable fashion: We are the consequence of our individual choices and actions. This mind-set is psychologically termed a \"strong internal locus of control.\" Conversely, people with an \"external locus of control\" believe the quality of their life depends on luck and other people. They are the whiners and victims.\n\nStuff Happens\n\nLive long enough and stuff happens. First, and sometimes second and third, loves fizzle. Career aspirations go flat, or there is downsizing at work. People we thought we could count on disappoint. Children get in trouble, break our hearts. Sometimes retirement funds blow away like a dandelion in the wind. You, or someone you love, gets really sick. Then there is death, as immutable as gravity but oh-so-much-more heartsickening when the loss is someone you love.\n\nWomen with a strong internal locus of control refuse to be buckled by stuff, including inevitable mistakes, disappointments, heartaches, and the physical marks of years passing by. They learn\u2014and intrinsically grow more desirable, beautiful, and resilient\u2014as a result. Women lacking a strong internal locus of control tend to squander precious time and energy grieving both what happened to them and what never did. Women lacking a strong internal locus of control also tend to use food as an emotional buffer.\n\nFood for Thought\n\nClare Lavendar, PhD, holistic nutritionist and dear friend, recently introduced me to the concept of primary foods versus secondary foods. The philosophy is the foods you eat are secondary to all the other things that feed you\u2014your relationships, career, spirituality, and exercise routine. Those things are regarded as primary foods. Secondary foods are what you put into your mouth and swallow. The premise is, if your primary foods are in balance and satisfying, you won't crave foods that sabotage your waistline, your health, and how quickly you age.\n\nI reached out to Nan Allison, MS, RD, LDN, coauthor with Carol Beck of Full and Fulfilled: The Science of Eating to Your Soul's Satisfaction. Nan's ongoing clinical work and research examines why we choose to eat the way we do. She explained: \"Most people, and particularly women, use food to celebrate, comfort, nurture, distract, and numb out. Anxiety, loneliness, boredom, and anger all send triggers to our brain that associate with eating. Most women then use food like a drug in an effort to quell their core feelings. Some women do the reverse. They don't eat, literally attempting to starve their feelings away.\"\n\nAccording to Evelyn Tribole, MS, RD, and Elyse Resch, MS, RD, FADA, authors of Intuitive Eating, \"Food won't solve the problem. If anything, eating for an emotional hunger will only make you feel worse in the long run. You'll ultimately have to deal with the source of the emotion, as well as the discomfort of overeating.\"\n\nWhat You Need Now\n\nA strong internal locus of control is not for purchase, and no one can give it to you. It is a deeply ingrained thinking pattern that typically starts early in life and then develops over a period of years, but it's never too late to learn how to think differently. No matter how old or young you are, you can start right now to build your internal locus of control muscles. The following will help:\n\n  * Faith in a Higher Power\n  * A good group of girlfriends\n  * A commitment to laugh often and play more\n  * Taking up a sport\n  * A good marriage\n  * A purpose to give back now and leave a legacy once gone.\n\nCHAPTER 10:\n\nFaith\u2014A Proven Path to Wellness\n\nIn my twenties and thirties I was an overachieving, stressed-to-the-max, whirling-dervish workaholic. My astonishing evolution into a more calm, joyful, and purposeful person began accidentally. On a lark with a girlfriend, I found myself naked in a hot tub overlooking Big Sur, conversing with an elder Benedictine monk (Brother David Steindl-Rast) about the meaning of my life.\n\nDon't spritz your knickers thinking I am going to tell you that to decelerate your aging, you too have to go cross-country and get into a hot tub with a monk. As we get older, there is less need for extreme drama; moreover, active faith does not require a kickoff event. Millions of women of faith confirm that an ingrained and intentional belief in a Higher Power works best when quietly radiating through each moment of every day.\n\nLike the mystical Sufis, I personally believe there are as many paths to God as there are breaths of children. Accordingly, when I speak of a Higher Power, I am not endorsing a specific religiosity. Whatever name you call your God or Higher Power, I am rallying you to press into your faith.\n\nI have grown very intentional about nurturing my faith. I start every morning with a \"coffee with God\" hour. I pray, journal, and read my devotionals. I also surround myself with Spirit-enlivened women.\n\nPhyllis Tousey is right down the road, reading her Bible as the sun rises over the Atlantic Ocean. I can close my eyes and feel the sparks from Debbie Austin's prayers igniting her ministry. Rhonda Marko tells me she prays aloud in her car. With the advent of Bluetooth technology, people pulling alongside think she is talking on the phone. Stacey Graham shares an inspirational quote on her voice-mail message. Passing time during chemo treatments, Linda Cunningham texts me daily meditation messages. Marjean Coddon nudges me to bridge from my Christian heritage to also embrace the wisdom of the Kabbalah. Sue Fort White and I both read Daily Word and God Calling. I know if I call her at any time to ask advice, we'll begin our conversation from the same spiritual context.\n\nConsider the following: spiritually active women are healthier, have longer life expectancies, and experience enhanced quality of living.\n\nThe Science of Spirituality\n\nAscending the steps of the red-brick, white-columned house of eighty-five-year-old Velma Morris, I cursed the airline that lost my bag. Mrs. Morris was the South's first recognized female religious writer. It had taken me more than three years to finagle an interview. Now, sans black suit with pearls, I would be on her doorstep wearing none-too-clean stretch jeans, an old sweatshirt, and a thirty-year-old pair of clogs (yes, clogs; they slide off easy in the airport security line and keep my feet warm on the plane). So much for first impressions.\n\nI knocked, expecting a maid to open the door, take one look, and shoo me off the premises. Instead Mrs. Morris greeted me in black sweats and a white apron, looking like a plump, blue-haired penguin. A stereo blaring Frankie Valli's \"Big Girls Don't Cry\" drowned out her greeting.\n\nOver deviled eggs, celery stuffed with homemade pimento cheese, and ham sandwiches on oven-warm bread, we got down to business. Our conversation would leave an inestimable mark on me.\n\n\"Please don't call me a 'religious writer.' That label makes me feel like I am selling God as if he were a good used car. I simply write about everyday people asking the same questions humans have asked since the beginning of time: Why do men fight wars? Why do children get cancer and other terminal illnesses? Why are some people blessed with prosperity so stingy? Why haven't you caused the penis to drop off every man who participates in or condones female genital mutilation? What's really going to happen to me when I die?\n\n\"Honey, I'm a Christian and Reverend Morris was an ordained Presbyterian minister, but if he were alive he'd tell you the same thing I'm about to. The common denominator in the sacred texts of all faiths is this: Choosing to be at peace regardless of what's going on in your life or our world is feet-hit-the-street faith in action. In the daily battle between good and evil, sickness and health, it's our ultimate trump card.\"\n\nChoosing to be at Peace regardless of what's going on   \nin your life or our world is feet-hit-the-street-faith in action.   \nIn the daily battle between good and evil, sickness and health,   \nit's our ultimate trump card.\n\nMayo Clinic backs up Mrs. Morris's premise. \"Nurture your spirit no matter what you call your source of inspiration,\" a Mayo Clinic health letter advises, then cites research for credibility. Duke University studied four thousand people for four years and found that those who attended church weekly had a 28 percent lower mortality rate overall when compared to those who didn't belong to a church community. The researchers also considered income, education, chronic diseases, other illnesses, health habits, exercise, smoking, drinking, body fat, social participation, and psychological status. None of these factors explained the results.\n\nOther research shows people who are regularly involved in religious and spiritual activities statistically live longer than those who are not. Church attendance was the strongest predictor of longevity. Various theories have been put forth to explain this spiritual dimension of longevity. Physical explanations include the fact that people who are involved in religious groups benefit from the social networks they form. If they get sick, others look out for them. Religious beliefs may also lead to less risky behavior.\n\nIn addition, a well-developed sense of spirituality may help people better cope with life's tough psychological demands. In a later study done by Duke University of 1,700 older Americans, researchers at Duke University Medical Center found that those who attend religious services had stronger immune responses. About 60 percent of the men and women surveyed attended religious services at least once a week. Blood tests showed that regular attendees were less likely to have a high level of an immune system protein involved in age-related diseases. This study suggests a direct positive effect.\n\nPrayer, Meditation, and the Relaxation Response\n\nSurveys indicate that nearly 90 percent of patients with serious illness will engage in prayer for the alleviation of their suffering or disease. Among all forms of complementary medicine, prayer is the single-most widely practiced healing modality. Prayer is the second-most common method of pain management (after oral pain medication) and the most common nondrug method of pain management.\n\nA well-noted study by Dr. Herbert Benson, a cardiovascular medicine specialist at Harvard Medical School, documented the potential healing benefits of spiritual practices, such as prayer and meditation (as well as hypnosis and other relaxation techniques). Benson demonstrated that the body responds to these practices with what he calls the relaxation response, which consists of \"a lowering of the heart rate, blood pressure, and breathing rate; a reduced need for oxygen; less carbon dioxide production.\" In effect, the relaxation response is the opposite of the stress response and can be consciously used to modulate the impact of stress.\n\nSome of the effects of prayer may be due to the larger context within which prayer occurs, which is usually one of religious commitment and social support.\n\nMedical researchers believe prayer improves health in the following ways:\n\nThe relaxation response: prayer elicits the relaxation response, which lowers blood pressure and other factors heightened by stress.\n\nSecondary control: prayer releases control to something greater than oneself, which can reduce the stress of needing to be in charge.\n\nThe placebo response: prayer can enhance a person's hopes and expectations, and that in turn can positively impact health.\n\nHealing presence: prayer can bring a sense of a spiritual or loving presence and alignment with God or an immersion into a universal unconsciousness.\n\nPositive feelings: prayer can elicit feelings of gratitude, compassion, forgiveness, and hope, all of which are associated with healing and wellness.\n\nMind-body-spirit connection: when prayer uplifts or calms, it inhibits the release of cortisol and other hormones, thus reducing the negative impact of stress on the immune system and promoting healing.\n\nFaith in Action\n\nDr. Pam Chally, dean of Brooks College of Health at the University of North Florida, and a beautiful blond with enviable skin and kickstart brain, shares: \"My core belief is we are all here to serve. I grew up on a farm. My high school graduating class had only forty-six people in it. You might have thought my youth would give me a small view of the world. But, you see, faith was the fabric of both my family and my community. And faith has no bounds. Even as a little girl, I believed with God all things are possible. I continue to live that out today.\"\n\nGod is doing a lot with Dean Chally. She was awarded HealthSource magazine's 2012 Celebration of Nurses award and has received the EVE award for Education, UNF Distinguished Professor, Desmond Tutu Peace and Reconciliation Award, the Transformational Leadership and Collaborative Engagement Award, and was honored as a Woman of Influence by the Jacksonville Business Journal. Despite the hoopla, she contends, \"My greatest accomplishment will always be to stay present, not get preoccupied, so I can treat everyone\u2014whether the janitor or the president\u2014with a high level of respect, love, and honor.\"\n\nCarla Harris is a managing director in the Institutional Advisory Group at Morgan Stanley Investment Management. She is also the author of Expect to Win and a gospel singer who sells out Carnegie Hall. Carla has been on the following lists: Fortune magazine's \"The Most Powerful Black Executives in Corporate America\" and \"The Most Influential List\" (2005), Black Enterprise magazine's \"Top 50 African Americans on Wall Street,\" Essence magazine's \"The 50 Women Who Are Shaping the World,\" Ebony magazine's \"15 Corporate Women at the Top,\" and the Network Journal's 2005 list of \"25 Most Outstanding Women in Business.\" She was also named \"Woman of the Year 2004\" by the Harvard University Black Men's Forum. When it comes to how faith has shaped her aging, Carla says, \"My faith is the center of my life; it is part of everything I do, including my business. My faith is what keeps me positive. I could say about aging, 'Oh, boy, I'm aging and things don't work the way they used to,' or I can say, 'One of the great benefits of aging is the cultivation of a discerning spirit. I get quiet for a few minutes, check in with prayer, and quickly know if I should be doing X versus Y. Now, in my fifties, I have a way of discerning things that was not possible in my twenties or thirties.\"\n\n\"Note: I believe there is a world of difference between wisdom and discernment. Wisdom evolves from my learning from the experiences God puts in my way. Discernment takes wisdom a step farther down a spiritual path. When I really don't know, don't have a clue what the right answer is, I can tune in and let God tell me what is right. You see, I would never have had the spiritual muscles for that much trust in my youth.\"\n\nListening to God saved Laura Bergman's (Laura B.) life. Laura B. shared how, in 2006, she resigned from the board of a large national philanthropy company, knowing that her best work was done there: \"I wasn't sure what was next, but I felt a pregnant sense of purpose. I prayed and prayed and would get guidance like 'clean out your closets,' 'straighten out yours and Tom's personal accounting record,' and 'fix up your home a bit.' It was tempting to be frustrated because I had this sense that my purpose was bigger, but I disciplined myself to obey. Better to follow God's nudges with a cheerful heart. This went on for a year.\"\n\n\"Then, in April 2007, after a routine mammogram, I was told there was a suspicious area in my breast that could 'possibly one day, maybe, turn into breast cancer.' I prayed for guidance and God told me to go for a second opinion. I did immediately and soon learned I definitely had breast cancer not in one, but both, breasts. If I hadn't prayed, listened, and acted on Divine Guidance, who knows if I would be alive today.\"\n\nTalking About Trusting Your Instincts\n\nLaura B. shared how, immediately upon her diagnosis, she asked a question. The answer to her question would lay out God's purpose for the next several years of her life: \"I said 'I would like to speak to a woman who has the exact kind of breast cancer I have so she can tell me from her own experience what I might expect.' The doctors at Mayo told me they didn't have any kind of patient-to-patient sharing system. I knew right then and there the mission God had been preparing me for: to start a breast cancer advocacy program. I couldn't have done it, or done it with peace of mind, if I hadn't spent the year before getting my house in order.\"\n\nLaura B. is founder of Pink Sisters and Friends advocacy group at Mayo Clinic in Florida. The program serves hundreds of women each year, matching the diagnosis and protocol of each new breast cancer patient with a Pink Sister advocate with the same. The two women stay together, in constant contact, throughout treatment. Together they tackle the gritty stuff: doctor and hospital appointments, dealing with surgeries, chemotherapy, radiation and its effects, and home care after surgery, as well as psychological, familial, financial, and sexual challenges. Laura B. has been nominated for the L'Or\u00e9al Paris 2012 Women of Worth Award, which recognizes and honors women making an exceptional difference in their communities.\n\nUnbelief on the Uptick\n\nAccording to a 2012 report from the Pew Center, the number of people in the United States who say they believe in \"nothing in particular\" is on the rise. Barry Kosmin, coauthor of three American Religious Identification Surveys, theorizes why \"None\" has become the \"default category.\" He says, \"Young people are resistant to the authority of institutional religion, older people are turned off by the politicization of religion, and people are simply less into theology than ever before.\"\n\nKosmin's surveys were the first to brand the \"Nones\" in 1990 when they were 6 percent of US adults. By the 2008 survey, \"Nones\" were up to 15 percent. By 2010, another survey, the biannual General Social Survey, bumped the number to 18 percent.\n\nLadies, I am not here to evangelize, but these statistics raise grave concerns. If faith in a Higher Power is the single most defining variable of our aging and quality of life, then even a slight trend in growing disbelief is an insidious risk factor. It raises the bar for all women of faith: Are you\u2014am I\u2014living a life that other women and girls want to emulate? Do you and I look, act, and smile like we have something they should want?\nCHAPTER 11:\n\nGirlfriends Are   \nNext to God\n\nAt forty-two, I met an older woman who became my friend and, through her love and counsel, filled in many of the blank spaces my mother left behind. She would also open the door to new directions for my life\n\nIt was 2002 and I was worn out from a corporate turnaround, so I decided to take a sabbatical. I leased my house in Nashville, packed up Bodhisattva (Bodhi, my shih tzu), Namaste (Nami, my marmalade-colored kitty), several pairs of cutoffs, and my computer to head to Apalachicola, a tiny town in Florida's panhandle. My girlfriends thought I was crazy.\n\n\"It doesn't have a traffic light. You're kidding, right?\"\n\n\"Does FedEx even deliver there?\"\n\n\"The grocery store is called the what? The Piggly Wiggly?\"\n\n\"I've been there. It's pretty, but you know there are no single men, at least none who still have their own teeth.\"\n\nBut I was undeterred, fixated. Today I look back and wonder why. I can only conclude it was a God thing.\n\nMy move wasn't seamless. I fractured my foot and the moving truck went missing for three days. Geoff, one of my new neighbors, knocked on the door of the house I had rented to warn, \"You know, gators are right out there in the bay at the end of your yard. They're likely to think that puppy and kitty of yours are fancy hors d'oeuvres.\"\n\nYikes! For the first time I wondered if I might have made a huge mistake.\n\nMy third day I woke at dawn and watched the sunrise over the bay. I remember feeling exquisitely peaceful, then jumping up, panicking. Nami wasn't on my bed. Or in the house. I threw on a pair of cutoffs, put on my protective boot, pulled my hair into a ponytail, and hobbled out in search.\n\nI called and called. No Nami. I looked all over my yard, even tiptoeing down to the edge of the bay. No Nami. I could hear Bodhi frantically barking in the house. I started crying. Then I saw her, all five pounds of yellow fur, scampering into a hedge in the yard next door. I hadn't yet met this neighbor, but I had been told she was an older woman whose husband was in the nursing home\u2014and also that she had a very sophisticated security system. Seeing a light in the window, I decided best to knock on the door and announce myself before foraging for Nami in her bushes.\n\nI knocked. The door opened.\n\n\"Hi, I'm Genie James and I just moved next door. I am sorry to bother you so early, but my cat is hiding in your hedge. I need to catch her and take her home, but I didn't want you to be scared if you looked out your window and saw a strange woman in a boot going through your bushes.\"\n\nTwinkling eyes looked me up and down. The woman pursed her lips for a second then seemed to relax. She smiled.\n\n\"Do you play bridge, honey? Our fourth died last week.\"\n\n\"No, ma'am. I am sorry, but I don't.\"\n\n\"Oh well. Do you drink wine?\"\n\n\"Yes, ma'am, I do.\"\n\nShe brightened. \"Now that's nice. I'll see you over here this afternoon at five.\"\n\nWith that, Smiles Randolph, my new best friend, Randy's mother, and my future mother-in-law, closed her door.\n\nThe Hormone Connection\n\nClinical studies show girlfriends give more than psychological and emotional benefit. A cohort of supportive women can have a positive impact on the immune system, cardiac and breast health, pain response, and even reduce the chances of catching a cold. According to UCLA researchers Drs. Laura Klein and Shelley Taylor, bonding with women stimulates the release of a hormone called \"oxytocin,\" which has a calming, peaceful effect. The positive effects of oxytocin are enhanced by the presence of estrogen, which circulates in the system of even non-menstruating women. This calming response doesn't happen in men because testosterone, the male dominant hormone, blocks oxytocin's positive neurological stimulation.\n\nGirlfriends Shore Up   \nInner Locus of Control\n\nI am certain that if it were not for my girlfriends and my sister Sheila, I would be either loony or dead. They help me through life's rough patches, celebrate my successes, and nudge (or pull) me into a better future. Most of all, my girlfriends hold me accountable for my choices.\n\nStacey was with me the last time I saw Mother alive and the first time I dared tell a large audience stories from my heart. Pat has helped me negotiate multiple life contracts, from business to personal, ensuring I hang on to what's my due and come out ahead. Suebee was the first to nudge me down an authentic spiritual path and continues to counsel my sometimes knee-jerk personality to \"pray, listen, wait, then act.\"\n\nShirley bailed me out of a jam, then helped me get a job. Aleene proves that those you love in junior high can sometimes grow up and old with you. She and Fran are strong threads weaving back into my memory what was good from our childhood. Kay shows me by example how our God is a God of second and third new beginnings.\n\nVicki never judges when I land in deep doo-doo. She cheerfully shows up with a shovel and helps me get a plan. Marjean always listens, then creates a safe place for me to be scared before I can be strong. By juggling sickness, a business, and single motherhood, Linda teaches me how courage, tenacity, and tenderness never go out of style.\n\nGirlfriends Can Be a Lifeline\n\nI saw Linda yesterday. Only a week and she looked at least ten pounds thinner, weight she didn't have to lose. And she was befuddled. I've seen it before, too many times: chemo brain. I feel angry: Why her? Helpless: What can I do? My homemade four-cheese macaroni casserole won't help.\n\nLinda has chutzpah, tenacity, and a tight girlfriend group who have known her and loved her actively for decades. I'm new to this sisterhood. Though they might be wary of a stranger in their midst, these women understand Linda is going to need all the help she can get. So they include me. We'll show up, do what\u2014no all\u2014we can. Thankfully, Linda's long-term prognosis is excellent. Still, Smiles and Laura taught me the hardest life lesson: No matter how much we pray, love and give of ourselves we can't cancel out sickness. Or cheat death when it's time. But girlfriends can sometimes tip the balance back in our favor. Consider Maggie's story:\n\nIn November of 1998 I was diagnosed with late-stage ovarian cancer\u2014stage 3-C\u2014which is one step away from stage 4 (e.g., worst-case scenario). The cancer hadn't yet spread to my lungs, but it had spread to other parts of my body. I was forty-five, recently widowed (my husband had been killed the year before in a car accident), and the mother of seven-year-old twin boys.\n\nMy gynecologist told me there were factors in my favor: my relatively young age and the fact that I was fit and had never smoked. Still, the first oncologist said I had only a 20 to 30 percent chance of being alive in five years. For seconds I sat stunned; then I stood up.\n\n\"Your statistics will not define my future,\" I said, walking out his door.\n\nI got into my parked car and cried, then started calling and calling. My girlfriends. There are twelve of us who have loved each other since junior high. All were at my home the following evening, three flying cross-country to show up.\n\nWe made a pact. I would choose to live. And if\/when I wanted to give up, my girlfriends would take turns standing by my side and whispering in my ear until I was strong enough to once again choose life.\n\nThat first year was the hardest. For starters I underwent something called \"debulking\" surgery. The surgeon was able to get only 75 percent of the cancer out. Then I suffered through six months of aggressive chemotherapy. Never a day went by that I didn't hear from all eleven girlfriends. One or two were always with me, holding my head over the toilet or doing the day-to-day chores of mothering my boys.\n\nWhen I missed midget football games, one girlfriend videotaped them. Another sewed a flannel nightgown in school colors, making me a legitimate bed-bound cheerleader. Delicious breakfasts, lunches, and dinners appeared like room service. Weekly movie night became a new tradition. Requisite: only movies with very happy endings.\n\nWhen I lost my hair, eyebrows, and lashes, we took over the wig salon, poured champagne, and determined I shun sandy brown locks for flamboyant, curly tresses. Orange, I was told, radiates warmth and energy while stimulating appetite, activity, and socialization. My demure, no-frills self somersaulted. \"Orange curly hair? Why not?\"\n\nMy new oncologist enrolled me in a study following fifty women with advanced ovarian cancer. The study was designed to evaluate correlation between social support\u2014or lack thereof\u2014and levels of an inflammatory protein called interleukin-6, or IL-6. High levels of IL-6 are linked to a poorer prognosis for women with ovarian cancer.\n\nEvery three months for the first year and every six months for the past eleven, I have sat down with a psychologist. Absent a husband or lover, I am cynically probed as to how \"only girlfriends\" could adequately meet innate needs for closeness, intimacy, and nurturance. Despite multiple interviewers' skepticism, I unfailingly score highest in social support. Other numbers illuminate my scores' significance: that first year my IL-6 scores were consistently 70 percent lower than my peers. Remember: the lower, the better. Even better, my lower than average IL-6 scores have remained stable for more than a decade. The most bittersweet number: of the original fifty women in the study, I am the only one remaining.\n\nLocus of Control Makes a Friend,   \nFinds Hope, and a Future\n\n\"It is because of Kristi that I am here, well and working. Kristi also helped my whole family have a better life,\" said Habiba.\n\nHabiba, a Bosnian immigrant, first came to the United States after suffering heinous atrocities during her country's civil war. Through near-starvation, untreated illness, untended pregnancy, barbaric living conditions, not knowing if her young husband was dead or alive, and being separated from her infant daughter, Habiba says she never considered giving up.\n\n\"It is hard to describe the kind of fear that lived in my heart, but I never forgot that I had to do everything I could to stay strong, to be positive. I had to look forward.\"\n\nObviously, this woman has an internal locus of control to envy, but what exactly was it that Habiba looked forward to?\n\nIn 1999, reunited with her husband and daughter, Habiba came to the United States. Though educated, she spoke little English, so she got the only job she could, working for an office building cleaning service in Jacksonville, Florida. One night while emptying a trash can, she met Kristi.\n\n\"When I met Kristi I was already very sick,\" Habiba shared, \"but I tried not to focus on that. Instead, I would come into this important woman's office in the early evening and try to be quiet so as to not disturb her work. But she talked to me. She asked me questions about my life and my family. She genuinely seemed to care.\"\n\nHabiba, only in her late twenties, was experiencing painful joint symptoms. She was soon diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis and told by her doctor that, unless she began aggressive therapy immediately, she would be in a wheelchair before age forty. But the treatment was expensive and she had no insurance.\n\n\"I could not allow myself to focus on that bad news,\" Habiba told me, \"so I would spend hours before work prying my fingers open and massaging my hands and feet. Every movement became painful, even driving. Still, I believed God would not have helped me survive the war unless I was needed to live to be a strong and good mother for my beautiful daughter. My choice was to give up, stay home and die, or keep showing up. I chose to show up. One thing that helped was that almost every night I worked, I would see Kristi.\"\n\n\"Kristi\" is a petite blond daughter of a Baptist minister. She is also president of a Jacksonville Citibank site and a state officer for Florida, responsible for community and government relations, site work environment, and the overall culture of more than 4,800 employees. I asked about her hand in Habiba's life.\n\n\"I watched Habiba clean my office with more than meticulous dedication; she exuded something akin to reverence. I was struck by the way this warmly friendly yet surprisingly dignified young woman would quietly pick up and dust every one of my family pictures, particularly those of my son. I noticed she would look at those closely. I would learn my son is the same age as her daughter.\"\n\nDespite language and barriers of class and station, Kristi and Habiba became friends. Their bond bore fruit. In 2002 Habiba became a Citibank employee. Today she works in the Quality Department for Transaction Services, where she was awarded a 2012 Quality Excellence Award because, during her entire tenure, she has made zero errors processing credit cards and serving customers.\n\nHabiba's resilient internal locus of control is awe-inspiring. Nevertheless, it is Kristi's story I find most life-impacting. I ask myself, Would I even have noticed Habiba emptying my trash can? Would I have bridged our differences to begin and sustain a conversation, much less foster a friendship? Would I have taken the risk of championing to my superiors the hiring of a cleaning woman with broken English and health issues?\n\nThe old me would have said, \"Probably not.\" Because of Habiba and Kristi's story, however, I would like to believe my answer today might very possibly be \"Yes.\"\nCHAPTER 12:\n\nLighten Up and Play More\n\nPicture two tables of women eating lunch. At the first table sit two friends smiling, laughing, and sharing an appetizer. At the second table sit two scowling women robotically inhaling their salads while checking text messages. At which table are the women radiating health and well-being? Now, be honest. At which table would you likely be sitting?\n\nUnplug and Chill Out\n\nForty-two year-old Velma knows she shouldn't text while driving, so she compromises, putting her thumbs to work only at stop lights or during traffic jams. Today a blaring horn and middle-finger-out-the-window tells her she missed her light. Guiltily, Velma pockets the phone in her purse.\n\nShe comes home, slips off her pantsuit, puts on sweats, and looks at the elliptical in the den off their bedroom. She has about an hour before Connor shows up with the kids. They had agreed to take turns carpooling to soccer practice to trade off an hour for working out every other night. Velma looks at the elliptical again and considers her increasingly smushy thighs. Then she plops on the bed, pulls her phone out of her purse, and begins checking e-mails. She's just logged onto Facebook when she hears Connor's car. Quickly, she stashes the phone, throws water on her face, and grabs a towel\u2014just as she would have had she been working up a sweat.\n\n\"Web-based technology is no longer a convenience; it's my cocaine. My urge to log on is more irresistible than taking care of myself, spending time with my children, or having sex with Connor. Worse, I feel constantly anxious when unplugged.\"\n\nUnfortunately, our multitasking, information-overloaded, instant-results-driven \"Information Generation\" is increasingly at risk of being chronically harried and exhausted as stalking to-do lists evoke gnawing guilt and growing feelings of inferiority. New research indicates heavy Internet use leads to something termed \"popcorn brain,\" a condition where your brain becomes so accustomed to the constant stimulation of electronic multitasking that you become uncomfortable and unfit for life offline. Worse, other studies show insistent information fatigue can have harmful cognitive impact, leading women to use poorer judgment and make life-impacting choices they quickly regret.\n\nDr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, explains that constant stimulation can activate dopamine cells in the nucleus accumbens, a main pleasure center of the brain. This simulates the addictive pleasure-seeking compulsion to never unplug. The looming doom is that over time, and with enough Internet usage, the structure of our brains can actually physically change.\n\nResearchers in China did MRIs on the brains of eighteen college students who spent about ten hours a day online. Compared with a control group who spent less than two hours a day online, these students had less gray matter, the thinking part of the brain. A 2012 Newsweek review of findings from more than a dozen other countries showed similar trends.\n\nWhile it may seem counterintuitive, one of the best health and beauty tips for any age is to chill out more. At a minimum, learn how to be \"unavailable\" for at least ten minutes three times a day. Get out of your house or office, or go to a room where you won't be disturbed. Leave your phone; at the very least, turn it off completely. Get practical to become unavailable.\n\nI advise overbusy, high-demand women to do their best to chill out more. If nothing else, spend more time in the bathroom and take more showers, places you are less likely to be interrupted. Block out all noise and distractions, center yourself, discern between what you have the power to impact and what you do not, and cultivate calm.\n\nLaughter Is Good Medicine\n\nLaughing is a neurotransmitter aphrodisiac. It also has an ecstatic ripple effect. According to my friend and \"joyologist\" Kathleen Halperin, \"We've long known that the ability to laugh is helpful to those coping with major illness and the stress of life's problems. But researchers are now saying laughter can do a lot more\u2014it can basically bring balance to all the components of the immune system, which helps us fight off diseases.\n\n\"Laughter provides a safety valve that shuts off the flow of stress hormones and the fight-or-flight compounds that swing into action in our bodies when we experience stress, anger, or hostility. These stress hormones suppress the immune system, increase the number of blood platelets (which can cause obstructions in arteries), and raise blood pressure.\n\n\"When we're laughing, natural killer cells that destroy tumors and viruses increase, as do gamma interferon (a disease-fighting protein), T cells (which are a major part of the immune response), and B cells (which make disease-destroying antibodies).\n\n\"Laughter may lead to hiccupping and coughing, which clears the respiratory tract by dislodging mucous plugs. Laughter also increases the concentration of salivary immunoglobulin A, which defends against infectious organisms entering through the respiratory tract.\n\n\"What may surprise you even more is the fact that researchers estimate that laughing one hundred times is equal to ten minutes on the rowing machine or fifteen minutes on an exercise bike. Laughing can be a total body workout! Blood pressure is lowered, and there is an increase in vascular blood flow and in oxygenation of the blood, which further assists healing. Laughter also gives your diaphragm and abdominal, respiratory, facial, and leg and back muscles a workout. That's why you often feel exhausted after a long bout of laughter\u2014you've just had an aerobic workout!\"\n\nThe psychological benefits of humor are quite amazing, according to doctors and nurses who are members of the American Association for Therapeutic Humor. People often store negative emotions, such as anger, sadness, and fear, rather than expressing them. Laughter provides a way for these emotions to be harmlessly released.\n\nLaughter can also be cathartic. That's why some people who are upset or stressed out go to a funny movie or a comedy club, so they can laugh the negative emotions away (these negative emotions, when held inside, can cause biochemical changes that can affect our bodies). Increasingly, mental health professionals are suggesting \"laughter therapy,\" which teaches people how to laugh\u2014openly\u2014at things that aren't usually funny and to cope in difficult situations by using humor.\n\nLaugh at Yourself\n\nThe ability to laugh at ourselves allows us the opportunity to embrace our flaws and promotes self-acceptance. It does not include harmful put-downs, ridicule, or negative sarcasm. Nor are we advertising that we are defective; rather, we are demonstrating that we are human.\n\nHumor is a positive coping mechanism that not only improves our mood, it builds our self-esteem. Unfortunately, we often resort to all kinds of unhealthy coping mechanisms like drinking, smoking, eating, overworking, and so on to make ourselves feel good. While these habits offer temporary boosts, they further undermine our self-esteem. Choose to laugh instead!\n\nTips for Laughing More Every Day\n\nWatch a funny TV show every day (old syndicated sitcoms are a great source of reliable laughs).\n\nRead the daily comics online or in the newspaper.\n\nLearn an age-appropriate joke and tell it to a youngster. Making children laugh is one of the best ways to bring more joy and humor into your life.\n\nSubscribe to a joke, quip, or quote of the day and have the laughs delivered right to your in-box.\n\nShare funny articles with friends and family members. Sometimes the thought of making someone else laugh can give us the same sense of well-being we get when we laugh at a joke. Reaching out to others with humor is a wonderful way to strengthen connections and emotional intimacy.\n\nThe Cheeky Science of Play\n\nIn March of 2012, my friend Pat Shea and I journeyed to Sante Fe to attend a workshop on transformational speaking led by Gail Larsen. The stated objective of the workshop was to help attendees discover their \"original medicine,\" for example, our singular gifts and talents that define our unique, individual roles in influencing change. I was skeptical that I had an original medicine, believing my best talent was regurgitating helpful information and other people's good ideas. Regurgitate is synonymous with vomit. \"Vomiter of Other People's Stuff\" didn't strike me as an original medicine name people would gravitate toward.\n\nGail paired me with twenty-something Alexandra Franzen, who sported several mesmerizing tattoos and surprisingly red hair. Alexandra introduced herself: \"I am half Jewish, half Swedish, a former lesbian, a recovering socialist, and a onetime helicopter pilot. I've moved through my strumpet years and my cubicle season to most recently establish myself as a quite successful entrepreneur.\"\n\nReally? Partnering with this nascent, maverick beauty was supposed to help me become a better speaker and more intentional agent of change?\n\nI looked at Gail. Raised my eyebrows. She smiled and nodded, pleased how well the two of us were bonding.\n\n\"Do you prefer Alex to Alexandra?\"\n\n\"Only if you think you don't have time to say my whole name.\"\n\nOh boy. Fumbling for common ground, I asked \"Alexandra\" about her entrepreneurial business.\n\n\"Mostly, I play with words. In fact, play is my work.\"\n\nWhoosh went my comfort zone. For the next five days Alexandra turned my thinking inside-out, explaining why playing every day is as critical to health, productivity, and creativity as sleep or food. Alexandra would later put her thinking to paper in her adorable book 50 Ways to Say You're Awesome published by Sourcebooks, spring 2013.\n\nNeurological science backs up Alexandra's premise. Our brains are made up of billions of neurons with connections between them. These neurons are bundled into groups called neural pathways. We have neural pathways for memory, attachment, emotions, language, motor control, each of our senses, and many more. When children and adults play, many parts of the brain are activated at the same time.\n\nThe brain \"lights up\" during a child's dramatic play: fine motor, gross motor, language, emotion, and memory; abstract concepts like \"good guys\" and \"bad guys\"; scientific concepts like cause and effect; social concepts like \"taking care of baby\"; and big themes like aggression, affection, loyalty, and power\u2014each with its own neural pathway\u2014are all seen during children's play.\n\nGary Landreth, professor at the University of North Texas, states that children act out their life experiences and feelings in a natural, dynamic, and self-healing manner. Play is the symbolic language children use for self-expression. When adults play, we begin to feel more positive because of a release of endorphins, and our stress levels go down. It calms and relaxes us while stimulating our brains and bodies. It helps us connect with others and increases our energy level and excitement. It is the antidote for loneliness, isolation, anxiety, and depression. It helps us feel happy, creative, and resilient.\n\nPlay is also the single best way for adults to simultaneously activate multiple neural pathways. If you want to know more, there is an Institute of Play and multiple books on the subject. My new fave is Stuart Brown's Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul. If, like me, you are hardwired to be a workaholic on overdrive, you also need to know:\n\nPlay has been scientifically proven to be good for the brain. All animals play. Grizzly bears that play the most survive the longest. Rats that socialize develop bigger, more complex brains. Play stimulates nerve growth in the portions of the brain that process emotions and executive function.\n\nPlay teaches us to use our imaginations. Imagination is perhaps the most powerful human ability, letting us create simulated realities we can explore without abandoning the real world. As kids grow older, the line between pretend and real becomes more solid, but imaginative play continues to nourish the spirit.\n\nRough-and-tumble play teaches us how to cooperate and play fair. Research in humans and animals has shown that roughhousing is necessary for the development of social awareness, cooperation, fairness, and altruism. If young rats are denied rough-and-tumble play, they develop serious social problems in adulthood and aren't able to mate.\n\nPlay helps us learn to be friends. When children are four to six years old, they start \"mutual play,\" listening to other kids' points of view and incorporating them into imaginative games. This mutual play is the basic state of friendship that sustains us throughout our lives.\n\nSometimes the best way to learn a complicated subject is to play with it. That's why kids often learn computer systems faster than adults; they aren't afraid to just try stuff out and see what works. Kids don't fear doing something wrong. If they do, they learn from it and do it differently the next time.\n\nPhysical play delays mental decline in old age. Research on this is still in the early stages, but older people who get regular exercise are less likely to suffer cognitive decline. Doing crossword puzzles, brainteasers, and other thinking games seems to help, too.\n\nA little play can help solve big problems. Play is nature's great tool for creating new neural networks and for reconciling cognitive difficulties. When we play, dilemmas and challenges naturally filter through the unconscious mind and work themselves out. Even a few hours spent doing something you love can make you new again.\n\nWhen we get play right, all areas of our lives go better. One of the hardest things to teach kids is how to make it past difficulty or boredom to find the fun. Making all of life an act of play occurs when we recognize and accept that there may be some discomfort in play, and that every experience has both pleasure and pain.\n\nMy friend Alexandra has a black belt in play. Her work is her play and her play is her work, consequently, she has a hard time telling the difference between the two. I am still learning, but I do know this: Play means more than unplugging. It means freeing your mind to have fun. If you have forgotten how to play, borrow a three-year-old. Get on the floor or go outside. Let them reteach you. Even better, consider taking up a sport.\nCHAPTER 13:\n\nPlay More Sports\n\nElizabeth Nye, director of Girls, Inc., in northwest Oregon, and I were on the phone. She said, \"My life, my aging experience, is nothing like my grandmother's or my mother's. My grandmother grew up on a farm and never finished high school. In her adult years, she got up at four in the morning and walked to the nursing home where she worked as a kitchen aide. My mother got her high school diploma, married, worked as a secretary, and smoked her entire life. Relentless economic insecurity wore them down. Both were determined to create a different reality for me.\"\n\nBoy, did they.\n\nA graduate of Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service, Elizabeth started her career at Population Services International (PSI) in Washington, DC. While there, she worked on a variety of social marketing projects for malaria prevention, clean water, and HIV\/AIDS prevention in the developing world. She then devoted the next five years to the pharmaceutical industry at Bristol-Myers Squibb. As product manager in the company's Virology Division, she marketed HIV\/AIDS products in the United States. She was also responsible for leading the Virology Division's Women's Initiative and African American Initiative to better understand and address the impact of HIV\/AIDS on these populations. In 2006, Elizabeth relocated to her hometown of Portland, Oregon, with her husband and two daughters.\n\n\"So, when you think of the circumstances and perspectives associated with how you grew up compared to those surrounding your daughters today, what do you believe will be the most significant game changer?\" I asked Elizabeth.\n\nI assumed one of two responses to my question: education or more financial security. She surprised me by saying, \"Sports. I think the fact that both my daughters are actively involved in sports teams will make the biggest difference.\"\n\nThough I fully understood that playing a sport is a calorie-burning exercise with great social dynamics, it took me a while to buy into the power of sports as a vehicle for positive aging. Reflect back that I was the puny, asthmatic child kept indoors. When I did go to physical education, no one ever chose me to be on their kickball team. Not only was I sickly, I was\u2014and continue to be\u2014comically uncoordinated. I rang Donna Orender.\n\nDonna, who lives near me in Jacksonville Beach, Florida, is a game changer of national scope. From 2003 to 2010 she served as president of the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA). In 2005, Donna was named one of the ten most powerful women in sports by FOXSports.com.\n\n\"The data is undeniable. According to a survey of executive women, 81 percent played sports growing up and 69 percent said sports helped them to develop leadership skills contributing to their professional success.\" Many other women echoed Elizabeth's and Donna's thinking: \"I believe my basketball experience can be directly linked to my business experience and success,\" said Mary Claire Bonner, who retired in 2009 from Aetna. Before retiring, the New York resident was senior vice president of local and regional business for Aetna, working directly for the company's president and \"running a large business that concentrated on small and midsize employer health benefit needs in more than thirty states.\" Reflecting on the position, Bonner discovered that her favorite part about leading others was creating a strong team. The skills to be good at this, Bonner noted, started in fifth grade when she joined the basketball team.\n\n\"Playing basketball changed me as a person,\" said Bonner, who played from grade school through her junior year at one of Penn State's Commonwealth campuses.\n\nAccording to the Hall of Fame Network magazine, the Women's Sports Foundation (started by female tennis champion Billie Jean King) became established because, \"In an economic environment where the quality of our life is dependent on two-income families, our daughters cannot be less prepared for the highly competitive workplace than our sons.\"\n\nDigging into the data, I was astounded by the correlation between sports and success among women, especially high-profile leaders. The key contributor was Title IX, a landmark legislation that celebrated its fortieth anniversary this year. A 2010 study by Betsey Stevenson, chief economist of the US Department of Labor, found that Title IX accounted for a 20 percent increase in women's education and for about a 40 percent rise in employment for women ages twenty-five to thirty-four.\n\nIn a 2012 column for CNN Money, Sanyin Siang, executive director of the Coach K Leadership and Ethics Center at Duke University, wrote, \"Well documented are IMF managing director Christine Lagarde competing in synchronized swimming; PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi playing cricket; Kraft Foods CEO Irene Rosenfeld engaging in four varsity sports in high school and basketball in college; and HP CEO Meg Whitman playing lacrosse and squash.\n\n\"This is not surprising considering the mental discipline and social skills honed through playing sports. At the Coach K Center, we hear often from leaders such as Fidelity President Kathy Murphy, Walmart EVP of People Division Susan Chambers, and Morgan Stanley Managing Director Carla Harris about how sports had fostered the resilience, agility, and team-orientation that advanced their leadership. Also, engaging in and appreciating sports gives women an understanding of business parlance that is often steeped in sports analogies and provides another avenue for social inclusion in the workplace.\"\n\nA Platform for Social Change\n\nIn the 2012 Summer Olympics, for the very first time, women athletes from Saudi Arabia were represented, and the US Olympic team had more women delegates than men. Women also made up 40 percent of the total number of athletes at the 2012 games.\n\nIn June 2012, Hillary Clinton announced the Global Sports Mentoring Program, saying, \"We want to find ways to get more women and girls on the field, the court, the track, in the pool, the mat, wherever their interests and talents take them so they can discover their strengths, develop their skills, experience that special satisfaction that sports can bring, win or lose. And we believe in the positive effects that can flow out of that experience with girls and women across their lifetimes and, by extension, for their families and communities.\"\n\nThe 1984 Olympic gold medalist Nawal El Moutawakel says, \"Sport is one of the best tools for social change because it is a large part of cultures around the world and reaches into every socioeconomic class of society. Sport helps develop self-esteem and confidence, improve physical and mental well-being, serve as a medium of communication, and empower women to improve themselves and their communities.\"\n\nI called my niece Shelley and asked her to chime in. Shelley is director of development for Explore Austin, a six-year committed mentoring program for underserved girls and boys. Think leadership development meets Outward Bound\u2013type vision quests, including strenuous hiking and rock climbing to get a sense of Explore Austin's model: \"What we have seen with our youth in these programs is that moving through the realms of physical exertion, collaboration, and teamwork creates deep bonds of trust difficult to ignite through only conversation. Taking young women out of their comfort range to stretch them physically, mentally, and emotionally is a dynamic engine for personal growth, particularly when they experience how we, their adult mentors, are right there in it with them.\n\n\"What has been just as exciting as watching our girls mature as individuals and leaders is the response of the women mentors. They tell us that, while they originally believed committing to mentor these young girls for six years would be something of a chore, a long-term community obligation, they find they grow as much if not more than the girls they are mentoring. They say that what becomes most transformative is the opportunity to not only lead, but participate. As the years go by, girls who were 'students' evolve into the life-teachers.\"\n\nDon't Wait Until You Retire\n\nForbes columnist and retirement activist Robert Laura warns: \"Too often people think there is a magical world they will enter once they officially retire, which will help them do things they didn't do before they retired . . . walking every day, eating healthy, writing memoirs that turn into New York Times bestsellers, and so on. But there is nothing magical about retirement. In fact, it's my belief that retirement will only magnify what you already are. If you frequent the couch, prefer fatty foods, or indulge in an evening cocktail before bed, retirement will only provide more time for you to reinforce your existing habits.\"\nCHAPTER 14:\n\nPartner with Care\n\nMy personal opinion is that girlfriends and pets are nonnegotiable companions, but most women also long for a Prince Charming with whom to float into forever. Is marriage worth the effort?\n\nWhen It Works\n\nPhyllis Tousey was explaining to me why she is convinced women should regard \"breakfast and sleep as a holy disciplines,\" when her phone buzzed.\n\n\"Oh my goodness,\" she girly-gushed, \"it's Chip.\"\n\nChip is Phyllis's husband of forty-something years. He is also a top-notch estate lawyer. I should know. He is ours.\n\nNothing about Phyllis makes you think \"girly-gush.\" As a nurse epidemiologist, her research in how nutrition and lifestyle choices impact the immune system is rubber-hits-the-road stuff. As a woman, her faith frames her as a no-nonsense, rock-solid pillar of her church community. So perhaps you can imagine my surprise when I watched her scramble to answer her phone, then blush as she and Chip set the time and place for their dinner date. She hung up, looked at me, and said, \"He is such a blessing.\"\n\nDr. Cathy Christie shared, \"I am married to the love of my life. When we are separate during our days, I can't wait until the time we are together again.\"\n\nDonna Orender took the theme of happily ever after to a whole new level: \"MG is my beloved.\"\n\nThese women, all role models for an aging experience any woman would aspire to, include a happy marriage as part of their health and beauty regimen. Medical science says they are on the right track.\n\nHealth Benefits of Marriage\n\nResearch suggests that married people enjoy significantly better health than the unmarried. In other words, marriage is good for your health and your heart, in more ways than one. In fact, one sociologist suggested the health benefits of marriage are as significant as the benefit from giving up smoking. Here are top findings:\n\nMarried adults have a greater likelihood of living longer than their unmarried counterparts. Married people live longer because they are more likely to enjoy better physical health. This is partly due to the fact they're more likely to recognize symptoms, seek medical treatment, avoid risky behavior, recover quicker, and eat a healthier diet. Spouses are intimately aware of and impacted by their spouse's choices. In a sense, couples have a significant vested interest in watching out for one another and encouraging healthy choices and behavior. Researchers found emotional support from a spouse can help people recover from both minor and major illnesses and even help cope with chronic diseases. Some studies even suggest that marital relationships actually boost the immune system, making sickness less likely in the first place.\n\nMarried women are less likely to suffer from any form of mental illness. Married people have significantly lower rates of severe depression and at least half the likelihood of developing any psychiatric disorder than never-married, cohabiting, and divorced people. According to Tara Parker-Pope, the Well columnist for the New York Times and author of For Better: The Science of a Good Marriage, some of today's most interesting research on the relationship between marriage and health is being led by a pair of researchers at Ohio State University College of Medicine. The duo, Ronald Glaser and Jan Kiecolt-Glaser, are also, fittingly, married to each other. Glaser and Kiecolt-Glaser's scholarly collaboration has its roots in a chance encounter during a faculty picnic in October 1978 on the Ohio State campus. Glaser and Kiecolt eventually met for lunch at the university's hospital cafeteria. They married a year later, in January 1980.\n\nRecruiting seventy-six women\u2014half of whom were married and the other half separated or divorced\u2014the Glasers used marital-quality scales, types of questionnaires that ask couples to indicate agreement or disagreement with statements like \"If I had to do it over again, I would marry the same person\" or \"We often do things together.\"\n\nNext, using blood tests, the Glasers measured the women's immune-system responses, tracking their levels of antibody production and other indicators of immunity strength. The results showed that the women in unhappy relationships and the women who remained emotionally hung up on their ex-husbands had decidedly weaker immune responses than the women who were in happier relationships (or were happily out of them).\n\nAn Unhappy Marriage   \nCan Make You Sick\n\nResearch shows that women in an unhappy marriage have a weaker immune system than women who are happily married or divorced. Marriage stress and heart problems have a strong connection with women. Women who face the highest level of stress in marriage increase the possibility of a heart attack and bypass.\n\nRelationship stress can also affect the body's ability to heal. In the research, wounds took a day longer to heal with partners who quarreled compared to those who didn't. With couples who showed a higher tension and a high level of hostile behavior, the wounds took two days longer to heal.\n\nHappily Ever After Hits a Snag   \nfor the Over-Fifty Crowd\n\nMarried women should face the fact that odds are that they will someday be alone. Across the industrialized world, women still live five to ten years longer than men. Among people older than 100 years old, 85 percent are women. And while widowhood might loom, new research from the National Center for Family and Marriage Research at Bowling Green University in Ohio shows that one in four people getting divorced is older than fifty. In 1990, the statistic was less than one in ten.\n\nAccording to the Modeling Income in the Near Term (MINT) data system, divorced and widowed baby boomer women are one of the fastest growing economically vulnerable population segments. Women who choose to think their husbands, or any man, will take care of them financially for life are engaged in highly risky thinking.\n\nThe scenarios for risk and na\u00efvet\u00e9 vary. There are women who continue to rely on a spouse as their sole financial safety net, other women who consider how best to merge investment portfolios should they marry again, and a burgeoning subset of breadwinning women who need to protect personal assets in the event of divorce. Yes, breadwinning women.\n\nA 2012 survey of 1,410 American women and 604 men\u2014between the ages of twenty-five and sixty-eight\u2014found that 53 percent of women make more money than their male counterparts, with an increasing number of women assuming this role as a result of partners losing jobs during the financial crisis, divorce, and marrying later in life.\n\nKeep Dollars in Your Own Pocket\n\nIn 2006, Kristen Walter was living her dream life. Her college-sweetheart-turned-husband Scott adored her. Their two children, Nick and Lexi, were healthy, good kids. Scott's executive level job allowed a nice house in friendly community with country club amenities. Kristen loved being the mom who kept their home sparkling with good energy and home-cooked meals while also serving as room mom, softball coach, and Bible study leader.\n\nThen disaster struck. Scott, only thirty-seven at the time, woke up having a massive heart attack. Blessfully, Scott recovered but a few months later he rocked Kristen's world again saying:\n\n\"Honey, we need to think about you doing something.\"\n\nKristen says, \"I remember that moment vividly. I was standing at our kitchen sink washing dishes. My gut hurt. The idea of working outside our home was as foreign to me as standing on a street corner hustling. But, though I wanted to ignore him, I knew in my heart Scott was right. I prayed and asked for guidance. Because family was and is my priority, I asked God to help me plan my life around my work, not my work around my life.\"\n\nSoon after, Kristen met Molly Geil, executive national vice president for Arbonne International, in the grocery line. One friendly conversation spawned more. Soon Kristen was in the business of marketing beauty, health, and wellness products to women. In eight months, she had earned an Arbonne Mercedes-Benz. Amazingly, her team was able to do this in Nevada, which at the time was the hardest-hit state in the recession.\n\nAvoid the Gilded Cage\n\nFifteen minutes late, Lauren swept into the Palm wearing a vintage cream-colored Chanel confetti skirt suit and gold Fendi kitten heels. Heads turned. Zigzagging through white tablecloths, handing out business cards right and left, Lauren was her own best advertisement.\n\nSpotting Sandy, Lauren shimmied into a corner booth. \"How are you, sweetie?\" she asked, leaning in for a kiss while surreptitiously scrutinizing her oldest friend.\n\n\"Fine, good,\" Sandy answered, then nervously looked at her watch.\n\nAntennae up, Lauren schmoozed on. \"And how's Dan? Any news from his last interview?\"\n\n\"Dan? Well . . . Dan's fine. Just a little depressed. But that's normal, you know. He's been chief operating officer of a multimillion dollar company for years. How do you stop that one day and start interviewing the next?\"\n\nTheir waiter interrupted. Lauren ordered a bottle of Groth Chardonnay. Sandy demurred at first but, when the wine was poured, gulped almost the entire glass in one swallow.\n\n\"Honey,\" Lauren cooed, \"you look a little thin. Eat some bread.\"\n\n\"Oh, I've been running more. With Dan in the house all the time, he keeps the television blaring and it makes me nervous. So I go running two to three times a day now. Dan doesn't mind. He likes me thinner.\"\n\nDespite layers of silver and diamond bangles, Lauren noticed a purplish smudge around Sandy's right wrist. \"Is Dan drinking more?\" she probed gently.\n\nSandy's nose flared like a spooked thoroughbred. \"Not really. I mean, he never has a scotch before five. An occasional Bloody Mary in the morning and maybe some wine with lunch, but that doesn't count when you are essentially on eternal vacation. I mean, look at us.\" She tipped her wineglass in Lauren's direction.\n\nLauren had gleaned enough. Seven years earlier, she had walked out with her three teenage girls, cash in wallet, and as much clothes and jewelry as could be stuffed into the back of her BMW sedan. Desperate for funds, she staged a couture consignment sale at a friend's house four states away. To her amazement, she scored four thousand dollars, which she immediately reinvested shopping at estate sales and, later, rifling through European flea markets.\n\nToday she owns Couture Closets in five cities, a wonderful riverfront home in town, and a dream-retreat cabin outside of Asheville. Best of all, all three daughters were in college on her dime, not a penny required from their scumbag father.\n\n\"Sandy,\" she said now, \"I could truly use your help. Please become one of my buyers. You would be great. We would have such fun traveling to estate sales all over the world. It would be like old times when we stewed for Delta. Best of all, think how great it would be making your own money finding fabulous clothes!\"\n\nSometimes Prince Charming Farts\n\n\"Genie, are ya'll hiring at the medical practice? I have a friend who really needs a job.\"\n\nUghhh. I hate being buttonholed by friends with unskilled children, relatives, or chums needing work. Nevertheless, every so often a pearl lands in my lap.\n\n\"We are recruiting for a position in our front office, Sue. Tell me about your friend.\"\n\n\"She is absolutely amazing. She has chaired four events for the school where my Brian is and each one blew the roof off fund-raising. I don't know how she does it with three children in three different schools, but she is equally active with all of them and also last year chaired the board of Girls, Inc. I know from experience that she is fanatically organized, always working off lists and spreadsheets. And she is an excellent writer. You wouldn't believe the quarterly fund-raising updates she sends out mixing facts and figures with true-to-life stories. But she's no nerd. She has a super laugh and a really sweet way of encouraging others to do their best. When Marilynne chairs an event, the other moms can't move fast enough to sign up for her committees.\"\n\nHmmm. Goal-oriented lists and spreadsheets, chairing a non-profit board, strong writing skills, proven motivational talent, a good sense of humor and\u2014evidently\u2014superior time management abilities . . . I was intrigued.\n\n\"What's her name again?\"\n\n\"Marilynne Ford. Her husband was Chris Ford.\"\n\n\"Chris Ford the Ponte Vedra stockbroker who supposedly put on an Armani suit, drank a bottle of Dom Perignon, and drove his Porsche off the Dames Point Bridge?\"\n\n\"Uh-huh.\"\n\nThree days later I interviewed Marilynne. She was candid that, while she had not worked for pay in close to twenty years, her family's recent tragedy meant she now had to. She was poised and articulate. Most impressive was her clear determination to provide her children with an alternate example of how to cope when times are tough.\n\nI didn't hire her. Instead, I passed her r\u00e9sum\u00e9 onto the chair of a search committee. Within six weeks, Marilynne was named development coordinator for Experience Works, a nonprofit organization committed to helping older adults re-enter the workforce.\n\nWhen the Going Gets Tough,   \nRemember Why You Fell in Love\n\nWhen Smiles first introduced me to Randy on Christmas Eve 2002, I hardly noticed him. He was nice enough, and I loved his two-year-old lab, Rigger, but I was relishing my time alone and not interested in men or dating.\n\nAfter that, Randy came back and forth from Jacksonville to Apalachicola almost every weekend. I would see him when the three of us\u2014Smiles, Randy, and I\u2014would have dinner. I slowly became intrigued by this gentle, gifted healer who paradoxically was also a good old boy who loved to hunt and fish.\n\nOn May 7, 2003, we went to lunch. Alone. As Smiles used to say, \"Randy came home from that lunch thirty-six hours later.\"\n\nNot long after, I moved to Jacksonville. Three years later, we married.\n\nWhat's funny about Randy and me is that our paths have always been very close. I grew up in Panama City, Florida, only an hour and a half away from Apalachicola. We shopped at the same store for our Easter outfits, our parents celebrated special occasions at the same small Italian restaurant, and we believe we vacationed on St. George Island only blocks away from each other at least three times.\n\nWhat's real about the two of us is that we share a deep faith in God. We also both understand the importance of family, blood and chosen. We are quirky, jointly spoiling our blended pet family\u2014Rigger, Bodhi, and Nami\u2014as if they are baby angels. And, not to be understated, we have both been healthcare mavericks, ahead of our time in our individual and shared commitment to a more integrated, holistic model of care. But these last several years we have hit some rough waters.\n\n\"Rough as in the size of a puddle?\" my friend Deirdre asked.\n\n\"More like the size of the Atlantic Ocean. But we hung in there.\"\n\n\"What helped you weather the storm?\"\n\n\"After another same-theme fight, I was majorly upset, stressed, and sleepless. About three in the morning I got up and started working on my computer. Work is my go-to drug to dull anything I don't want to feel or can't figure out. Randy came downstairs, and instead of ridiculing me for being an over-the-top workaholic or starting up our fight again, he popped a bottle of champagne, poured me a glass, turned on that Cajun redneck reality show Duck Dynasty, and suggested I curl up with him to watch. I was so surprised I did.\n\n\"Something happened that night. As we laughed, sipped, and cuddled, I remembered why I fell in love with this man\u2014not as a doctor or my business partner but as a guy. Just a goofy, sometimes selfish, yet pretty sexy guy who happens to really love me.\n\n\"The next day I determined to shift my attention away from what Randy wasn't doing for me and focus more on what I needed to do for myself. I decided to practice what I was preaching in my writing. I got back into the routine of working out regularly and scheduling time with my girlfriends. I also decided to stop bitching at Randy and hire a handyman and an executive assistant.\"\nEpilogue\n\n\"Ineed matching bras and panties. Really. Stop rolling your eyes and send someone. Come on. Matching bras and panties are every woman's secret empowerment.\"\n\nPause.\n\n\"Don't tell me yours don't match now?\"\n\nTrite as it sounds, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. It was January 5, 2012. Laura had been admitted to the ICU the night before. We\u2014Randy and I\u2014rushed over as soon as we heard. She was supposedly \"better,\" now in a step-down unit.\n\nAfter weeks of dinosaur-heavy business stress compounded by a raw, draining, and, ultimately, pointless fight with Randy the night before, I was exhausted. Laura's hospital bed beckoned like a lemon-cr\u00e8me-stuffed, raspberry-iced cupcake. My foggy brain registered that coveting someone's hospital bed\u2014particularly someone you adored\u2014was perverse and had probably sent some weird reverberations out into the Universe.\n\nI asked the nurse for directions to the nearest awful coffee machine and rallied, sending someone out for underwear. Excuse me, lingerie: pastel, ultrasoft, and, of course, matching bras and panties.\n\nI thought back to a night years earlier when Laura was staying with us so I could take her back and forth to Mayo for treatment. After a day of chemo-induced, dignity-stealing nausea and poopy problems, I popped a chick flick into the DVD, hoping to do something, anything, to make her smile. The movie was Kissing Jessica Stein. Randy was in our living room interviewing a new doctor.\n\nIf you haven't seen it, this movie is about a straight Jewish girl who becomes smitten with an elfin free spirit, who happens to also be a girl. The unlikely protagonist navigates the horror-heartbreak-acceptance of her family, as well as an unexpected rekindled attraction to her college boyfriend. It is funny. Laura and I laughed so hard Randy poked his head in.\n\n\"Can you two please be a little less loud? I am in a very serious meeting.\"\n\nWe put our hands over our mouths. Laura's giggles spilled like jelly beans out of an open bag. I chortled so hard wine spewed up and out my nose. Peeking around Randy, I saw Rigger, our yellow lab, licking the doctor's left ear while Nami attacked his shoelaces as if they were squirming earthworms. I barely made it to the bathroom.\n\nIt's a family trait, not incontinence . . . Sheila and I both tinkle in our panties when we belly laugh.\n\nRandy banged the door.\n\nLater, part bewildered, part petulant, he said, \"Sometimes you act like you love Laura more than me.\"\n\nNow if any weird thought just flipped across your smutty little mind, squash it.\n\nTruth is, I did love Laura powerfully, in deep ways I cannot explain. I suppose I should have been jealous because of her history with Randy, and also because she was a showstopper: a mix of Julianne Moore and Diane Lane good looks with a petite, sculpted figure Barbie would have envied. But Laura was so much more.\n\nLaura was a spiritual rule-keeper, an extravagant mother, and the kind of optimist who believed Lassie would always come home before the credits rolled. To me, she was always abundantly kind, unswervingly encouraging. Laura told me I was smart, I was loved, I was on the right path. On good days, I believed her.\n\nWhen I first moved in with Randy, it was Laura who counseled me on shifting from singledom to couplehood with a sense of humor in tow. She taught me mnemonics to keep straight the names of everyone in his large Catholic family. She also grooved on my work, taking notes when I described my latest team-building initiative, clipping articles on customer service and proffering stringent feedback when she thought I was too soft\u2014or too hard\u2014a leader.\n\nAlways feminine and gleefully accessorized, Laura teased me to be more girly. She told me to wear a lace camisole under my pinstripe suit and try honey-warm highlights around my face. She would dare me to skinny-dip and surprise Randy when he came out to walk our dogs.\n\nOur last afternoon together, Laura urged me to learn to speak Italian, try dark chocolate with caramel and sea salt, and\u2014of all things\u2014make sure our medical practice did not give up converting from paper-based medical charts to electronic health records (EHR).\n\n\"I know it's expensive, Genie,\" she said, \"and surely it's going to be a hassle, but look . . .\" Laura opened a four-inch, three-ring binder showing me pages and pages of crisp, texted health records, most highlighted, some with her lusciously penciled notes and intricate drawings in the margin.\n\nNew government regulations were requiring that all hospitals and doctors' offices shift to EHR or be subject to financial penalties. But the transition was a huge investment and, understandably, Randy preferred his tried-and-true pen and paper chart to a computer keyboard and screen. I sighed.\n\n\"And this new book you are writing on aging, how's it going?\"\n\n\"I am thinking of punting the whole project. There are so many books about aging already out there. Health Communications Inc. has agreed to publish, but I'll be funding a lot of the marketing and media out of pocket.\n\n\"I sit at the computer and stare at the screen for hours. I'm beginning to think the whole idea is just another ego trip, my wanting to pretend I have answers I don't. I mean, what fresh thing do I have to say about aging? It's not like I'm the poster woman for getting it right.\"\n\nLaura's prednisone-puffy face sharpened. Her near-skeletal little hands reached out and grabbed mine.\n\n\"You must write this book. You have to. For Danika. For my granddaughters yet to be born.\"\n\nTears rolled down my face and off my chin.\n\n\"Promise me,\" she demanded.\n[Appendix A:   \nFavorite Belly Flat Recipes](Content.html#Appendix-A--Favorite-Belly-Flat-Recipes)\n\nBreakfast\n\nBroiled Grapefruit Serves 2\n\n1 grapefruit\n\n1 teaspoon ground ginger\n\n1 tablespoon honey\n\nPreheat the broiler.\n\nCut the grapefruit in half and use a small serrated knife to cut out the sections. Spoon the sections and juice into a bowl. Scrape out all of the remaining thick skin and pulp and discard. Spoon the sections from the bowl back into the halves. This is best done one half at a time.\n\nSprinkle the ginger and drizzle the honey over the top of each grapefruit half. Place the halves on a baking sheet.\n\nBroil for 3 to 5 minutes, until the honey begins to bubble.\n\nBanana in Bark Serves 1\n\n1 tablespoon ground almonds\n\n1 tablespoon ground or milled flaxseed\n\n1 whole banana\n\nMix almonds and flaxseeds on a large plate.\n\nPeel banana and roll in mixture until fully covered.\n\nEither eat immediately or place on wax paper and put in refrigerator to chill before eating.\n\nAsparagus Omelet Serves 2\n\n4 egg whites\n\n\u00bc teaspoon salt\n\n4 egg yolks\n\nDash of pepper\n\n1 cup 1% milk-fat cottage cheese\n\n1-1\/2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil\n\n6 asparagus spears, trimmed and slightly steamed\n\nPreheat the oven to 350\u00b0 F.\n\nBeat egg whites until frothy. Add salt and beat until stiff.\n\nBeat yolks until thick and lemon colored; add pepper and cottage cheese and beat until well blended. Fold egg whites into yolks.\n\nHeat olive oil in a 10-inch iron skillet; pour in omelet and cook approximately 3 minutes, until the bottom is lightly browned.\n\nTop with asparagus spears and finish cooking in the oven for 15 minutes or until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean.\n\nCitrus Ambrosia Serves 2 to 3\n\n1 11-ounce can mandarin oranges, drained\n\n1 pink grapefruit (or grapefruit sections in a jar, packed in juice,   \nnot syrup), cut into \u00bd-inch pieces\n\n2 tangerines, cut into \u00bd-inch pieces\n\n1 cup fresh cherries, pitted and halved\n\n1\/8 cup silvered almonds\n\nToss all the ingredients together and chill for 1 hour.\n\nEgg in a Nest Serves 2\n\n2 slices whole-grain bread\n\nExtra-virgin olive oil\n\n2 eggs\n\n2 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese\n\nRed pepper flakes to taste\n\nTurn a small glass upside down to cut a circle out of each bread slice.\n\nLightly coat a skillet with olive oil, place the bread slices in the skillet, and break an egg into each hole.\n\nCook on medium heat, turning once until the eggs are the desired firmness.\n\nRemove from the skillet and garnish with the Parmesan cheese and red pepper flakes.\n\nFlaxseed and Fruit Smoothie Serves 1\n\n1 cup skim milk\n\n1 cup frozen berries\n\n1 banana\n\n1 cup plain low-fat yogurt\n\n1 tablespoon flaxseed oil\n\n1 tablespoon ground flaxseed\n\nCombine all ingredients except flaxseed in blender. Blend well.\n\nPour into large glass and stir in flaxseed.\n\nOrange Smoothie with Flaxseeds Serves 4\n\n1 banana\n\n1 6-ounce can frozen orange juice concentrate\n\n2 cups vanilla soy milk\n\n1 teaspoon ground ginger\n\n2 tablespoons milled flaxseeds\n\nPlace the banana, orange juice concentrate, soy milk, and ginger in a blender. Process until the ingredients are blended and smooth.\n\nStir in the flaxseeds and serve.\n\nSMILEY TOAST Serves 2\n\n1 tablespoon sesame seed butter   \n(may substitute almond or peanut butter)\n\n2 slices whole-grain or whole-wheat bread, toasted\n\n\u00bd banana, sliced\n\n2 dozen raisins\n\nSpread the sesame seed butter on the warm toast.\n\nUse the banana slices to make eyes.\n\nArrange the raisins in a semicircle like a smile.\n\nYogurt and Fruit Parfait Serves 1\n\n1\/3 cup ground almonds\n\n2 tablespoons ground or milled flaxseed\n\n1 cup plain low-fat yogurt\n\n3\/4 cup berries\n\nRaw honey (optional)\n\nIn small bowl, mix almonds with flaxseed.\n\nIn parfait glass, alternately layer yogurt, berries, and almond-flaxseed mixture.\n\nIf desired, drizzle a small amount of honey on top.\n\nCrustless Cruciferous Quiche Serves 6\n\n1 cup skim or fat-free milk\n\n6 eggs\n\n1 cup frozen chopped spinach, thawed, drained and squeezed dry\n\n1 cup frozen chopped broccoli   \n(thawed, well drained)\n\n1 finely chopped small white onion\n\n1\/2 cup grated mozzarella cheese\n\nSalt and pepper to taste\n\nPreheat oven to 425 degrees. Beat eggs and milk together until frothy. Pour into well-oiled, medium-size iron skillet. Add in veggies and onion and top with cheese. Bake for 30 minutes until top is crusty. Add salt and pepper if needed.\nMain Dishes:\n\n[Perfect for  \nLunch or Dinner](Content.html#Main-Dishes--Perfect-for-Lunch-or-Dinner)\n\nTurkey and Asparagus Wraps Serves 4\n\n16 asparagus spears\n\n1\/3 cup plain low-fat yogurt\n\n1 teaspoon lemon juice\n\n1 teaspoon curry powder\n\nSalt and pepper to taste\n\n1 pound deli-style turkey breast, sliced\n\nWash, trim, and steam asparagus spears until tender. Set aside to cool.\n\nMix yogurt, lemon juice, curry powder, salt, and pepper in a small bowl.\n\nPlace 2 or 3 slices of turkey on a plate. Spread with the yogurt mixture. Put asparagus spears on one end and roll up. Secure with toothpick if necessary.\n\nServe immediately or refrigerate.\n\nVegetable Barley Soup Serves 8\n\n2 quarts vegetable broth\n\n1 cup uncooked barley\n\n2 large carrots, chopped\n\n2 stalks celery, chopped\n\n1-14.5-ounce can diced tomatoes with juice\n\n1 cup cauliflower, chopped\n\n1 cup broccoli, chopped\n\n1 onion, chopped\n\n3 bay leaves\n\n1 teaspoon garlic powder\n\n1 teaspoon salt\n\n1\/2 teaspoon ground black pepper\n\n1 teaspoon dried parsley\n\n1 teaspoon curry powder\n\n1 teaspoon paprika\n\n1 teaspoon Tabasco (optional)\n\nPour the vegetable broth into a large pot. Add the barley, carrots, celery, tomatoes, cauliflower, broccoli, beans, onions, and bay leaves.\n\nSeason with the garlic powder, salt, pepper, parsley, curry powder, paprika, and Tabasco.\n\nBring to a boil, then cover and simmer over medium-low heat, stirring occasionally, for at least 1 hour.\n\nSavory Spinach and   \nSalmon Salad Serves 4\n\n3 tablespoons orange juice\n\n2 tablespoons low-sodium soy sauce\n\n2 teaspoons minced fresh ginger\n\n1 teaspoon raw honey\n\n1-1\/2 teaspoons extra-virgin olive oil\n\n4 (6-ounce) salmon fillets\n\n2 cups fresh spinach, washed\n\n1\/2 cup mandarin orange slices\n\n1\/3 cup chopped green onions (scallions)\n\n2 hard-boiled eggs, sliced\n\n1\/4 cup ground almonds mixed with 1 tablespoon ground or milled flaxseed\n\nIn a small bowl, combine the orange juice, soy sauce, ginger, and honey. Whisk, gradually adding the olive oil, until well blended.\n\nGrill, bake, or poach the salmon fillets.\n\nMake a bed of spinach on each of four plates. Place salmon in the center of each one.\n\nGarnish each with mandarin orange slices, scallions, and eggs. Drizzle the orange-soy sauce dressing over the entire plate and sprinkle with almond-flaxseed mixture.\n\nGrilled Fish   \nwith Citrus Marinade Serves 4\n\n1\/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil\n\n2 tablespoons grapefruit juice\n\n3 tablespoons lime juice\n\nSalt and pepper to taste\n\n4 (6-ounce) fish fillets\n\nCombine olive oil, grapefruit juice, lime juice, salt, and pepper. Pour over fish and marinate in refrigerator for 2 or more hours.\n\nGrill and serve.\n\nNot Your Ordinary   \nTuna Salad Serves 4\n\n1 large (12-ounce) can white albacore tuna in water\n\n1 red pepper, chopped fine\n\n1 yellow pepper, chopped fine\n\n1\/4 cup grated green apple\n\n1\/3 cup shredded fresh cabbage\n\n2 tablespoons plain low-fat yogurt\n\n1\/2 teaspoon lemon juice\n\n1\/2 teaspoon rice wine vinegar\n\nSalt and pepper to taste\n\nMix all ingredients together in a large bowl.\n\nChill for at least 1 hour before serving.\n\nCauliflower Crab Cakes Serves 6\n\n2 cups crabmeat\n\n2 cups cooked and mashed cauliflower\n\n1\/3 cup minced celery\n\n1\/3 cup minced onion\n\n1 tablespoon parsley\n\n2 eggs, beaten\n\nExtra-virgin olive oil or grapeseed oil (for saut\u00e9ing)\n\nCombine all ingredients in a large bowl, except the olive oil.\n\nForm into 6 patties and chill in refrigerator for at least 1 hour.\n\nBrown in skillet lightly coated with olive oil.\n\nChicken and Cold Rice Salad Serves 10\n\n2 cups cooked brown rice (you may use whole-grain minute brown rice)\n\n2-1\/2 cups cooked chicken, cubed\n\n1 cup broccoli florets, steamed al dente\n\n\u00bd cup shredded almonds\n\n2 tablespoons minced parsley\n\n1 cup plain low-fat yogurt\n\nSpinach\n\n4 tangerines\n\nToss everything together in a large bowl except the spinach and tangerines. Chill for at least 2 hours.\n\nServe on a bed of spinach and surround with tangerine slices.\n\nGrilled Salmon   \nwith Dill and Lemon Serves 4\n\n2 tablespoons dill\n\n1 teaspoon garlic powder\n\n4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil\n\n2 tablespoons white wine vinegar with tarragon\n\nJuice of 2 lemons\n\n4 (1-inch thick) salmon steaks, 4 ounces each\n\nMix dill, garlic powder, olive oil, vinegar, and lemon juice. Pour mixture over salmon steaks and marinate in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours, turning at least once.\n\nPlace salmon on hot grill and cook 3\u20135 minutes on each side.\n\nTurkey, Broccoli,   \nand Cashew Roll-Ups Serves 2\n\n1\/2 pound thinly sliced roast turkey breast\n\n1 tablespoon honey\n\n1 teaspoon lemon juice\n\n1\/2 teaspoon grated fresh ginger\n\n1\/2 cup finely chopped steamed broccoli\n\n1\/4 cup crushed cashews\n\nOn a cutting board or on wax paper, separate the turkey slices into two piles.\n\nIn a small bowl, whisk together the honey, lemon juice, and ginger, then add the broccoli and cashews.\n\nSpread the mixture on the turkey slices, roll up, and secure with toothpicks.\n\nQuick Turkey-Stuffed   \nCabbage Serves 8\n\n1 pound ground turkey\n\n1 large onion, chopped\n\n1 cup brown rice, uncooked\n\n1\/4 cup fresh mint, chopped, or 1 tablespoon dried mint\n\n1 egg, beaten\n\n2 (14-ounce) cans chicken broth\n\nSalt and pepper to taste\n\n2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil\n\n1 medium cabbage\n\n2 tablespoons flaxseed\n\nPreheat oven to 350\u00b0 F.\n\nCombine the turkey, onion, rice, mint, egg, broth, salt, and pepper and saut\u00e9 in olive oil until browned.\n\nIn another pot, steam the cabbage until it is slightly soft.\n\nAfter the cabbage cools, cut off the bottom, peel off the leaves, and place them in a baking dish one by one.\n\nSpoon a helping of turkey mixture onto each leaf and then roll it up.\n\nSprinkle with flaxseed and bake for 15\u201320 minutes.\n\nVegetable-Stuffed   \nFlank Steak Serves 6\n\n2 pounds flank steak\n\n1\/2 cup red wine vinegar\n\n3 cloves garlic, finely chopped\n\n2 teaspoons dried thyme\n\n1 cup fresh spinach\n\n4 large carrots, boiled and cut in 1\/2 inch pieces\n\n1 cup sun-dried tomatoes soaked in red wine\n\n1 small onion, thinly sliced\n\n3 teaspoons red pepper flakes\n\n2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil\n\n1-1\/2 cups beef broth\n\nArrange the steak on a cutting board so that the long side is parallel to you. Using a long knife, butterfly the steak to within \u00bd inch of the far edge so that it opens like a book.\n\nPound the steak with a mallet until about \u00bc inch thick. Transfer to a baking dish, poke holes in the meat, and sprinkle with the red wine vinegar, garlic, and thyme. Cover and marinate overnight.\n\nPreheat the oven to 375\u00b0 F. Put the meat on the cutting board and top with a layer of the spinach, carrots, sun-dried tomatoes, and onions. Sprinkle evenly with the red pepper flakes.\n\nStarting with the edge closest to you, roll the meat forward to form a tight cylinder. Using kitchen twine, tie the meat at 1-inch intervals.\n\nHeat the olive oil in a large, deep skillet or Dutch oven and sear the meat on all sides over high heat until brown.\n\nPour in the beef broth, then add enough water to reach about one-third of the way up the sides of the meat.\n\nCover, transfer to the oven, and bake until tender, approximately 2 hours.\n\nRemove the meat and place on a clean cutting board. Let stand 10 minutes before slicing. Spoon a tablespoon of the beef broth mixture over the meat before serving.\n\nVeggie Burgers Serves 4\n\n1 medium onion, chopped very fine\n\n1 medium bell pepper, chopped very fine\n\nExtra-virgin olive oil\n\n2 cups cooked fresh spinach, drained and chopped fine\n\n1 cup mashed cooked cauliflower\n\n1 can black beans, drained\n\n1 tablespoon garlic powder\n\n1 egg, beaten well\n\n2 pieces whole-grain toast, crumbled fine\n\nSalt and pepper to taste\n\nSaut\u00e9 onion and bell pepper in olive oil until onion is translucent.\n\nWhen mixture has cooled, place it in a large bowl and add all other ingredients, mixing well.\n\nForm patties and place on cookie sheet. Chill for at least 2 hours before browning in olive oil in a skillet on top of the stove, or bake at 400\u00b0F for 30 minutes.\nCHAPTER 15:\n\nMatter, No Matter Your Age\n\nThere is a special place in hell for women who do not help other women.\n\n\u2014Madeleine K. Albright\n\nEighty-one-year-old Carol Baras lives in San Diego. Over a forty-year career, Carol and her husband Bill started and ran multiple companies; some expanded into global markets. She also founded a nonprofit telephone hotline for troubled youth for which she was featured in People magazine and on Good Morning America. Over a chocolate martini, Carol told me she has \"so much more left to give\" and is \"looking forward to what the next ten years might surprise me with.\"\n\nLike Carol, you and I can choose to believe that we can make a difference. Choosing to matter means we stay needed, interesting, and relevant. No matter our age, life can matter more.\n\nVolunteer\n\nIn December 2011, I sat down with Crissy Haslam, the First Lady of Tennessee. I went to Emory University with Crissy and Bill (Governor Haslam); in fact, Crissy was a Kappa Alpha Theta sorority sister, and I was also a little sister in Bill's Sigma Chi fraternity, but it had been decades since we connected. Prettier than Sissy Spacek, with girl-next-door charm belying an astute, nimble brain, Crissy was born to be a First Lady. I asked my old friend how she hoped to use their conjoined political platform to make a difference for women and girls in Tennessee.\n\nCrissy talked about Bill's linked commitment to improving education and adding jobs across the state. She described her own passion for early literacy improvement, the importance of coaching parents as to the exponential benefits of reading with their children, and how she hoped to help catalyze more parental involvement in schools. Crissy was articulate and eloquent. Then I asked, \"How do you make it real? Your philanthropic interests, I mean?\"\n\nCrissy's eyes lit up. She leaned forward, becoming immediately animated, talking with her hands and punctuating certain sentences with a tap of her foot. She told me about delivering meals for the Love Kitchen, a nonprofit in Knoxville, Tennessee, that provides meals, clothing, and emergency food packages to the homebound, homeless, and unemployed. She beamed, explaining how the Love Kitchen was founded by two retired grandmothers and sisters, Helen Ashe and Ellen Turner, who felt God placed in their hearts a mission to serve via food for the hungry.\n\n\"For decades I served on multiple nonprofit boards, and, of course, Bill and I regularly tithed to church and many charitable organizations,\" Crissy shared, \"but it wasn't until I personally picked up those meals, drove, delivered them, and looked into the eyes of those I was serving that I truly felt it\u2014you know, the reality of what my time commitment on boards really meant, and also the pay-it-forward value of the checks we write. My experience made me humble. It made my privilege to give intensely, intimately real.\"\n\nGive Wisely\n\nWomen have for centuries been the fuel of our nation's volunteer efforts; now we are also the rising force in philanthropy. According to Betsy Brill, founder of Strategic Philanthropy Ltd., and a regular contributor to Forbes.com, \"It's not just who gives that is changing\u2014there is, after all, a rich history of high-profile women contributing generously to significant causes\u2014it's how women and to whom women are giving that is redefining contemporary philanthropy.\n\n\"To a great degree, the charitable giving by women, directly or through women's funds, focuses on improving the quality of life and opportunity for girls and women. The exponential growth of women's funds suggests an increasing acceptance of the idea that philanthropic investments in women and girls will increasingly fuel positive change in communities. It also suggests a growing interest in philanthropic models that allow donors to leverage and pool their charitable dollars to achieve maximum impact.\"\n\nIn compassionate hands, tools of influence and power can be life-giving and world-changing. Since our grandmothers marched as suffragettes and our mothers dipped their toes in the women's movement by choosing to work and demanding separate checking accounts, women across the globe have emerged as an economic force to be reckoned with. In 2009, women controlled an estimated 27 percent, about $20 trillion, of the world's wealth. Women now own more than 17 million US businesses and control $4.3 trillion of the $5.9 trillion in US consumer spending. Projections are that women-controlled wealth in the United States will grow at an average of 8 percent through 2014\u2014making US women the largest single economic force in the world.\n\nAbsurdly, women living in the United States today are poorer than men in all racial and ethnic groups. In 2008, more than half the 37 million Americans living in poverty were women. More recent surveys tell us that 38 percent of women thirty to fifty-five years old are worried they will live at or near poverty because they cannot adequately save for retirement. Thirteen percent of women older than seventy-five are poor, compared to 6 percent of men. More bad news: poverty rates for males and females living in the United States are the same throughout childhood but increase for women during their childbearing years and again in old age.\n\nFrankly, these facts about intractable female poverty across the globe should startle those of us who are more fortunate to action. We will be\u2014we must be\u2014the force narrowing this wealth-to-poverty gap.\n\nIn the United States, key findings of a 2009 report released by the Foundation Center and the Women's Funding Network included:\n\n  * Private and community foundations increased their giving for activities targeting women and girls from an estimated $412.1 million in 1990 to nearly $2.1 billion in 2006.\n  * Women's funds are guided by the principle that women catalyze and lead the way to change in neighborhoods and communities; 98 percent of the women's funds surveyed indicated that achieving social change was a high priority for their fund.\n  * Excitedly, women-led philanthropy is seeding sustainable change for women and girls, not only in this nation but across the globe. At the September 2011 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared a tipping point for women. She said, \"When we liberate the economic potential of women, we elevate the economic performance of communities, nations, and the world. There is a stimulative ripple effect that kicks in when women have greater access to jobs and the economic lives of our countries: Greater political stability. Fewer military conflicts. More food. More educational opportunity for children. By harnessing the economic potential of all women, we boost opportunity for all people.\"\n\nOrganizations such as the International Network of Women's Funds, the Global Fund for Women, and Women for Women International are driving a more comprehensive approach to social change by focusing philanthropic giving on initiatives impacting human rights, health, and economic empowerment\u2014one girl or woman at a time.\n\nChoosing where and to whom to give your hard-earned (or inherited) money, as well as where you choose to invest your precious time and individual talents, is a really big deal. I choose based on the following four criteria:\n\n  1. A cause for women, girls, or animals about which I am personally passionate,\n  2. Confidence\/trust in the administration and leadership of that cause,\n  3. The pressing needs in my community that I can somehow personally impact\/influence and, most important,\n  4. What need touches my heart as exceptionally \"real.\"\n\nI believe women's fingerprints on the changes we impact must be sealed with a commitment far beyond charity. Our giving is more than an academic, do-good, slam-dunk exercise. Our philanthropy must be a conscious, intellectually vetted, yet heart-driven investment.\n\nI urge you to find a cause you are passionate about, then touch and feel that need. Like the Velveteen Rabbit, then and only then will your giving become real. Then and only then will we, as women, become the turbochargers for the change our world needs now.\n\nLog On with Purpose\n\nNo matter her age, a woman wearing jeans, sitting on her patio, and typing on her iPad has the potential to have as much\u2014if not more\u2014impact as a herd of Capitol Hill lobbyists or a billion-dollar multimedia advertising campaign. Let men play video games. Women will tune in, log on, and make a difference. Internet and social media platforms put exponential power at our fingertips. Applications such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and blogs increasingly catapult everyday people into dynamo activists. The Dragonfly Effect, by Jennifer Aaker and Andy Smith, is a stimulating and inspirational resource for any woman wanting to log on, join the conversation, and have impact locally, nationally and\/or globally.\n\nOne of my favorite examples of one person tapping the power of the Internet to circumvent the status quo is Chase Adams, cofounder of Watsi (watsi.org). Chase was a Peace Corps volunteer in Costa Rica when a woman on a bus approached him and asked for money to help fund her son's needed medical treatment. Chase told me he \"had an epiphany\" and soon returned to the States with the mission of developing a crowd-funding community to connect people like you and me with patients in serious need of medical care and treatments.\n\nIn summer 2012, only two years after Chase's original epiphany, his vision went live, relying fully on volunteer talent. Neera was one of the first patients funded on Watsi. She is a twenty-four-year-old Nepali woman who had suffered from seizures since she was a child. Her mother died when she was young and her father remarried, but Neera was never taken to seek treatment for her condition. Neera was later married and then widowed, a position that carries major social stigma in Nepal. One day, while Neera was cooking (a task that Nepali women are expected to perform regardless of ability) she had a seizure and suffered severe burns on her face and body.\n\nWhen Neera's profile was posted on Watsi, she needed skin grafting and reconstructive surgery to repair severe damage caused by burns. Neera comes from a district in Nepal where the average per capita income is less than a dollar a day. She had no financial support from her family and could not afford the $975 medical treatment she needed. She was literally out of options.\n\nThen, something amazing happened. Twenty-two Watsi donors stepped in and fully funded Neera's treatment. Now, for the first time in four years, Neera has regained the use of her hand. Her burns have been treated and her skin is healing. She is on track to live a normal, happy, healthy life.\n\nCecelia is a Watsi donor. When asked, \"Why do you support Watsi and why did you share it on Facebook?\" here's what she said: \"I'm a two-time breast cancer survivor. I have the wonderful First World benefit of insurance, a good job led by supportive people, a husband who makes enough to give me the room to take care of myself . . . in short, I'm rich beyond measure compared to almost everyone else in the world. I have so much to be grateful for.\"\n\n\"Every day I get piles and piles and piles of mail from nonprofits looking for money. I don't blame them\u2014I know times are tough. I've worked for nonprofits before and I know how things work. But it hasn't stopped my becoming inured to the pleas. It's like walking down a street with hundreds of hands in my way, and I've started to feel resentful. Because of my experience, I know that the mailers I'm getting cost money, and that some of these organizations are only passing a small percentage of the donations they receive to the actual people they're purporting to help.\"\n\n\"Along comes Watsi, allowing me to donate directly to someone in need. And there she is\u2014a sixty-year-old woman facing cancer and the debilitating treatments on her own, without all my resources. And all my money goes to her treatment. Alleluia! Thank you for allowing me to share.\"\n\nUnfortunately, the misconception persists that technology-based communication is primarily a playground for the young-in-years. This is dead-wrong thinking. A growing composite of data from such respected sources as the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) and the Pew Research Foundation indicates that the over-fifty crowd is one of the fastest growing segments using mobile technology. And, according to Facebook, since 2008 the number of women over fifty-five on the site has tripled and makes up the social network's fastest-growing age-group.\n\nSlow to enter the world of social media, I attended the 2012 BlogHer conference in New York. I hated to miss the wave of our future but, like many other women, my concern was time. With everything else on my to-do list, when was I supposed to tweet or whatever? Deanna Zandt, author of Share This! shot back: \"Social networking is much more than a way to find your high school friend or learn what your favorite celebrity had for breakfast. It's how women can connect, share our stories, and build empathetic relationships that change our world. But the world needs many different kinds of voices to make these conversations work. We need you!\"\n\nSoon after, while speaking to a group of seventy-something women, I asked them how many had an opinion regarding pro-choice movements.\n\n\"Do you mean how many of us are for it?\" one woman asked crisply.\n\n\"No, how many of you have an opinion one way or another?\"\n\nAll forty-two hands shot up.\n\n\"You may have read recently that thousands of Turkish women rallied in Istanbul amid growing fears that the Turkish Islamic government might ban abortion. Whether you are pro-choice or pro-life, you can have a voice in this controversy. All you have to do is log on.\"\n\nThree days later, seventy-nine-year-old Anne sent me this e-mail: \"After hearing you speak, I logged on and joined in several blog conversations. I also asked my thirty-four-year-old granddaughter to help me set up a Twitter account and teach me how to tweet. She got my thirteen-year-old-great-granddaughter involved. For the first time in decades, they looked at me as if I was interesting, as if I had something to say. Now my fifty-six-year-old daughter is envious of their attention and praise. She asked me if I would show her how to log on and join in too. Thank you for reminding me that my voice matters, that someone out there still cares to hear what I have to say.\"\n\nVote and\/or Run\n\nTwenty-three-year-old Lacey walked from the den where her father Lester was pumping his fists in the air watching Fox News talking heads on his wide-screen TV into the sunroom where her mother, Ronnie, sat highlighting \"The National Women's Political Caucus Guide for How to Run Low-Budget Campaigns.\" Exasperated, she interrupted.\n\n\"Doesn't it seem like both of you are wasting tons of energy? I mean, both of you are passionate about opposing political agendas. Why get so worked up? At the end of the day, you will just cancel out each other's vote. Why even bother?\"\n\nRonnie faced her daughter square on.\n\n\"Why vote?\" She spoke quietly but with fire, \"Because my opinion matters to the future of the United States of America as well as our country's global agenda. So does your dad's. So does yours. A person's vote is not right or wrong. It is simply their voice, their personal power of truth to share and, in the process of voting, conglomerate with all the other voices in our nation. A vote is how each of us can exercise our freedom and also fulfill our responsibilities as a citizen. One person's voice can and never will cancel out another's.\"\n\n\"Lacey, honey, political agendas and their associated candidates will come and go. Sometimes we elect clowns, charlatans, and suited-up bags of gas, but in this nation and in our world, new voices are emerging\u2014voices of activism, entrepreneurship, and compassionate capitalism. Voices with the power to change our world. Increasingly, these are the voices of women coming from the grass roots.\"\n\n\"Your dad's and my disparate political views have strengthened, rather than frayed, our mutual esteem of each other's intelligence and experience. Again, if you think our individual votes cancel each other out, you are dead wrong. Standing firm in our own truths while respectfully agreeing to disagree is the stuff of democracy. I suggest you reframe your experience of our family political landscape and realize that the essence of world peace is modeled in your very own home!\"\n\nYes, your vote matters, so never, ever fail to fill out that ballot. But some of us may choose to do more. The number of women stepping up and running for office is increasing. Wonderful news: more and more of us are winning. In 2011, US women held 90, or 16.8 percent, of the 535 seats in the 112th US Congress; 17, or 17.0 percent, of the 100 seats in the Senate; and 73, or 16.8 percent, of the 435 seats in the House of Representatives. In addition, three women served as delegates to the House from Guam, the Virgin Islands, and Washington, DC. Around the world, 19.2 percent of all national parliamentary positions (including seats in the upper house or Senate, where applicable) are held by women. Of the 181 countries for which data was provided, the United States ranked almost exactly in the middle: 92nd, just above Turkmenistan.\n\nWorried that there are not enough hours in the day for you to take care of your own health, attend to your family, grow your business or expand your career, manage your financial well-being, and also run for office? Listen to someone who is doing it to tell you that, if this is the role the Universe is calling you to fill in our world today, you can:\n\nLast year, I gave birth to my son Joaqu\u00edn\u2014who is now nine months old. It put me in an exclusive group; I became only the eighth member of Congress to give birth while serving in office. The first woman to give birth while in office was Yvonne Braithwaite Burke in 1973. From 1973 to 1996, there were no women in Congress who gave birth! It's obvious that having a child while being responsible to thousands of constituents is a daunting task. But it's not impossible.\n\nNot only was I able to continue serving the interests of my constituents during my pregnancy, I even made it down to the House floor\u2014maternity gear and all\u2014to cast votes the night before I gave birth. I'm not going to tell you it was easy. I have a great staff and a wonderful family who made it easier. If anything, this opportunity showed me how much women can accomplish.\n\nLast fall, Stanford and the University of Chicago conducted a study comparing female lawmakers to their male counterparts. The study focused on three specific measurements of the effectiveness of each member of Congress: (1) the number of pieces of legislation each member introduced, (2) the number of members of Congress who cosponsored each piece of legislation, and (3) the amount of discretionary spending each member was able to direct to his or her district.\n\nThe conclusion of the study was clear: women are more effective legislators than men. Quantitatively, women introduce more legislation and procure more resources for their districts. Qualitatively, the legislation women introduce receives greater support from their colleagues.\n\nThe results reaffirm a truth I've seen again and again in my life and my time in Congress: women get things done and don't take no for an answer. That's not to diminish the impact of my male colleagues, but there are times when women show greater fortitude and a stronger commitment than our male counterparts. We've had to work harder to get where we are, which means we keep digging and trying new methods until we get the results we want.\n\nWomen often view issues with a 360-degrees lens\u2014by examining parts of the debate the way it relates to the whole. Moms, aunts, sisters, or mothers in Congress are good for our government and good for our nation. It leads to better policies, better laws, and better governance. It's why our nation's Capitol now has more bathrooms for women and a breast-feeding room.\n\nIn your own day-to-day lives, you will bring out your passion for people and the world around you. Don't just sit on the sidelines. Don't just take the world as you find it. Use your voice to stand up to injustice. Empower the powerless.\n\nYou can write the laws rather than react to them. You can ensure the next generation of women legislators have an easier road and more role models than your generation does\u2014and than my generation had.\n\nI look forward to hearing more voices of women in the debates that will help shape the world in which my son grows up.\n\nExcerpted from Congresswoman Linda T. S\u00e1nchez's, February 25, 2010, blog. Congresswoman S\u00e1nchez represents the 39th Congressional District of California.\n\nThis One's for the Girls\n\nI don't have children of my own. I would have particularly loved to have had a daughter but not especially one with any of the men I hung out with during my procreating years. While this fact saddens me it also deepens my commitment to positively contribute to girls' lives, those belonging to women in my circle of friends, my community, and our country. How else will I live on? What better legacy could I leave?\n\nWhenever I have a \"George Bailey moment\" (the character in the movie It's a Wonderful Life who doesn't think his life matters and considers suicide only to be interrupted by a guardian angel), I stop and consider:\n\nI have a few fingerprints on Sarah White's life, and she many on mine. At eighteen, Sarah is already proving herself to be a committed engine for equality and social justice.\n\nMy niece Shelley recently sent me a card inscribed with the following Marianne Williamson quote:\n\nOur deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. And as we let our own light shine, we give other people permission to do the same.\n\n\"Genie,\" Shelley wrote inside, \"you teach me this. I would not be who I am or be excited about the woman I will continue to grow into without you in my life.\" Hardly a better legacy than that, except possibly . . .\n\nI adore Randy's daughter Danika and am goo-goo for our granddaughter Lulu. I am sure I will spoil her, but more than that, I want to do everything I can to help her grow into a woman who is smart, strong, kind, and bold.\n\nBesides being a super aspiration for Lulu, \"Smart, strong, and bold\" is the motto for Girls Inc. This nonprofit organization works in communities across the United States to inspire girls to be strong, smart, and bold through life-changing programs and experiences that help girls navigate gender, economic, and social barriers. I am on the board of the Girls Inc. chapter in Jacksonville, Florida. It, and the Girls Inc. chapters in Nashville, Tennessee, and Northwest Oregon are three of my personal choice philanthropies.\n[Salads   \nand   \nSide Dishes](Content.html#Salads-and-Side-Dishes)\n\nCruciferous Couscous Serves 8\n\n1 cup minced broccoli\n\n1 cup fresh spinach\n\n1 cup minced cauliflower\n\n2 tomatoes, cubed\n\n2 tablespoons minced garlic\n\n2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil\n\n3 cups water\n\n2 cups quick-cook couscous\n\n2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar\n\nSalt and pepper to taste\n\nPreheat oven to 350\u00b0 F.\n\nMix broccoli, spinach, cauliflower, and tomatoes with garlic and 1 tablespoon of olive oil and place on a baking sheet. Bake for 15\u201320 minutes, until tender.\n\nIn a pot, bring water and remaining tablespoon of olive oil to a boil, add couscous and return to a boil, then remove from heat and let stand for 5 minutes. Fluff with a fork and let cool.\n\nPlace couscous on a plate and top with roasted vegetables.\n\nDrizzle with balsamic vinegar before serving.\n\nBeets and Brussels Sprouts Serves 6\n\n4 medium beets\n\n10\u201312 Brussels sprouts\n\nExtra-virgin olive oil\n\n1 small white onion, peeled and sliced thin\n\n3 tablespoons frozen orange juice concentrate\n\n2 teaspoons grated ginger\n\nSalt and pepper to taste\n\nBoil beets for 45 minutes or until tender by touch with a fork; drain when done.\n\nRemove and discard the outer leaves of the Brussels sprouts and boil them in a separate pan for 5 minutes. Drain and cut in half.\n\nPut olive oil in skillet, saut\u00e9 onion, and add beets and Brussels sprouts. Cook until warm, about 2\u20133 minutes, then stir in orange juice concentrate and ginger. Salt and pepper to taste.\n\nCreamy Coleslaw Serves 10\n\n4 cups shredded cabbage\n\n1 cup grated carrots\n\n1-1\/2 cups plain low-fat yogurt\n\n1-1\/2 tablespoons finely chopped celery\n\n1 teaspoon grated onion\n\n3 tablespoons white vinegar\n\n1 tablespoon raw honey\n\n3\/4 teaspoon salt\n\nDash of pepper\n\nMix all ingredients in a large bowl and toss well.\n\nRefrigerate for at least 2 hours before serving.\n\nBroccoli and Cauliflower   \nin Lime Dressing Serves 4\n\n1 tablespoon low-sodium soy sauce\n\n2 teaspoons raw honey\n\n3 tablespoons fresh lime juice\n\n1 cup broccoli florets\n\n1 cup cauliflower florets\n\nSalt and pepper to taste\n\nRed pepper flakes (optional)\n\nMix soy sauce, honey, and lime juice. Set aside.\n\nBoil broccoli and cauliflower for about 5 minutes, till they are tender yet firm. Drain and toss immediately with soysauce, lime mixture. Season with salt and pepper to taste.\n\nSprinkle with red pepper flakes if desired.\n\nSpicy Kale and Beans Serves 8\n\n2 cups dried black-eyed peas\n\n1 bunch kale (about 2 pounds)\n\n1 large onion, diced\n\n1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil\n\n2 tablespoons white vinegar\n\n1\/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper (optional)\n\n2 hard-boiled eggs, chopped\n\nSoak black-eyed peas overnight.\n\nThe next day place the drained peas in a large saucepan, cover with water, and bring to a boil over high heat. Boil for 3 minutes.\n\nRemove the pan from the heat, cover tightly, and let stand for 1 hour.\n\nWash kale, remove large stem ends, and coarsely chop the leaves.\n\nSaut\u00e9 the onion in a large skillet. Add the kale and cook for about 5 minutes, until the leaves are wilted but still bright green. Stir in black-eyed peas, vinegar, and crushed red pepper until the entire mixture bubbles with heat.\n\nTop with the eggs before serving.\n\nSpinach and Feta Brown Rice Serves 6\n\n1 cup brown rice\n\n1 cup fresh spinach leaves\n\n2 teaspoons minced garlic\n\n4 tablespoons low-fat feta cheese\n\nSalt and pepper to taste\n\nCook the brown rice according to directions on the package, or bring to a boil 2 parts water to 1 part rice in a medium-size pot. Cook on low for 30\u201345 minutes until the rice is soft.\n\nBefore serving, add the spinach and garlic, stirring until the spinach wilts.\n\nPut on a plate and garnish with feta cheese.\n\nBeet and Orange Salad Serves 4\n\n1 jar pickled beets\n\n2 cans mandarin oranges in water, or 2 tangerines, peeled, sectioned, and seeded\n\n1\/2 cup orange juice\n\n1 cup fresh spinach\n\n1\/4 cup slivered almonds\n\nToss beets and mandarin orange or tangerine sections in orange juice. Chill for at least 1 hour.\n\nServe on bed of spinach.\n\nGarnish with slivered almonds.\n\nMashed Cauliflower   \nwith Turkey Bacon Serves 4\n\n1 medium head cauliflower\n\nSalt and pepper to taste\n\n1\/4 cup skim milk\n\n1\/4 cup instant low-carb mashed potatoes\n\n1 teaspoon garlic paste or garlic powder\n\n2 slices cooked turkey bacon, crumbled\n\nCut cauliflower into florets and steam with salt and pepper until very tender.\n\nPlace in blender and add all ingredients except turkey bacon. Blend until smooth.\n\nReturn to pot or stove to reheat if necessary.\n\nGarnish with crumbled turkey bacon.\n\nCabbage-Apple Salad Serves 6\n\n1 cup shredded cabbage\n\n1 cup diced apple\n\n1 cup chopped celery\n\n1\/4 cup plain low-fat yogurt\n\n2 tablespoons flaxseed\n\nMix all ingredients in a large bowl. Toss, chill, and serve.\n\nSkillet Broccoli or   \nAsparagus with Sesame Seeds Serves 6\n\n2 large stalks fresh broccoli or 12\u201314 asparagus spears\n\n2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil\n\n2 tablespoons sesame seeds\n\n2 or 3 cloves garlic, peeled and sliced\n\nSalt and pepper to taste\n\nWash broccoli and cut the florets into medium to large pieces. Peel the tough outer layer from the stems and slice the inner tender, juicy portion in half.\n\nOr, if using asparagus, wash the spears and trim off the ends.\n\nIn a large skillet with a lid, heat the oil over high heat. Add sesame seeds and saut\u00e9, stirring until lightly toasted; be careful not to over-cook, because they burn quickly. Also, keep a lid handy because the sesame seeds might start to pop.\n\nAdd the broccoli (or asparagus) and garlic, and stir for a few seconds. Add salt and pepper to taste, and stir.\n\nCover the skillet and remove from heat; let sit about 15 minutes. The broccoli (or asparagus) will retain its color and be tender and crisp.\nAppendix B: Resources\n\nBest Resource: Yourself\n\nYou want to make smart, belly-flat-friendly, hormone-healthy choices but may not be sure where to start. While this section provides a listing of suggested resources, I want to take a minute to remind each reader that you are the one in charge of determining what is right for you, your body, and ultimately, your health.\n\nI strongly encourage you to do your research, ask informed questions, reach out to other women for input and vet health and medical professionals to discern their credentials, training, experience, and reputation. Ultimately assemble a health coaching and care team you trust, but remember: Even with your team in place, you are the common variable in every health and wellness conversation you will have. Therein, you must always take the lead.\n\nChoosing Organic\n\nFoods\n\nMany people initially complain that buying organic meat and produce is too expensive and that sorting through food product labels to determine GMO versus non-GMO foods can be confusing. The good news is that, because of growing consumer demand, almost every grocery store in the nation now stocks organic foods and also has a health food aisle. Some progressive grocery store chains in larger metropolitan markets even have a nutritionist on the floor available to help you sort through questions, labels, and foods to match special dietary needs.\n\nI applaud the grocery store industry for increasingly responding to shoppers wanting more natural options. My hat is off to two companies who continue to raise the bar:\n\nWhole Foods Markets: Founded in 1980 as one small store in Austin, Texas, Whole Foods Markets is now the world's leading retailer of natural and organic foods, with more than 340 stores in North America and the United Kingdom. This is a mission-driven company whose popularity and growth deserves celebration. To find a Whole Foods Market near you, go to www.wholefoodsmarket.com.\n\nTrader Joe's: I particularly like the clear labeling of all Trader Joe's private labeled products clearly promising NO artificial flavors, colors or preservatives, NO monosodium glucarate (MSG), NO genetically modified (GMO) ingredients, NO added trans fats. There are currently 375 Trader Joe's grocery stores in the United States. To find one near you, go to www.traderjoes.com\/stores.\n\nTo learn more about the \"why\" of organic food choices, or to locate a source for organic foods near you, go to: www.organicfoods.com, www.organicconsumers.org, www.eatwell.org, and www.NutritionStyle.com. Local farmer's markets can also be a great source for organic foods, often at lower prices than you will pay in the supermarket or health food store.\n\nHousecleaning Products\n\nRemember it is important to decrease your exposure to environmental estrogens, or xenoestrogens. I recommend using organic, eco-friendly housecleaning products when at all possible. One excellent resource is Billee Sharp's book Lemons and Lavender. Also check out www.greenworkscleaners.com and www.eartheasy.com.\n\nSafe Cosmetics\n\nI urge you to make sure your cosmetics are safe. Many are not. An excellent website for detailed information on beauty products is www.safecosmetics.org. The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics is a coalition of public health, educational, religious, labor, women's environmental and consumer groups. The coalition's goal is to require the health and beauty industry to protect consumer health by phasing out all chemical ingredients linked to cancer, birth defects, and other health problems, and replace them with safer alternatives.\n\nIf you want to learn more and then take informed action, Ellen Murmur's book Simple Skin Beauty: Every Woman's Guide to a Lifetime of Healthy, Gorgeous Skin is a wonderful resource. Whole Foods Premium Body Care line of products are among the most exceptional and affordable personal care products available. They meet the strictest standards for quality sourcing, environmental impact, results and safety. Whole Foods Premium Body Care is an excellent choice for being good to your whole body.\n\nIn addition, many websites inform and offer naturally terrific products. Some favorites include:\n\nwww.kellyteegardenorganics.com\n\nwww.tataharperskincare.com\n\nwww.aubrey-organics.com\n\nwww.burtsbees.com\n\nwww.dermae.com\n\nwww.pangeaorganics.com\n\nwww.weleda.com\n\nNote: Some of these products are more wallet-friendly than others. Do your homework, check out reviews, ask for samples and, ultimately, choose the ones that work best for your body, face and budget.\n\nVaginal Lubricants\n\nOver-the-counter vaginal lubricants can be a good choice to self-treat a condition of vaginal dryness, but read the label before you buy. Some ingredients in certain products are absolute no-no's because they create a medium for bacteria and growth, thereby increasing risk of urinary tract infection. Others contain potentially harmful petrochemicals. Safe sources for vaginal lubricants include:\n\nwww.bewellstaywell.com\/Sylk-Natural\n\nwww.goodcleanlove.com\n\nwww.yesyesyes.org\n\nIf a condition of vaginal dryness and\/or painful intercourse persists, consult your doctor.\n\nVitamins and Supplements\n\nAccording to a recent survey of nearly 1,000 supplements conducted by ConsumerLab.com, a product-certification company, one out of four supplements has quality problems, such as contamination or a failure to include an ingredient listed on the label.\n\nI own the Natural Medicine Pharmacy that adjoins Randy's Ageless and Wellness Medical Center. Drawing on Randy's expertise as a physician specializing in age-management medicine, as well as his training as a compounding pharmacist specializing in pharmacognosy (plant-based medicine), I have established one criterion for the vitamins and supplements we carry that is simple yet non-negotiable: Research-driven dietary supplements with a proven track record. This means digging deep to evaluate quality, truth in labeling, and company adherence to stringent manufacturing guidelines. These guidelines include:\n\n  * Raw materials testing\n  * Potency testing\n  * Product traceability\n  * Purity testing\n  * Product freshness\n  * Microbiology testing\n\nThe bottom line is truth in packaging. People have the right to know what they are putting in their body and they deserve to get the amount of active ingredient they are paying for. Randy has developed a signature-formulation, private-label line of vitamins and supplements available online at www.hormonewellstore.com.\n\nRandy has also vetted and recommends the following brands. The following three are available only through a physician's office. For more information on their products or to find a doctor in your area who carries them, go to:\n\n  * Metagenics, www.metagenics.com\n  * Orthomolecular, www.orthomolecularproducts.com\n  * Xymogen, www.xymogen.com\n\nLife Extension is a direct-to-consumer source for vitamins and supplements that Randy and I have high confidence in. In addition to its natural product offerings, Life Extension publishes a fantastic scientifically rooted monthly magazine. For more information on Life Extension, go to www.lef.org.\n\nHormone Health\n\nOver-the-Counter Progesterone Creams\n\nMany women find that using an over-the-counter (OTC) bioidentical progesterone cream is an excellent first step toward eliminating estrogen dominance and restoring hormone balance. You can purchase bioidentical progesterone creams in most health foods stores. The good news is that it is available. The bad news is that some products are better than others. The reason for this discrepancy: There is no regulatory body that oversees the production or standardization of product manufacturing for so-called \"natural\" products. What this means to the average consumer is that there is great variation among the many OTC progesterone creams on the market today.\n\nWhile I cannot reveal Randy's exact formula for his Natural Balance Cream, I can share here several of the critical variables that define its integrity of ingredients and proven efficacy:\n\n  * Dr. Randolph's Natural Balance Cream is a bioidentical formulation of progesterone. This means that the molecules of progesterone suspended in the cream have exactly the same molecular structure as those produced by the human body. The body recognizes, receives, and utilizes these molecules. The parent molecule for progesterone comes from a substance known as diosgenin, which is found in soy or Mexican wild yam. Many products on the market today containing soy or Mexican wild yam claim to be a \"natural progesterone\"; however, until the diosgenin is converted from its original molecular structure, the body will not recognize it. Consequently, soy or Mexican wild yam it the raw state will not generate the same clinical response.\n  * Dr. Randolph's Natural Balance Cream contains the maximum concentration of bioidentical progesterone that can be mixed in an OTC product. Some creams have a \"little\" progesterone in their mix but not enough to generate a consistent and positive user response.\n  * The progesterone in Dr. Randolph's Natural Balance Cream meets the United States Pharmacopoeia gold standards for quality and purity. In addition, the laboratory used to produce Dr. Randolph's Natural Balance Cream compounds this product under strict guidelines approved by the National Association of Compounding Pharmacists. This is not required by law so not all product manufacturers go to the trouble or expense.\n  * The progesterone molecule in Dr. Randolph's Natural Balance Cream is encased within a liposomal delivery system. This is critical because, as the many layers of the oily globule of liposome melt away like a snowball, the hormones are dispersed continuously through the skin for up to twelve hours. This means that the underlying issue of hormonal imbalance is eliminated, hormonal balance is restored, and my patients have continuous relief of their symptoms throughout the day. In contrast, other over-the-counter progesterone creams are not formulated for sustained release. When the progesterone is immediately absorbed through the skin, a quick spike in progesterone levels occurs causing a temporary vs. constant relief of symptoms. Therein a formulation that is time-released is much more clinically effective.\n\nDr. Randolph's Natural Balance Cream is available at www.hormonewellstore.com. Randy has also reviewed the following OTC progesterone creams and verified their quality and truth in advertising:\n\nArbonne International\n\nPhytoProlief and Prolief Natural Balancing Creams\n\nwww.arbonne.com\n\nEmerita\n\nPro-Gest progesterone cream\n\nwww.progest.com\n\nSeeking Medical Professional Help\n\nIf you have committed to the lifestyle changes outlined in this book and tried an OTC progesterone cream for more than one month with no relief of symptoms, this is a signal that your body needs more. It is time for you to seek professional medical help to diagnose and treat a more advanced or more multifactorial underlying condition of hormone imbalance.\n\nCaution: treating hormone imbalances is serious medicine. Do your homework before choosing a medical professional. Find out:\n\n  * Board certification(s)\n  * Training in hormone health, what organization, how long. Excellent organizations offering continuing medical education (CME) programs on natural hormone health are the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine (A4M), www.a4m.com and the Institute of Functional Medicine, www.functionalmedicine.org\n  * Protocol for routinely analyzing hormone levels via blood work or saliva testing.\n  * Years of experience\n  * Reputation among patient community, then\n  * Trust your instincts. Is this someone you can partner with and trust?\n\nWhen looking for a physician or medical professional in your area, an excellent resource can be your local compounding pharmacist. If you need help finding a compounding pharmacy in your area, contact one of the two organizations listed here.\n\nThe International Academy of Compounding Pharmacists (IACP)\n\nP.O. Box 1365\n\nSugar Land, TX 77487\n\nPhone: 281-933-8400\n\nFax: 281-495-0602\n\nWebsite: http:\/\/www.iacprx.org\n\nProfessional Compounding Centers of America (PCCA)\n\n9901 South Wilcrest Drive\n\nHouston, TX 77099\n\nPhone: 877-798-3224\n\nFax: 877-765-1422\n\nWebsite: http:\/\/www.pccarx.com\n\nFinally, patients come to Dr. Randolph's Ageless and Wellness Medical Center from across the nation and around the globe. If you are interested in scheduling an appointment with Randy or one of the medical professionals trained by him practicing within our clinic, call (904) 249-3743 or reach us through our website, www.agelessandwellness.com.\n\nTesting Hormone Levels\n\nMeasuring hormone levels is essential for the proper diagnoses of perimenopause, menopause, andropause, or other disease states such as hypothyroidism and adrenal exhaustion (chronic fatigue syndrome). Hormone level testing also enables your physician to closely monitor hormone levels during treatment to ensure they all remain adequately balanced and within the optimal physiological range. Hormone levels can be analyzed through blood, saliva, or urine.\n\nPhysicians on the cutting edge of optimal aging medicine are increasingly adding specialized lab services into the clinics. At Dr. Randolph's Ageless and Wellness Medical Center we have recently partnered with Atherotech Diagnostic Lab, www.atherotech.com, and Genova Diagnostics, www.gdx.net. An emerging, and still controversial, trend is lab companies offering tests directly to the consumer. Two very credible companies offering this service are:\n\n  * MyMedLab, www.mymedlab.com\n  * ZRT, www.zrtlab.com\n\nRecommended Reading\n\nHormone Health\n\nIf you have not already done so, I strongly recommend you read the first two books Randy and I co-authored: From Hormone Hell to Hormone Well and From Belly Fat to Belly Flat. The first will provide you a more comprehensive treatise of the history and science behind bioidentical hormone replacement. The second expounds more fully on the links between estrogen dominance, belly fat, and what you can do about it. Other excellent hormone health resource books include:\n\nLee, John R., MD, with Virginia Hopkins. What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Menopause. New York: Warner Books, 1996.\n\nLee, John R., MD, with Jesse Hanley, MD, and Virginia Hopkins. What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Perimenopause. New York: Warner Books, 1999.\n\nLee, John R., MD, with David Zava, PhD, and Virginia Hopkins. What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Breast Cancer. New York: Warner Books, 2002.\n\nMorgentaler, Abraham, MD, Testosterone for Life: Recharge Your Vitality, Sex Drive and Overall Health. New York: McGraw Hill, 2009.\n\nNorthrup, Christiane, MD, Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom: Creating Physical and Emotional Health and Healing. New York: Bantam Books, 1994.\n\nNorthrup, Christiane, MD, The Wisdom of Menopause: Creating Physical and Emotional Health and Healing During the Change. New York: Bantam Books, 2001.\n\nSchwartz, Erika, MD, The Hormone Solution. New York: Warner Books, 2002.\n\nSeaman, Barbara. The Greatest Experiment Ever Performed on Women: Exploding the Estrogen Myth. New York: Hyperion Books, 2003.\n\nSomers, Suzanne, Ageless: The Naked Truth About Bioidentical Hormones. New York: Crown Publishers, 2006.\n\nSomers, Suzanne, The Sexy Years, Discover the Hormone Connection: The Secret to Fabulous Sex, Great Health, and Vitality for Women and Men. New York: Crown Publishers, 2004.\n\nTaylor, Eldred, MD, and Bell-Taylor, Ava, MD, Are Your Hormones Making You Sick? Physicians Natural Medicine, Inc., 2000.\n\nWilson, James L., ND, DC, PhD, Adrenal Fatigue. Petaluma, CA: Smart Publications, 2003.\nReferences\n\nPrologue\n\nCrary, D. (2011, August 11). Boomers will be spending billions to counter aging. Boston. Retrieved from http:\/\/articles.boston.com\/2011-08-20\/lifestyle\/29909735_1_anti-aging-retirement-age-dietary-supplements.\n\nIntroduction\n\nRandolph, C. W., & James, G. (2009). Chapter 1: Decades of Desperate Women Dangerously Duped. In From Hormone Hell to Hormone Well. (pp. 5\u201322). Deerfield Beach, Florida: Health Communications, Inc.\n\nChapter 1\n\nRandolph, C. W. (2009). From Hormone Hell to Hormone Well. (2nd ed.). (pp. 1\u2013240). Deerfield Beach, Florida: Health Communications, Inc.\n\nBaron, P. (2005, June). \"Hormone Testing for Optimal Health.\" Life Extension Magazine.\n\nHormone treatment options (2012). Women in Balance. Retrieved July 23, 2012, from http:\/\/womeninbalance.org\/choices-in-therapy\/hormone-treatment-options\/.\n\nRandolph, C. W. (2011). Women's Hormone Health. Dr. Randolph's Natural Hormone Institute. Retrieved July 23, 2012, from http:\/\/www.hormonewell.com\/manage_moods.html.\n\nMayeaux, E. J. (2005, August 30). The menopausal patient and hormone replacement therapy. LSU. Retrieved August 25, 2012, from http:\/\/www.sh.lsuhsc.edu\/fammed\/outpatientmanual\/menopause-hrt.htm.\n\n\"Hormone Balance.\" (2012, March 29). Life Extension.\n\nChapter 2\n\nWeight loss in middle age. (2012). Livestrong. Retrieved August 3, 2012, from http:\/\/www.livestrong.com\/weight-loss-in-middle-age\/.\n\nGann, C. (2012, May 7). Fat Forecast: 42% of Americans Obese by 2030. ABC News.\n\nBelly fat in women: Taking\u2014and keeping\u2014it off, http:\/\/www.mayoclinic.com\/health\/belly-fat\/WO00128.\n\nWhitmer RA, Gustafson DR, et al. \"Central obesity and increased risk of dementia more than three decades later.\" Neurology. 2008 Sep 30;71(14):1057\u201364. doi: 10.1212\/01.wnl.0000306313.89165.ef. Epub 2008 Mar 26.\n\nR. Morgan Griffin, Obesity and Early Puberty: What's the Risk?, Retrieved from http:\/\/children.webmd.com\/features\/obesity.\n\nSmith GI, Atherton P, Reeds DN, et al. \"Dietary omega-3 fatty acid supplementation increases the rate of muscle protein synthesis in older adults: a randomized controlled trial.\" Am J Clin Nutr February 2011 vol. 93 no. 2 402\u2013412.\n\nObesity and Early Puberty: What's the Risk? http:\/\/children.webmd.com\/features\/obesity (June, 2010).\n\nChapter 3\n\nSchmitz KH, Lin H, Sammel MD, Gracia CR, Nelson DB, Kapoor S, DeBlasis TL, Freeman EW. \"Association of physical activity with reproductive hormones: the Penn Ovarian Aging Study\". Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev, 2007 Oct; 16(10):2042\u20137. Epub 2007 Sep 28.\n\nBreast Health. (2011). Natural Hormone Institute. Retrieved August 26, 2012, from http:\/\/www.hormonewell.com\/breastHealth_diet.html.\n\nExercise Lowers Estrogen Levels in Older Women, Retrieved from http:\/\/www.breastcancer.org\/research-news\/20100216.\n\nSafdar A, Bourgeois JM, Ogborn DI, et al. \"Endurance exercise rescues progeroid aging and induces systemic mitochondrial rejuvenation in mtDNA mutator mice\". PNAS, (2011): 201019581, http:\/\/www.pnas.org\/content\/early\/2011\/02\/18\/1019581108.full.pdf+html.\n\nCherkas LF, Hunkin JL, Kato BS, et al. \"The Association Between Physical Activity in Leisure Time and Leukocyte Telomere Length\". Arch Intern Med, 2008; 168(2): 154\u2013158. Doi:10.1001\/archinternmed2007.39.\n\nPadycula, J. (2012, April 18). Buddy Up for Workout. She Knows.\n\nActress goes archer: Geena Davis in Olympic archery semifinals, http:\/\/sports  \nillustrated.cnn.com\/olympics\/news\/1999\/08\/05\/davis_archery_ap\/ (August 1999).\n\nAfter Late Start, Runner Is Speeding Through Records, http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2012\/04\/02\/sports\/runner-kathy-martin-60-is-speeding-through-records.html?pagewanted=all (April 2012).\n\n7 Ways Technology Helps You Lose Weight: The New Digital Diet, http:\/\/www.  \nprevention.com\/weight-loss\/weight-loss-tips\/7-ways-technology-helps-you-lose-weight.\n\nChapter 4\n\nEWG Research Shows 22 Percent of All Cosmetics May Be Contaminated With Cancer-Causing Impurity, http:\/\/www.ewg.org\/release\/ewg-research-shows-22-percent-all-cosmetics-may-be-contaminated-cancer-causing-impurity (Feb 2007).\n\nExposure to Chemicals in Plastic, http:\/\/www.breastcancer.org\/risk\/factors\/plastic (September 2012).\n\nBraun JM, Kalkbrenner AE, et al. Impact of Early-Life Bisphenol A Exposure on Behavior and Executive Function in Children. Pediatrics. 2011 Nov;128(5):873\u201382. doi: 10.1542\/peds.2011\u20131335. Epub 2011 Oct 24.\n\nKaiser Permanente Says GMO Controversy Misleading, Retrieved from http:\/\/news.health.com\/2012\/12\/03\/kaiser-permanent-says-gmo-controversy-misleading\/ (December 2012).\n\nChapter 5\n\nRisks and Benefits of Estrogen Plus Progestin in Healthy Postmenopausal Women: Principal Results From the Women's Health Initiative Randomized Controlled Trial. (2002). Journal of the American Medical Association, 288(3), 321\u2013333.\n\nWyeth Pharmaceuticals, Inc: Prempro. (2009, May). US Food and Drug Administration. Retrieved July 23, 2012.\n\nWinfrey, O. (2009, February). Is Hormone Replacement Therapy Right for You?. The Oprah Show. Retrieved July 23, 2012, from http:\/\/www.oprah.com\/health\/Is-Hormone-Replacement-Therapy-Right-for-You\/9.\n\nNorthrup, C. (2009, January 29). Hormone Replacement Therapy Q&A Webcast. The Oprah Winfrey Show. Webcast retrieved from http:\/\/www.oprah.com\/health\/The-Hormone-Replacement-Webcast-with-Dr-Christiane-Northrup.\n\nMcGraw, R. (2009). Retrieved August 25, 2012, from http:\/\/www.robinmcgraw.com\/books.html.\n\nL. Leaseburge, Personal communications. 2011.\n\nRenee, J. (2011, March 28). Information on the Pregnenolone Supplement. Livestrong. Retrieved July 23, 2012, from http:\/\/www.livestrong.com\/article\/408509-information-on-the-pregnenolone-supplement\/.\n\nLeonetti, H. B. (2005). Transdermal Progesterone Cream as an Alternative Progestin in Hormone Therapy. Alternative Therapies in Health & Medicine, 11(6), 36\u201338.\n\nStein, D. G., Sayeed, I., & Atif, F. (2012). Progesterone Prodrugs and Analogs as Neuroprotective Agents. Emory Institute for Drug Development. Retrieved July 23, 2012, from http:\/\/eidd.emory.edu\/progesterone-prodrugs-and-analogs.\n\nSkelly, L., & Korschun, H. (2011, July 13). Progesterone Inhibits Growth of Neuroblastoma Cancer Cells. Emory Woodruff Health Sciences Center. Retrieved July 23, 2012, from http:\/\/shared.web.emory.edu\/whsc\/news\/releases\/2011\/07\/progesterone-inhibits-growth-of-neuroblastoma-cancer-cells-.html.\n\nChapter 6\n\nThompson, Holli, Your Girlfriends and Your Weight, Retrieved from http:\/\/askmissa.com\/2011\/12\/16\/your-girlfriends-and-your-weight\/.\n\nCohen, Emma, Ejsmond-Frey, Robin, Knight, Nicola and Dunbar, R.I.M. \"Rowers high: behavioural synchrony is correlated with elevated pain thresholds.\" Biol. Lett. Rsbl20090670. Published online September 15, 2009 doi: 10.1098\/rsbl.2009.0670,http:\/\/rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org\/content\/early\/2009\/09\/14\/rsbl.2009.0670.full.pdf+html.\n\nJaslow, R. (2012, March 27). Eating lots of chocolate helps people stay thin, study finds. CBS News.\n\nBrian Buijsse, Cornelia Weikert, Dagmar Drogan, Manuela Bergmann, and Heiner Boeing. Chocolate consumption in relation to blood pressure and risk of cardiovascular disease in German adults. European Heart Journal, DOI: 10.1093\/eurheartj\/ehq068.\n\nHollis, J. (2012, April 16). Chew on this: study finds additional chewing reduces food intake in young adults. In Iowa State University. Retrieved from http:\/\/archive.news.iastate.edu\/news\/2012\/apr\/chewing.\n\n5 Benefits of Properly Chewing Food. (2008). 3 Fat Chicks. Retrieved August 26, 2012, from http:\/\/www.3fatchicks.com\/5-benefits-of-properly-chewing-food\/.\n\nChapter 7\n\nDiscovery Health, 5 Anti-Aging Supplements That Really Work, http:\/\/health.howstuffworks.com\/wellness\/aging\/anti-aging-tips\/5-anti-aging-supplements.htm (Nov 2012).\n\nVadim Aksenov, Jiangang Long, Sonali Lokuge, Jane A Foster, Jiankang Liu and C David Rollo, \"Dietary amelioration of locomotor, neurotransmitter and mitochondrial aging\" Experimental Biology and Medicine (2010, 235): 66\u201376, http:\/\/ebm.rsmjournals.com\/content\/235\/1\/66.full.pdf+html.\n\nGahche J, Bailey R, Burt V, et al. Dietary Supplement Use Among U.S. Adults Has Increased Since NHANES III (1988\u20131994). NCHS data brief, no 61. Hyattsville, MD: National Center for Health Statistics. 2011.\n\nBailey RL, Gahche JJ, Lentino CV, et al. Dietary supplement use in the United States, 2003\u20132006. J Nutr. 2011; 141(2):261\u2013266.\n\nDickinson A, Boyon N, and Shao A. Physicians and nurses use and recommend dietary supplement: report of a survey. Nutrition Journal. 2009; 8:29.\n\n\"11 Proven Benefits of Omega-3 Fish Oil for Women,\" Retrieved November 27, 2012 from http:\/\/www.ehow.com\/about_5445018_proven-omega-fish-oil-women.html.\n\nBetty Kovacs, MS, RD, \"Probiotics,\" Retrieved November 17, 2012 from http:\/\/www.medicinenet.com\/probiotics\/article.htm.\n\n\"Herbal Supplements: What to Know Before You Buy,\" Retrieved November 17, 2012 from http:\/\/www.mayoclinic.com\/health\/herbal-supplements\/SA00044.\n\n\"4 Dangerous (and Common) Vitamin Fillers You Must Avoid,\" Retrieved November 17, 2012 from http:\/\/www.draxe.com\/4-dangerous-and-common-vitamin-fillers-you-must-avoid\/.\n\nChapter 8\n\n\"Vitamin D Levels and oral supplementation in patients with skin cancer\", Journal of American Academy of Dermatology Vol 62, Issue 3, Supplement 1 (March 2010): Page AB66.\n\nBrierley Wright, \"Anti-aging foods for your skin,\" http:\/\/www.eatingwell.com\/blogs\/health_blog\/anti_aging_foods_for_your_skin (May 2012).\n\nMaria Celia B Hughes, Gail M Williams, Anny Fourtanier, and Adele C Green, \"Food intake, dietary patterns, and actinic keratoses of the skin: a longitudinal study\", The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition Vol 89 no. 4, (April 2009): 1246\u20131255.\n\nPeter Jaret, \"Coping With Acne: Your Care Plan,\" Retrieved from http:\/\/www.webmd.com\/skin-problems-and-treatments\/acne\/acne-care-11\/exercise.\n\nRobert Haas, MS, \"How Chronic Insomnia Destroys Skin Health,\" Retrieved October 30, 2012 from http:\/\/www.lef.org.\n\nChapter 9\n\nVaginal Dryness, Retrieved January 13, 2013 from http:\/\/www.nlm.nih.gov\/medlineplus\/ency\/article\/000892.htm.\n\nChapter 10\n\nKoenig, Harold G, Hays, Judith, et al, Does Religious Attendance Prolong Survival? J Gerontol A Biol Sci Med Sci (1999) 54 (7): M370-M376. doi: 10.1093\/gerona\/54.7.M370\n\nUniversity of Colorado at Boulder (1999, May 17). Research Shows Religion Plays a Major Role in Health, Longevity. ScienceDaily, Retrieved January 23, 2013, from http:\/\/www.sciencedaily.com\/releases\/1999\/05\/990517064323.htm\n\nKoenig, H.G., Cohen H.J., George L.K., Hays J.C., Larson D.B., Blazer D.G. (1997) \"Attendance at religious services, interleukin-6 and other biological indicators of immune function in older adults.\" International Journal of Psychiatry in Medicine 27 233\u2013250\n\nJonas, W.B., Crawford, C.C. (2003) Healing Intention and Energy Medicine. New York: Churchill Livingstone.\n\nGlazer, S. (January 14, 2005). \"Can Spirituality Influence Health?\" CQ Researcher. Vol. 15, no. 2: 1\u201335.\n\nPuchalski, C., MD, (2004). Spirituality in health: the role of spirituality in critical care. Critical Care Clinics. Vol. 20: 487\u2013504.\n\nDossey, L. MD (1993). Healing Words. San Francisco: Harper Collins Publishers.\n\nGeneral Social Surveys, 1972\u20132010. Conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago.\n\nChapter 11\n\nLee, H. (2009, June). Oxytocin: The great facilitator of life. Progress in Neurobiology. 8(22), 127\u2013151.\n\nChapter 12\n\nCohen, E. (2011, June 23). Does life online give you \"popcorn brain?\" CNN.\n\nBe Well: Laugh. (2012). UCF Wellness and Health Promotion Services. Retrieved August 26, 2012, from http:\/\/bewellucf.com\/2011\/11\/17\/be-well-laugh\/\n\n\"Is Laughter Part of Your Healthy Lifestyle?\" (2012). Healthy Living.\n\nGail Larsen. (2012). \"Real Speaking.\" Retrieved August 5, 2012, from http:\/\/www.realspeaking.com\/.\n\nVessels, J. (2011, March 1). \"Play: It's Just Good for You!\" Health & Wellness.\n\nChapter 13\n\nMassMutual Financial Group and Oppenheimer Funds, \"From the Locker Room to the Boardroom: A Survey on Sports in the Lives of Women Business Executives,\" 2002.\n\nStephanie Wilcox, How Do Team Sports Help Develop Girls Into Future Leaders?, http:\/\/www.theglasshammer.com\/news\/2010\/12\/08\/how-do-team-sports-help-develop-girls-into-future-leaders\/ (December 2010).\n\nStevenson, Betsey. Beyond the Classroom: Using Title IX to Measure the Return to High School Sports. (Cambridge, MA: NBER Working Paper Series, National Bureau of Economic Research, 2010) , http:\/\/www.nber.org\/papers\/w15728.\n\nErnst & Young, Women Make All the Difference in the World, http:\/\/www.ey.com\/GL\/en\/Issues\/Driving-growth\/Growing-Beyond\u2014-High-Achievers\u2014-Women-make-all-the-difference-in-the-world (2012).\n\nHillary Rodham Clinton, U.S. Secretary of State, announcing the Global Sports Mentoring Program, 21 June 2012.\n\nChapter 14\n\nParker-Pope, T. (2010, April 14). Is Marriage Good for Your Health? The New York Times.\n\nPerls, Tom. New England Centenarian Study, Boston University School of Medicine, http:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/centenarian\/overview\/.\n\nResearch, Statistics, and Policy Analysis. (2012, August 2). \"Social Security.\" Retrieved August 5, 2012, from http:\/\/www.ssa.gov\/policy\/docs\/workingpapers\/index.html.\n\nStudy: Majority of Women Becoming Primary Breadwinners. (2012, July 16). CBS News. Retrieved August 27, 2012, from http:\/\/washington.cbslocal.com\/  \n2012\/07\/16\/study-majority-of-women-becoming-primary-breadwinners\/.\n\nChapter 15\n\nExcerpted from Congresswomen Linda T. S\u00e1nchez, February 25, 2010 blog. Congresswomen S\u00e1nchez represents the 39th Congressional District of California.\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}}
+{"text":" \nThe Great Tapestry of Scotland\n\n**Panel 1 stitched by:**\n\n_KA Two_\n\nLinda McClarkin\n\nCarol Whiteford\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nBeith, Kilwinning\n\n_For all those who have worked on The Great Tapestry of Scotland_\nThis eBook edition published in 2013 by  \nBirlinn Limited  \nWest Newington House  \n10 Newington Road  \nEdinburgh  \nEH9 1QS  \n_www.birlinn.co.uk_\n\nCompleted panels from The Great Tapestry of Scotland  \ncopyright \u00a9 Great Scottish Tapestry Charitable Trust\n\nPhotographs copyright \u00a9 Alex Hewitt  \nPanel designs copyright \u00a9 Andrew Crummy\n\nForeword \u00a9 Alexander McCall Smith  \nIntroduction and other text \u00a9 Alistair Moffat\n\nThe moral right of Alistair Moffat to be identified as the author of this work have been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.\n\nAll rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form without the express written permission of the publisher.\n\nISBN: 978-1-78027-160-6  \neBook ISBN: 978-0-85790-656-4\n\nBritish Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data  \nA catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library\n\n# Contents\n\nForeword\n\nIntroduction\n\nThe Tapestries\n\nPANEL 2 The Ceaseless Sea\n\nPANEL 3a The Formation of Scotland\n\nPANEL 3b The Collision\n\nPANEL 4 Scotland Emerges from the Ice\n\nPANEL 5 The Wildwood\n\nPANEL 6 Tents and Tipis\n\nPANEL 7 The First Farmers\n\nPANEL 8 Brochs, Crannogs and Cairns\n\nPANEL 9 Pytheas the Greek\n\nPANEL 10 The Coming of the Legions\n\nPANEL 11 Ninian at Whithorn\n\nPANEL 12 Dalriada\n\nPANEL 13 Cuthbert and the Gospels\n\nPANEL 14 The Crosses and the Angles\n\nPANEL 15 Dunnichen\n\nPANEL 16 The Vikings\n\nPANEL 17 Dumbarton Rock\n\nPANEL 18 Constantine Climbs the Hill of Faith\n\nPANEL 19 Carham\n\nPANEL 20 King Macbeth\n\nPANEL 21 St Margaret of Scotland\n\nPANEL 22 The Flowers of the Borders\n\nPANEL 23 David I and the Wool Trade\n\nPANEL 24 St Andrews Cathedral\n\nPANEL 25 Duns Scotus and the Schoolmen\n\nPANEL 26 Somerled, Lord of the Isles\n\nPANEL 27 Haakon at Kyleakin\n\nPANEL 28 The Death of Alexander III\n\nPANEL 29 William Wallace and Andrew Moray\n\nPANEL 30 Bannockburn\n\nPANEL 31 The Rain at Carlisle\n\nPANEL 32 The Black Death\n\nPANEL 33 The University of St Andrews\n\nPANEL 34 The Ancient Universities\n\nPANEL 35 Orkney, Shetland and Scotland\n\nPANEL 36 Rosslyn Chapel\n\nPANEL 37 Chepman and Myllar\n\nPANEL 38 Blind Harry\n\nPANEL 39 Waulking\n\nPANEL 40 Flodden\n\nPANEL 41 The Thrie Estaitis\n\nPANEL 42 The Court of Session\n\nPANEL 43 The Scottish Reformation\n\nPANEL 44 Mary, Queen of Scots\n\nPANEL 45 The Reivers and the Rescue of Kinmont Willie\n\nPANEL 46 Robert Carey's Great Ride\n\nPANEL 47 The Making of the King James Bible\n\nPANEL 48 The Dawn of the Ulster Scots\n\nPANEL 49 Witches\n\nPANEL 50 The National Covenant\n\nPANEL 51 Droving\n\nPANEL 52 Philiphaugh, 1645\n\nPANEL 53 The Killing Times\n\nPANEL 54 The Massacre at Glencoe, 1692\n\nPANEL 55 The Bank of Scotland Founded\n\nPANEL 56 The Darien Scheme\n\nPANEL 57 The Act of Union, 1707\n\nPANEL 58 The Jacobite Rising of 1715\n\nPANEL 59 The Kilt\n\nPANEL 60 The Jacobite Rising of 1745\n\nPANEL 61 The Ordnance Survey\n\nPANEL 62 English Advances, Gaelic Retreats\n\nPANEL 63 The Royal and Ancient Golf Club\n\nPANEL 64 The First School for Deaf and Dumb Children\n\nPANEL 65 James Small and the Swing Plough, 1770\n\nPANEL 66 Enlightenment Edinburgh\n\nPANEL 67 Edinburgh's New Town\n\nPANEL 68 James Watt and the Steam Engine\n\nPANEL 69 The Tobacco Lords\n\nPANEL 70 Adam Smith\n\nPANEL 71 David Hume and Jean-Jacques Rousseau\n\nPANEL 72 The Highland and Lowland Clearances Gather Pace\n\nPANEL 73 Weaving and Spinning\n\nPANEL 74 James Hutton's Theory of the Earth\n\nPANEL 75 James Boswell and Smoked Fish\n\nPANEL 76 The Forth and Clyde Canal, Burke and Hare\n\nPANEL 77 Scotland and the Drive for Empire\n\nPANEL 78 Robert Owen and New Lanark\n\nPANEL 79 Robert Burns and 'Tam o' Shanter'\n\nPANEL 80 The False Alarm\n\nPANEL 81 Henry Raeburn\n\nPANEL 82 Walter Scott\n\nPANEL 83 Fingal's Cave\n\nPANEL 84 The Scotsman, Founded 1817\n\nPANEL 85 George Smith and the Glenlivet\n\nPANEL 86 Borders Tweed\n\nPANEL 87 The Growth of Glasgow\n\nPANEL 88 Sheep Shearing\n\nPANEL 89 The First Reform Act\n\nPANEL 90 Kirkpatrick Macmillan\n\nPANEL 91 Queen Victoria at Balmoral\n\nPANEL 92 The Scots in India\n\nPANEL 93 The Disruption\n\nPANEL 94 David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson\n\nPANEL 95 The Railway Boom\n\nPANEL 96 The Caithness School, 1851\n\nPANEL 97 Fitba\n\nPANEL 98 Irish Immigration after the Famine\n\nPANEL 99 James Clerk Maxwell\n\nPANEL 100 Scots in Africa\n\nPANEL 101 Highland Games\n\nPANEL 102 Scottish Rugby\n\nPANEL 103 Shinty and Curling\n\nPANEL 104 Scots in North America\n\nPANEL 105 The Paisley Pattern\n\nPANEL 106 The Battle of the Braes\n\nPANEL 107 Mill Working\n\nPANEL 108 Robert Louis Stevenson\n\nPANEL 109 Workshop of the Empire\n\nPANEL 110 The Scottish Trades Union Congress Forms\n\nPANEL 111 Keir Hardie\n\nPANEL 112 The Herring Girls\n\nPANEL 113 The Discovery Sails from Dundee\n\nPANEL 114 Dundee, Jute, Jam and Journalism\n\nPANEL 115 Shetland, the Isbister Sisters\n\nPANEL 116 Charles Rennie Mackintosh\n\nPANEL 117 The Munros\n\nPANEL 118 The 1914\u20131918 War\n\nPANEL 119 The Building of HMS Hood, the Battle of Ypres 1917\n\nPANEL 120 Elsie Inglis\n\nPANEL 121 The Sinking of HMY Iolaire off Stornoway, 1919\n\nPANEL 122 Eric Liddell\n\nPANEL 123 Women Get the Vote\n\nPANEL 124 Whaling\n\nPANEL 125 The General Strike, 1926\n\nPANEL 126 Fair Isle\n\nPANEL 127 Hugh MacDiarmid\n\nPANEL 128 Ramsay MacDonald and the Rise of the Labour Party\n\nPANEL 129 The Great Depression\n\nPANEL 130 Tenement Life\n\nPANEL 131 The Second World War\n\nPANEL 132 The Clydebank Blitz\n\nPANEL 133 War Defences\n\nPANEL 134 D-Day, 1944\n\nPANEL 135 The First Edinburgh Festival\n\nPANEL 136 East Kilbride and the New Towns\n\nPANEL 137 The National Health Service\n\nPANEL 138 Television Arrives\n\nPANEL 139 The Washer Women\n\nPANEL 140 Cumbernauld New Town\n\nPANEL 141 North Sea Oil\n\nPANEL 142 Aberdeen\n\nPANEL 143 Linwood and the Hillman Imp\n\nPANEL 144 Pop Music Booms\n\nPANEL 145 Glenrothes\n\nPANEL 146 The Upper Clyde Shipbuilders\n\nPANEL 147 Stop Yer Ticklin', Jock!\n\nPANEL 148 The Rise of the Scottish National Party\n\nPANEL 149 Scotland at the Movies\n\nPANEL 150 Scotland's World Cup in Argentina\n\nPANEL 151 The Miners' Strike\n\nPANEL 152 Gaelic Resurgent\n\nPANEL 153 Glasgow \u2013 European City of Culture\n\nPANEL 154 Dolly the Sheep\n\nPANEL 155 The Scottish Parliament Reconvenes, 1999\n\nPANEL 156 AND 157 Parliament of the Ancestors, Parliament for the Future\n\n# Foreword\n\nThe tapestry illustrated in this book tells the story of Scotland. As one might imagine, to illustrate the history of a country, even with some 165 panels at one's disposal, is no easy task. Nor is it easy to tell it in a way that brings centuries of a nation's existence to life in an entertaining and vivid way. The Great Tapestry of Scotland does all this, and it does it in a way that was instantly recognised and appreciated by the public when it first went on show in the Scottish Parliament in the late summer of 2013. People came in their thousands \u2013 so many, in fact, that at times the building was thought to have reached capacity and faced the hitherto unthought-of possibility of being closed for a few hours.\n\nI was part of the group of people behind the tapestry project, and I went to the opening with my heart in my mouth. What would the public judgement be on a project that had such large ambitions? Would people find fault with our selection of subjects? Would the artist's style fail to resonate with the people of Scotland? I need not have worried for a moment on any of these scores. People stood before the tapestry with wonderment and delight on their faces. Some cried with emotion \u2013 the greatest tribute, I think, that any work of art can be given. I saw young children gazing at the panels with rapt attention. I saw elderly people recognise images and references and share them with each other with all the joy that goes with discovering something one has long known about but perhaps forgotten or not thought about for a long time. Everybody standing before the tapestry seemed transported by the experience.\n\nThe tapestry is the work of more than a thousand people from all over Scotland and beyond. The central artistic vision, though, is that of three people: Alistair Moffat, who selected the subject matter and wrote the text; Andrew Crummy, who drew the designs; and Dorie Wilkie, who supervised and inspired the stitching. All three made this object, but Andrew is the one who must be particularly celebrated as the artist. A man of great modesty, he never seeks praise, but it must be said here that he has, quite simply, wrought a masterpiece.\n\nThen there are the many stitchers who have themselves put their own artistic stamp on the tapestry. Although Andrew designed the main images, he generously left a great deal of scope for individual stitchers to make their own contribution. And they have done so magnificently, adding numerous touches throughout, giving yet more life and colour to this lovely object.\n\nWhen we started this project, which began with a telephone call I made to Andrew Crummy proposing that we do it, I had no idea that the result would be so lovely and so affecting. I had no idea, too, that in bringing the tapestry to completion so many people would be brought together in friendship. But that has all happened, and now the Scottish nation has something that it can treasure for many years \u2013 centuries, we hope \u2013 to remind us all of who we are and all the love, suffering, hope, disappointment, and triumph that makes up the life of a people. I hope, too, that we shall be able to share that with others from other nations, who will see the universal human story written on these panels of linen and perhaps reflect on the ideals of brother- and sisterhood that have always been so important in Scotland and remain so today.\n\nAlexander McCall Smith\n\n# Introduction\n\nOn a summer afternoon in the 1890s, Donald MacIver drove his pony and trap up the track on the west side of Loch Roag on the Atlantic shore of the Isle of Lewis. A teacher at the school at Breascleit, he found himself completing the last stage of a long journey back into the past. Beside Donald sat an old man. His uncle, Domnhall Ban Crosd, had sailed across the ocean from Canada so that, before he died, he could at last return home. As Donald flicked the reins and the pony trotted up the rise at Miabhig, the vast panorama of the mighty Atlantic opened before them. Below spread the pale yellow sands of Uig at low tide and around the bay lay a scatter of townships.\n\nHis by-names hint at Domnhall Ban's demeanour. Common enough when used to distinguish the owner of a frequently found name, _ban_ means 'fair headed' but _crosd_ is unusual \u2013 probably deriving from an English adjective, it is somewhere between 'obstinate' and 'ill natured'. Perhaps the old man set a characteristic stone-face when he gazed on the heartbreakingly beautiful bay at Uig, the water glinting in the summer sun, a sparkle, a sight he had not beheld for fifty years, not since the white-sailed ships slipped over the horizon bound for a new life in Canada.\n\nAs Donald guided his pony gently over the rutted tracks, grass growing green on their crests, they came at last to journey's end, the place Domnhall Ban Crosd had seen only in his dreams. It was the township of Carnais, his birthplace, where crofting families had been cleared off the land by the agents of an absent and uncaring aristocracy in 1851. Like many, Domnhall Ban and his people had found good and even prosperous lives in Canada but, in their hearts, there was _ionndrainn_. It means 'something that is missing', 'an emptiness', and, before he grew too old for a long sea voyage, the child of Carnais wanted to see his home place once more. But, when Donald pulled on the reins and braked the trap, there was nothing. Nothing at all to see. The croft houses had been tumbled down, the fences and fields opened to sheep pasture. What had been a busy, living landscape, home to the chatter of children and the day-in, day-out labour of farming families, had simply been obliterated. As he looked around at the desolation, the old man's face at last crumpled and he wept, tears falling for all that experience in one place, all lost and gone, memories that would die with him. ' _Chaneil nith an seo mar a bha e, ach an ataireachd na mara_ ,' he said to his nephew \u2013 'There is nothing here now as it was, except for the surge of the sea.'\n\nMuch moved by his uncle's sadness, Donald MacIver wrote his great lyric, ' _An Ataireachd Ard_ '. In memory of loss and change, of the wash of history over Scotland, it begins:\n\n_An ataireachd bhuan_\n\n_Cluinn fuaim na h'ataireachd ard_\n\n_That torunn a'chuain_\n\n_Mar chualas leams' e 'nam phaisd_\n\n_Gun mhuthadh, gun truas_\n\n_A' sluaisreadh gainneimh na tragh'd_\n\n_An ataireachd bhuan_\n\n_Cluinn fuaim na h'ataireachd ard._\n\nThe ceaseless surge\n\nListen to the surge of the sea\n\nThe thunder of the ocean\n\nAs I heard it when I was a child\n\nWithout change, without pity\n\nBreaking on the sands of the beach\n\nThe ceaseless surge\n\nListen to the surge of the sea.\n\nThe Great Tapestry of Scotland begins and ends with images of the ceaseless surge of the sea. The thunder of the ocean, its belly-hollowing elemental beauty is where our story of Scotland begins and it may well be where it ends, aeons into the future. But what made the rhythm and swirl of Donald MacIver's words resonate was his uncle's grief at the unflinching passage of time and the destruction of the way of life of ordinary people. And despite his tears, the old man's instinctive understanding that it could not be other. Lying on the edge of beyond, the land of Scotland, the hard, ancient rocks of Lewisian gneiss, the old red sandstone and the shales and coal of the Midland Valley, endure but the story of the people who lived on its straths, in its river valleys and glens changes constantly and sometimes brutally.\n\nNo mere backdrop, Scotland is utterly singular. Most who see a photograph or a sequence on TV of a landscape without road signs or a familiar landmark can recognise it instantly and intuitively as a place in Scotland. Not sure exactly where but it's definitely Scotland. There is a mixture of atmosphere, look and something very simple. The colours of Scotland are like no other and, above all, the Great Tapestry and its thousand makers have perfectly captured the blues, greens, reds, greys and browns of our distinctive geography.\n\nThe sorrow of Domnhall Ban Crosd is also characteristic. The old man did not weep for the passing of empires, the boasts of Ozymandias, he did not stand in the magnificent ruins of greatness, he wept for the scatter of once-snug cottage walls, for the passing of a way of life, for the body-warmth of a dying culture, the humanity of shared ills and privations, the clear and unambiguous sense of a community, the ghosts of people who would help each other when the waves crashed on Mangersta Head and storms blew in off the ocean. On that summer afternoon, Domnhall Ban knew that night had fallen on Carnais.\n\nIf those who look at its panels also listen closely to the Great Tapestry, they will hear something of what it sounds like, not only like the thunder of the ocean but also the distant march of armies, the jingle of harness, the roar of cannon and the echo of oratory. But much louder and more insistent will be the tread of ordinary people, the _craic_ by the fireside, the whispers of hunters in the wildwood, the chatter of plough teams, the whistle of a shepherd, the clatter and rattle of mills, foundries and shipyards. And the singing, the waulking songs, the pawky melodies of Harry Lauder, the psalms, the keening and the grief. The sounds of a community, what Domnhall Ban knew at Carnais. But, despite the efforts of the powerful, the disengaged and outsiders, Scotland is still, just, a community, and a series of connected communities. Scots still believe in a collective sense of ourselves and that society should take responsibility for the old, the weak and the poor. Lest this sound like a manifesto, it should be pointed out that it is not a proposal for the future but an observation of what happened in the past \u2013 and in the present. The Great Tapestry is, after all, the creation of a community \u2013 the thousand stitchers who came together in groups to make it.\n\nAnd, lest our sense of ourselves becomes self-congratulatory, the ceaseless surge of the sea and the ungraspable millions of years it took to form the geology of our nation remind us that the history of Scotland is but a speck bobbing on the ocean of time. Eleven thousand years may seem like an epic sweep but it is as nothing when the night sky is clear and the light of dead stars shines down on our tiny planet. And, being Scots, we should be further chastened by the knowledge that, if we have somehow managed to retain a worthwhile, workable sense of community, there were plenty of times when we behaved extremely badly and continue to.\n\nThe Great Tapestry of Scotland is, then, a people's history of a people, made by a thousand of those people. That says much about its content, its cultural bent, but why exactly is it so beautiful, so evocative and how did it come into being?\n\nAlexander McCall Smith is the simple answer to the last question. He made it happen. Having seen the remarkable Prestonpans Tapestry, a beautiful embroidered record of the battle fought near the town in 1745, Sandy was impressed not only with the panels and their design but also with the impact they had on those who looked at them. They were mesmerised. An idea leapt into Sandy's head. Why not make a tapestry that tells all of Scotland's story and do it for 2014, the Year of Homecoming, the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, the Ryder Cup at Gleneagles, the 700th anniversary of Bannockburn? A tapestry of Scotland for Scotland's year. The artistic inspiration behind the Prestonpans project was Andrew Crummy and, once Sergeant McCall Smith had recruited him, he called me. What should be in it? How should the narrative run? Would I write it? Within ten seconds, I was enlisted \u2013 Corporal Moffat, sir. Our platoon was completed when Dorie Wilkie, the wonderful Head Stitcher on the Prestonpans Tapestry, agreed to oversee the making of what we decided to call The Great Tapestry of Scotland. Gillian Harte became our excellent administrator and, finally and vitally, Jan Rutherford and Anna Renz agreed to do the publicity and raise the funds needed. They did a superb job.\n\nNow we needed an army, a thousand volunteer stitchers to transform my narrative and Andrew Crummy's superb drawings into the tapestry. And, once the call went out, they enlisted within months. Groups of stitchers sat down all over Scotland, from Shetland to Galloway, and they began the hard, detailed, fiddly, inspiring work of making all come alive.\n\nPrincipal amongst the pleasures of working on this unique project has been my collaboration with Andrew Crummy. In the best Scottish tradition, I kent his mother \u2013 the remarkable Helen Crummy who founded the Craigmillar Festival Society \u2013 and, with his passionate inherited interest in community arts, Andrew is certainly his mother's son. From the outset, we agreed that if the tapestry was to speak clearly of Scotland, then it had to tell a story of our people, of all who lived here for all those who live here now.\n\nWhat made collaboration a joy was Andrew's abundant talent. He knows how to make bold statements, his drawing is absolutely assured and it proceeds from a clear grasp of the essential narrative. No messing about, arrow-straight to the point. The lyrical opening panel shows Andrew's talent perfectly as sheep, fish and birds dance in the hair of the woman who looks up at the hand with the needle while, around her, the arms of others enfold scenes and objects of Scotland \u2013 standing stones, tenements, shipyards, books, musical instruments and a football. And, moving briskly through the picture plane, trains puff across viaducts, ships sail, fully rigged, to unknown destinations while an oil drilling platform is planted in the sea. It is nothing less than the singular, all-encompassing, wholly original work of a great artist.\n\nCrucially, Andrew also understood what stitchers liked to stitch and his drawings deliberately involved them directly in the creative process, inviting them to add images, even alter the original. We both talked of Renaissance altarpieces and how painters appended predella panels below the Virgin and Child, the Crucifixion or the Adoration of the Magi or whatever the main image was. In these, painters sometimes added street scenes, landscapes or a portrait of the donor and, by leaving spaces in the drawings, Andrew and I hoped that stitchers would take the initiative. And they did! We also hoped that each would attach an impresa and perhaps initials. And they did. They made it their own.\n\nWhat further encouraged additional bits of history in each panel was geography. Not only did the tapestry have to tell a story of the Scots, it had to include as much of the land of Scotland as was feasible. Panels were set in the Northern Isles, the Highlands, the cities, the Hebrides, the Midland Valley, Galloway and the Borders. And then, very importantly, those linked to a particular area were usually sent to groups of stitchers who lived in the same area. And that process of matching was wonderfully fruitful.\n\nThe needs of a wide geographical spread did not inhibit my major task \u2013 what to include and what to exclude. Over the eleven millennia of our story, Scotland has changed enormously. Cities did not always exist and places now sparsely populated were once important. Before 3,000 BC, very few hunter-gatherers lived in the wildwood and it seems that the islands of the Atlantic coast supported a much larger proportion of the population than they do now. Before 1700, the vast majority of Scots lived in the countryside while after 1900 most had moved to the Lowland cities. Without bending the narrative out of shape, it was possible to locate Scotland's story right across the nation.\n\nDrama is naturally eye-catching and it would have been easy to arrange our past around a series of battles, wars, martyrdoms and coronations and the other familiar set pieces. And some did insist on inclusion. But, generally, it seemed better to talk of how change affected the many rather than leaders or elites of various sorts. For those who worked the land for generations, invasion and political change often meant the replacement of one set of masters with another. The great problem is silence. Written records usually noted the doings of the mighty, the notorious and the saintly \u2013 and rarely have anything to say about ordinary people. Andrew and I therefore decided to show something of the lives of the many with generic panels, images of people working, walking their lives under Scotland's huge skies. These are simple and eloquent, needing little explanation.\n\nEarly Scotland is also \u2013 conventionally \u2013 a story of men. My own work in DNA studies and elsewhere has led me to believe that, in the millennia before the last two centuries, the status of women was little better than that of informal slavery. And so Andrew and I took every opportunity to include female figures, wherever figures were needed, both in the specific and generic panels. _Clann-Nighean an Sgadain_ , the Hebridean Herring Girls who followed the fishing fleets in the 19th and early 20th centuries to gut and barrel the herring catch as it came ashore around Scotland's ports, is a good example. We did not distort our national story to include women where they were not actors in events, but we recognised that always they were there, giving life to the nation, and we tried never to forget that.\n\nNot that we would have been allowed to. Almost all of the stitchers are women and they would not have let us do anything less. That fact remains an absolutely determinant influence.\n\nThe completion of this epic project is also the end of an equally epic, long, emotional and unexpected journey. And the tapestry itself is unexpected. Two years ago, I had no idea that it would look like it does. The Great Tapestry of Scotland sparkles, glows and surprises. It is not only the work of Andrew Crummy, Dorie Wilkie and myself, inspired by Sandy McCall Smith, it is a unique expression \u2013 a history of a nation written and made by a thousand people.\n\n**Panel 158 stitched by:**\n\n_The Red Lichties_\n\nEvelyn Chaplain\n\nBob Chaplain\n\nRena Freeburn\n\nJanette Nairn\n\nEileen Shepherd\n\nAlice Sim\n\nJessy Smart\n\nMary Stephen\n\nLinda Walker\n\nMargaret Wynne\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nInverkeilor, Arbroath\n\n# The Tapestries\n\n_Almost all of the images and the panels are easy to understand and some have text to help identify who is who and what is what. They also run in a broadly chronological order but what follows adds a context, the briefest summary of the story of Scotland, background music for this stunning procession of the past._\n\n# PANEL 2  The Ceaseless Sea\n\nIn the beginning was the sea. Hundreds of millions of years ago, when the Earth was very young and vast primordial landmasses rose and were submerged, what would become Scotland was unrecognisable. Different parts of our familiar and beloved geography lay far distant from each other, some were attached to huge continents, some were splintered fragments, still others lay submerged on the bed of an ancient ocean. Lying between three palaeo-continents, Laurentia, Baltica and Avalonia, the great expanse of the Iapetus Ocean was beginning to shrink as tectonic movement shaped and reshaped the crust of the Earth. An unimaginably long time ago, about 410 million years, much of what became Scotland was waiting to rise out of the prehistoric seas and be welded together into one of the most geologically distinct places on our planet. Scotland was to be the deposit of a series of ancient collisions. And, throughout our prehistory and in more modern times, these collisions would remain central to an understanding of our nation and its people. Our history is written in our rocks just as surely as it is in monastic chronicles, census returns or the stones and bones of archaeological digs.\n\n**Panels stitched by:**\n\nHelen Nairn\n\nFrances MacLean\n\nDebbie Muir\n\nNino Stewart\n\nMarjorie Watters\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nKinlochmoidart\n\n# PANEL 3a The Formation of Scotland\n\nAs powerful tectonic forces bulldozed the great continents across the face of the Earth, splinters were sometimes sheared off. Known as terranes, four very different rock formations were ground together to make the map of Scotland. To the north-west, Lewisian gneiss made the Western Isles, Coll, Tiree, Iona, the western peninsula of Islay known as the Rhinns and parts of the Atlantic coastline. Tremendously hard, the gneiss is igneous, forged deep in the molten crust of the Earth and forced upwards as the palaeo-continents moved, buckling and corrugating the strata. To the east and south of the Lewisian formations, thick layers of Old Red Sandstone predominate and their most spectacular monuments are the Torridon Mountains and the singular peak of Suilven. Below the Great Glen lie Dalriadan rocks, mostly strata of sandstone, shale and limestone. The mountains and glens of such as the Cairngorms were moulded and changed as volcanoes roared and ice ages froze the land. Below the abrupt frontier of the Highland Boundary Fault, the geology of the Midland Valley, better known as the Central Belt, was originally formed in tropical latitudes. Many millions of years ago, vast and dense forests grew where Glasgow, Stirling, Perth and Edinburgh now stand. It was swampland and, as the trees died and fell, they made layers of carbon. These strata would much later become Scotland's coalfields. The Southern Upland Fault was formed by the fourth terrane. Following a line from Ballantrae in Ayrshire to Dunbar on the Firth of Forth, its hills were once the bed of a primordial ocean.\n\n# PANEL 3b The Collision\n\nSome way to the south of the Southern Upland Fault lies a fascinating geological relic. On the west coast of the Isle of Man, near the hamlet of Niarbyl, the cliffs of a small cove have running diagonally across them a thin, greyish-white seam of rock. It is visible for only a hundred metres or so before it disappears into the waters of the Irish Sea but it is a memorial to the making of Scotland. Known as the Iapetus Suture, it marks the precise place where the vast continents of Laurentia and Avalonia collided, having welded the four terranes together. And as an entertaining footnote, the harder rocks of the Southern Upland Fault caused the strata of the softer rocks of the North of England to buckle and push the coal and iron ore seams nearer to the surface. In this way, Galloway and the Borders made West Cumbria and Tyneside a gift of their traditional industries. The angle of the ancient collision is remembered in the north-east to south-west slant of Scotland's geography, the Great Glen, the Highland Boundary Fault, the Midland Valley and the Southern Upland Fault, to say nothing of the compass direction of the modern border between England and Scotland. The grain of the land has been immensely influential on our history. Upland and lowland follows it, lochs and rivers run that way, tracks and roads are forced to take its direction. Geology formed Scotland and the land and the sea formed the character of the people.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_North Berwick Creative Embroidery Group_\n\nCarole Bailey\n\nAngeniet Black\n\nAudrey Brown\n\nTertia Crawford\n\nMargaret Dinning\n\nMargaret Holm\n\nVi Jones\n\nPat Lucas\n\nBunty McInroy\n\nIsobel Russell\n\nMargaret Struth\n\nLyn Vaughan\n\nSandra Walker\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nDunbar, Gullane, East Linton, North Berwick\n\n# PANEL 4  Scotland Emerges from the Ice\n\nThe last ice age ended very much more recently. Some time around 9,000 BC, glaciers began to groan, splinter and grind over the landscape of Scotland like prehistoric sandpaper. Bulldozing boulders, gravel and other deposits, they shaped familiar landmarks like Stirling and Edinburgh's castle rocks, they scarted out glens and sea lochs, rolling hills and mountains. And, when the ice at last drew back, people came \u2013 the Pioneers who first settled Scotland. They came from the south \u2013 some from the ice-age refuges, the famous painted caves on either side of the Pyrenees, others walked to Scotland from the east. Until c. 6,000 BC, the southern basin of the North Sea was dry land. What first drew the Pioneers, our earliest ancestors, northwards was probably the migration of the animals they depended on. Many were cold adapted, like reindeer, and, as the ice melted very quickly in a process known as climate flickering, the animals could not evolve fast enough and so they were forced to chase the cold. And our ancestors followed them north. Although they looked like us, these hunter-gatherers will have seemed young to a modern eye. Few lived beyond the age of thirty, women perhaps dying young because of complications in childbirth. Since the bone needle had been invented, the Pioneers were able to make warm and close-fitting garments from skins, their look probably most resembling that of the Forest Indians of the eastern United States. When they came to Scotland, they may have come to a land of plenty, a place where roots, fruits, nuts and berries grew and fish and prey animals thrived. And their arrival reminds us of a basic historical truth \u2013 every Scot is an immigrant. The only question is when our ancestors arrived.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Pioneer Panelbeaters_\n\nEileen Henderson\n\nLaura Henderson\n\nAnnette Hunter\n\nKirsten Hunter\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nLinlithgow, Edinburgh\n\n# PANEL 5  The Wildwood\n\nAfter the ice, willow scrub was the first to colonise, growing in sheltered, damp places, and then came aspen, birch, hazel, elm, oak and finally lime. As they grew and the leaves of a thousand autumns fell and enriched the soil, Scotland was carpeted by a vast wildwood \u2013 a green and temperate jungle that stretched away on every horizon. By the end of the eighth millennium BC, deciduous trees could thrive and survive at 2,500 feet above sea level and only in the windblown Highland ranges would the wildwood fail to grow. With the trees and the dense canopy came animals which nested, burrowed and browsed in the shade at ground level, living off a plenitude of insects, seeds, leaves, grasses, roots and shoots. But there was also drama. The aurochs, giant wild cattle with seven-foot horn-spreads, thrashed through the undergrowth and wild boar, especially sows with young, could be a fearsome sight on the charge. Red and roe deer and elk also flitted amongst the shadows of the trees. Streams, rivers and lochs were home to fish, waterfowl, otters and beavers while all were closely followed by their predators \u2013 wolves, lynxes and bears. And, principal amongst them, the first Pioneers to arrive after the ice. It may well be that the animals of the wildwood saw people so rarely that they were more curious than afraid. They soon learned to be.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_The Edinburgh Tapestry Tenners_\n\nJo Avery\n\nJoy Dunn\n\nJoan Houston\n\nJoan Leslie\n\nMorag Macleod\n\nElizabeth McCall Smith\n\nElizabeth McGuigan\n\nGill Salvesen\n\nKatherine Shaw\n\nLiz Sutherland\n\nMarjory Watson\n\nSusan Wexler\n\nNikhat Yusaf\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nLinlithgow, Edinburgh\n\n# PANEL 6  Tents and Tipis\n\nThe Pioneers at first left only gossamer traces. At Cramond, near Edinburgh, the postholes left by the whippy green rods needed to make a bender tent encampment have been found and dated to the ninth millennium BC. And more spectacular, larger postholes were excavated at Barns Ness in East Lothian and interpreted as the earliest substantial house yet found in Scotland. This remarkable find closely resembled a similar structure unearthed at Howick, in Northumberland, and, in 2013, another was found at Echline during the construction of the Queensferry Crossing, on the south side of the Forth. Each had been made from whole tree trunks rammed into postholes and canted inwards to form a tipi shape. This frame was then covered by turf or perhaps thatch made with bracken and ferns. The living space was an oval shape and could accommodate a family of seven or eight. But the importance of these ancient houses was that they signified ownership of the land around them or at least the exercise of customary rights. Why expend all that energy if others could fish and hunt nearby? The most important resource was firewood for heat, cooking and light and many bands of hunter-gatherers will have ranged wide to gather it and possibly been forced to move when wood became scarce. Very few people lived in Scotland at the time the houses at Barns Ness and Echline were built \u2013 perhaps no more than a thousand or so. If these houses were occupied at the same time, the family bands who lived in them may have known each other.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Halflinbarns Schoolhouse Weaving Group_\n\nVi Bathgate\n\nFrances Fergusson\n\nFrances Gardiner\n\nBeth Orr\n\nIrene Rendells\n\nDiane Rendells\n\nMuriel Stuart\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nNorth Berwick, East Linton\n\n# PANEL 7  The First Farmers\n\nIn the years around c. 3,000 BC, the greatest revolution in Scotland's history took place. Farmers crossed the North Sea from Europe and they brought new techniques of cultivating crops and domesticating animals. Life changed utterly and amongst many spectacular monuments to the productivity of the farmers were the great stone circles of Orkney and the large timber halls built on the banks of rivers in eastern Scotland at places such as Balbridie, Claish and Kelso. The population grew very quickly particularly as a consequence of growing cereal crops. It turns out that the invention of porridge changed the world. In hunter-gatherer societies infants with soft baby teeth found the wild harvest of roots, fruits, nuts and berries difficult and consequently they were breastfed for much longer. While nursing, women generally cannot conceive and so the birth interval was long. When cereal cultivation began, the dried or charred grains could be mashed into a protein-rich porridge and fed to infants. This allowed mothers to stop breast-feeding earlier and it greatly reduced the birth interval so the first farmers began to have much larger families. And the production of food surpluses in good years allowed these growing communities the time to do work not associated with agriculture \u2013 the building of the great religious monuments of prehistoric Scotland.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\nJo Constantine\n\nFrances Gardiner\n\nRosalind Neville-Smith\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nOrkney, North Berwick\n\n# PANEL 8  Brochs, Crannogs and Cairns\n\nWith no windows, only one door and a double skin of thick drystane walls, the remarkable structures known as brochs may seem like a response to Scotland's weather. Most were built towards the end of the first millennium BC in the Northern Isles and around the Atlantic coasts although isolated examples were found near Galashiels and in Berwickshire. Brochs were almost certainly status symbols probably built by specialist teams of masons for important individuals. They stand as what archaeologists call 'statements in the landscape'. No doubt warm and relatively spacious with two or three floors, they were not easily defended. Crannogs were. Raised on wooden piles driven into the beds of lochs, just offshore, these houses were surrounded by water and accessible only by a single wooden causeway. Loch Tay had several along its banks. Crannogs were a watery variant on the roundhouse, a design that evolved in later prehistory in Scotland. Conical in shape, the roof beams usually rested on a low circular stone wall and the house was made weather tight by turf or bracken thatch. Some were large with diameters of 33 to 36 feet and had two storeys. Cairns were more enigmatic. Often found on hilltops, they may have been memorials or places where the worship of sky gods took place. Such beliefs may have been more common amongst the Carnonacae of Wester Ross and the coastal glens down to Skye. Their presence was noted on a map made in the second century AD and their name means the People of the Cairns.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\nDianne Laing\n\nFrances Gardiner\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nNorth Berwick\n\n# PANEL 9  Pytheas the Greek\n\nThe first traveller to leave any sort of a record of his journey to Scotland was Pytheas, a Greek traveller and explorer from the mercantile colony of Massalia, modern Marseilles. Some time around 320 BC, he came north to visit Britain, possibly because the tin miners of Cornwall exported the metal to the Mediterranean for the production of the alloy known as bronze. Or perhaps he was just curious. In any case, Pytheas gave our country its name. He called it Pretannike, the land of the Pretannikoi, the People of the Tattoos. Probably conferred by the kindreds who lived on the southern coasts of the Channel, it referred to the habit of body decoration, something that had probably died out on the Continent and made the peoples of Britain different. Almost certainly transported in curraghs, sea-going hide boats sailed by experienced local merchants and mariners, Pytheas circumnavigated Britain. Using a measuring stick called a gnomon, he took a reading of latitude on the Isle of Lewis, probably at the ancient stone circle at Calanais. Intrepid and inquisitive, the Greek explorer travelled further north to Orkney and Shetland and perhaps even beyond. The record of his journey, _On the Ocean_ , has been lost but it was so widely referred to \u2013 and mocked \u2013 by other writers in antiquity that large parts of it can be reconstructed. When the Romans came to conquer, almost four centuries later, they altered Pretannike to Britannia. If they had not, we might all be called the Prits rather than the Brits.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\nMargaret Macleod\n\nMary Macleod\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nIsle of Lewis\n\n# PANEL 10  The Coming of the Legions\n\nIn AD 43, the Emperor Claudius entered Colchester in triumph at the head of his victorious legions, their eagle standards glinting, hob-nailed boots tramping. To impress the defeated British kindreds, they had even brought war elephants to plod past the crowds. In the following forty years, the Romans pushed the edges of their Empire farther and farther northwards until the governor of the province of Britannia, Julius Agricola, led an invasion force into Scotland. Having brigaded together three legions and regiments of auxiliaries, he marched his men up through the Tayside and Angus glens to a place the Romans called the Graupian Mountain. Probably at the foot of Bennachie in Aberdeenshire, a pivotal battle was fought. A confederacy of Caledonian kindreds commanded by Calgacus, the first Scot to be named in the historical record, was defeated by the discipline, determination and organisation of the legions and auxiliaries. But the victory was not consolidated, Scotland was soon abandoned and Agricola recalled to Rome. Some time around 122, the Emperor Hadrian ordained that a wall should be built. It stretched from near the mouth of the Tyne, through the Hexham Gap to the Solway coast beyond Carlisle. It was as much a clear limit to conquest as a means of controlling the frontier between the province of Britannia and the barbarians of the north, an early definition of Scotland. The south of Scotland was briefly part of the Empire in the middle of the second century when Hadrian's successor, Antoninus Pius, commanded a turf wall to be raised between the Forth and Clyde. But it was a short-lived occupation. Several Roman commentators grumbled that Scotland was simply not worth the bother.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\nCaroline M Buchanan\n\nAnne Hamill\n\nSusan Lindsay\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nLarbert, Falkirk\n\n# PANEL 11  Ninian at Whithorn\n\nCarlisle appears to have survived as a functioning Roman town for at least two centuries after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. When St Cuthbert visited in 685, he was shown a working fountain, something that implied a working water supply. Early Christianity in Britain flourished principally amongst town dwellers and there seems to have been a well-established church in the town served by ordained priests. Carlisle may have been the place where Ninian himself was instructed and ordained. His dates are a matter for constant revision but he probably preached some time in the fifth century. At the ancient church of Whithorn in Galloway, what is known as the Latinus Stone was found. It seems not to have been a tombstone but rather the commemoration of the foundation of a shrine or a monastic refuge of some kind. Perhaps it remembers the mission of Ninian who, according to a slightly confused account from Bede of Jarrow written in the early eighth century, had been sent to convert 'the Southern Picts'. This last is probably a vague reference, from a monk who never left the twin monasteries of Monkwearmouth and Jarrow, to the native kindreds of the Novantae and the Selgovae, the early peoples of Galloway and Dumfries. Ninian caused a church to be built at Whithorn and it was notable because it was made in stone 'which was unusual amongst the British' sniffed the sainted Bede. It was known as Candida Casa, the White House, and the aura of sanctity around Ninian's foundation has endured for more than 1,500 years.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\nShirley McKeand\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nDumfries\n\n# PANEL 12  Dalriada\n\nIn the fifth century AD and perhaps for some time before, Irish war bands had been crossing the North Channel to invade and to settle. DNA evidence supports the notion of colonisation by Northern Irish kindreds, in particular those known as the Ui Neill. They seized the Atlantic coastlines of Argyll (the name means the Coast of the Gael), several southern Hebridean islands and the shores of Lorne and further north. In their mouths, these warriors and settlers brought the Gaelic language to replace the Pictish dialects of those they subdued. For many centuries afterwards, Gaelic was described as Irish or Erse. Dalriada became the collective name, according to Bede, for the territory of the incomers and eventually its kings became powerful right across Scotland. Recent research has discovered a frontier between the British kingdom of Strathclyde and the Dalriadan Gaels. It is marked by the Clach nam Breatainn, the Stone of the Britons, at the head of Loch Lomond in the north and in the south in the Firth of Clyde by the sentinel Cumbraes, literally the islands of the British. One of the earliest Scottish historical documents to survive is the _Senchus Fer n-Alban_ , the _History of the Men of Alba_ , now the Gaelic name for all Scotland but then a reference only to Dalriada. It is a naval muster roll and it describes a seaborne warrior culture, something that would endure for a millennium or more. More peacefully, the Irish invaders eventually brought Columba to Scotland and to Iona, surely the spiritual heart of the West.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\nFelicity Blackburn\n\nCatherine Borthwick\n\nHelen Brodie\n\nMorag Keenan\n\nEileen MacPhie\n\nLinda McLean\n\nHeather Simpson\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nArisaig, Malliag, Edinburgh\n\n# PANEL 13  Cuthbert and the Gospels\n\nSome time in the late seventh century, a young man rode from the hills above Melrose to the gate of the old Celtic monastery that lay in a loop of the River Tweed. Cuthbert wished to become a monk and lead an exemplary life of prayer, contemplation and preaching. He became Bishop of Lindisfarne and, shortly after his death on the tidal island, he was canonised. And immediately claimed by the English. The reality is more complicated. Cuthbert is an Anglian name but, in the seventh century, the Borders and the Lothians formed part of the glittering kingdom of Northumbria and would remain so for more than three centuries. A northern dialect of early English would develop into Scots and it was introduced by the Angles of the Tweed Basin and the Lothians. Surely the most beautiful and dramatic in Britain, Durham Cathedral was raised on Cuthbert's bones and his saintly cult brought pilgrims, gifts and money to his tomb and those who tended it. His name supplied an early definition of Englishness when the people who lived to the south of the Tweed began to call themselves the Haliwerfolc, the People of the Holy Man. But, in truth, these claims and counterclaims pale into insignificance beside the glorious achievements of the church in the north between the seventh and ninth centuries. The Book of Kells was essentially a production of the Columban monastery at Iona and the Lindisfarne Gospels were made by the island monks in their windblown refuge off the Northumberland coast. Perhaps one day these stunning artistic and spiritual achievements will come back home where they belong.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Stitchers o' Stow_\n\nAnna Houston\n\nHelen Houston\n\nLorna Lyons\n\nPatricia McMahon\n\nDiana Muir\n\nKaren Nelson\n\nSerpil Renton\n\nAmanda Runciman\n\nKathleen Runciman\n\nLibby Runciman\n\nElizabeth Simm\n\nDorothy Small\n\nDeborah Wood\n\nwith stitches from the children of Stow Primary School\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nStow, Galashiels, Lauder\n\n# PANEL 14  The Crosses and the Angles\n\nWhen the ambitious and ruthless kings of Northumbria pushed west with their war bands in the late seventh and eighth centuries, they obliterated the ancient British kingdom of Rheged. Hinged on Carlisle, it stretched as far west as Dunragit, or the Fort of Rheged, near Stranraer, and perhaps as far south as Lancashire. In the wake of the warriors came holy men and artists. Two of the most beautiful and intricate examples of early Christian sculpture in Britain stand at Bewcastle, on the moors east of Carlisle, and at Ruthwell, in Dumfriesshire. Scenes from scripture were carved on the cross shafts and arms and brightly painted. The Ruthwell Cross also has a place in the story of British literature. Carved in Northumbrian runes cut on the lower, narrow sides of the shaft are two extracts from one of the earliest surviving poems composed in English, _The Dream of the Rood_. It is part of a very sophisticated scheme of words and images for reading the cross and its central conceit is that the rood or cross upon which Christ was crucified had a personality. This is the haunting second stanza:\n\nI [lifted up] a powerful king \u2013\n\nThe Lord of Heaven I dared not tilt.\n\nMen insulted both of us together;\n\nI was drenched with blood poured from the man's side.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_The Angle Stitchers_\n\nHelen Allan\n\nMargaret Boe\n\nGeorgina Chapman\n\nBarbara Downie\n\nAmelia Little\n\nYvonne Tweedie\n\nFrea Webster\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nEdinburgh, Haddington\n\n# PANEL 15  Dunnichen\n\nFew battles genuinely alter the course of history and even fewer in the early history of Scotland were commemorated by an artist. In the kirkyard at Aberlemno in Angus, there stands a remarkable Pictish stone. Carved on one side are four scenes from the Battle of Dunnichen, fought in 685 only six or so miles from Aberlemno. The sculptor shows a genuine understanding of warfare. There is a shield wall of infantry with the man in the front rank waiting for the shock of a cavalry charge and he holds up a shield with a prominent boss at an angle that might meet a downward cut from a cavalry warrior. Behind him is a soldier holding a long spear that projects well beyond his comrade and behind him stands a third rank ready to support and plug gaps in the line. Warriors on horseback may represent the two great kings whose armies clashed at Dunnichen. The Picts were led by Bridei and the Angles by Ecgfrith. Having conquered the Tweed Valley, the Lothians and probably Fife, the Anglian juggernaut had rumbled northwards to be met by Bridei and his war bands at Dunnichen, near Forfar, where it was brought to a juddering halt. Ecgfrith was killed and the Angles retreated south of the Forth. Bridei's achievement was not only a decisive victory; it made Scotland possible. If the Northumbrians had won and gained control of fertile Pictland, consolidating as they did in the south, England and the English language might have stretched all the way to Shetland.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Angus Embroidery and Textile Artists_\n\nPat Beaton\n\nNorman Beaton\n\nDot Chalmers\n\nLinda Clark\n\nBetty Fotheringham\n\nElspeth Foxworthy\n\nHelen Fulford\n\nElizabeth Hill\n\nIsobel Hyslop\n\nDeborah Kenward\n\nJanette Nairn\n\nEna Norrie\n\nPatricia Rae\n\nJoan Robb\n\nIolanta Robertson\n\nMary Stephen\n\nSandra Taylor\n\nLinda Walker\n\nMargaret Wynne\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nCarnoustie, Forfar, Arbroath\n\n# PANEL 16  The Vikings\n\nIn 793, fell portents were seen. Thunder and lightning rent the air and dragons flew. On the shingle beach of the holy island of Lindisfarne, fearsome warriors rasped their ships up above the high-tide line and raced for the doors of the monastery before the terrified monks could bolt them. The Vikings had sailed into history. Even across thirteen centuries the shock of the first attacks is still palpable. The outrage of the church was expressed in an early description: the Vikings were known as the Sons of Death. Their _dreki_ or dragon ships were sleek, fast and very versatile, able to deliver warriors to targets that lay inland but up navigable rivers, their shallow draught taking the keels clear of reefs of sand or rocks and their double-ended hulls allowing them to reverse in narrow channels. After the first raids, Vikings began to colonise parts of Scotland. Orkney and Shetland retain the clearest Scandinavian cultural and genetic legacies while almost all the place names on the Isle of Lewis are Norse in origin. Some names recall how the Viking sea lords saw Scotland as a landmass articulated by a series of sea roads. The place name Tarbert \u2013 there is a Tarbert in Kintyre and another between Loch Lomond and Loch Long (and the Firth of Clyde) \u2013 means 'an overbringing', a place where crews trundled their longships overland, probably by pulling them on log rollers.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Gaels Stitchers_\n\nSheila Forrest\n\nHeather Forrest\n\nCatherine Harrison\n\nMadalene Lee\n\nAnn MacGilp\n\nMaureen McKellar\n\nMaureen Robinson\n\nMargaret Smith\n\nMary Swift\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nDunoon\n\n# PANEL 17 Dumbarton Rock\n\nIn the summer of 870, lookouts on the ancient fortress of Dumbarton Rock saw a bone-chilling sight. Rounding the headland and gliding into the upper Clyde were the sails of more than two hundred Viking dragon ships. Standing in the prows of the most splendid were sea lords and the Norse kings of York and Dublin. They had come to lay siege to the Rock of the Clyde, Alcluith, the seat of the Old-Welsh-speaking kings of Strathclyde, Ystrad Clud. After four months of bitter attrition, the well on the Rock ran dry and the garrison was forced to surrender. Instead of slaughter, the Strathclyde aristocracy faced slavery. The Vikings carried on a widespread and lucrative trade and elite captives will have fetched high prices at the slave market in Dublin. King Artgal appears to have evaded capture but he had the greater misfortune to fall into the hands of King Constantine of Alba or Scotland, the son of Kenneth MacAlpin. The last independent king of Strathclyde was executed. The siege and the failure of its dynasty appeared to spell the end of the ancient kingdom as a separate polity but its name and crown lingered in the records for more than a century after Artgal's death. At the Battle of Carham in 1018, there was a final flourish. King Owain of Strathclyde rode south with his war band to join the forces of Malcolm II of Scotland in an attack on the Angles of Northumbria. But, by the middle of the 11th century, no more is heard of the rulers who held court on the spectacular Rock of the Clyde.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Artgal's Rocks_\n\nLouise Foster\n\nAshley Holdsworth\n\nPatricia Livingston\n\nSarah Muir\n\nJulie Robertson\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nGlasgow, Edinburgh\n\n# PANEL 18  Constantine Climbs the Hill of Faith\n\nThe unrelenting pressure exerted by Viking sea lords in the Hebrides and along the Atlantic shore helped push the focus of an emerging Scottish kingship eastwards. Scone became important and, when Constantine succeeded to the throne, he and his Bishop of St Andrews, Cellach, made an important public declaration:\n\n[They] pledged themselves upon the Hill of Faith near the royal city of Scone, that the laws and disciplines of the Faith, and the rights in churches and gospels, should be kept in conformity with [the customs of] the Scots.\n\nConstantine may have been the first to call himself King of Alba, still the Gaelic name for Scotland. This choice and the clear will to mould a national church after a Scottish\/Gaelic model can be seen as an explicit rejection of Pictishness \u2013 Alba not Pictavia \u2013 but it can also be interpreted as a declaration of unity, a conscious and public attempt to weld together disparate parts into a new kingdom. In the 10th century, Scotland spoke the dialects of at least six languages \u2013 Norse, Gaelic, Pictish, Old Welsh, Scots and, for the cultured, Latin. The name of Scotia for the lands north of the Forth was current in the 11th century but it was not until the late Middle Ages that Scotland began to be widely used for the whole nation. But it may be said that the idea of Scotland was much in Constantine's mind as he and Cellach climbed the Hill of Faith at Scone.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Constant Stitchers_\n\nKatie Antonio\n\nHelen Huxley\n\nDorothy Maingot\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nPerth, Glencarse\n\n# PANEL 19  Carham\n\nIn the summer of 1018, on the banks of the River Tweed, Scottish axemen swung their weapons to brutal effect as they cut a Northumbrian war band to pieces. Led by Malcolm II and King Owain of Strathclyde, the Scots broke the ranks of the Northumbrian spearmen of Uhtred, Earl of Northumbria. Carham is now a tiny, sleepy hamlet on the English bank of the river but, to the emerging Scottish kings, it was a place of great significance. The Tweed Valley had been part of the kingdom and earldom for three centuries, it spoke English and shared a common culture, from matters of religion to agriculture. But Malcolm's axemen chopped through these ancient ties to make an emphatic statement \u2013 that the Tweed Valley was now part of the kingdom of Scotland. English chroniclers attached much less importance to the battle. Some indeed believed that this fertile swathe of territory had been granted to Kenneth II of Scotland by the English King Edgar in 981. But Malcolm II may not only have been fighting a force mustered from the lands south of the Tweed, he may also have been asserting himself over people to the north who still saw themselves as Anglian. It took more than a century before the Tweed Basin thought of itself as not English and it may be that Carham was the bloody beginning of a transition.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\nJane Cole\n\nVal Fairbairn\n\nMig Moore\n\nCarolyn Scott\n\nIsa Scott\n\nMargaret Waller\n\nMoira Wilson\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nTweedbank, Galashiels\n\n# PANEL 20  King Macbeth\n\nThe famous play by William Shakespeare may be seen as five acts of unrelenting defamation. Guilty of none of the foul crimes enacted on stages all over the world, Macbeth was, in reality, a competent monarch whose kingdom was sufficiently peaceful for him to go on pilgrimage to Rome. There, he was said to have scattered money like seed and no doubt sought papal forgiveness for only the most routine of sins. Almost never given his royal rank, Macbeth was a king twice over. From the early 1030s, he was King of Moray, an ancient polity around the shores of the Moray Firth, and, when King Duncan of Alba invaded in 1040, he was killed \u2013 in battle not in bed. Aside from resistance from Crinan (lay abbot of Dunkeld), the Abbot of Iona and young (not old) Duncan's father, King Macbeth of Alba ruled unchallenged and legitimately for 14 years. In 1054, Siward, Earl of Northumbria, raided deep into Scotland and began a process of destabilisation which ended in King Macbeth's death in 1057. He was succeeded by his stepson, Lulach. Almost erased from the regnal lists, King Lulach reigned for only a year before being deposed by Malcolm III. Far from being the ruthless, wicked, witch-obsessed tyrant of the Scottish play, King Macbeth was lauded as 'the renowned' after his death and, in _The Prophecy of Berchan_ , the author sang of 'the generous king' and 'the red, tall, golden-haired one, he will be pleasant to me among them; Scotland will be brimful west and east during the reign of the furious red one'. King Macbeth was famous as _Ri Deircc_ , 'the Red King'. Perhaps his red hair was traduced into red blood. Whaur's yer Willie Shakespeare noo?\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\nSandra Leith\n\nGlennie Leith\n\nIngrid McGown\n\nPaddy McGruer\n\nRhea Scott\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nMoray, Portsoy\n\n# PANEL 21  St Margaret of Scotland\n\nBorn in Hungary, a princess of the English royal house of Wessex, Margaret fled to Scotland in 1066 after the Norman Conquest. Four year later, she married Malcolm III Canmore (not because of his head, big or otherwise; the nickname was, in fact, a title for, in Gaelic, _Ceann Mhor_ means something like 'Great Leader\/Ruler'). She was a paragon of piety and fertility. Canonised in 1250, she deserved more immediate recognition for mothering no fewer than five sons and two daughters, all of whom lived to adulthood. This ensured that the MacMalcolm dynasty would not lack heirs. Three of Margaret's sons reigned as kings of Scotland \u2013 Edgar, Alexander and David \u2013 but it is perhaps for her faith that St Margaret will be remembered. Pilgrimage was becoming increasingly popular in 11th-century Scotland and the queen laid plans to make it easier to visit the great shrine of St Andrew. A ferry for pilgrims ran from South Queensferry to North Queensferry, where the road and rail bridges now stand, and, at North Berwick, a longer crossing could be made to Earlsferry in the East Neuk. In addition, Queen Margaret also worked to bring the Scottish church closer to the papacy in Rome but also did not ignore the sacred sites of the Celtic church when she ensured that Iona's monastery was restored. Many churches (and an excellent university in Edinburgh) are dedicated to her, the oldest being St Margaret's Chapel in Edinburgh Castle, the most venerable building in the city. It was endowed and founded by her equally pious son, David I. Margaret's other signal achievement was to have been one of the few women to take a leading role in our early history.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_St Margaret's Stitchers_\n\nBrenda Borrows\n\nRebecca Brown\n\nVonny Burke\n\nBeryl Butcher\n\nSally Clark\n\nAgnes Mabon\n\nKate McDonald\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nDalgety Bay, Aberdour, Dunfermline, Cairneyhill\n\n# PANEL 22  The Flowers of the Borders\n\nThe immense power of religious belief is sometimes underestimated in modern, secular Scotland. The landscape of the 12th-century Border country was punctuated by its products. Eight hundred years ago, it would have looked entirely natural to our eyes. Almost all buildings were made from wood and roofed with bracken or turf. Only the smoke of cooking fires would have drawn our attention. The tallest landmarks on the horizon were trees, roads were no more than narrow tracks and the only substantial man-made structures were the stockaded motte and bailey fortresses being thrown up by local lords \u2013 and they were few. But, in four places in the Borders, within a radius of little more than ten miles, piety raised up four mighty churches. Awe-inspiring and vast, the abbeys at Kelso, Jedburgh, Melrose and Dryburgh were a stunning architectural response to a profound depth of belief. Inspired by David I and all founded in the first half of the 12th century, communities of reformed monks came to the south of Scotland to build churches and monasteries. The first and perhaps the most significant were the Tironensians from Picardy in France. After a false start near Selkirk, they moved to a bend in the River Tweed at Kelso. There the construction of a vast cathedral-scale church began. With a double crossing and a collection of conventual buildings around it, Kelso Abbey was a wonder of the age. Now, only part of the west end still stands but it is a truly monumental fragment. At Jedburgh, most of the nave survives and Melrose has a roof as it carried on being used as a parish church. But perhaps the prettiest and most atmospheric of all is Dryburgh, the last resting place of Sir Walter Scott and Earl Haig. The abbeys were lavishly patronised and sometimes wealthy and anxious noblemen who knew they were dying gave gifts that involved them becoming novice monks, thus qualifying for burial inside the sacred precincts. This taking of holy orders was _ad succurrundum_ , done in a hurry. They believed that the soil of the precinct would cleanse their bodies of sin.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Scottish Borders Embroiderers' Guild_\n\nAlison Delaney\n\nCatherine Edmundson\n\nBarbara Farquhar\n\nSusan Gray\n\nAli Halley\n\nCathy McCulloch\n\nJenni Young\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nGalashiels, Hawick, St Boswells, Jedburgh, Melrose\n\n# PANEL 23  David I and the Wool Trade\n\nProsperity as well as piety raised the Border abbeys, St Andrews and Glasgow Cathedrals and the other great churches of early medieval Scotland. Much wealth was accumulated by the rapid development of the wool trade. As well-organised and semi-industrial textile production intensified in Flanders and Italy, the demand for raw wool grew. And, in the relatively benign climate of the 12th century, the monasteries in the Borders ran huge sheep ranches in the Cheviots (and there were others in the likes of the Lammermuirs \u2013 the Lambs' Moors) and a busy inland market was established at the royal burgh of Roxburgh. This enormously important medieval town has been entirely effaced; not one stone has been left standing upon another, a casualty of centuries of border warfare with England. But it saw the beginning of urban life in Scotland. Once the spring clip had taken place and the fleeces had been baled into woolpacks, sold at Roxburgh and either carted or possibly floated on rafts down the Tweed to Berwick, they were loaded at the quays on to ships bound for the Low Countries and further afield. Berwick became a very wealthy town, the location of groups of foreign merchants and the largest contributor of customs revenues to the crown. David I and his successors created royal burghs to stimulate trade and bring Scotland into the mainstream of the European economy. Until the Wars of Independence destroyed Roxburgh and ultimately severed the arterial link with Berwick, Scotland prospered on the backs of its sheep.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Broomlands\/Roxburghshire WRI_\n\nKathleen Binnie\n\nElizabeth Bruce\n\nVal Horsburgh\n\nCathy Simpson\n\nJoan Turnbull\n\nVal Van Der Reijden\n\nHazel Woodsell\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nKelso\n\n# PANEL 24  St Andrews Cathedral\n\nOnly two shrines in Western Europe housed the relics of the Apostles, men who had known Jesus. One was St James at Santiago de Compostela in Northern Spain and the other was St Andrew at St Andrews. According to legend, St Regulus, a Greek monk from Patras, brought three finger bones of the saint's right hand, the upper bone of an arm, a kneecap and a tooth. By 1070, these had been housed in St Regulus' Church, now in the precincts of St Andrews Cathedral, its 33-metre-high tower a famous landmark. By the 13th century, and probably earlier, St Andrew was seen as the patron saint of Scotland and the possession of his relics was a powerful buttress for the emergence of a national church. He had been crucified on the crux decussata, the diagonals of the St Andrews Cross, the saltire flag of Scotland. In the middle of the prosperous 12th century, the construction of a grand cathedral to hold the relics was begun and it continued for more than a century. It was finally dedicated in 1318 in the presence of King Robert the Bruce. The town plan of St Andrews reflected the cathedral's central importance with North and South Streets laid out as processional ways leading to and from the West Door. By the time of the Scottish Reformation in the middle of the 16th century, the great church was stripped of its altars and images and the relics of St Andrew lost. Stone robbers removed much of the fabric and now the east gable stands almost alone as the most impressive reminder of the cathedral's medieval grandeur.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Hill of Tarvit Textile Conservation Volunteers NTS_\n\nChristeen Anderson\n\nSoan Cairns\n\nAlison Docherty\n\nUrsula Doherty\n\nAnne Halford McLeod\n\nMargaret May\n\nAnn Miller\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nCupar, Auchtermuchty, Dairsie, Upper Largo, Newport on Tay, Ceres\n\n# PANEL 25  Duns Scotus and the Schoolmen\n\nThe local and correct pronunciation of the Berwickshire town of Duns is 'dunce' and the name may not be mocked for it arose in its other usage from the philosophy of one of the greatest intellectuals of the Middle Ages. Probably born in or near the town c. 1266, John Duns (or Dunce) Scotus was ordained in the priesthood in the Order of the Friars Minor in Northampton. They were popularly known as the Franciscans. Towards the end of 1302, John began teaching at the University of Paris. In his copious and hugely influential writings, he produced elegant arguments for the existence of God, the reality of the Immaculate Conception and much else. Scotus's work was widely admired and his followers were sometimes known as Schoolmen or Scholastics. His work remains important and, in the 20th century, there was a significant resurgence of interest and admiration. Philosophers such as Peter King, Gyula Klima, Paul Vincent Spade and others acknowledged his immense contribution to western thought. But, in the 16th century, John Duns Scotus's reputation was much dented. When his supporters opposed the work of Renaissance humanists and their fascination with classical \u2013 and pagan \u2013 philosophers such as Aristotle and Plato, and in particular the creation of the King James Bible, they were derided as Dunsmen or Dunces \u2013 people incapable of good scholarship. But modern dunces should be much consoled by their close association with one of Scotland's greatest minds and one of our most beautiful counties.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Embroiderers' Guild Kelso Branch_\n\nAnn Bacon\n\nMary Bonsor\n\nElizabeth Cuthbert\n\nStephanie Dempsey\n\nKay Gardiner\n\nColina Harris-Burland\n\nTricia Marshall\n\nAlison Minter\n\nMargaret Mitchell\n\nPat Nicol\n\nTricia Reynolds\n\nAnita Rhind\n\nRineke Sangster\n\nAnne White\n\nHelen Williams\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nColdstream, Tweedmouth, Hawick, Ednam, Gordon, Kelso, Duns\n\n# PANEL 26  Somerled, Lord of the Isles\n\nTechnological change often drives politics in unexpected directions. The Hebridean warship known as the birlinn developed from the Viking _dreki_ , the 'dragon ships'. _Naibhig_ in Gaelic, meaning 'the little ships', they were smaller than the longships and much more manoeuvrable as a result not only of scale but a simple innovation. The pilots of the _dreki_ used a steer board (the derivation of starboard because the steer board was usually on the right-hand side) attached to the side of the ship but the birlinns were fitted with a hinged rudder fixed to the keel and therefore in the centre. Over the shallow and rocky coastal waters of the Hebrides, these fast and nimble little ships could go places larger boats with a deeper draught dared not. The birlinns were central to the power of Somerled. Sometimes known as Somerled the Viking, his name is from Sumar-lidi or Summer Raider. Rising to prominence through a mixture of conquest and judicious marriage, he established himself as Lord of the Isles, ruling over an Atlantic principality that included many of the islands of the Southern Hebrides and Argyll. In 1156, Somerled and his captains won a great naval battle against Godred Olafsson and by 1158 he had seized Godred's kingdom of Man and the Northern Hebrides. But Somerled's ambitions were not satisfied. In 1164, he sailed a huge army up the Clyde to attack Malcolm IV's kingdom of Scotland. The expedition ended in disaster, Somerled died, the Islesmen retreated and his vast territories broke into smaller lordships. He is seen as the progenitor of Clan Donald and his descendants succeeded to the lordship until the late Middle Ages.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\nKatherine MacLean\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nLochaber\n\n# PANEL 27  Haakon at Kyleakin\n\nIn the summer of 1263, King Haakon of Norway mustered a huge fleet. Alexander II and his son, Alexander III, were actively attempting to incorporate the Atlantic coastlands and islands into their kingdom of Scotland. The gathering of the vast Norwegian fleet after it had crossed the North Sea must have been a memorable sight for it is remembered in a well-known place name. Kyleakin on the Isle of Skye is from the Kyles or Narrows of Haakon, the place where the king's fleet dropped anchor, gathered intelligence and made plans. By October, the fleet had moved south to occupy the Firth of Clyde, using the shelter of the Cumbraes as an anchorage and a source of water and supplies. Negotiations opened but soon failed and, on a stormy night, several Norwegian ships were driven onshore at Largs. A Scottish force arrived and fierce fighting followed on the beach. It was inconclusive but nevertheless the season and the weather were against Haakon, October being late in the year for a large fleet to be at sea, and they set sail for Norway. Three years later, the Treaty of Perth was agreed and the ancient dispute over the sovereignty of the Hebrides, the Atlantic shore and the Isle of Man was settled in Scotland's favour. But Orkney and Shetland were to remain outside the realm of the MacMalcolm kings and their heirs for another two centuries.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_South Skye Stitchers_\n\nMargaret Scott\n\nMargaret Govier\n\nLaila Hall\n\nAnn Hickey\n\nJulie Mace\n\nEmma Morrison\n\nFlora Struthers\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nIsle of Skye\n\n# PANEL 28  The Death of Alexander III\n\nThe night of 19 March 1286 was stormy. Strong winds whipped up the spindrift off the Firth of Forth, rain spattered the royal feasting hall at Edinburgh Castle. But King Alexander III of Scotland was unabashed \u2013 he was celebrating his marriage to the beautiful Yolande de Dreux and, perhaps flushed with wine, he was determined to share her bed that very night. The problem was that his new bride was at the royal manor at Kinghorn, across the storm-tossed Forth. Despite entreaties from his anxious courtiers, Alexander called for his horse to be saddled, rode to South Queensferry and crossed safely. Perhaps all would be well. But, somewhere along the cliff path to Kinghorn, the king became detached from his retinue and his horse probably lost its footing in the wind and the dark. The following morning search parties found Alexander III's body on the beach, at the foot of a steep and rocky slope. His neck was broken. Scotland was immediately plunged into a dynastic crisis. All three of the king's children had died and the heir presumptive was Margaret, the Maid of Norway, his granddaughter. She died before she reached Scotland. Alexander's rashness was to cost his realm dear. After the wind and rain of 19 March 1286, much greater storms burst over Scotland as the kingdom without a king began the nightmare of the Wars of Independence.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Fab Four Fifers on the Forth_\n\nDorothy Balfour\n\nJean Boath\n\nDilys Campbell\n\nChris Fair\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nCairneyhill, Dalgety Bay, Aberdour\n\n# PANEL 29  William Wallace and Andrew Moray\n\nAfter the death of Alexander III, what became known as 'The Great Cause' developed momentum as several noble families claimed and contended for the vacant throne. In 1293, Edward I of England judged that John Baliol had the strongest claim but he immediately began to manipulate the new king. When Baliol renounced his homage to Edward, the English immediately invaded and forced the King of Scots to abdicate in a humiliating ceremony where the royal arms were ripped off his surcoat. Edward is said to have commented, 'A man does good business when he rids himself of a turd.' In 1296, Andrew Moray led a rebellion in the north and he was soon joined by a force commanded by William Wallace, a minor nobleman from Ayrshire. His name is written as Le Waleis and may have denoted a family who spoke Old Welsh, the ancient tongue of Strathclyde. At Stirling Bridge, the allies scored a stunning victory in 1297. By allowing only part of a much larger English army to cross the narrow bridge before attacking them, they caused chaos. Retreating English soldiers were driven into the ranks of those behind, the bridge broke down and many drowned. After the battle, Wallace and Moray were proclaimed Guardians of Scotland but it seems that Moray died of his wounds soon afterwards. A year later, fortunes reversed as the English triumphed at Falkirk and Wallace spent seven years evading capture. But, in 1305, he was betrayed and taken to London to suffer the appalling agonies of a traitor's death. Having been dragged naked through the streets, he was hanged and, while still alive, emasculated and eviscerated before being beheaded. Knowing what his fate would be, Wallace asserted at his trial that, since he had never been the subject of Edward I, he could be no traitor. It is a stirring story of defiance to the last.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Perth Embroiderers' Guild_\n\nLorna Morrison\n\nGladys Anderson\n\nDorothy Lewin\n\nHeather Moir\n\nAnthea Pawley\n\nMichelle Peet\n\nJanice Reid\n\nWendy Rosier\n\nMary Ross\n\nPat Scales\n\nLoretta Whitcomb\n\nJeanette Yates\n\nMargaret Young\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nPerth, Blairgowrie, Methven, Scone\n\n# PANEL 30  Bannockburn\n\nIn the Middle Ages and long before, Stirling was the pivot of Scotland. To the west of the great castle rock, treacherous Flanders Moss stretched and it forced those armies that wished to march north to cross the River Forth below the castle walls. In 1314, Stirling was held by an English garrison besieged by the Scots. Edward II mustered a huge army of more than 2,000 armoured knights, the medieval equivalent of modern tanks, and 16,000 infantry and archers. The English king was looking to confront the man who had had himself crowned King of Scots, Robert the Bruce. His army was probably less than half the size of Edward's but he had the immense advantage of choosing the battleground. He would move his army around it brilliantly. And he forced the squadrons of English heavy cavalry to ride over boggy and tussocky ground, probably at the Carse of Balquiderock, about a mile and a half east of the traditional site. Over two days, a remarkable conflict took place. It began with a famous single combat when Sir Henry de Bohun charged with his lance levelled at King Robert \u2013 who flicked the reins of his pony to turn him aside at the last moment and with a backhanded cut, felled the English knight in an instant. A roar went up from the Scottish ranks. It was an omen. Formed up in flexible, mobile squares bristling with spears, the Scots attacked the English heavy cavalry as it struggled on the soft terrain. The squadrons broke and the first day ended with momentum swinging to Bruce. Disarray and disagreement in the English ranks allowed the Scottish squares, or schiltrons, to drive deep into the mass of the English army. Archers could not fire for fear of hitting their own men. Buckling under intense pressure, they retreated and were then routed. Edward fled and the slaughter began. It was an unlikely, telling and famous victory.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Two Toxophilists_\n\nCaroline M Buchanan\n\nMargaret Martin\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nFalkirk, Stirling\n\n# PANEL 31  The Rain at Carlisle\n\nFlushed with victory at Bannockburn, King Robert led an invasion of England and, in the spring of 1315, laid siege to the old Roman city of Carlisle and its dour castle. Heroic resistance was directed by Sir Andrew de Harcla, a local lord who was created Earl of Carlisle for his efforts. But the more compelling reason for the city's survival was not dogged defence \u2013 it was rain. That spring, unusually heavy and persistent rain fell all over Europe and, around Carlisle's stout walls, Bruce's siege engines became bogged down and were easily toppled in the soaking ground, his army encampment was washed out and little food could be commandeered locally. It was the beginning of the Little Ice Age, a series of periods of bad and cold weather that was to grip Europe for more than five hundred years. The rain not only drove Bruce from Carlisle in 1315, it continued into 1316 and there was widespread famine across Europe. Crops failed, bread was hugely expensive, no winter forage could be cut and herds and flocks had to be slaughtered. By the summer of 1317, the rain had relented but hunger had depleted and weakened the population. In Scotland, between 10 and 25 per cent of the population had died and food production did not return to normal until the mid 1320s. Medieval governments simply could not deal with the crisis caused by climate change and famine and criminal activity became common as people were forced to steal to live. But it was religious faith that may have been rocked most severely. Prayer and intercession had no effect and the 14th century saw the rise of new beliefs across Europe \u2013 what were immediately cast as heretical sects.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Galloway Broderers_\n\nAnne Ackerley\n\nLorraine Challis\n\nHelen Keating\n\nJane McCandlish\n\nLinda Murtough\n\nMarion Owen\n\nSusie Seed\n\nMargaret Surplice\n\nRuth Williams\n\nwith stitches by Children of Kirkbean Primary School\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nGatehouse-of-Fleet, Kirkbean, Castle Douglas, Melrose, Carsphair\n\n# PANEL 32  The Black Death\n\nAt Caddonfoot near Galashiels, a Scottish army gathered for a raid into England. Their captains saw what they called 'the foul death of the English' \u2013 the devastating arrival of the Black Death in the summer of 1348 \u2013 as an opportunity. Believing that this English disease would not affect them, the army attacked Durham and brought the contagion back north. By 1350, it was raging through towns, villages and farm places. Originating in China, the Black Death swept west to Europe and spread quickly to England where it killed between 30 and 50 per cent of the inhabitants \u2013 between 3 and 5 million people. Those figures may have been a little less disastrous in Scotland but not by much. The plague was carried by fleas and infected human beings through contact with rats. Also known as bubonic plague, it attacked the lymph glands to cause swelling and then made its deadly way into the bloodstream. A variant was pneumonic plague and it was transmitted through the air rather than by touch. Death was rapid \u2013 only three or four days after the symptoms appeared. The consequences of such a pandemic were dramatic and long lasting. A shortage of farm labour drove up wages but caused output to decline, while the death of many priests through contact with their parishioners contributed to a slackening in the certainties of belief. But, in one way, the Black Death did benefit Scotland. In 1346, two years before its arrival in England, Edward III's army had defeated the Scots at the Battle of Neville's Cross, near Durham and the young king seemed set to realise his grandfather's dream of subjugating Scotland. Disease diverted him and the danger of English domination passed.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\nMichael Blacklock\n\nCatherine Hamilton\n\nLiz Sanderson\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nMelrose, St Boswells\n\n# PANEL 33  The University of St Andrews\n\nThe oldest in Scotland and the third oldest in the English-speaking world, the university at St Andrews was formally founded by papal bull in 1413. Bishop Henry Wardlaw, commemorated in an imposing new statue near St Mary's College, had licensed a small group of teachers and students two years previously but the blessing of the papacy allowed degrees to be awarded. By the middle of the 16th century, the town, castle and university became embroiled in the Scottish Reformation and Patrick Hamilton and George Wishart were burned at the stake. By the 18th century, the university had declined and, when Samuel Johnson visited in 1773, there were only a hundred or so students. A century later, St Andrews was much strengthened by the incorporation of University College Dundee with its bias towards science and, in 1894, Agnes Blackadder graduated, becoming the first woman in Scotland to gain a similar degree to those awarded to men. Dundee became a separate university in 1967 and St Andrews was so anxious to increase its numbers in 1968 that the entrance qualifications were so low as to admit a number of unsuitable undergraduates. In 1413, Lawrence of Lindores was made rector of the university, the first in an unbroken line of distinguished rectors.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\nElizabeth Bracher\n\nThelma Grieg\n\nKate Scorgie\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nKirkcaldy, Burntisland, Kilconquhar\n\n# PANEL 34  The Ancient Universities\n\nWhile England languished with only two universities, at Oxford and Cambridge, until the 18th century, Scotland had four \u2013 at St Andrews, Glasgow, Aberdeen and Edinburgh. Indeed, for a time Aberdeen had two university colleges. The historical effects of this imbalance have long been obvious. But the impulse behind these foundations is less clear. One historian has described the creation of the ancient Scottish universities as nothing less than a national programme for higher learning. But the output of graduates was small. St Andrews and Glasgow, founded in 1451, were producing perhaps only 30 graduates a year. The need to train clerics for the Reformation church certainly accelerated growth in the second half of the 16th century but what lay behind these remarkable foundations may have been something like a sense of the value of education \u2013 something that is still discernible, just, in modern Scotland. The pity is that it is now both difficult and very expensive for young people from modest backgrounds to gain entry to university and to taste something of one of Scotland's greatest cultural and historical glories.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\nWendy Ewart\n\nLindsey Fraser\n\nVivian French\n\nLesley Kerr\n\nElizabeth Laird\n\nDavid McDowall\n\nVikki Reilly\n\nAnna Renz\n\nKathryn Ross\n\nJan Rutherford\n\nLiz Short\n\nGill Small\n\nEleanor Updale\n\nLesley Winton\n\nAnna Winton\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nWest Linton, Aberdour, Edinburgh\n\n# PANEL 35  Orkney, Shetland and Scotland\n\nSince the Vikings began to sail 'westoversea' from Scandinavia in the eighth century, Orkney and Shetland had been under their control. Powerful Earls of Orkney such as the wonderfully named Sigurd the Stout sometimes posed a threat to the mainland. Kenneth II could do nothing to prevent Sigurd annexing Caithness and extending his reach as far south as the Moray Firth by the end of the 10th century. It was not until the 15th century that what became known as 'the matter of Norway' was resolved. In 1468, a Scottish embassy was despatched to negotiate the marriage of Margaret, the daughter of King Christian I of Denmark and Norway, to James III of Scotland. Terms were agreed and they brought to an end a long-running dispute over the payment of an annual tribute to the Scottish crown for the Western and Northern Isles. Until the full amount of Princess Margaret's dowry was paid, all of the historic rights and lands of the kings of Norway and Denmark in Orkney and Shetland were to be ceded to the Scottish crown. The dowry was never paid and, in 1472, the Northern Isles formally became part of the kingdom of Scotland. At last, the nation's frontiers reached their modern extent. And the Scandinavian character of the archipelagos began to change. The language of Norn had died out by the end of the 19th century and recent DNA studies have shown the extent of a Scottish takeover since the late 15th century. Amongst men with old Orkney surnames, such as Flett, Foubister and Linklater, Viking DNA markers are found in 35 per cent while, in the general population, it declines to only 20 per cent.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Shetland Needleworkers_\n\nSheila Peterson\n\nPatricia Brown\n\nHelen Burgess\n\nRita Fraser\n\nMaureen Harkness\n\nMali Hewamanage\n\nSylvia Jamieson\n\nJuliet Nicolson\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nShetland\n\n# PANEL 36  Rosslyn Chapel\n\nThis gorgeously decorated and much visited chapel was founded by William Sinclair, the Earl of Orkney and Caithness, in the middle of the 15th century. Only the choir of what was intended as a family church was completed. It stands on a small hill near the dramatically sited Sinclair Castle at Roslin. The sculptural decoration of the interior is dazzling and no expense appears to have been spared in making one of the most beautiful churches in Scotland. But, after the Reformation, the chapel was closed and only reopened in 1861 under the aegis of the Scottish Episcopal Church. Many writers have attempted to make links between Rosslyn Chapel and freemasonry and the Knights Templar but none of these interpretations have so far appeared convincing. Famously, the novelist Dan Brown brought his protagonists in his _Da Vinci Code_ to a denouement at Rosslyn and part of the subsequent film, starring Tom Hanks, was shot at the chapel \u2013 all of which has helped bring many thousands of visitors to an otherwise quiet corner of Midlothian.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_The Apprentice Stitchers_\n\nFiona McIntosh\n\nAnne Beedie\n\nMargaret Humphries\n\nJean Lindsay\n\nJinty Murray\n\nPhilippa Peat\n\nBarbara Stokes\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nRoslin\n\n# PANEL 37  Chepman and Myllar\n\nIn 1507, a royal licence was granted to Walter Chepman and Andrew Myllar to print books in Scotland. For what was essentially a monopoly, the licence specified that these should be 'bukis of our lawis, actis of parliament, croniclis, mess bukis, and portuus efter the use of our Realme, with addiciouns and legendis of Scottis sanctis' and the King would decide what reasonable prices for these books should be. This seems to have been a conscious attempt at modernisation and even nation building. Sadly, the press only lasted two or three years but it did mark the beginning of a long, honourable and occasionally profitable tradition of printing and publishing in Edinburgh. Set up in the Cowgate, Chepman and Myllar did have some success and it may be that their edition of Blind Harry's _The Wallace_ was a best-seller. With the _Aberdeen Breviary_ , a compilation of the rituals and ceremonies of the Scottish Church intended to show how different they were from the English, the output of the new press is tinged with propaganda. But, by 1600, others had set up in business and their catalogues brimmed with popular works in Scots as well as grammars and Latin texts.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_The Bobbin Stitchers_\n\nAnne Mackinnon\n\nMeriel Tilling\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nLoanhead, Dalkeith\n\n# PANEL 38  Blind Harry\n\nThe full title of the epic poem composed by the minstrel known as Blind Harry is _The Actes and Deidis of the Illustre and Vallyeant Campioun Schir William Wallace_. It tells the tale of the great hero and royal accounts record that Harry sang 'a ballad' for King James IV on 2 January 1492 accompanied by two Gaelic clarsach players. More of a historical novel rather than a history, _The Wallace_ played powerfully to patriotic sentiment and, at twelve volumes, it could not fail to make an impression. Robert Burns admired Blind Harry but others, such as the historian John Major, attacked him for inventing battles and fictional episodes in William Wallace's life. Perhaps the greatest debt is owed by Hollywood and Mel Gibson's memorable film _Braveheart_. Also ahistorical and inventive, it nevertheless excited great patriotic sentiment. Gibson also knew, as no doubt did Blind Harry, that it was principally entertainment and, when the film premiered at the Macrobert Arts Centre in the University of Stirling in 1995, the bulb in the projector blew. The star of the film leapt up onstage in his kilt and suggested he tap-danced while repairs were made. But _Braveheart_ and Blind Harry's great poem both succeeded in showing just that \u2013 Wallace's extraordinary bravery.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Sangstream Stitchers_\n\nAnne Rowe\n\nJane Angel\n\nSheila Capewell\n\nNancy Davis\n\nShauna Dickson\n\nKate Frame\n\nMaureen Morris\n\nMarion Mullins\n\nKatharine Proudfoot\n\nGill Simpson\n\nDonna Watt\n\nHelen Wyllie\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nEdinburgh\n\n# PANEL 39  Waulking\n\nFor many centuries, urine was not wasted in the West Highlands or the Hebrides. It was needed for the process known as waulking cloth. Two processes were involved. The first involved scouring or removing oils and impurities from the cloth and that was where urine came in. The ammonia it contains helped in cleaning cloth. The second stage was the thickening of what had been cleaned and in Gaelic culture this gave rise to a particular music. The groups of women who sat around a table pounding and moving a bolt of cloth around would sing a very rhythmic song so that everyone worked at the same pace and in unison. Individual verses are usually sung by one person and then all join in the chorus. This last is often a string of nonsense words, the Gaelic equivalent of tra-la-la, but they can be very beguiling, almost hypnotic. ' _Coisich a Ruin_ ', 'Come on, my love', is one of the most famous and it played to a much wider audience through the crystal voice of Karen Matheson when the band Capercaillie released a version that climbed into the UK music charts. Waulking songs are now only performed for the sake of the music since waulking itself began to be done mechanically in the 1950s.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Wester Ross Waulkers_\n\nLiza Adam\n\nMelinda Christmas\n\nLennie Cole\n\nIsobyl la Croix\n\nFiona Macintyre\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nGairloch\n\n# PANEL 40  Flodden\n\nThe reign of James IV, often seen as Scotland's first renaissance monarch, is also remembered for military disaster. In 1513, the king was killed on Flodden Field as he led the downhill charge of a large Scottish army against an English force under the command of the Earl of Surrey. It was an impulsive and foolhardy action since it removed any ability to command. Pinned in the ruck of hand-to-hand combat, James could see nothing of the course of the battle and could not affect matters once the armies had joined. By contrast, the old warrior, Surrey, stayed at the rear and was mounted so that he had some sense of where he needed to reinforce, retreat or push forward. When dawn broke on the morning after the battle, the landscape of hell was revealed. On the gently undulating northern ridge of Branxton Hill, more than 10,000 men lay dead or dying. Through a long dark night the battlefield had not been a silent graveyard. Trapped under lifeless comrades, crippled, hamstrung or horribly mutilated, fatally wounded men still breathed. Bladed weapons rarely kill outright and they were often used to bludgeon men to their knees or into unconsciousness. Some will have been put out of their misery by parties of English soldiers scouring the field by torchlight for plunder, others will have bled to death, maimed, lacerated by vicious cuts, screaming, fainting and screaming once more in their death agonies. The slaughter was unprecedented, especially thinning the ranks of the Scottish nobility, but losses were also great on the English side and no invasion of Scotland followed immediately. But Flodden ushered in a century of instability in the south \u2013 the age of the Border Reivers.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Flodden Embroiderers_\n\nHelen De Le Mar\n\nCaroline Proctor\n\nDiane Skene\n\nBelinda Trustram Eve\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nTongue\n\n# PANEL 41  _The_ _Thrie_ _Estaitis_\n\nWritten by Sir David Lyndsay, this satire on the three estates of Scotland \u2013 the clergy, the nobility and the burgesses \u2013 was first performed in the open air outside Cupar in 1552. In essence an attack on these interest groups, the play was written against a background of rising tension in Scotland as the Reformation developed momentum. The Scots language used by Lyndsay is often ripe and the text contains what may be the first appearance of the word 'fuck'. It is a robust piece in another sense because its form still entertains \u2013 a production of _The Thrie Estaitis_ formed the dramatic centrepiece of the 1948 Edinburgh Festival and it was adapted in 1996 by John McGrath who cast Sylvester McCoy in a major role.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_The Schroders_\n\nLynne Schroder\n\nJim Schroder\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nCallander\n\n# PANEL 42  The Court of Session\n\nIn 1532, the Scottish Parliament passed an act to establish the College of Justice and it may be seen as the founding moment of the institutions of Scots law \u2013 the point at which it was made formally clear that it was different from English law. This was not the culmination of a process. Scots and English law during the Middle Ages had been largely similar. It was the outcome of a political deal. After the disaster at Flodden, James V was broke and he appealed to Pope Paul III for a portion of the Scottish church revenue that went to Rome. A sizable cut \u2013 about 10,000 gold ducats \u2013 was agreed but on one condition \u2013 Scotland had to set up a College of Justice based on the principles of canon law, complete with senators and other Roman paraphernalia. As the Reformation began to take significant hold in northern Europe, Paul III wanted to create as many institutional links as possible with Scotland. Surprisingly, these newfangled innovations survived the Scottish Reformation and, from that point on, they began to grow away from the principles of English common law. And so, for advocates, procurators fiscal and all of the other lucrative differences, we have a cash-strapped king and an astute pope to thank. When people remark that Scots law is based on Roman law, as though it adds some spurious dignity and antiquity, they should remember that it was in effect canon law. And the cost? A snip at 10,000 ducats.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\nMhairi MacDonald-Greig\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nEdinburgh\n\n# PANEL 43  The Scottish Reformation\n\nCompared with the tremendous upheavals in Europe and the blood that was spilled in France and Germany in particular, the Reformation in Scotland was relatively peaceful and quick. While there was conflict and martyrdom on both sides, a formal break with the papacy and the Catholic Church was achieved quickly. After the death of Mary of Guise, the Catholic mother of Mary, Queen of Scots, the so-called Reformation Parliament passed acts in 1560 abolishing the old faith. _The First Book of Discipline_ , partly written by John Knox, set education as a priority. So that the mass of people could read the Bible, the Word of God, for themselves, there would be a school in every parish. This took much sacrifice and many years but it was eventually achieved. This set literacy in Scotland at uniquely high levels and it would form the basis of many achievements to come. But the new kirk was impoverished as secular lords and the Crown grabbed as much of the property of the old church, of the monasteries and convents as it could. The patrimony of the Dukes of Roxburgh, for example, reflects much of the estate of the Abbey of Kelso. The reformed church received only a sixth of the income of the old and even by 1562 there were only 257 ministers for 1,067 kirks. The balance was made up by more than 600 readers. John Knox is often seen as the embodiment of the Scottish Reformation as well as a by-word for dour joylessness. In reality, he was a brilliant man and a great preacher possessed of immense courage. He survived two years as a galley slave, chained to a rowing bench, to come back to Scotland to lead the forces for change.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_St. Thomas's_\n\nGladys Bennett\n\nAudrey Axon\n\nAlison Bogie\n\nSue Brown\n\nIrene Brydon\n\nFiona Campbell\n\nWilma Finlayson\n\nMark Gilmour\n\nKay Hush\n\nVerity Macfarlane\n\nMargaret Mitchell\n\nAgnes Murray\n\nBelinda Petherick-Kerr\n\nMhairi Taylor\n\nChris Young\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nEdinburgh\n\n# PANEL 44  Mary, Queen of Scots\n\nFeckless, impulsive, romantic, beautiful, deceitful \u2013 adjectives that could all be applied to Mary, Queen of Scots. One of half a dozen instantly recognisable figures from Scottish history, she lived, reigned and was executed at a time of tremendous change \u2013 and virtually every move she made was the wrong move. The only legitimate child of James V, she succeeded to the throne at the tender age of six days. Having spent most of her childhood in France, she married the Dauphin, Francis, and, when he briefly became king, she was queen consort. On his death in 1560, Mary made plans to return to her realm of Scotland and, in 1565, she married her cousin, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley. Two years later, he was murdered and his house at Kirk o' Field in Edinburgh blown up \u2013 probably by James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell with whom Mary fell in love and married. After an uprising against her, Mary was forced to abdicate in favour of her son, James VI. At which point in this soap opera, she fled south to seek the protection of her cousin, Elizabeth I of England. Even though Mary had claimed her throne and was a Catholic. She was placed under stately home arrest and after eighteen and a half years in captivity, Mary was beheaded for plotting against Elizabeth. Feckless, impulsive, romantic, beautiful deceitful \u2013 and probably very unlucky, her 45 years were certainly eventful but there is a sense that the history of Scotland happened without or despite her.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Hopetoun Tapestry Conservation Volunteers_\n\nMorag Austin\n\nMargot Baird\n\nJane Beth Brown\n\nSallie Bryson\n\nMartha Creasey\n\nAlison Docherty\n\nCharlotte Docherty\n\nRos Duffy\n\nGillian Gyte\n\nMaureen Johnson\n\nBeryl Johnston\n\nHelen Kelly\n\nIsobel Potts\n\nRita Poulter\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nHopetoun, Edinburgh, Lancashire\n\n# PANEL 45  The Reivers and the Rescue of Kinmont Willie\n\nFor almost a century after Flodden, royal authority was either weak or remote on either side of the border and a thoroughly criminalised society came into being \u2013 what is known as the age of the Border Reivers. What mattered was not the rule of law but family loyalty and, as armies crossed and recrossed the Tweed Valley or took the western route to Dumfriesshire, theft became an easier way of life than farming. Kinmont Willie Armstrong was typical. A ruthless, violent thief, he changed sides, did deals and survived. But, at a truce day in 1596, he was captured and imprisoned in Carlisle Castle. This act was in contravention of the rules of truce where those who attended cross-border hearings on complaints were immune from arrest. But the English warden, Lord Scrope, ignored this. Walter Scott of Buccleuch, on whose land Armstrong had been captured, organised a rescue. It was to be the last great raid and it was brilliantly successful \u2013 a superb example of the reivers' skills. It was the last raid because the world was about to change. Queen Elizabeth of England was old and without an heir. James of Scotland had been assured that he would succeed and no longer would thieves be able to hop over the border and play off one jurisdiction against another. The days of the Border Reivers were coming to a welcome close.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Smailholm Stitchers_\n\nIsabel Atkinson\n\nAvril Blown\n\nFiona Brown\n\nDenise Hunter\n\nDerrick Jowett\n\nRobyn Kinsman Blake\n\nSusan Mason\n\nVeronica Ross\n\nSally Scott Aiton\n\nMargaret Shaw\n\nMargaret Skea\n\nCatherine Tees\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nSmailholm\n\n# PANEL 46  Robert Carey's Great Ride\n\nOn 24 March 1603, Sir Robert Carey began a journey he hoped would bring him favour and gain. He attended the dying Queen Elizabeth in her last days and when the old queen expired, his sister, Philadelphia, pulled a ring from her finger. It had been a gift from James VI of Scotland. She gave it to her brother who rode like the wind to Edinburgh to give James the news he had been waiting for for almost 20 years. Carey had organised a relay of post horses and he reached Berwick after only 48 hours. But somewhere north of the town he fell off his horse and, while he lay on the ground, it kicked him. Spattered with blood and mud, he clattered into the inner courtyard of Holyrood-house and demanded that King James be woken. When Carey gave him the old queen's ring, he knew that his life and the history of his nation had turned in a new direction. The Union of the Crowns would surely lead to ever-closer ties. But James's new courtiers in London were not impressed with Carey. His conduct was condemned as 'contrary to all decency, good manners and respect' and he was dismissed from the post James had given him as a Gentleman of the Bedchamber. But he persisted and was eventually made Earl of Monmouth by Charles I in 1626. He wrote a memoir which became an excellent source for the story of the Border Reivers and its second edition was annotated by Sir Walter Scott.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Ageing Well Edinburgh_\n\nRobina Brown\n\nCaroline M Buchanan\n\nLinda Garcia\n\nLaura Kempton Smith\n\nKath Laing\n\nSheila McFarland\n\nSheila Miller\n\nMary Stewart\n\nRuth Watson\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nEdinburgh\n\n# PANEL 47  The Making of the King James Bible\n\nBegun in 1604 and completed seven years later, what is known as the King James Bible was one of the greatest achievements of his reign. Completed by 47 scholars, it set new standards of accuracy and is often hailed as the most influential piece of literature in history. Also known as the Authorised Version, it was intended to reflect the structure and particular beliefs of the Church of England. But, in truth, the brilliance of the translation from Greek for the New Testament and from Hebrew for the Old Testament has transcended that original purpose. Spelling has been modernised but the glory of the language is unaltered. Here are the first three verses from 1 Corinthians 13:\n\nThough I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as a sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.\n\nAnd though I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could move mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.\n\nAnd though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profits me nothing.\n\nVast numbers of phrases in common use come from the King James Bible as well as the text of the Lord's Prayer and the glorious translation that is Genesis 1 to 11.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Heirs of 1843_\n\nFiona Anderson\n\nMarie Austin\n\nWinifred Cumming\n\nLilias Finlay\n\nMary Godden\n\nNan Laird\n\nDorothy MacKenzie\n\nJean Mackinlay\n\nChristine MacPhail\n\nDeborah Miller\n\nElizabeth Mitchell\n\nMaggie Morley\n\nJean Morrison\n\nJudith Pickles\n\nMaggie Romanis\n\nwith stitches from 30 members of St Andrew's and St George's West Church, Edinburgh\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nEdinburgh\n\n# PANEL 48  The Dawn of the Ulster Scots\n\nIn 1606 two ambitious Ayrshiremen launched a venture that would change the course of Irish and British history. Hugh Montgomery of Braidstane, and his near-neighbour James Hamilton from Dunlop, set up Scotland's first 'colony', across the North Channel in Ulster.\n\nMontgomery and Hamilton both had connections at the court of King James VI\/I in London. In 1605, through opportunism and influence, they managed to dispossess the Irish chieftain Con O'Neill of two-thirds of his huge landholdings in Down and Antrim. O'Neill was facing execution for alleged rebellion against the crown, and in exchange for a pardon agreed that Montgomery and Hamilton would each take one-third of his land \u2013 to be settled by Scots loyal to King James.\n\nThe following year thousands of Scots, mainly Protestant farming families from the southwest, began moving to eastern Ulster to inhabit and cultivate the lands given up by O'Neill. They and their descendants became the Ulster Scots. The success of the Hamilton\/Montgomery Settlement directly inspired two further ventures blessed by King James: the Jamestown colony founded in Virginia in 1607, and the Protestant Plantation of the rest of Ulster beginning in 1610. Ulster-Scots later contributed mightily as migrants to many other countries; for example, seventeen Presidents of the United States have had Ulster Scots, or 'Scotch-Irish', ancestry.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Crewel Chicks 'n' Dave_\n\nKate Edmunds\n\nShona McManus\n\nElizabeth Raymond\n\nMary Richardson\n\nDave Richardson\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nTranent, Cockenzie, Dunbar\n\n# PANEL 49  Witches\n\nOne of the greatest disfigurements in Scotland's history, one which banishes objectivity, was the pursuit and appalling torture and murder of women (and some men) as witches. In 1563 the interest in witchcraft stirred when the Reformation Parliament passed an act outlawing it on pain of death. By the 1590s, witch trials had begun and Agnes Sampson of North Berwick was dragged before James VI and some of his nobles at Holyrood to be interrogated. She denied all charges and was sent back to prison 'there to receive such torture as has been lately provided for witches'. Agnes was hanged by the neck, choking and vomiting for an hour before finally confessing. Her crimes were trivial and probably linked to the native tradition of folk healing and natural remedies. But the enthusiasm for such dreadful treatment was connected to the notion that Scotland was a godly commonwealth and that witches polluted it. Burning was the most common form of execution because it was seen as the most effective method of extirpating witches and witchcraft. Many women and men were strangled before fires were lit around them but others were burned alive. In Edinburgh in 1608, a group of perhaps eight women were tied to stakes to be burned alive. The fires burned through the bonds of three who ran out of the inferno with horrific burns. And the crowd threw them back in.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_The Coven_\n\nJill Brennan\n\nVal Cowan\n\nJoan Doig\n\nEmma Mackenzie\n\nElizabeth Smith\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nNorth Berwick, Athelstaneford, East Saltoun\n\n# PANEL 50  The National Covenant\n\nSigned in Greyfriars Kirkyard in 1638, this remarkable document was, in essence, a covenant between God and Scotland or Christ's Kingdom of Scotland. Many noblemen and thousands of relatively humble people attached their names, pledging themselves to defend their rights to a national church. It was a response to the efforts of Charles I to bring the church in Scotland into conformity with the Church of England. Written by Archibald Johnston and Alexander Henderson, it demanded a Scottish Parliament and a General Assembly free from royal interference and the abolition of bishops in the kirk. The Covenanters raised an army and, in what are known as the Bishops' Wars, they defeated Royalist forces. These conflicts sparked the War of the Three Kingdoms, what is usually miscalled the English Civil War. Until 1650 and the arrival of Oliver Cromwell's New Model Army, the Covenanters effectively ruled Scotland. When Charles II was restored, the Killing Times began. Covenanters were hunted down and persecuted. Unable to congregate in towns, they held field conventicles \u2013 open-air services \u2013 and sometimes thousands gathered. Covenanters were powerful in Galloway but gradually, with some lenience on offer from James II, these fiercely held beliefs died away and by the end of the 17th century only tiny sects were active.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_3 in EH3_\n\nMhairi MacDonald-Greig\n\nElizabeth Mason\n\nMargo Mason\n\nBlanka Peters\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nEdinburgh\n\n# PANEL 51  Droving\n\nBefore the transport revolutions of the 19th and 20th centuries, animals walked to market. Sheep, even geese (who were made to walk through tar and then sand so that their feet could cope with a journey) and other animals were driven to be sold but by far the greatest traffic was in cattle. The Highland economy in particular bred a tough, small breed that was in great demand to supply salt beef to the British army as the drive for empire got under way in the 18th century. Notably, drovers from Skye swam their cattle across the straits from Kylerhea to Glenelg, tying them nose to tail, before herding them through the mountain passes and down to the market known as the Falkirk Trysts. In Highland glens, particularly brilliant patches of green grass show where the stances were, the overnight stops of the herds moving through the mountains. Each summer, beasts would stop, graze and muck the ground of the stances before moving on. Rob Roy MacGregor was perhaps the most famous, or notorious, drover and it was the cattle business which caused him to become an outlaw. When the railways penetrated Scotland and the North in the later 19th century, droving came to an end. But the roads where the beasts walked can still be seen.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_The Highland Stitchers_\n\nBarbara Campbell\n\nAgnes Greig\n\nPenny Stevenson\n\nPat Thornton\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nMuir of Ord, Culloden Moor, Beauly\n\n# PANEL 52  Philiphaugh, 1645\n\nHaving fought a brilliant campaign in the Highlands, James Graham, the Marquis of Montrose, the Royalist commander in Scotland, found himself at Philiphaugh, near Selkirk. He was pursued by a Covenanter army led by a brilliant soldier, General David Leslie, and, on 13 September 1645, plans were laid. It was misty and Montrose's scouts failed to report the advance of the enemy. The first he knew of an attack was the sound of gunfire and he arrived to find his army in some confusion. But the Royalist musketeers managed to beat off the initial assault. What Montrose did not realise was that Leslie had divided his forces and sent his cavalry along the Hartwoodburn and, screened by Howden Hill, they arrived at the battlefield and attacked the rear of the Royalist army. Brave and even reckless, Montrose charged 2,000 Covenanter dragoons with only 100 cavalry. His captains urged him to flee, telling their general that the king's cause in Scotland would be lost without him. And so, with 30 men, he cut his way out. But the cause was lost anyway and Montrose would suffer an ignominious death in Edinburgh on 21 May 1650, hanged on the Burgh Muir with a favourable biography round his neck. It was a sad end for a brilliant military tactician, a daring commander, one of several to serve the undeserving Stewart dynasty.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Ettrick & Yarrow Stitchers_\n\nAlison Blackadder\n\nAnn Hardie\n\nSandra Howat\n\nMargaret Robinson\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nSelkirk\n\n# PANEL 53  The Killing Times\n\nIn the 1680s, the conflict between Covenanters and the government forces of Charles II and James II and VII reached its bloody crescendo. Driven out of towns and villages by powerful disapproval and the attentions of patrolling dragoons, Covenanting congregations took to the hills so that they could worship in peace. These services were known as field conventicles and sometimes thousands attended. At Irongray, near Dumfries, a huge conventicle was protected from the dragoons by a company of armed sympathisers. The Covenanting resistance to the restored Stewart monarchy's efforts to establish the Church of Scotland they wanted was at its stiffest in the south-west. At Wigtown a remarkable martyrdom took place. Passionate Covenanters, two young girls, Margaret Wilson and her sister, took to the hills to hear services and avoid persecution. But Margaret was arrested, imprisoned and, with an older woman, condemned to die a cruel death. In Wigtown Bay, they were tied to stakes at low tide and left to drown as the tide came in. As efforts to extirpate their interpretation of the Protestant faith intensified in the 1680s, Covenanters were killed or executed. Preachers were forced to go about the countryside in disguise and one of the more unlikely attempts at anonymity was the mask allegedly worn by Alexander Peden. More likely to draw attention than deflect it, the mask appears nevertheless to have been effective. In at least two places in the south of Scotland, there are rocks known as Peden's Pulpit. By the end of the 17th century, Covenanting zeal was waning \u2013 but, in contemporary Scotland, some of that thrawn spirit mercifully lives on.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_EH12 group_\n\nAlison Bruce, Lady Marnoch\n\nVivienne Cameron\n\nJennifer Harding-Edgar\n\nSue Kerridge\n\nSteve Shillito\n\nLeona Thomas\n\nChris Young\n\nwith stitches from some members of the EAL and other ASL services at East Neighbourhood Centre, Edinburgh\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nEdinburgh\n\n# PANEL 54  The Massacre at Glencoe, 1692\n\nWith the departure of the Stewarts in 1688, William of Orange and his advisors kept a weather eye on the Highlands, already simmering as an area of continued support for what would be called Jacobitism. Rebellion and a victory at Killiecrankie (where the Jacobite general, John Graham, 'Bonnie Dundee', was killed) had not been followed through and resistance finally fizzled out in 1690. These events had persuaded the London government to demand oaths of allegiance in return for a pardon for any part Highland chiefs may have taken in the uprising. Many sought permission from the exiled James VII and II and, typically, he dithered. Messages of agreement were finally sent to the Highlands in the middle of December 1691. Winter snows held up Alastair MacIain, the 12th chief of the MacDonalds of Glencoe and he was late in swearing allegiance. A plot began to form. The sworn enemy of the MacDonalds, John Campbell, Earl of Breadalbane, was in London and he persuaded the Lord Advocate, John Dalrymple, the Master of Stair, that MacIain's oath was both late and not properly sworn. Stair then convinced King William to sign an order for the execution of a den of thieves in Glencoe. The massacre now had the royal seal of approval and orders were despatched north. In late January 1692, Robert Campbell of Glenlyon led 120 men into the glen where they were billeted with families. Two weeks later, probably with the arrival of fresh orders carried by a Captain Drummond, the killing suddenly began. MacIain was stabbed to death as he attempted to get out of bed and, in all, 38 men died as blades grew bloody and muskets fired. About 40 women and children subsequently perished of exposure in the snows after their houses were burned. It was a disgraceful episode but, 50 years later, much worse was to follow in the Highlands.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Ben Nevis_\n\nNorma Callison\n\nSandra Casey\n\nKaren Lees\n\nDaphne MacLean\n\nJohan Morton\n\nGillian Oram\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nFort William, Roy Bridge\n\n# PANEL 55  The Bank of Scotland Founded\n\nIn 1695, a year after the Bank of England, the Bank of Scotland was established by an act of the Scottish Parliament. It was the first in Europe to issue its own banknotes and it continues to do so. Unlike its counterpart in London, the Bank of Scotland was founded to support and finance business enterprise. Its first Chief Accountant was George Watson and a leading director was John Holland, an Englishman. Suspected of sympathy for the exiled Stewart kings, the Bank found itself in competition with an upstart rival, the Royal Bank of Scotland. It was set up by royal charter in 1727. There followed 25 years of intense competition \u2013 what were known as the Bank Wars, an enmity that has never entirely faded. Into the 20th century, mergers and acquisitions took place. The Royal Bank took over the National Commercial Bank of Scotland in 1969 and the British Linen Bank became part of the Bank of Scotland in 1971. Both had issued their own banknotes and, sadly, these fell out of circulation. In 1999, rivalry ignited once more when the Bank of Scotland attempted to take over the much larger National Westminster Bank and this prompted a bid from the Royal Bank which was ultimately successful. Throughout three centuries of business, the major Scottish banks acquired a hard-won reputation for caution and probity, for steadiness and solidity. All of which exploded in 2008 when both institutions began to fall apart in a tangle of incompetence and mismanagement. Catastrophe and immediate closure were only just averted by the prompt action of the government in guaranteeing both banks' debts. But the reputational damage will take generations to repair.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Blacket Stitchers_\n\nAlison Cunningham\n\nAileen Gardiner\n\nJen McDowell\n\nRoz Preston\n\nSue Ross Stewart\n\nRie Stevenson\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nEdinburgh\n\n# PANEL 56  The Darien Scheme\n\nAs Scotland saw its southern neighbour lay down the foundations of a great empire, the Company of Scotland was formed with the aim of fostering Scottish imperial projects. It raised a staggering sum, \u00a3400,000, about a fifth of the wealth of Scotland, in order to colonise part of the Isthmus of Panama, a place known as Darien. An original aim was to dig a canal to link the Atlantic and the Pacific. The first expedition of five ships set out from Leith in July 1698 with 1,200 people on board. Having dropped anchor in the Bay of Darien on 2 November, the settlers christened their new home Caledonia. But they were entirely unprepared for the stifling heat of the following summer, their supplies of food rotted and people began to die. The mortality rate reached ten a day. After almost a year, only 300 settlers had survived the tropical, insect-infested conditions and one ship limped back to Scotland with the terrible news. But it did not reach port in time to prevent a second expedition setting sail with a thousand hopefuls on board. Disease struck once more and the Spanish attacked the colonists' Fort St Andrew. The Darien Scheme had turned into a disaster. Of the 2,200 settlers who sailed from Scotland, only a few hundred survived and the nation lost a fortune. The episode laid a ground of failure and near-bankruptcy that pushed powerful individuals and interests closer to the idea of political \u2013 and economic \u2013 union with England.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Lasy Daisy_\n\nLiz Cameron\n\nLesley Evans\n\nMargaret Lyon\n\nSheena MacDonald\n\nIsobel Potts\n\nRita Poulter\n\nJean Thomson\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nEdinburgh, Ceres\n\n# PANEL 57  The Act of Union, 1707\n\nThe Darien Disaster led indirectly to the Union of the Scottish and English Parliaments. It was claimed that union would help Scotland recover. A sum of cash, known as the 'Equivalent', was paid by the English Exchequer. The amount was \u00a3398,085, almost exactly equivalent to the \u00a3400,000 lost at Darien. It was viewed as compensation by many who had invested in the scheme. From an English point of view, the deal was straightforward \u2013 they wanted to ensure that a different monarch could not reign in Scotland. By contrast, there was tremendous opposition in Scotland, especially in Edinburgh where the novelist Daniel Defoe was operating as an English spy. 'For every Scot in favour, there is 99 against!' he reported to London. But despite its unpopularity, the terms of the Act of Union were agreed in 1706 and enacted the following year. The independence of the Church of Scotland (and with it, matters of education) and the legal system were guaranteed but, in most other senses, the union was comprehensive. In addition to a unified legislature in London, there was both a customs and a monetary union. It was a hostile merger but, by the middle of the 18th century, Scotland's economy was beginning to thrive and many Scots were able to make a career in the sprawling British Empire. After the death of Queen Anne in 1714, the last of the Stewarts had gone \u2013 but their ambitions were undimmed.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_The Craiglockhart Crew_\n\nMargaret Beck\n\nMoira Davidson\n\nMary Gillespie\n\nMarysia Holmes\n\nMaureen Johnson\n\nMargot McDowall\n\nDorothy Morrison\n\nDeborah Pearce\n\nMargo Taylor\n\nAlison Wardlaw\n\nAnn Williams\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nEdinburgh\n\n# PANEL 58  The Jacobite Rising of 1715\n\nWhen the Act of Union of 1707 applied the Act of Settlement and assured the succession of the Protestant House of Hanover, the exiled Stewarts were compelled to act. Queen Anne, the last representative of the dynasty, had died in 1714 and George I acceded. When James VII and II wrote to the Duke of Berwick in August 1715, he knew that history was waiting: 'I think it is now more than ever Now or Never.' But chronic indecision and poor communications made success ever more unlikely. Despite receiving no commission from the exiled king, John Erskine, the Earl of Mar, raised the standard of rebellion at Braemar on 27 August. Within weeks, his 12,000-strong army had control of the north and had captured Perth. Meanwhile, John Campbell, Duke of Argyll, mustered a much smaller force of 4,000 in support of George I. At Sheriffmuir, near Dunblane, the armies met and, with three times more soldiers, it looked a certain victory for Mar. But the battle was a botched, confused affair. Argyll's left wing was far shorter than the Jacobite right wing opposite them and should have been quickly outflanked, rolled up and defeated but orders were unclear. Argyll seized the initiative and, attacking the Highlanders' left wing, drove them back before turning to help his outnumbered left wing. Mar refused to commit his entire army in an all-out attack and Argyll claimed victory. A traditional song captured the confusion:\n\nThere's some say that we wan and some say that they wan\n\nAnd some say that nane wan at a', man,\n\nBut one thing is sure that at Sheriff Muir\n\nA battle was fought on that day, man,\n\nAnd we ran and they ran and they ran and we ran,\n\nAnd we ran and they ran awa' man.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Dunblane Group_\n\nJudith Abbott\n\nHeather Bovill\n\nCaroline B Buchanan\n\nMaud Crawford\n\nJenny Haldane\n\nMavis Oldham\n\nMary Storrar\n\nLysbeth Wilson\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nDunblane, Stirling, Auchterarder\n\n# PANEL 59  The Kilt\n\nScottish weddings and other formal occasions now resemble a Highland Games. Within a generation, kilts \u2013 and, indeed, full tartan fig \u2013 have become de rigeur for grooms, best men and most guests. Fifty years ago Lowlanders would not have been seen dead in a kilt. The origins of all of this Highland splendour are, of course, disputed. The big kilt or plaid \u2013 a term used, confusingly, by Americans for tartan \u2013 was worn as a kilt in the modern sense but was also big enough to act as a cloak, hood or even a blanket. All was kept decent by a belt and the word kilt appears to derive from tucking in or kilting up a plaid round the waist. Many hypotheses have been advanced for the shrinking of the big kilt to the modern, small kilt. But the most likely, certainly the most entertaining, was that it was invented by an Englishman. Thomas Rawlinson was a Quaker from Lancashire who ran a charcoal burning and foundry business in Lochaber in the 1720s. Noticing that the big kilt encumbered his foresters as they felled trees and his foundry men as they smelted iron, he promoted the wearing of the small kilt. It was probably a natural development encouraged by the Englishman because illustrations of men wearing a version have been found to predate the 1720s. What was worn under the kilt remains a secret but occasionally, when Highlanders fought in hot weather, they cast off their plaids and charged in their shirts. All was on resplendent show at _Blar na Leinne_ , the Field of the Shirts, a clan battle between Frasers and McDonalds near Fort William in the summer of 1544. It is not known how long the shirts were.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Smailholm Group_\n\nIsabel Atkinson\n\nAvril Blown\n\nFiona Brown\n\nDenise Hunter\n\nDerrick Jowett\n\nRobyn Kinsman Blake\n\nSusan Mason\n\nVeronica Ross\n\nSally Scott Aiton\n\nMargaret Shaw\n\nMargaret Skea\n\nCatherine Tees\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nSmailholm, Gordon\n\n# PANEL 60  The Jacobite Rising of 1745\n\nIn the summer of 1745, Bonnie Prince Charlie was rowed up Loch Shiel to join the muster of his Highland army. But only a handful of men greeted him. As hopes faded, the sound of the pipes of Clan Cameron was heard. About a thousand clansmen were led to Glenfinnan by Locheil and the rising had begun. Whatever faults he had \u2013 and they appear to have been many \u2013 Charles Edward Stuart had charisma and the surprise is not that he failed but that he very nearly succeeded. Unlike the Earl of Mar and the Old Pretender, the Prince and his generals moved forward with real intent. As clansmen flocked to the standard, they moved south quickly, reaching Edinburgh in September and taking the city without loss. At Prestonpans, the Highland charge tore into the terrified ranks of a government army commanded by Sir John Cope. The battle was a rout, lasting no more than 15 minutes and Prince Charles's victory sent shock waves throughout Britain. On 8 November, the Jacobites invaded England and took Carlisle. But, by the time they reached Derby, the three government armies in England were closing in. Even if the Highlanders won again, they would lose between 1,000 and 1,500 casualties and that would make a fighting retreat back to Scotland impossible. Meanwhile London was in uproar, the stock market was falling and nervous preparations were made. The argument for retreat prevailed and it led all the way to Culloden and defeat in April 1746. The Stewart cause was at last lost. It was the beginning of a long end for the clans and an appallingly punitive campaign of killings and rapes followed the departure of the Prince. He died drunk, dissolute and friendless in Italy.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_EH41_\n\nKathleen Bain\n\nCandy Richardson\n\nAvis Moore\n\nMarjory Smith\n\nCindy Sykes\n\nwith stitches by 32 delegates to the Episcopalian Conference 'Ta See Oursels'\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nHaddington\n\n# PANEL 61  The Ordnance Survey\n\nOne of the reasons the Jacobite army penetrated as far south as Derby in 1745 was the lack of good mapping and decent roads. The far superior government forces were unable to react, to move quickly enough to position themselves and their artillery in the path of a fast-moving Highland army. That is why the wonderfully detailed and accurate maps of Britain are called the Ordnance Survey. In 1747, Lt Col. David Watson proposed that reliable maps of the Scottish Highlands be made to ensure that rebellious clansmen could not simply disappear into an uncharted wilderness or use local geographical knowledge to tactical advantage. The resulting maps were scaled on one inch to a thousand yards. War, or the threat of war, stimulated the mapping of the South of England when William Roy, one of Watson's assistants in Scotland, began to work on Kent and Sussex. Fear of a French invasion was the prompt. By the 1820s, the first complete surveys of England and Wales were produced. The Ordnance Survey is an adornment to life in Britain, despite the recent abandonment of the green Pathfinder series, a set of superbly detailed maps easily handled out of doors. By comparison, maps of European countries are poor but, during the First World War, the Ordnance Survey began work on maps of Belgium, France and Italy. Would that they were more easily available.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Inverness & Area_\n\nJudie Holliday\n\nAnne Omand\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nFortrose, Dochgarroch\n\n# PANEL 62  English Advances, Gaelic Retreats\n\nThe defeat at Culloden in 1746 was the beginning of a long end for the Highland clans, their culture and their language. Gaelic had crossed the North Channel from Ireland with the establishment of the kingdoms of Dalriada and, at its zenith, the language was spoken all over the Highlands and the Western Isles but, as the brutal aftermath of the Jacobite Risings merged into the Clearances, people left the Highlands with Gaelic, a language that they rarely passed on to their children. Now it is spoken by less than 1 per cent of all Scots. The original native tongue of Scotland was what might be best described as Old Welsh or Cumbric. Now entirely effaced, its only traces are to be found in the landscape, in natural features and place names. Peebles is from _pebyll_ , the Old Welsh word for tents and it probably meant a shieling. Altcluit meant the Rock of the Clyde, now Dumbarton Rock, and Penicuik is from _Pen y Cog_ , Cuckoo Hill. Early versions of English invaded with the Angles as they overran the Tweed Basin and the Lothians in the seventh century and, in the medieval period, it spread with the establishment of towns and trade. But, until the 19th century, Gaelic reached down the Perthshire, Angus and Aberdeenshire glens and it is likely that those who lived on either side of the linguistic frontier understood each other well enough. Now the fate of Gaelic is very perilous and, if it is lost, it will be all Scotland's loss.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_In Stitches_\n\nJean Gowans\n\nTina Hammond\n\nCarolyn Irvine of Drum\n\nHelen Jackson\n\nDiana Munro\n\nMairi Skinner\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nBanchory, Letham, Potarch\n\n# PANEL 63  The Royal and Ancient Golf Club\n\nGolf is a Scottish invention. All other claims are entirely insubstantial and at St Andrews and around Edinburgh the modern game began to take shape. The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews is probably not the oldest in the world. That honour could probably be claimed by the Royal Burgess Golfing Society of Edinburgh which was founded almost 20 years before, in 1735. But the R&A is the most powerful because it makes the rules. But it does not own a golf course. The Old Course and the others around it are the property of the citizens of the town of St Andrews. Regarded as the home of golf, the links (i.e. seaside) courses are also closest to the game's origins. The strip of land behind the dunes of the West Sands, what is now the world-renowned Old Course and its sister courses, was too sandy for cultivation and was used for grazing. In the bitter winter winds, sheep scraped out bields or shelters and these sandy indentations became known as bunkers. The fairways of the Old Course were not laid out or created but are the well-mown folds of naturally undulating land. And the rough is very rough. On a calm summer's day, the Old Course seems to present few difficulties to the professionals who contend for the Open Championship. But, when the wind blows, it becomes evil, unfair, impossible \u2013 a conspiracy of nature and the R&A. In reality the Old is the greatest golf course in the world. Bar none.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Tee'd Off_\n\nPat Freeth\n\nJennifer Link\n\nEddie Link\n\nShona Morrison\n\nLis Smith\n\nSheila Tunstall-James\n\nMairi Wheeler\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nKinross, Glenlomond, Auchtermuchty, Forgandenny, St Monans\n\n# PANEL 64  The First School for Deaf and Dumb Children\n\nThomas Braidwood founded the first school in Britain designed to teach deaf and dumb children. It was set up in a house in the Canongate in Edinburgh in 1780. Developing out of what he called the 'combined system', Braidwood codified the earliest version of British Sign Language. It was based on the use of the hands, the shapes they made, how they were turned, were placed and moved. C is made by curving the thumb and index finger into a semicircle and D by adding the straight index finger of the other hand to the semicircle. Deaf and dumb people talk in a mesmerising flurry of hand movements and British Sign Language has developed regional dialects. Some Scottish signs are not understood in the south of England. Braidwood's first pupil was Charles Sheriff, the son of Alexander Sheriff, a wealthy wine merchant working in Leith. The school tended to cater for those with the means to pay its fees but Joseph Watson, a relative of Braidwood, founded the first public school for the deaf and dumb. Based in Bermondsey in 1792, the London Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb was very successful. By 1783, Braidwood himself had moved to London to found a new school and his grandson set up a school in Virginia in the USA. Scots pioneered this field of education and Thomas Braidwood would have smiled to see British Sign Language recognised alongside English, Welsh, Gaelic and others as one of Britain's official languages and also to see that his original school in the Canongate is remembered in the nearby district of Edinburgh, the Dumbiedykes.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Cammo Quilters_\n\nKatherine Forsyth\n\nRosemary Gordon-Harvey\n\nAvril Green\n\nElizabeth Reekie\n\nGillian Swanson\n\nNorma Watkins\n\nCaroline Watson\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nEdinburgh\n\n# PANEL 65  James Small and the Swing Plough, 1770\n\nScottish agriculture had long been hampered by poor technology. The Auld Scots Ploo was built mostly of wood tipped by iron and it took a team of four powerful oxen to pull it through the ground. It often broke down when it hit big stones or roots. And because it did not turn the sod completely, the auld ploo needed an army of plough followers to break up big clods and pull out weeds. In the 1770s, a Berwickshire blacksmith, James Small, perfected the swing plough. Cast all in iron at the Carron Ironworks, it had a screwed shape that turned the sod over completely, could be pulled by one strong horse and guided by one skilled man. Because it ploughed a deeper furrow, the swing plough improved drainage and brought more land into cultivation. Small was a perfectionist who worked on his prototypes endlessly and even spent time in prison as a debtor. He did not patent his design and consequently it was imitated very widely. This in turn accelerated the speed of change on the land and its adoption on the prairies of the USA and Canada made these regions into the breadbaskets of the world. Even now James Small is little known and his huge contribution to the modern world badly understood. He died in 1793 of overwork and in great poverty. The swing plough changed cultivation radically and, by doing that, it changed the world.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\nChristine Covell\n\nSandra Douglas\n\nLinda Jobson\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nPeebles, Eskbank\n\n# PANEL 66  Enlightenment Edinburgh\n\nPerhaps the most glittering period in Scotland's history was the second half of the 18th century \u2013 what is known as the Enlightenment. Between 1768 and 1771, Encyclopaedia Britannica was established in Edinburgh by William Smellie, a printer, editor and antiquary. At Anchor Close, just off the High Street, work began on setting down all human knowledge \u2013 it was an age when such a feat was thought possible, the organisation of all there is to know. The Encyclopaedia appeared in 100 weekly instalments and could be pithy. The entry for Woman was four words long \u2013 'the female of man'. But it proved popular and a second edition was soon put in train. It was published at a time of great intellectual ferment in Scotland and in Edinburgh in particular. An English visitor, a chemist called Amyat, left a famous observation, 'Here I stand at what is called the Cross of Edinburgh [the Mercat Cross in the High Street] and can, in a few minutes, take 50 men of genius and learning by the hand.' It was an intense environment. The medieval tenements of the Old Town piled people on top of each other and intellectual clubs met to discuss and dispute in the taverns off the High Street and the Canongate. The Select Society was founded by the painter Allan Ramsay, and the philosophers David Hume and Adam Smith. The Poker Club was intended to 'poke things up a bit'. Publishing was busy but this remarkable period of intellectual achievement was underpinned and understood by a society where, at 75 per cent, mass literacy was the highest in the world.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Shepherd House Group_\n\nJean Cameron\n\nAnn Fraser\n\nSarah Hynd\n\nMarianne More Gordon\n\nFrances Stevens\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nInveresk, Musselburgh, North Berwick\n\n# PANEL 67  Edinburgh's New Town\n\nOvercrowding and building collapse forced the city council to extend Edinburgh's boundaries to include the farmland beyond the Nor Loch, an unpleasant body of water that lay at the northern foot of the Castle Rock. It is now Princes Street Gardens. A design competition for what would be known as the New Town was won by 26-year-old James Craig and his simple layout of a grid of three main streets linking two squares and crossed by five north-to-south thoroughfares is essentially what survives today. The street and square names reflected contemporary politics. George Square and St Andrew Square were to represent the union of the two nations. But someone remembered that there was already a George Square on the south side of the city and so Queen Charlotte was commemorated in Charlotte Square as well as Queen Street. And the royal princes were immortalised in Princes Street, although few can remember their names. Intended as a residential suburb, the New Town has a very pleasing symmetry. There were problems at each end in the south which were never quite resolved. Craig intended George Street to have a church in the squares at each end to finish the vistas but Sir Lawrence Dundas decided to build his house in St Andrew on the site intended for the church and St Andrew and St George's is in George Street. The connection with the Old Town down the Mound was not properly planned, resulting in the chicane into Hanover Street but perhaps the most glaring misfit is Queensferry Street and the way it is awkwardly attached to the south side of Charlotte Square and the west end of Princes Street. But the whole scheme is a wonderfully harmonious and concrete testament to the Edinburgh Enlightenment and a time when the city council could get things right.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\nCatherine Harlick\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nRhiconich\n\n# PANEL 68  James Watt and the Steam Engine\n\nBorn in Greenock in 1736, James Watt became a distinguished engineer and inventor \u2013 a Scot whose fame remains worldwide. But he did not invent the steam engine \u2013 rather, he made it work much more efficiently. While employed at Glasgow University as an instrument maker, Watt saw how wasteful of energy designs for steam engines were. They repeatedly cooled and reheated their cylinders. Instead, Watt invented the separate condenser and this hugely improved the power and efficiency of pumps in particular. And it made them cheaper to manufacture. When Watt conceived a means of producing rotary motion, the use of the steam engine broadened well beyond pumping. The brilliance of what he achieved could be seen on old steam trains where the huge iron wheels were very obviously driven by rotary power. In partnership with Matthew Boulton, Watt became a wealthy man and, throughout his life, he continued to work on inventions. Not only did he come up with the concept of horsepower as a means of measurement, the unit of electricity known as a watt is named after him.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Campsie Stitchers_\n\nNancy Bailey\n\nIsobel Shaw\n\nJacky Young\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nGlasgow\n\n# PANEL 69  The Tobacco Lords\n\nThe Act of Union may have been deeply unpopular in Edinburgh but it converted Glasgow into a very busy port. Its position on the Clyde was enormously important in the age of sailing ships. The trade winds first hit Europe in the west of Scotland and this gave ships sailing out of Glasgow for the American colonies a two-to-three-week advantage. From 1710 until c. 1760, the city boomed because of the trade in tobacco. The wealthiest and most enterprising merchant was John Glassford and he ran a fleet of 25 merchant ships. Known as the Tobacco Lords or sometimes the Virginia Dons, Glasgow merchants built huge mansions that gave their names to the city's streets \u2013 Thomas Buchanan, Archibald Ingram and Glassford amongst them. The American Revolution of 1776 caused great difficulties. The Glasgow merchants had lent vast sums to the planters of Virginia and Maryland and, after the break with Britain, few of these debts were ever repaid. But, ever versatile, the Tobacco Lords switched their trade to cotton in the British West Indies. Their most lasting legacy is in Glasgow's Georgian architecture.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_The Last Gasp Group_\n\nMarie Abbott\n\nJenny Barnett\n\nSheila Bruges\n\nElma Muir\n\nSally Nairn\n\nAnne North\n\nPamella Roberts\n\nHilda Stewart\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nBlairgowrie, Perth, Dunkeld\n\n# PANEL 70  Adam Smith\n\nPerhaps the most influential thinker of the Scottish Enlightenment, Adam Smith was born in Kirkcaldy in 1723. The old harbour fascinated him as he watched ships load and unload at the quaysides. Having studied at Glasgow University and Oxford, he lectured at Edinburgh before being appointed Professor of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow. He is rightly renowned for two enormously influential pieces of scholarship. _The Theory of Moral Sentiments_ was published in 1759 but the work he is most famous for is _An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations_. It is considered the first modern treatment of economics and it has been enormously influential since its publication in 1776. Many scholars see Smith's dictum of the play of self-interest in economic life as being summarised in this famous sentence:\n\nIt is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.\n\nAs with many great thinkers, Smith has been interpreted by politicians of many different persuasions but his clear-eyed thinking makes his work highly accessible almost 250 years after _The Wealth of Nations_ was first published.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\nLouise Foster\n\nMeg Murray\n\nChristine Simm\n\nJean Taylor\n\nFiona Wemyss\n\nFiona Wilkie\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nForgandenny, Edinburgh\n\n# PANEL 71  David Hume and Jean-Jacques Rousseau\n\nFamously decent and mild-tempered, the great philosopher of the Edinburgh Enlightenment David Hume was known as Le Bon David. This title was conferred on him in Paris where he acted as the undersecretary to the British ambassador, Lord Hertford, between 1763 and 1765. He was lionized for his work, writing to a fellow historian that 'I can only say that I eat nothing but ambrosia, drink nothing but nectar, breathe nothing but incense and tread on nothing but flowers'. This idyll was disturbed by the case of the philosopher, Jean-Jacques Rousseau. After the publication of his radical tract, _The Social Contract_ , with its famous first line, 'Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains', he was persecuted. Hume offered to take Rousseau to safety in England despite warnings that the refugee was not a man to be trusted. And they soon quarrelled. Rousseau suspected a plot against him and began to abuse him and draw friends and influential people into the row. In less than a year, their relationship had descended into mutual loathing. Such was Hume's fury that his reputation for moderation and goodness was severely endangered when he wrote of Rousseau as 'surely the blackest and most atrocious villain, beyond comparison, that now exists in the world'. Oh dear.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Coastal Stitchers_\n\nSheila Baird\n\nJean Dawson\n\nChristina Dougan\n\nAlison Sanchez-Ruiz\n\nHilary Williams\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nAberlady, Ballencrieff, Gullane\n\n# PANEL 72  The Highland and Lowland Clearances Gather Pace\n\nIn the late 18th and throughout the 19th century, both the Highlands and Lowlands of Scotland slowly emptied of people. Landlords wanted to make profits from sheep or sporting estates and, in the Lowlands, smallholders were cleared as farms grew larger and more cost-effective. The growing cities of the Central Belt offered work for many but significant numbers reached the quaysides of Glasgow, Greenock and elsewhere and kept going, seeking new lives in North America, Australia, New Zealand and other developing countries. It may be that the Highland Clearances are better understood because of the actions of what seemed like a brutal aristocracy. There was resistance and, at the Battle of the Braes in Skye in 1882, crofters fought with the police. But the Napier Commission met and a reform of the law allowed security of tenure and limited the ability of landlords to evict families.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Links Needlework_\n\nSusie Alexander\n\nBetty Beazley\n\nIsabel Bryce\n\nMargaret Cormack\n\nHelen Deasy\n\nSheena Esson\n\nLiz Farmer\n\nEdwina Fraser\n\nLynn Fraser\n\nSheena Fraser\n\nCath Fraser\n\nMargaret Gowans\n\nAda Grant\n\nKathleen Grant\n\nMarion Hailstone\n\nSheila Hamilton\n\nCath Hay\n\nStephanie Hoyle\n\nCathy MacGillivray\n\nJanet Mackenzie\n\nAnne Marie Mackenzie\n\nMargaret MacLennan\n\nEvelyn Main\n\nMary McBean\n\nMairi Neilan\n\nEvelyn Reid\n\nAnn Sutherland\n\nDorothy Sutherland\n\nIngrid Wallace\n\nMary Williams\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nNairn\n\n# PANEL 73  \nWeaving and Spinning\n\nFor countless generations, ordinary people had made their own yarn by spinning raw wool. But, by the Middle Ages and probably before, weaving had become a specialist craft. Looms were operated by men because of the strength needed in the process, while women generally made yarn on a spinning wheel. Individuals created their own designs but the undyed wool limited what those might be. The characteristic tartans with all their differences are really an invention of the 19th century. Most cloth was 'hodden grey' woven from home-reared wool and entirely utilitarian.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\nJacqueline Walters\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nThurso\n\n# PANEL 74  James Hutton's Theory of the Earth\n\nOne of the great figures of the Enlightenment, James Hutton, was born in Edinburgh in 1726. He was a farmer in Berwickshire and experimented with the new practices of the Agrarian Revolution. But, like many great scientists, Hutton was a superb observer. Looking at rock formations, and especially those at Siccar Point on the Berwickshire coastline, he became convinced that the Earth was an organism \u2013 that it was being perpetually formed by natural processes. In 1785, he coined the word superorganism for the Earth. These processes that ensured constant change included sedimentation, erosion and volcanic activity. Hutton was the originator of geology as a scientific discipline, cutting thought about the making of the Earth loose from religious dicta and tradition. But, like many men of the Enlightenment, he was a polymath. Interested in the project to build a Forth and Clyde canal, Hutton was a shareholder and site inspector as well as a campaigner for the relief of excise duty on the carrying of coal \u2013 the sort of traffic the canal might carry. He was also a partner in a chemical company that made ammonia from domestic soot and he dabbled in property development in Edinburgh. His biography describes the life of a busy intellect with an insatiable curiosity about the world.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Crewel Chicks 'n' Dave_\n\nKate Edmunds\n\nShona McManus\n\nElizabeth Raymond\n\nMary Richardson\n\nDave Richardson\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nTranent, Cockenzie, Dunbar\n\n# PANEL 75  James Boswell and Smoked Fish\n\nIn the late 18th century, James Boswell gained a literary reputation as the biographer and companion of Dr Samuel Johnson but he also had something to say about Finnan haddies. Being very partial to the lightly smoked haddock from the village of Findon, near Aberdeen, Boswell was pleased to see them available in London but less happy when he tasted them. So that they made the sea journey unspoiled, the Finnan haddies had been much more heavily smoked and were, frankly, a bit tough. Arbroath smokies are the other famous product of the east coast. Also haddock, they are first salted overnight and then tied in pairs with hemp twine. Left to dry, they are hung over a triangular piece of wood and set over a fire of hardwood in a barrel. This is then sealed with a wet jute sack (so that it won't catch fire) and within only an hour, the haddocks are cooked. A beautiful rich brown, Arbroath smokies are a genuine delicacy \u2013 although not delicate but strong-tasting. Boswell's views are not recorded \u2013 nor do they matter a jot.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_The Coburg Ladies_\n\nCatherine Aitken\n\nSarah McCabe\n\nMargaret McCabe\n\nAnnie Wright\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nPrestonpans\n\n# PANEL 76  The Forth and Clyde Canal, Burke and Hare\n\nJames Hutton's investment in a canal linking the east and west of Scotland was worthwhile and, in the early 19th century, work began on digging a canal between Fountainbridge in Edinburgh and Port Dundas in Glasgow. The men doing the labouring work were known as navigators or navvies and many of these were Irish. The most notorious were William Burke and William Hare who committed a series of unusual murders in 1828, the details of which were very memorable. They sold the corpses of their 16 victims to Dr Robert Knox, an anatomist at Edinburgh University who needed fresh bodies for dissection. He charged fees for his lectures and, although he was never arrested or brought to trial, the Edinburgh mob and the press believed that Knox was complicit in the murders. When Burke was convicted and sentenced to death (Hare turned King's evidence and was granted immunity from prosecution), the judge specified that his body be publicly dissected. This famous case did not spark any anti-Irish rioting but it did spawn many films, TV programmes, plays, novels and songs.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Whippity Stouries_\n\nChristine Simm\n\nJean Taylor\n\nFiona Wilkie\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nBo'ness\n\n# PANEL 77  Scotland and the Drive for Empire\n\nAs the British Empire expanded in the second half of the 18th century, Scots were at the forefront. Out of all proportion to the relative populations, there were many Scots serving in the British Army, especially Highlanders. Sorely in need of troops to prosecute the Seven Years War against the French, the Prime Minister, William Pitt, encouraged the recruitment of two regiments of clansmen. Justifying putting arms into the hands of men who had rebelled against the crown only ten years before, Pitt wrote to the king, saying:\n\nI sought for merit wherever it was to be found. It is my boast that I was the first minister who looked for it and found it in the mountains of the north. I called it forth and drew into your service a hardy and intrepid race of men . . . [T]hey served with fidelity as they fought with valour and conquered for you in every part of the world.\n\nThe last Highland charge was probably made at the battle for control of Canada on the Heights of Abraham. Much of the British Empire was bought by the blood of the clans. More peacefully, Scots became involved centrally in the East India Company, especially after it came under the control of Henry Dundas. Many Orcadians in particular worked in Canada for the Hudson's Bay Company as it opened up the vast interior of the north. And what cannot be ignored is the involvement of many Scots in the infamous triangular trade. Merchant ships took manufactured goods to West Africa where they were traded for slaves. They were then shipped in 'the middle passage' to the Caribbean and to the USA where so-called cash crops such as sugar, rum, molasses, tobacco, hemp and cotton were loaded for the return voyage to Britain.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_The Meikle Family_\n\nGraham Meikle\n\nFiona Meikle\n\nAnnabel Meikle\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nPathhead, Edinburgh\n\n# PANEL 78  Robert Owen and New Lanark\n\nA child of the Enlightenment, Robert Owen was a mill manager in Manchester who became interested in the welfare of his workers. During a visit to Glasgow, he fell in love with Caroline Dale, the daughter of David Dale, the owner of the mills at New Lanark. The mills there derived their power from the Falls of the Clyde. Owen persuaded his partners to buy New Lanark and he proceeded to make a series of reforms. First he opened a mill shop for his workers that sold quality goods at little more than wholesale prices and, when bulk buying created profits, these were passed on to customers. These principles became the basis for the Co-op. Owen also founded infant childcare at New Lanark and promoted the education of the children of his workers. After a time, Owen's mind turned to more political and philosophical activities. He began to lobby for changes in legislation but was unhappy with the Factory Act of 1819. Owen wrote _The Revolution in the Mind and Practice of the Human Race_ in which he argued that character is formed by nature and individual circumstances. By 1828, after some disagreements, Owen resigned all connection with New Lanark and, based in London, he formed the Association of all Classes of all Nations and it was he who coined the term 'socialism'.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_New Lanark_\n\nLea Barrie\n\nJanice Glover\n\nNancy Howat\n\nTamara Jones\n\nJulia McMurray\n\nLesli Paterson\n\nMarjorie Romer\n\nPat Strong\n\nLiz Young\n\nwith stitches by members of the New Lanark Trust staff\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nLanark, Glasgow\n\n# PANEL 79  Robert Burns and 'Tam o' Shanter'\n\nThe genius of Robert Burns lay in his ability to create poetry that is complex, tremendously beautiful and accessible to all. At Burns Suppers the world over, the recital, usually from memory, of 'Tam o' Shanter' is a highlight. Pure entertainment, it is probably one of the most rollicking, energetic poems ever composed. Written in 1790, the poem first appeared a year later in the _Edinburgh Magazine_ before being published in Francis Grose's _Antiquities of Scotland_. Burns asked Grose to include a drawing of Alloway Kirk and Grose agreed so long as the poet wrote something to go with it. The glorious result was 'Tam o' Shanter'. The opening is unmatched:\n\nWhen chapman billies leave the street,\n\nAnd drouthy neibors, neibors meet;\n\nAs market days are wearing late,\n\nAnd folk begin to tak the gate,\n\nWhile we sit bousing at the nappy,\n\nAn' getting fou and unco happy,\n\nWe think na on the lang Scots miles,\n\nThe mosses, waters, slaps and stiles,\n\nThat lie between us and our hame,\n\nWhere sits our sulky, sullen dame,\n\nGathering her brows like gathering storm,\n\nNursing her wrath to keep it warm.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Blister Sisters_\n\nMary Doherty\n\nMaureen Finlay\n\nMargaret Mitchell\n\nMargaret Potter\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nEast Calder\n\n# PANEL 80  The False Alarm\n\nAs the French invasion force assembled at Boulogne in 1803\u201304, Napoleon itched to add Britain to his conquests but the weather was against him. Nevertheless, the threat was taken very seriously and nowhere more so than in the Scottish Borders. The old early warning system used in the days of English invasion was revived as balefires were piled up on hills and high points. If the French landed on the North Sea coast, a relay of beacons would be lit and the forces of volunteers recruited in the countryside would muster. Walter Scott, attached to the Midlothian Yeomanry Cavalry, was amongst these. On 31 January 1804, the system went spectacularly into action. A volunteer sergeant new to the Borders peered into the darkness from the balefire at Hume Castle and, yes, he was certain he could make out the yellow flames of a fire lit on Dowlaw in north Northumberland. Having lit the Hume balefire, the alarm crackled rapidly through the Borders as beacons were lit on Peniel Heugh, the Dunion and Crumhaugh Hill at Hawick. These triggered others to be lit in Teviotdale, Ettrick and Yarrow. When volunteers saw the fires, adrenalin must have pumped as they pulled on their boots and buckled on their sabres. Walter Scott was in Cumberland when the Hume bale was fired and he rode 100 miles to join his regiment at Dalkeith. The Borders was in uproar and rumours ricocheted. Regiments of Napoleon's cuirassiers were expected to come clattering along the Berwick road at any moment. But they did not. No one did. What the unfortunate sergeant at Hume had seen was not a balefire but the everyday work of some Northumbrian charcoal burners. Phew.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Lady Stitchers_\n\nSonya Anderson\n\nPhyllis Hogg\n\nBarbara Plevin\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nBroxburn, Port Seton\n\n# PANEL 81  Henry Raeburn\n\nThe Rev. Robert Walker's day out skating on Duddingston Loch was immortalised by Henry Raeburn in the 1790s. It was only one stunning portrait from many painted by, arguably, Scotland's first great master. In a busy life, he produced hundreds of superb works, amongst them beautifully observed portraits of Walter Scott and Alastair Ranaldson Macdonell of Glengarry. These two illustrate Raeburn's great subtlety. A handsome man and one of the most famous people in Europe during his lifetime, Scott liked to portray himself as a straightforward sort of man. But, with a wonderful handling of light and the ability to capture expression, Raeburn shows an altogether more complex man, with sadness as well as creativity seeming to emanate from his gaze into the middle distance. Macdonell of Glengarry was a well-known clan chief and he was the model for Scott's creation, Fergus Mac-Ivor in his first novel, _Waverley_. Dressed in full Highland fig and clutching a musket, he looks the very epitome of the clansman whose genealogy and history reach back into the mists of time. But his features and expression are telling. He was known as a haughty and ruthless man. Far from being the protector of his people, he cleared Glengarry of crofters, felled timber for sale and exploited his patrimony for his own profit. Such is the quality and variety of Raeburn's portraits between the 1790s and 1820s that they can be read as a commentary on the age.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\nJennifer Myles\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nSouth Queensferry\n\n# PANEL 82  Walter Scott\n\nScott was a phenomenon \u2013 a figure who helped form many perceptions of modern Scotland. Born in Edinburgh in 1771, he was educated to follow his father into the law but Scott's lameness, perhaps caused by a bout of polio, sent him to recuperate in the Borders with relatives. These visits influenced the 'wee sick laddie' very much. At his grandparents' farm near Kelso, he listened to his aunt recite the Border ballads and they fired his imagination. As a young man, he began to make written copies of the ballads, what had been mainly an oral tradition. In 1802 and 1803, Scott had published _The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border_ and the three volumes were very successful. But, in 1805, this collection was spectacularly overshadowed by Scott's own composition, _The Lay of the Last Minstrel_. This long narrative poem, set in the Borders, became a huge best-seller and it established the author as a figure of real renown. He brought out two more long poems, _Marmion_ and _The Lady of the Lake_. With his novel _Waverley_ and a string of subsequent successes, Scott became a worldwide name, the first author to be feted during his own lifetime. His novels also turned Scotland into a destination for tourists, especially when the railways came after the 1860s. And his fame had all sorts of other effects. When Scott organised the state visit of George IV to Scotland, he wrapped it in tartan, making the whole thing a Highland affair. This, in turn, caused the Borders textile mills to clack and rattle as demand for tartan boomed. Tragically, a series of unhappy business deals impoverished Scott and he killed himself with overwork to pay back his debts.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\nCatherine Guiat\n\nEileen Henderson\n\nAnnette Hunter\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nEdinburgh\n\n# PANEL 83  Fingal's Cave\n\nJames Macpherson had style \u2013 or, at least, nerve. In 1760, he was induced to have published _Fragments of Ancient Poetry Collected in the Highlands of Scotland_ , a set of translations he claimed to have made from Gaelic. A year later, he announced the discovery of something astonishing, something to rival the classical epics of Homer and Virgil. Composed by Ossian, at some time in the distant and mist-strewn past, this was _Fingal, an Ancient Epic Poem in Six Books_. Wildly popular and deeply suspect at the same time, the work of Ossian\/Macpherson helped create a vision of a romantic Highlands where a noble past had created tales to rival anything in Latin and Greek. Goethe adored the poems and Napoleon reputedly kept a copy by him on campaign. The real Gaelic name for the remarkable sea cave on the uninhabited Hebridean island of Staffa is _An Uamh Bhin_ , 'the Singing Cave', presumably after the echoic sound made by the tides. But the Ossian poems persuaded Sir Joseph Banks to rename it Fingal's Cave. The romantic composer, Felix Mendelssohn, visited this haunting place, with its perpendicular basalt columns, and wrote an overture, _The Hebrides_ , based on the echoes.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Scoraig Stitchers_\n\nAlison Barr\n\nJill Beavitt\n\nAggie Brudenell\n\nKath Bush\n\nCatherine Dagg\n\nAnthea Douglas\n\nNick Lancaster\n\nJoany McGuire\n\nSusan McSweeney\n\nJessie Millard\n\nHugh Piggott\n\nDjinni Van Slyke\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nDundonnell\n\n# PANEL 84  _The Scotsman_ , Founded 1817\n\n_The Scotsman_ newspaper, founded as a weekly by a lawyer, William Ritchie, and a customs official, Charles Maclaren, was based in Edinburgh. Apparently a reaction to 'the unblushing subservience' of other papers to the Edinburgh establishment, its motto was 'impartiality, firmness and independence'. It quickly grew popular in the east of Scotland as the newspaper that would become _The Herald_ , founded in 1783, dominated in Glasgow and the west. When newspaper stamp tax was abolished in 1850, _The Scotsman_ moved to a daily circulation. It has a distinguished history under several notable editors such as Alastair Dunnett, Eric MacKay and Magnus Linklater. _The Scotsman_ 's coverage of the arts and the Edinburgh Festival and Fringe in particular has been crucial in the development of Scotland's culture. When Allen Wright, the arts editor, instituted the Fringe Firsts Awards for original drama on the Fringe in 1973, it single-handedly stimulated new work in Britain. More recently, the newspaper has come under pressure as, in line with the sector, its circulation has fallen and valued staff have been laid off. Nevertheless, _The Scotsman_ was named Newspaper of the Year in Scotland for 2012.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_The Penicuik Team_\n\nJoan Cape\n\nMary Darling\n\nDeborah Hall\n\nFiona Hutcheson\n\nIsobel Ritchie\n\nJan Young\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nWest Linton, Penicuik, Roslin\n\n# PANEL 85  George Smith and the Glenlivet\n\nWhisky production in Scotland was mostly illicit until the early 19th century, made by those anxious to avoid paying excise duty. When George Smith founded the Glenlivet Distillery in 1824, it was unusual for being entirely legal. This made Smith unpopular and he was in the habit of never travelling without a pair of pistols in his belt. He had also to protect his brand from imitators. As it does now, Glenlivet had an excellent reputation. Malt whisky may be said to be one of the few Scottish products that combines the best of Highland and Lowland. Near the distillery at Ballindalloch, Josie's Well supplies pure water from the foothills of the Grampian massif while the barley malt comes from Portgordon in Banffshire. When George Smith died in 1871, his famous brand was being appropriated by others who attached Glenlivet to their own names. Legal action was not entirely successful. Others were permitted to hyphenate Glenlivet but only the product distilled by the Smiths could be called _The_ Glenlivet. It has phenomenal sales, being the most popular in the USA and the second best-selling worldwide. Global sales currently run at 6 million bottles. It is to be hoped that Josie's Well never runs dry.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Granite Quoins_\n\nZuzana Banicova\n\nPamela Brice\n\nPamela Cook\n\nBruce Duncan\n\nJosephine Duncan\n\nDilly Emslie\n\nCoral Goldfarb\n\nHeather Hutton\n\nEwan Jeffrey\n\nOma Kapilla\n\nRudra Kapilla\n\nCarole Keepax\n\nMaria Mirick\n\nMichelle Morgan\n\nTracy Nelson\n\nSarah Richardson\n\nCatherine Stollery\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nAberdeen, Edinburgh, Monymusk, Laurencekirk\n\n# PANEL 86  Borders Tweed\n\nWalter Scott and his friend, James Hogg, both had a writer's eye for telling detail. Both men and their characters sometimes wore a cloth called the Shepherd's Check or the Shepherd's Plaid. Border weavers had worked the undyed whites, blacks and browns of yarn into the warp and weft to create a rectilinear pattern. Portraits of Scott and Hogg exist of them draped with the check or plaid and it became fashionable. After the visit of George IV in 1822, the manufacture of tartan saw the mills in the Borders become very busy but what really promoted the manufacture of tweed was the wearing of trousers. Until the early 19th century, most men rode horses and wore breeches. But, in 1829, a diarist, Archibald Craig, recorded men wearing trousers made from Shepherd's check with a black coat. Colours were introduced and, in 1830, a London tailor, an expatriate Scot called James Locke, visited Galashiels to encourage the mill owners to create pattern books of tweed and tartan so that he could show it to customers. Reluctantly, they agreed. At the same time, suits were becoming fashionable \u2013 jackets and trousers made from the same cloth and pattern. Locke coined a new name for the output of the Border mills when he sold it as tweed and tweed suits became the acme of good taste. The rest is sartorial history.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Melrose Group_\n\nElizabeth Chalmers\n\nRuth Dall\n\nMary Wilson\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nMelrose, St Boswells\n\n# PANEL 87  The Growth of Glasgow\n\nBy the 1820s, Glasgow's population had outgrown Edinburgh's. The Tobacco Lords had had a deep water port dredged as far upriver as Port Glasgow but, into the 19th century, the volume of trade persuaded investment in allowing merchant ships to dock in the heart of the city. In 1795, the Forth-Clyde Canal opened with its terminus at Port Dundas and this brought the raw materials of Lanarkshire into the city. Glasgow was growing very fast and became one of the earliest European cities to reach a population of one million. By the end of the 19th century, it was known as 'The Second City of the Empire' and the city's motto, 'Let Glasgow Flourish', was never more apposite. Shipbuilding and heavy engineering clustered close to the river but, across the city, textile and carpet manufacture, cigarette making, printing and publishing and all manner of industry were providing employment and making fortunes. The 19th century saw the building of the Kelvingrove Art Gallery, the Mitchell Library and the City Chambers. There was a palpable sense of civic pride and one of its exemplars was William Burrell. A ruthless ship owner who had the nerve to buy at the bottom of the market and sell at the top, he was also a near-obsessive art collector. After his death in 1958, he bequeathed his fabulous collection to Glasgow and the building that houses it in Pollok Park is a shared delight.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Glasgow Society of Women Artists_\n\nHelen Abdy\n\nSusan Black\n\nLyn Dunachie\n\nAdrianne Foulds\n\nNetta Hunter\n\nMargaret Murphy\n\nIngrid Parker\n\nAnn Rennie\n\nAnn Wilson\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nGlasgow\n\n# PANEL 88  Sheep Shearing\n\nWool was pulled or combed out of fleeces before sheep were sheared and as the animals shed winter wool, this could be relatively easy. But, as wool production intensified in the Middle Ages, fleeces had to be sheared in the spring clip, often before lambing if the weather was not too cold. Washing the wool was a significant part of the process and there is a Scots song that remembers oily or tarry _oo_ , the word for wool:\n\nTarry Oo, Tarry Oo,\n\nTarry Oo is ill tae spin,\n\nCaird it weel, caird it weel,\n\nCaird it weel ere ye begin.\n\nWhen 'tis cairded, row'd and spun,\n\nThen the wark is halflins done,\n\nBut when woven, drest and clean,\n\nIt may be cleading for a queen.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Pentland Stitches_\n\nAli Cameron\n\nSara-Jayne Donaldson\n\nHilda Ibrahim\n\nAngela E Lewis\n\nMeg Macleod\n\nAnn Mair\n\nCarmel Ross\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nThurso, Dunnet, Caithness\n\n# PANEL 89  The First Reform Act\n\nIn the brief reign of William IV, this long overdue piece of legislation redistributed parliamentary seats to reflect the great changes wrought by the Industrial Revolution. Separate acts were passed for Scotland, Ireland, and England and Wales but the effects were similar. Rotten boroughs such as Grampound in Cornwall or Dunwich in Suffolk elected two MPs even though only a handful of men had the vote in each village. Steered through parliament by Earl Grey (also famous for tea), the acts ensured new constituencies were created for burgeoning cities such as Manchester and Glasgow. Counties could elect two members, known as Knights of the Shires, and universities retained representation in the House of Commons. Until 1918, Edinburgh and St Andrews, in a unique cooperation, elected a joint MP, as did Glasgow and Aberdeen. In 1832, the electorate was all male and consisted only of a tiny proportion of the population at around 500,000. Voters were property owners whose land or houses was reckoned to be worth a certain sum and those who owned two or more houses in different constituencies were allowed to vote more than once. The Reform Act increased the franchise to 813,000. In Scotland, the rise was much more dramatic. Before the Act, only 4,239 could vote and this increased to more than 65,000. Aberdeen, Dundee and Perth were awarded MPs for the first time.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Pentland Stitchers_\n\nTish Alderson\n\nAnne Chater\n\nLois-May Donaldson\n\nAileen Gardiner\n\nDiana Gordon Smith\n\nViv Henderson\n\nAnthea Johnston\n\nJeannie Laidlaw\n\nCaroline Pearson\n\nMary Warrack\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nEdinburgh, Milnathort, Eskbank, Dalkeith\n\n# PANEL 90  Kirkpatrick Macmillan\n\nA blacksmith born in 1812 at Keir in Dumfries and Galloway, Kirkpatrick Macmillan invented the machine that his countryman, Sir Chris Hoy, cycled to Olympic glory. A plaque on the smiddy wall at Courthill records that '[h]e builded better than he knew'. In 1839, Macmillan made a wooden prototype with iron-rimmed wheels, something a blacksmith will have been skilled at, and a steerable front wheel. But crucially the back wheel could be powered by pedals connected to it by rigid rods, following the principles laid down by James Watt. Macmillan's relative, James Johnston, set out in the 1890s 'to prove that to my native country of Dumfries belongs the honour of being the birthplace of the invention of the bicycle'. Such an upfront statement invites scepticism but this should all be ignored. Like James Small, Kirkpartick Macmillan was clearly a talented inventor, one of a long line of Scots who added to the enjoyment and convenience of all. And how else can Sir Chris Hoy's phenomenal, natural, intuitive talent be explained? Bicycles are part of Scotland's heritage, then and now.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Pans People_\n\nSusan Findlay\n\nFrances Glynn\n\nAvril Harris\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nPrestonpans, Longniddry\n\n# PANEL 91  Queen Victoria at Balmoral\n\nQueen Victoria and Prince Albert fell in love with Scotland. After their first visit in 1842, they came back often, particularly to the Highlands. Preferring the slightly less rainy climate of Deeside, Albert eventually bought the Balmoral Estate and spent much of his summers shooting deer and other game. Where royalty led, the gentry followed and many imitations of Balmoral were built \u2013 so-called shooting lodges sprang up on many lochsides, some of them vast piles that lay empty for most of the year. Highland balls were a royal favourite and, once again, the court set the pace for the British aristocracy as they reeled, strathspeyed and sweated around dance floors in kilts, plaids and thick woollen hose. Tartan and all things Highland became fashionable. Balmorality was born and, with the annual holiday of the royal family, it continues. Bafflingly Queen Victoria announced that, at heart, she was a Jacobite. Her diary extracts from 1848 to 1861, _Leaves from the Journal of Our Life in the Highlands_ , was a best-seller and, in the railway age, it brought many tourists north. Just as they were arriving, many Highlanders were leaving, some of them cleared off their land by force.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Glenisla_\n\nHeather Berger\n\nClaire Broadhurst\n\nSheila Bruce\n\nCatriona Campbell\n\nPippa Clegg\n\nOlive Duncan\n\nJeanette McGill\n\nMary Ogilvie\n\nChristine Palmer\n\nKirsty Palmer\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nBlairgowrie, Abernyte, Edinburgh, Kirriemuir\n\n# PANEL 92  The Scots in India\n\nAfter the victories of the Seven Years War and the prowess of Robert Clive and the armies of the East India Company, India became a vast source of raw materials for British industry as well as a market for manufactured goods. Until the middle of the 19th century, the subcontinent was controlled by this private company. It could conclude treaties, fight wars and defy governments. Henry Dundas was appointed President of the Board of Control and he oversaw the recruitment of many Scots in India. By 1792, one in nine working for the Company was Scots and a third of all the officers in its armies. Many fortunes were made. Scots invested so heavily in the India tea trade that production outstripped that of China. Dundee became a centre for the processing of jute. A vegetable fibre, it was used for making sacking, carpet and linoleum backing and many other purposes. So many Scots were resident in Calcutta, now Kolkata, that a regiment known as the Calcutta Scots was raised for the Indian army.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Wardie Church Stitchers_\n\nAnn Bell\n\nKaren Bowman\n\nSusan Dyer\n\nRhona Else\n\nSusan Fraser\n\nJean Jenkins\n\nFrances Mackinnon\n\nFiona Mauritzen\n\nJane Prowse\n\nBarbara Purdie\n\nJanet Rust\n\nSusie Standley\n\nJean Temple\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nEdinburgh\n\n# PANEL 93  The Disruption\n\nBy 1843, tensions within the Church of Scotland had reached breaking point. The central issue concerned who had the right to appoint a minister to a parish \u2013 the laird or the kirk session. It struck chords with a bloody past, when battles had been fought over the related issue of independence for the kirk. Led by Thomas Chalmers, the Evangelical Party opposed the right (enshrined in an act of 1712) of lairds to 'prefer' their candidates while the Moderates supported it \u2013 because it was the law. At the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, held in St Andrew and St George's in Edinburgh, a staged walkout took place. The retiring Moderator, Dr David Welsh, led 121 ministers and 73 elders out of the established church and down to Tanfield Hall in Canonmills. There they constituted themselves as The Free Church of Scotland. Eventually 474 ministers out of about 1,200 came out. It was an act of real bravery. Most lost their manses and kirks immediately since they were the property of the Church of Scotland and a frantic building programme began that almost doubled the number of churches, church halls and manses in Scotland. By a quirk of history, the Disruption inadvertently created the circumstances in Edinburgh where the Festival Fringe could find performance spaces and flourish. The Disruption was also the first great public event to be recorded by photography. After parliament rescinded the act of 1712 in 1929, the kirk was reunited, almost.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Heirs of 1843_\n\nFiona Anderson\n\nMarie Austin\n\nWinifred Cumming\n\nLilias Finlay\n\nMary Godden\n\nNan Laird\n\nDorothy MacKenzie\n\nJean Mackinlay\n\nChristine MacPhail\n\nDeborah Miller\n\nElizabeth Mitchell\n\nMaggie Morley\n\nJean Morrison\n\nJudith Pickles\n\nMaggie Romanis\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nEdinburgh\n\n# PANEL 94  David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson\n\nA painter, Hill, joined Adamson, an engineer, to create the first photographic studio in Scotland. It was based at Rock House at the western end of Calton Hill in Edinburgh. Most of the early photographs, known as calotypes, were portraits, many of them shot out of doors. Not only did they provide a record of the Disruption, the two also began to photograph outdoor scenes, landscapes and working people. They particularly enjoyed shooting the work of the fishermen of Newhaven and the fishwives who walked up to Edinburgh to sell the fresh catch round the doors. Even though the studio and the partnership only lasted five years, the output was prodigious, the earliest photographic record of life in Scotland.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Floral Ring_\n\nAnnalise McBride\n\nMargot Miller\n\nHazel Stewart\n\nHeather Young\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nEdinburgh\n\n# PANEL 95  The Railway Boom\n\nRailways were built in Scotland from the 1830s onwards but, for some time, there was no network. The earliest were industrial, transporting coal and other raw materials between Glasgow, Dundee and Edinburgh. But, by 1842, investment was pouring in as the Edinburgh to Glasgow line opened and the Caledonian Company linked with the English rail network at Carlisle in 1848. Its great rival was the North British Railway and, in order to challenge and dominate the lines in the east of Scotland, it had to build bridges. The first spanned the Firth of Tay and opened in 1878 only to collapse a year later in a storm with the loss of 75 lives. The Forth Bridge was deliberately designed to look much stronger and it is the first structure in the world to be built of steel. Opened in 1890, its elegant cantilever construction has become an icon and, in any competition to decide the most famous manmade structure in Scotland, the Forth Bridge would surely win. Its completion opened up the north of Scotland to rapid rail travel. Contrary to popular belief, the bridge does not need constant repainting. A contract was completed in 2011 that should ensure that no repainting is needed until 2046 at the earliest.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Fifan Leddies_\n\nMargaret Caldwell\n\nJennifer di Folco\n\nMargaret Ewan\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nBurntisland, Anstruther\n\n# PANEL 96  The Caithness School, 1851\n\nBy the 19th century, the dream of John Knox and the reformers had been realised. There was a school in almost every parish in Scotland and one of the consequences was a high level of mass literacy. At between 70 and 77 per cent, it was highest in Britain in the counties of Caithness and Berwickshire. But the picture was patchy. In Lanarkshire, attendance at school was below 50 per cent. But, when school boards came into existence in 1872 and they took over much of education from the church, standards rose. Scotland's universities, especially Glasgow, pioneered the needs of students drawn from an urban and middle-class background rather than simply providing an education for the gentry. It offered degrees in law, medicine, engineering, science, and divinity. Entrance qualifications were standardised and women were admitted in the 1890s, with St Andrews taking the lead. Education continues to be set at a premium in Scotland \u2013 at least in theory. But the brief window that allowed children to progress from school to university with fees paid by the local authority and a maintenance grant from the Scottish Education Department is now closed. This obviously restricts the number of talented young people who can benefit from Scotland's great educational tradition.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Caithness Textile Artists_\n\nValerie Barker\n\nJoan Dancer\n\nLouise Hunt\n\nDorothy Johnston\n\nElla Lawrence\n\nShirley MacLeod\n\nCelia More\n\nCatherine Swanson\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nLybster, Wick, Thurso, Halkirk\n\n# PANEL 97  Fitba\n\nFuteball is recorded as early as 1424, when it was outlawed. But what might seem like football now was played all over Scotland. Ancient versions, like the Jethart Hand Ba' game, do not involve much kicking \u2013 of the ball, at least \u2013 but other variants do. It was not until the 1860s and 1870s that football's laws were codified and the first association of clubs was in England. Queens Park in Glasgow was founded in 1867 and it played against English opposition, reaching the FA Cup final twice. The first international match between Scotland and England took place in 1872. It was a 0\u20130 draw but the first time the Scottish football team played in navy blue jerseys with a thistle embroidered on the breast was two years later. They borrowed the design from the national rugby team. Scottish clubs began to form, mainly in the west at first, and the second oldest cup competition in the world began in 1873 with the Scottish Cup. Vale of Leven and Queens Park dominated the early years. Players were paid almost from the outset and Scotland's largest and wealthiest clubs have traditionally been Rangers and Celtic (although Rangers have recently fallen on hard times) and the first Old Firm match was played on Glasgow Green. After the Second World War, Scottish football enjoyed some glorious episodes. In 1967, Celtic became the first British side to win the European Cup and, in 1972, Rangers won the Cup Winners' Cup. But, since the mid 1970s, there has been a general decline \u2013 apart from Alex Ferguson's achievements at Aberdeen in the early 1980s \u2013 and the national side has fallen far down the world rankings. But hope springs eternal.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_The Glasgow Banner Group_\n\nMarilyn Caddell\n\nClare Hunter\n\nMary McCarron\n\nGrace Pratt\n\nNorma Ventisei\n\nAgnes Wylie\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nBishopbriggs, Uddington, Balquhidder, Lanark\n\n# PANEL 98  Irish Immigration after the Famine\n\nDuring the devastating potato blight in Ireland and the famine that followed between 1845 to 1851, emigration to Scotland accelerated rapidly. At its peak in 1848, the average number of immigrants disembarking weekly at the quays in Glasgow was estimated at more than a thousand and between January and April of that year, 42,860 came. Even in a city expanding as fast as Victorian Glasgow, this influx was dramatic \u2013 probably the most intense episode of immigration into Scotland for a thousand years. Many quickly found jobs in the heavy industries clustering around the coalfields of North Lanarkshire. It was hard, menial and frustrating work. Many Irish Catholics found it difficult to rise through the ranks of skilled workers but, after the horrors of the Great Famine, these jobs put bread on the table and roofs over the heads of families. Founded in 1887 by the Irish Marist Brother Walfrid, Celtic Football Club had a social as well as a sporting purpose and the club soon began to prosper. In 1888, the first Old Firm match with Rangers took place. Celtic won 5\u20132 but many of their players had been signed from Hibernian Football Club in Edinburgh. The two clubs became emblematic of the tensions between Catholics and Protestants in Scotland but mercifully most of the violence is now usually confined to the football pitch.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Trinity Stitchers_\n\nJoyce Ager\n\nMuriel Cleland\n\nDoreen Guy\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nEdinburgh, North Berwick\n\n# PANEL 99  James Clerk Maxwell\n\nBorn in Edinburgh in 1831, this brilliant but sometimes underestimated scientist brought a series of equations, experiments and observations about electricity, optics and magnetism together into a consistent theory. He argued convincingly that all three phenomena are manifestations of the electromagnetic field. In 1865, Maxwell showed that electrical and magnetic fields move through space as waves that travel at the speed of light. At the age of only 25, he was appointed Professor of Natural Philosophy at Aberdeen University. The Adams Prize, given by St John's College, Cambridge, chose as its topic the apparent stability of the rings around Saturn. Maxwell postulated that they were composed of small particles, each of which independently orbited the planet. Not only did he win the prize but, in 1980, the Voyager space exploration programme proved him right. Interested in optics and the study of colour vision, Maxwell's research made colour photography possible. Despite his pioneering work across many fields of science, James Clerk Maxwell seems not to have taken himself too seriously. Based on the song 'Comin' Through the Rye' by Robert Burns, he composed his own version to reflect his interest in physics:\n\nGin a body meet a body\n\nFlyin' through the air.\n\nGin a body hit a body,\n\nWill it fly? And where?\n\nMaxwell sadly died young of cancer at the age of 48 but his contribution to modern scientific thought was immense.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_The Gladsmuir Group_\n\nPatricia Coupe\n\nPru Irvine\n\nSusanne Lowe\n\nCelia Williams\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nGladsmuir, West Garleton, Pencaitland, Pathhead\n\n# PANEL 100  Scots in Africa\n\nDespite their involvement with the infamous slave trade, Scots made a positive contribution to the story of Africa in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Perhaps the most famous was David Livingstone, a medical missionary and explorer who sought to discover the sources of the River Nile. His meeting on 10 November 1871, with H. M. Stanley is immortalised in the quote, 'Dr Livingstone, I presume?' Since the explorer's own account does not mention this amusing piece of irony and Stanley later tore out the relevant pages of his journal, the phrase may be a fabrication. But it is a good line anyway. Mary Slessor was a missionary who penetrated deep into the Calabar region of West Africa. It was difficult for a woman but, in some ways, her gender made her less threatening. She preached against witchcraft, human sacrifice and the abandonment of twins. Slessor died of malaria in 1915. Alexander Gordon Laing was the first European to reach the fabled city of Timbuktu. On an expedition across the Sahara Desert, from north to south, in 1826 and despite being wounded in Tuareg attacks, he entered the city. But the intrepid Laing was murdered soon afterwards and his valuable papers lost. Tragedy was mixed with Scottish dourness. Mungo Park discovered the middle reaches of the great River Niger. He was born on the farm of Foulshiels, near Selkirk, in 1771 and, when he came back home in 1793 after many years abroad, his mother and brothers heard a knock at the door. 'Aye,' said one of his brothers, 'that'll be Mungo.' 'How do you know?' asked his mother. 'I saw him get off the coach in Selkirk.' was the reply. No matter how renowned, no one gets above themselves in Scotland.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_St Blanes Group_\n\nJudith Abbott\n\nCaroline B. Buchanan\n\nMaud Crawford\n\nSarah Gammell\n\nFiona Gibson\n\nJenny Haldane\n\nDorothy Morton\n\nLibby Taylor\n\nAnne Thomson\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nMurthly, Callander, Port of Menteith, Duns\n\n# PANEL 101  Highland Games\n\nThese tartan-clad summer celebrations of caber tossing, Highland dancing, bagpiping, heavy and light events and general conviviality are mostly a Victorian invention \u2013 a cheery facet of Balmorality. But some of the events or individual sporting contests are clearly much older. Perhaps the most idiosyncratic is _Maide Leisg_ , Gaelic for 'Lazy Stick'. It involves two men sitting on the ground with the soles of their feet pressed against each other. Between them, they hold a stick in their hands and attempt to pull each other up until one is raised off the ground. It is generally believed to be the oldest event at the Carloway Highland Games on the Isle of Lewis. There are 14 major Highland Games held each year in Scotland, most of them north of the Highland Line. In the USA there are 147 and one in Switzerland. The greatest athlete ever to compete in the heavy events was probably Bill Anderson. He won 16 Scottish Championship titles from 1959 to 1974 and was American champion from 1976 to 1980. The Scots Hammer, wooden shafted and thrown from a standing position, was Anderson's most successful event and his world record of 123 feet, 5 inches still stands unbeaten.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Strathpeffer Craft & Craic Group_\n\nCarole Bancroft\n\nMary Bethune\n\nJanet Bowen\n\nKit Bowen\n\nPatricia Haigh\n\nClara Hickey\n\nMorag Hickey\n\nPat Justad\n\nLaura Lee McWhinney\n\nAlison Munro-White\n\nAudrey North\n\nDenise Page\n\nGrace Ritchie\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nStrathpeffer, Garve\n\n# PANEL 102  Scottish Rugby\n\nThe Scottish Rugby Union was at first a Glasgow and Edinburgh affair with all the founding clubs except one coming from the cities. And, even though the game's heartland was in the Borders, it continued to be run by clubs of former pupils of Edinburgh and Glasgow schools for many years. Selection for international matches could be idiosyncratic and, until the era of league rugby in the early 1980s, Borders players had to have irresistible talent to be selected. The first match between England and Scotland was played in 1871 at Raeburn Place in Edinburgh and the Scots triumphed by a try to nil. It has been downhill ever since. Nevertheless, the amateur era was attractive, even romantic. Players could be heroes at Murrayfield on an international Saturday but they returned to their work on Monday as though very little had happened. One gnarled Borders prop forward scored a try against France in Paris but, as he cycled to his work as a railwayman on the Monday morning, he was accosted in the street by two old ladies who demanded to know why his wits had deserted him \u2013 why had he not run behind the French posts to make the conversion easier? In the days of the amateur game, Scotland could occasionally field a team to beat the best (except New Zealand), with victories over England being especially sweet. However, now that players are paid, Scotland rarely punches above its demographic weight. But, as with football, there is hope \u2013 especially at the beginning of each new season. Maybe this time . . .\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_The Mascots_\n\nMargaret Ferguson Burns\n\nMaeve Greer\n\nKathleen Grigor\n\nMargaret Hill\n\nJanet Speirs\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nEdinburgh\n\n# PANEL 103  Shinty and Curling\n\nIn addition to golf and, arguably, rugby, Scotland has given two other distinctive games to the world. Shinty is a robust form of hockey, with its most recognisable descendant probably being ice hockey. Unlike the genteel English version, shinty involves shoulder-charge tackling, tackling with the stick or caman, playing the ball in the air (the source of a few head injuries) and other moves only occasionally recognised in the rule book. Now it is played mostly in the Highlands where famous teams like Kingussie, Newtonmore and Fort William have dominated. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the game was popular in England, especially in Lancashire and Nottinghamshire. Some modern players have suggested that, for her Harry Potter books, J. K. Rowling was inspired by shinty to invent quidditch. Curling is more international and the game is firmly established in Canada, the USA, Switzerland, Sweden and elsewhere. It is also an Olympic sport. With immense precision, curling stones are slid down a long rectangular rink of ice to settle in a circular target zone or to knock a rival's stone out of contention. Made from granite, much of it quarried from Ailsa Craig in the Firth of Clyde, the stones make a noise when sliding down the rink. This has given rise to the phrase 'the roaring game'. In a hard Scottish winter, when lochs and rivers freeze, many very occasional curlers dust off ancient stones and take to the ice and they often roar.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\nSusie Finlayson\n\nLinda Jobson\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nEskbank, Dalkeith\n\n# PANEL 104  Scots in North America\n\nIn the decades immediately following the American Revolutionary War of 1775\u20131783, Scots, seen as loyalists, were unpopular. But into the 19th century, as emigration accelerated, several expatriate Scotsmen played leading roles in shaping the USA. Born in Dunfermline in 1835, the son of a weaver, Andrew Carnegie emigrated with his father and family in 1848. Fanatically hard-working and self-improving (through the use of libraries), the young Carnegie rose quickly through the ranks of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. He began to borrow money to invest in railway-related companies and, after the American Civil War (1861\u201365), made huge profits. In 1901, he formed US Steel and it was the first company to be worth more than a billion dollars. Carnegie's philanthropy was also immense and perhaps his greatest legacy is the network of libraries he funded in Scotland. John Muir was very different. A naturalist and an advocate for the active preservation of the natural world, he helped set up the Yosemite and Sequoia national parks. The Sierra Club, which he founded, is one of the most important conservation organisations in the USA. According to his biographer, Donald Worster, Muir's mission was 'saving the American soul from total surrender to materialism'. Known as _Aglooka_ , 'Long Strider', by the Inuit, John Rae explored Northern Canada in the mid 19th century. Originally from Orkney, he understood that the best way to survive Arctic conditions was to imitate the indigenous peoples in their clothing and way of life. Canada's northern regions were mapped by Rae and his work was consolidated by Sandford Fleming, a Scottish-born surveyor and map maker. He also designed the first Canadian postage stamp and proposed a system of worldwide standard time. After missing a train in Ireland, he produced a plan for a series of time zones based on the Greenwich meridian and, by 1919, it had been adopted. Scots pioneered much in and beyond North America.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\nSally Wild\n\nFrances Fettes\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nEskbank\n\n# PANEL 105  The Paisley Pattern\n\nIn the late 18th century, soldiers returning from the wars in India brought back silk and woollen Kashmir shawls decorated with the _boteh_ , a droplet-shaped vegetable motif of Persian or Indian origin. From c. 1800 onwards, weavers in Paisley began to produce shawls with this design. Their looms were sufficiently sophisticated to allow them to weave with five colours of yarn. The _boteh_ quickly became known as the Paisley pattern and, in the 19th century, it was printed on cotton and woollen shawls and headsquares. Printed Paisley pattern was much cheaper than woven and almost as fashionable.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_C plus 3_\n\nLorna Chapman\n\nCatherine Hughes\n\nJulie MacNaughton\n\nHazel Pert\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nGlasgow\n\n# PANEL 106  The Battle of the Braes\n\nIn 1882, after more than a century of oppression following the defeat at Culloden, crofting communities on Skye refused to accept it anymore and violence flared. When tenants were faced with eviction from farmland in the Braes district south of Portree, they withheld payment of rent and also herded their sheep to graze on the slopes of Ben Lee, an area expressly forbidden to them. It had formerly been common land but it was seized by Lord Macdonald's men after the Clearances. When a Sheriff Officer arrived from Portree to serve the eviction notices, an angry mob burned them in front of him. Women were especially active and vocal. Fifty policemen were summoned from Glasgow to enforce Lord Macdonald's will but, after they arrested the men responsible for burning the notices of eviction, they were attacked by a large mob. Three hundred men and women fought in the Battle of the Braes and seven women were badly injured by truncheon blows. Prisoners were tried and convicted without a jury. Newspapers expressed outrage and MPs called for an inquiry. Unrest spread to Glendale where more violence erupted. Astonishingly, a negotiator was sent to Skye, on board a navy gunboat, and it was agreed that, if the Glendale men stood trial, a Royal commission would be set up. Known as the Napier Commission, it proposed mild reforms but, after four crofter MPs were elected in 1885, the Crofters' Act was passed. Much more radical, it gave every crofter security of tenure. Immune from eviction, they were now able to pass on their crofts to their heirs. It was a remarkable and long overdue victory.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Skye Quilt Studio_\n\nSue Cooper\n\nIrene Curren\n\nLin Leighton\n\nJennifer Lewis\n\nLiz Macleod\n\nAnn Nicolson\n\nIrene Owen\n\nBarbara Rutterford\n\nAnne Trimmer\n\nShirley Urquhart\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nSkye\n\n# PANEL 107  Mill Working\n\nAs Paisley Pattern and other distinctive designs grew more popular, spinning and weaving were increasingly industrialised in Scotland. The outworkers who drove the looms and knitting frames at home, often with their wives and family carding and spinning yarn, were usually men. But as demand grew and entrepreneurs invested in scale, weavers and spinners moved into mills. At first water-driven and then steam-powered, with the coming of the railways, the mills also took on more and more women. The larger mechanical looms often needed delicate fingers to tease out problems and the muscle-power that drove the foot pedals of the domestic frames and looms became less important. Many of the beautiful shawls and fabric woven in Paisley and the west of Scotland were exported through Glasgow.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\nFrances Gardiner\n\nGillian Hart\n\nYvonne Murphy\n\nJeannie Roberts\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nPort Seton, North Berwick\n\n# PANEL 108  Robert Louis Stevenson\n\nFew writers have written masterpiece after masterpiece but _Treasure Island_ , _Kidnapped_ , _The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde_ and _The Master of Ballantrae_ have left an indelible mark. And, for TV watchers and filmgoers of a certain age, _The Black Arrow_ , _The Wrong Box_ and _St Ives_ were an early and thrilling introduction to the work of Robert Louis Stevenson. Unfussy in his language, brilliant in plot structure and characterisation, he was a genius, an original, a truly great writer. And yet the _Oxford Anthology of English Literature_ managed no mention of him or his work in more than 2,000 pages and, for decades of the 20th century, so-called critics consigned Stevenson to the ghetto of children's literature. Born in Edinburgh, he began writing when very young but, by the age of 23, his health began to become a problem. Stevenson spent much of his short life looking for a climate in which he might thrive. Between 1880 and 1887, his most famous books were published. By 1888, the famous author was in the Pacific and, in 1890, he bought land in Samoa. There he took the name of _Tusitala_ , 'the Teller of Tales'. In 1894, Stevenson collapsed and died, only 44 years old. Here is the well-known and much misquoted epitaph he wrote for himself:\n\nUnder the wide and starry sky\n\nDig the grave and let me lie.\n\nGlad did I live and gladly die,\n\nAnd I laid me down with a will.\n\nThis be the verse you grave for me:\n\nHere he lies where he longed to be;\n\nHome is the sailor, home from sea,\n\nAnd the hunter home from the hill.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Stitchers wi' Smeddum_\n\nAnn Dickson\n\nLynn Fraser\n\nJanet Macaulay\n\nLiz Neilson\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nTranent, Pencaitland\n\n# PANEL 109  Workshop of the Empire\n\nThe Lanarkshire coalfield and the deposits of iron ore that lay nearby combined with Glasgow's status as a busy Atlantic port to spark the city's great industrial development. Once it became possible to transport these raw materials in bulk by canal and then by rail, shipbuilding, railway locomotive and carriage building and other heavy engineering flourished. And what these industries produced could be readily exported through the Glasgow quays. Parkhead Forge may now be a shopping centre but in the 19th and early 20th centuries it was the largest steelworks in Scotland, employing more than 20,000 men at its height. Four railway manufacturers had plants in the Springburn District. St Rollox grew to be the largest and it is still operational as a rolling stock repair and maintenance facility. Heavy industry may have predominated in the 19th century in the west of Scotland where its output found ready markets in the developing infrastructure of the colonies of the Empire but other sorts of manufacturing were also important. Textiles, especially the spinning and weaving of cotton, flourished until the American Civil War cut off supplies in the 1860s. Coal mining powered much of Scotland's industry until the second half of the 20th century but by that time heavy engineering was declining. And the gradual disappearance of the vast market that was the British Empire was a fundamental reason for the shrinkage of Scottish manufacturing, one of its workshops.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Linlithgow Stitchers_\n\nChristine Anderson\n\nHazel Briton\n\nGloria Fleming\n\nAileen Rasberry\n\nValerie Spence\n\nPatricia Swan\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nLinlithgow, Falkirk\n\n# PANEL 110  The Scottish Trades Union Congress Forms\n\nRepresenting 630,000 members of 39 affiliated trades unions, the STUC is separate from the TUC, the British Trades Union Congress. In the voting for the first Parliamentary Committee 1897 (later the General Council), Miss M. H. Irwin gained the most support but, on the grounds that such a thing was politically premature, she declined to be chairman. Margaret Irwin was raised in St Andrews and took an early form of degree from the university. Involved with the Women's Suffrage movement, she was secretary of the Scottish Council for Women's Trades and central to the setting up of the STUC. The first woman to occupy the role of chairman was Miss Bell Jobson in 1937. The STUC was seen as more radical than the English TUC with many of its leaders being members of the Independent Labour Party. Its goal was 'to secure the collective ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange' \u2013 a dictum only recently removed from the philosophy of the modern Labour Party.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Clydeside 5_\n\nRosalind Jarvis\n\nJane Logan\n\nJacky Mackenzie\n\nJim Mulrine\n\nCarol Woodward\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nGlasgow\n\n# PANEL 111  Keir Hardie\n\nBorn in 1856 in a one-room cottage near Holytown in Lanarkshire, Keir Hardie had a meteoric rise. From being a miner, he became a union organiser and was then elected as MP for West Ham South in London in 1892. A year later, he and others formed the Independent Labour Party. After making a speech in parliament attacking the monarchy, Hardie lost his London seat but was later elected MP for Merthyr Tydfil and Aberdare, a constituency he served for the rest of his life. In the 1906 Liberal landslide, Labour won 29 seats and began to grow into a powerful political force. Two years later, Hardie resigned as Labour leader and became closely involved with campaigning for votes for women. Highly principled, he was a pacifist and was appalled by the slaughter of the First World War. He contacted socialist colleagues in other countries in order to organise an international general strike to bring the fighting to an end. Deeply unpopular, Hardie nevertheless persisted and made anti-war speeches wherever and whenever he could. But, a year after the outbreak of hostilities, he suffered a series of strokes and died in hospital in Glasgow on 26 September 1915.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Smith Stitchers_\n\nRita Smith\n\nShirley Smith\n\nAudrey Smith\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nFalkirk, Glasgow\n\n# PANEL 112  The Herring Girls\n\nKnown as _Clann-Nighean an Sgadain_ , many of the Herring Girls came from the Hebrides and their seasonal work followed the herring catch around the coasts of Scotland. Particularly from the 1840s onwards, they moved from the ports at Lerwick on Shetland down to Wick, Fraserburgh, Peterhead, all the way down to Eyemouth and then further south to the quaysides of Yarmouth and Lowestoft. Their job was to gut the herring catch and pack it into barrels where the fish was preserved in brine. Working at tremendous speed, the _Clann-Nighean_ worked in crews of three with two gutting and a third, usually the tallest, packing because she could reach the bottom of the barrel more easily. The guts were also saved and used as a noxious fertiliser by farmers. The women worked incredibly quickly and the average number of fish they gutted in a minute was 40 but it could be much higher. Of course, they often sang as they worked.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Herring Gulls_\n\nAlison Dickson\n\nJanet Raeburn\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nNorth Berwick\n\n# PANEL 113  The _Discovery_ Sails from Dundee\n\nLaunched in 1901, the _Discovery_ was the last traditional wooden, three-masted ship to be built in Britain. Designated RRS, Royal Research Ship, she was designed for the British National Antarctic Expedition led by Ernest Shackleton and Robert Falcon Scott. The hull was built of wood so that it would not be frozen into the ice and the bow was designed in such a way that it would rise up over the pack ice and break it by its deadweight. The expedition sighted the Antarctic coastline on 8 January 1902 and dropped anchor in McMurdo Sound. For the next two years, locked into the ice, the ship would remain there as the crew surveyed and mapped the coastline. The _Discovery_ expedition was reckoned a success since its crew were able to show that Antarctica was a continent, they relocated magnetic south and made excellent maps and charts. Using controlled explosives, the ship was freed from the ice in February 1904 and it docked at Spithead seven months later. Despite its success, the British Antarctic Expedition found itself in financial difficulties and the ship was sold to the Hudson's Bay Company. After a long career in various roles, the RRS _Discovery_ returned to the city that made her and, on 3 April 1986, she docked in Dundee to a very warm welcome. Since then she has become the focus of a superb museum at Discovery Point.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\nBarbara Bell\n\nUrsula Doherty\n\nTessa Durham\n\nCatherine Jones\n\nDawn White\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nNewport on Tay\n\n# PANEL 114  Dundee, Jute, Jam and Journalism\n\nDundee is very old and its name probably derives from _Dun-Deagh_ , 'Fire Hill'. This may have been a reference to the early habit of fires being lit on hills on the old Celtic quarter days. It is also appropriate since it was the fire of the industrial revolution that made Dundee grow into the fourth largest city in Scotland. Jute and whales were the stimulus. A vegetable fibre imported from India, jute was tough but hard to spin. Whale oil, a by-product of the city's other industry, was found to lubricate this process very well and the manufacture of many jute-based products such as canvas, sacking and twine began. In 1797, Janet Keiller invented marmalade. Without doubt. Other unlikely sources of early recipes for this excellent product have been put forward but none convince. But marmalade and jam, made from the fruits of the nearby berry fields, made Dundee famous \u2013 as did Oor Wullie and Desperate Dan. Generations were raised on the characters of _The Beano_ , _The Dandy_ and _The Sunday Post_. All were owned by DC Thomson, an enormously prolific and influential publishing company based in the city. One of the best but least remembered creations of the artists and writers at DC Thomson was Black Bob. This strip about a Border collie sheepdog and shepherd Andrew Glen, his alleged owner, ran in _The Weekly News_ until 1967. Both are still missed.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_3J_\n\nEleanor Arthur\n\nMargaret Purvis\n\nMarilyn Rattray\n\nAlister Rutherford\n\nJessie Sword\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nBroughty Ferry, Dundee\n\n# PANEL 115  Shetland, the Isbister Sisters\n\nIn rural communities all over Scotland women worked hard, doing menial, muscular tasks that would perhaps surprise modern sensibilities. On farms men did everything associated with horses \u2013 ploughing, carting, harvesting \u2013 while women did the back-breaking work of weeding, shawing, milking and bringing fuel for the fire. This everyday portrait of two sisters shows them with peat creels on their backs, chatting as they walk, knitting without a glance at what their practised fingers are doing. The exodus from the land of the last century has rendered much of what used to be thought of women's work redundant as well as changing its traditional meaning. Washing the dishes does not compare to weeding a field of turnips in the rain.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Pentland Stitches_\n\nAli Cameron\n\nSara-Jayne Donaldson\n\nAngela E. Lewis\n\nMeg Macleod\n\nAnn Mair\n\nCarmel Ross\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nThurso, Dunnet, Caithness\n\n# PANEL 116  Charles Rennie Mackintosh\n\nBuilt between 1897 and 1908, the Glasgow School of Art made the international reputation of Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Scotland's greatest artist. Trained as an architect, he, nevertheless, designed virtually every element of the houses and institutions he had built, from the cutlery to the door furniture and the fabrics used for curtains. Later in life, he also revealed himself as a superb watercolourist of landscapes and flowers. Mackintosh worked closely with his wife, Margaret Macdonald, and she occasionally created gesso panels for his domestic commissions. The Glasgow School of Art is his greatest achievement. Built on an awkward sloping site and difficult to see from any distance, it is a triumph of invention and appropriateness. With the support of the school's headmaster, Francis Henry 'Fra' Newbery, Mackintosh was given great freedom and he expressed himself with brilliance. The library is a masterpiece. But, aside from two major domestic commissions, a school and a church, Mackintosh's prodigious talents were not used to the full partly because the First World War halted most building projects and partly for personal reasons. He left Glasgow to live first in London (and occasionally in Suffolk) and then in south-west France. Recalling his remarkable talent, the daughter of Fra Newbery, Mary Newbery Sturrock said, in the 1980s, that she wept at the waste of such an artist. 'I'd like to have seen his fiftieth house \u2013 it wouldn't have been a bit like the first.'\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_The Dotty Stitchers_\n\nIrene Mitchell\n\nLindsay Morrison\n\nMarion Nimmo\n\nChristine Rettig\n\nKate Ross\n\nDorothy Stalker\n\nSue Whitaker\n\nSusan Wylie\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nErskine, Glasgow, Clydebank, Renfrewshire\n\n# PANEL 117  The Munros\n\nNon-Gaelic speakers may have difficulty in pronouncing the names of Scotland's mountains, but thanks to Sir Hugh Munro, we know how many of them rise to over 3,000 feet \u2013 282. But there is also a classification known as a Munro Top, a summit that is not seen as a separate mountain, perhaps part of a ridge. There are 227 of them. Munro bagging has become a popular pastime. More than 4,000 have climbed them all but the number who have scaled more than a few must be much higher. Ben Nevis is probably the most famous Munro, being the highest mountain in Britain, but, with the constant traffic up and down, is it being worn down?\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\nJoan Kerr\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nFort William\n\n# PANEL 118  The 1914\u20131918 War\n\nThe slaughter of the First World War is commemorated on memorials all over Scotland. Impossibly long lists of the names of young men who died between 1914 and 1918 remember an unparalleled death toll. Few understood why Britain was at war with Germany, Austria and Turkey but any dissent was buried by patriotic zeal. Young men not in uniform, for whatever reason, risked having a white feather pinned to them by women who called them cowards. Men who had been wounded were given special badges to avoid such humiliation. As the war stagnated in the mud of Flanders and the death toll spiralled, Scotland suffered disproportionately with perhaps as many as a quarter of all Scots who fought being killed. The commander of the British Expeditionary Force from 1915 to 1918 was Field Marshal Douglas Haig, the 1st Earl Haig of Bemersyde. Born in Edinburgh in 1861, he became a regular soldier who rose through the ranks to great eminence. But, since the 1960s, his reputation has been attacked, with some historians recalling the label 'Butcher Haig' and criticising him for the needless slaughter of soldiers. Others have defended Haig, arguing that his strategy was ultimately successful. Certainly the experience of the trenches changed politicians' view of what a conscript army would and would not do, especially in the Second World War. There would be no repeat of the casualty lists of 1914\u20131918 where a staggering 4 per cent of British men were killed.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_EH6 Group_\n\nSorrell Bentinck\n\nAlison Black\n\nAndrea Bloomfield\n\nLucinda Byatt\n\nCherry Campbell\n\nFiona Campbell Byatt\n\nSarah Conlon\n\nKaren Howlett\n\nNaomi Jennings\n\nYoshiko Nakano\n\nAlison Roarty\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nEdinburgh\n\n# PANEL 119  The Building of HMS _Hood_ , the Battle of Ypres 1917\n\nPasschendaele has become a byword for the miseries of fighting in the trenches of Flanders. Also known as the Third Battle of Ypres, it was an offensive launched by the Allies to gain control of the ridges to the south and east of the Belgian city of Ypres. Lloyd George, the prime minister, was against the operation as was General Foch, the French commander. They wanted to wait for American reinforcement. But Field Marshal Haig persisted with the strategy of attacking in the west and approval was granted in July 1917. The human cost was vast and the gains negligible. Wet weather bogged down the advance, the German Fourth Army fought back strongly and ultimately British and French troops had to be deployed to Italy to shore up that front after an Austrian victory at Caporetto. If the land war was a stalemate, Britain hoped to win the war at sea and, on 1 September 1916, the keel of HMS _Hood_ was laid down on Clydeside. Designated as a battlecruiser, _Hood_ was huge and very heavily armed, outgunning the _Mackensen_ -class German equivalents. She carried eight 42-calibre guns that could launch a 1,920-pound shell over a range of 17 miles at maximum elevation. Known as the _Mighty Hood_ , she was not commissioned until 1920. More than 20 years later, this huge battlecruiser fought in one of the most famous naval engagements of the Second World War, the Battle of the Denmark Strait. The _Hood_ was sunk by the _Prinz Eugen_ and the _Bismarck_ with an explosion in her magazines causing enormous loss of life. Out of a crew of 1,148, only three survived.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_The Appin Stitchers_\n\nJoy Blakeney\n\nJean Breckenridge\n\nHelen Currie\n\nDoreen Evans\n\nJanet Fairbairn\n\nMidge Gourlay\n\nFiona Hunter\n\nMargaret Rayworth\n\nMorag White\n\nAnne White\n\nPat Wyeth Webb\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nAppin, Port Appin, Benderloch, Barcaldine\n\n# PANEL 120  Elsie Inglis\n\nOne of the first female doctors to qualify, Elsie Inglis set up in medical practice in 1894 and opened a maternity hospital in Edinburgh. She was very unhappy with the standard of medical care for women and that propelled her into the women's suffrage movement. Elsie Inglis did pioneering work during the First World War but died in 1917 on her return to Britain. The Elsie Inglis Memorial Maternity Hospital was founded in Edinburgh and it continued to innovate in midwifery. It seemed that the consideration, warmth and humanity of its inspiration lasted for generations. The closure of the Elsie Inglis in 1988 may have made sense to some but its passing was much mourned by many.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\nFiona Kirton\n\nJo Macrae\n\nDeborah Ramage\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nEdinburgh\n\n# PANEL 121  The Sinking of HMY _Iolaire_ off Stornoway, 1919\n\nOn the evening of 31 December 1918, the Admiralty yacht, HMY _Iolaire_ (the name means 'Eagle' in Gaelic) sailed out of Kyle of Lochalsh bound for Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis. On board were 280 sailors returning home, having survived the horrors of the First World War. Within sight of the twinkling lights of the harbour, the yacht struck the infamous Beasts of Holm, a reef only twenty yards from the shore. In heaving seas, the yacht began to break up and 205 men were drowned, 181 of them Lewismen. In a small island community, the impact of this tragedy was huge. Only 75 survived and many of them because of the bravery and strength of John F. MacLeod of Ness. He swam ashore with a line, wrapped it around himself and about 40 men pulled themselves to safety along it. No satisfactory explanation for the disaster was ever produced and the legacy of the _Iolaire_ is still felt. In 1958, a memorial was erected at Holm and a stone pillar built on the Beasts.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Sea-Mistresses_\n\nTracey MacLeod\n\nMoira MacPherson\n\nGillian Scott-Forest\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nHarris, South Uist\n\n# PANEL 122  Eric Liddell\n\nThe romantic days of amateur sport have no better exemplar than Eric Liddell. The Flying Scotsman won a gold medal for the 400 metres at the Paris Olympic Games of 1924, having refused, on religious grounds, to run on a Sunday in the heats for the 100 metres, his better event. His idiosyncratic running style, with his head flung back, his mouth wide open and his arms flailing, was remembered by all who saw him but it was his blistering speed that dazzled. His rival, Harold Abrahams, defended Liddell, saying, 'People may shout their heads off about his appalling style. Well, let them. He gets there.' The year before the Olympic Games, he had played rugby for Scotland. And, at the age of 23, he retired from sport so that he could become a missionary in China. Interned by the Japanese, Liddell died in 1945, probably of a brain tumour and malnourishment. But his achievements were never forgotten and they were immortalised in the Oscar-winning film, _Chariots of Fire_. When the great Scottish sprinter, Allan Wells, won Olympic gold in Moscow in 1980, he dedicated his race to the memory of Eric Liddell.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_The Liberton Connection_\n\nRosemary Leask\n\nSheila MacIsaac\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nEdinburgh\n\n# PANEL 123  Women Get the Vote\n\nElsie Inglis became a founder member of the Scottish Women's Suffragette Federation in 1906 and worked hard to see the franchise extended. Others were even more militant and Flora Drummond, a postmistress, went to prison nine times as a leader of the Women's Social and Political Union. Some poured acid into pillar boxes, slashed portraits of the king and set fire to buildings such as Ayr Racecourse, Leuchars Railway Station and the Whitekirk in East Lothian. In prison, many went on hunger strikes. The First World War supplied unexpected support as suffragettes suspended campaigning. While men fought and died on the Western Front in their millions, many women worked in the munitions industries, joined the Women's Land Army or drove buses and ambulances. All were seen in a different light as a result. New legislation was enacted in 1918 to give all women over the age of 30 the right to vote in general elections and to stand as MPs. But pressure for equality did not abate and, in 1928, women 21 and over were allowed to vote.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Soroptimist International of Edinburgh_\n\nEdith Elliot\n\nJane Green\n\nClephane Hume\n\nWinifred Keeves\n\nIsabel Smith\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nDalkeith, Edinburgh\n\n# PANEL 124  Whaling\n\nDemand for whale oil for use in lighting drove a major expansion in whaling. Out of ports such as Dundee and Peterhead, whaling ships sailed the Arctic but overfishing seriously depleted stocks. In the early 20th century, Christian Salvesen established a whaling station in Shetland as well as one in the Antarctic on the island of South Georgia. Salvesen became the largest whaling company in the world in part because of their pioneering use of the entire carcass of the whale. By the end of the 20th century, stocks had dwindled so alarmingly that a complete moratorium had to be imposed to allow species to recover.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\nRebecca Fish\n\nAlasdair Fish\n\nRosalind Neville-Smith\n\nJoyce Peace\n\nHazel Shearer\n\nMolly Shearer\n\nLeah Shearer\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nOrkney\n\n# PANEL 125  The General Strike, 1926\n\nLasting only nine days, the strike was called by the Trades Union Congress in an attempt to force the government to halt a downward spiral of wages and conditions for 800,000 miners. More than 1.7 million workers downed tools. In the face of well-laid preparations and the support of the middle classes, students and others in maintaining services, the General Strike failed. Instead of building a land fit for heroes after the First World War, there was unemployment and deprivation, a broken promise to those who survived the trenches or lost relatives. In Glasgow, huge crowds gathered and soldiers were mobilised. The Riot Act was read from Glasgow City Chambers and the police charged demonstrators. But the left-wing MPs, Mannie Shinwell and Willie Gallacher, had no coherent political plan apart from protest and nothing of any real consequence was achieved. The strike was called off without any guarantees, terms or even a written statement. Such abject surrender was greeted with a mixture of fury and disgust in Glasgow.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Big County Gals_\n\nJune McEwan\n\nKaren Phillpot\n\nGill Tulloch\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nPitlochry\n\n# PANEL 126  Fair Isle\n\nMidway between Shetland and Orkney, Fair Isle is small, sparsely populated and famous. In 1900, the population was 400 but now it numbers only 70 and most live in the crofts on the southern part of the island. It is famous in the shipping forecast and for a traditional style of knitting. The latter became popular when the Prince of Wales, later to reign briefly as Edward VIII, took to wearing Fair Isle knitted sleeveless jumpers to play golf in the early 1920s. Very colourful and with finely worked horizontal geometric patterns, these designs consequently became the acme of fashion. And they are still are.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\nMarietta di Ciacca\n\nEdna Elliott-McColl\n\nSusan Finlayson\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nPort Seton\n\n# PANEL 127  Hugh MacDiarmid\n\nHugh MacDiarmid's masterpiece, _A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle_ incorporates a passage on the General Strike \u2013 a pessimistic response to its failure. The great lyric is a montage of invective and humour and a collection of themes dealt with in what seem like distinct poems. But it has an authentic voice in Scots \u2013 something MacDiarmid imbibed in his youth in the Borders town of Langholm. It begins:\n\nI amna fou sae muckle as tired \u2013 deid dune.\n\nIt's gey and hard wark coupin' gless for gless\n\nWi' Cruivie and Gilsanquhar and the like,\n\nAnd I'm no' juist as bauld as aince I wes.\n\nChristened Christopher Murray Grieve, MacDiarmid was born in Langholm in 1892 and he led a deeply individual life. During the 1930s, he was expelled from the Communist Party for being a Scottish Nationalist and then expelled from the Scottish National Party for being a communist. And, in 1956, when Soviet tanks invaded Hungary, he rejoined the Communist Party. Living in abject poverty, scraping a living with journalism, MacDiarmid worked tirelessly as a poet and writer and happily admitted that his work was of variable quality. But he was undoubtedly a Scottish literary genius, enormously influential, thrawn and indefatigable. When MacDiarmid died in 1978, his fellow poet, Norman MacCaig, suggested that each year the great man's passing be celebrated by two minutes' pandemonium.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_The Albyn Stitchers_\n\nBarbara Gregor\n\nLinda Herd\n\nDiana Herriot\n\nSamantha Townsend\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nLivingston\n\n# PANEL 128  Ramsay MacDonald and the Rise of the Labour Party\n\nThe first Labour Prime Minister was a Scot, Ramsay MacDonald. The illegitimate son of a farm labourer, John MacDonald and a housemaid, Anne Ramsay, he was raised and educated in Lossiemouth. In 1906, he was elected to the House of Commons as a Labour MP for Leicester and, in 1911, he became party leader. Implacably opposed to the First World War, he lost his seat in 1918 but returned to parliament in 1922 in the general election that saw Labour replace the Liberals as the second largest party. And, into the 1920s, MacDonald's pacifism and his oratorical skills earned him the respect of the electorate. By the early 1920s, Labour had become the main opposition party to the Conservatives and, in 1924, King George V called on him to form a minority government with the support of the Liberal Party. It only lasted nine months but showed that Labour had the ability to govern credibly. In 1929, MacDonald and Labour returned to government as the largest party but were overwhelmed by the onset of the Great Depression. When he formed a National Government, MacDonald was expelled from the Labour Party but carried on as prime minister. In 1931, he won a huge majority and Labour's Westminster representation was reduced to a rump of only 50 seats. Prime minister on three separate occasions, he stood down in 1935, losing his seat in the election (but becoming MP for the Combined Scottish Universities in a by-election a year later) and two years later MacDonald resigned as his physical and mental health collapsed. From a single-parent family living in a cottage in Lossiemouth to 10 Downing Street \u2013 it was an astonishingly meteoric life course for the time.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\nJenny Allan\n\nPolly Atkinson\n\nJoan Bell\n\nAriane Burgess\n\nAmanda Cooper\n\nCorinne Davies\n\nRian Davies\n\nIsabel di Sotto\n\nJenny Doig\n\nDaphne Francis\n\nAnne Gavin\n\nMary Haslam\n\nJacqui Hassan\n\nKatyi Hassan\n\nLinda Jones\n\nWilma MacBain\n\nFiona MacDonald\n\nMarjorie Macleod\n\nJoyce MacNaught\n\nShiela McCourt\n\nDiane McGregor\n\nAnne Milligan\n\nKatherine Murray\n\nJudi O'May\n\nFrances Powell\n\nKathleen Purmal\n\nLinda Robertson\n\nKathleen Ross\n\nAnne Skene\n\nWendy Springett\n\nYvonne Stuart\n\nDavina Thomas\n\nJune Watson\n\nJames Watson\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nBurghead, Forres, Findhorn\n\n# PANEL 129  The Great Depression\n\nWhen Wall Street crashed and confidence evaporated in the American economy in late 1929, the effects ricocheted around the world. And, unlike in 2008, there was no international consensus on how to effect recovery. Britain's world trade fell by half, unemployment soared to 3.5 million and the output of heavy industry plunged by a third. Scotland was particularly affected by the latter. But, because there had been no post-war boom to speak of in the 1920s, the slump was less extreme than it was in North America. However, the Scottish coalfields saw many men laid off as demand dried up and shipbuilding was badly hit on the Clyde. In 1931, unemployment benefit was paid according to need rather than contributions made but it was contingent on a means test and this was the cause of bitter resentment. A deep north\u2013south split became apparent in Britain. A recovery began slowly in the south where house-building offered employment but the heavy industries and mining in Scotland, on Tyneside and in Yorkshire and Lancashire and Wales remained depressed. And the widespread resentment at Conservative economic policies began to store up a wish for change that erupted in the surprising general election result of 1945. But what began to send men and women back to work in the heavy industries of the north was the government decision to rearm in the face of Nazi aggression.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Kelly's Cats_\n\nAudrey Anderson\n\nPat Balfour\n\nMary Bibby\n\nAlison Black\n\nHeather Bramwell\n\nNan Chalmers\n\nHeather King\n\nMargaret Moir\n\nGail Neiman\n\nKay Paul\n\nOlive Pauline\n\nAlison Purvis\n\nMargaret Ruddiman\n\nMaureen Stuchbury\n\nJune Willox\n\nVerna Wilson\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nAberdeen\n\n# PANEL 130  Tenement Life\n\nAs a solution to the density of urban living, tenements are ancient. In Rome and the great cities of the ancient world, multi-occupancy in buildings of several storeys was common. In industrialising England, the term soon acquired a pejorative gloss since it meant overcrowding and slum conditions, but in Scotland tenement life could be very attractive to working people. Even though shared toilets on the stair-heid were the norm, and the drying green and entrance were communal, the neighbourliness and mutual support, especially in hard times, usually more than compensated. Densely packed communities produced their own entertainment and social and sporting clubs thrived. As did political discourse. One of the greatest products of the Paisley tenements was Willie Gallacher, a founder of the Communist Party of Great Britain who was MP for West Fife between 1935 and 1950. In the slum clearances of the 1960s and 70s tenements were demolished and replaced with tower blocks. Which in turn were demolished and replaced with \u2013 tenements. This time with their own toilets.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Paisley Patter_\n\nMarie Connelly\n\nGladys Connolly\n\nCarla Corneli\n\nNatalie Elliott\n\nLiz Gardiner\n\nChristine Gilmour\n\nIrene Harvey\n\nLesley King\n\nAga Kulet\n\nCatherine Lappin\n\nMorven McAlister\n\nMargaret McBride\n\nPaula McKeown\n\nMargaret Muir\n\nAnne Ross\n\nGrant Scott\n\nJan Walker\n\nRita Winters\n\nMichaela Wright\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nPaisley, Elderslie, Greenock, Glasgow\n\n# PANEL 131  The Second World War\n\nThe first action of the Second World War was fought in the skies above the Firth of Forth as German aircraft attacked the naval base at Rosyth. Several were shot down. Scapa Flow in Orkney was also strategically vital for the North Atlantic and Shetland's proximity to Norway gave rise to the Shetland bus, a series of voyages by fishing boats to help Norwegians flee the Nazi invasion and aid their resistance efforts. Scots were notable in operations with Air Chief Marshal Hugh Dowding from Moffat leading Fighter Command and Robert Watson Watt's invention of radar giving defenders the edge in the Battle of Britain in 1940. Col. David Stirling founded the SAS, the Special Air Service. He was eventually captured and sent to Colditz Castle. But perhaps the most significant incarceration was the surrender and capture of the 51st Highland Division at St Valery. After the defeat of the British Expeditionary Force and the evacuation from Dunkirk, bad weather forced General Fortune to capitulate. For most of the duration of the war, they were held at Stalag XX-A in Poland and, in 1945, forced to march 450 miles west to Luneberg Heath, north of Hanover. On the home front, Prof. John Raeburn from Aberdeen was an agricultural economist who organised the 'Dig For Victory' campaign that fed Britain between 1939 and 1945. He encouraged people to convert lawns and flowerbeds into allotments and to keep chickens and pigs in back gardens. More than 900 'pig clubs' sprang up and, with rationing, it is said that Britain has never had as healthy a diet as it did during the Second World War.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_JHEMMS_\n\nMarion Harkins\n\nJoan Marsh\n\nSusan Matthew\n\nHeather Neal\n\nEileen Rennie\n\nMary Woodward\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nEdinburgh, Musselburgh\n\n# PANEL 132  The Clydebank Blitz\n\nIn March 1941, the Luftwaffe mounted two devastating raids on Clydebank and its shipbuilding yards. The town was destroyed and 528 people lost their lives, a further 617 were seriously injured and many were hurt by blast debris. Out of approximately 12,000 houses, 4,000 were completely destroyed and 4,500 severely damaged, making 35,000 people homeless. But the major targets of the John Brown shipyard and Beardmore's Diesel Works were not badly hit and were able to continue to function. The German raid was vast, with 439 bombers dropping more than 1,000 bombs. Only two were shot down by the RAF but the guns of the Polish destroyer, _Piorun_ , helped defend the town from the docks as it fired at the aircraft. There is a war memorial in Clydebank dedicated to the bravery of the Polish sailors. The attack took place over two nights and the damage to housing in the first raid was collateral since most of the workers lived close to the yards and the plants. But the following night seems to have been a terror raid aimed at civilians in an effort to damage not only their houses but also their morale. It failed.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Nervous Needles_\n\nShona Glenn\n\nClaire McDonald\n\nCarole Ross\n\nMarjorie Sinclair\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nEdinburgh\n\n# PANEL 133  War Defences\n\nSeveral generations after the German surrender, the marks of war can still be found in Scotland. When an invasion fleet sailed up the Oslo Fjord in 1940, one of its strategic aims was to open up a thousand-mile-long start line for an invasion of Britain. That, in turn, exposed the east coast of Scotland to a direct threat of invasion. Concrete obstacles to inhibit tank movement were hurriedly built on beaches and pillboxes set up at strategic vantage points. But, while the nearest and clearest threat was to the south-east of England, Scotland had few soldiers to defend its shores. In many places, a German invasion force could have landed unchallenged. The Moray Firth coastlands were thought to be particularly vulnerable and so the Cowie Stop Line was constructed. Near Stonehaven and following the line of the Cowie Water, a series of earthworks and concrete obstacles was built between the North Sea coastline and the foothills of the Grampians. This narrow neck of land was the gateway to southern Scotland and, while invaders might have been able to land in Moray or Banff, they would have had to round that corner of Scotland's geography. In truth, the Cowie Stop Line would have slowed down an advance rather than halt it. In the 1950s and 1960s, Scotland's concrete defences against the Nazis supplied schoolchildren with a setting for war games with toy guns that had more than a shiver of authenticity. They were built for a real war and might really have been attacked.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\nMay Bowie\n\nPatsy Brown\n\nFrances Fettes\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nNorth Berwick, Eskbank\n\n# PANEL 134  D-Day, 1944\n\nOn 6 June 1944, the largest amphibious invasion ever mounted landed on the beaches of Normandy to begin the reconquest of Nazi Europe. More than 73,000 American soldiers, 61,715 British and 21,400 Canadians either splashed ashore under heavy fire or were parachuted in the night before. Known as Operation Overlord, the landings saw some of the fiercest fighting of the Second World War. Scotland had not only been involved in the preparations and training for the landings, many Scottish soldiers attempted to fight their way up the beaches. Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat, commanded 1 Special Service Brigade and he instructed his personal piper, Bill Millin, to play as the troops landed. Under heavy German fire, he played 'The Road to the Isles' and 'Hielan' Laddie'. The piper was the only soldier in the Normandy Landings to wear a kilt \u2013 a Cameron tartan worn by his father in the trenches in the First World War. Apart from his sgian-dubh sheathed in his socks, Millan carried no weapons. Later, he talked to captured German snipers who said that they did not shoot at him because they thought he was crazy. Lovat's brigade advanced to Pegasus Bridge, bravely defended by the Ox and Bucks Light Infantry, with Millin leading and playing the pipes. Twelve men wearing berets were shot through the head and commandos then raced across the bridge with helmets on. In 2009, Piper Millin was decorated by the French government, receiving the Croix d'Honneur for gallantry.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\nMargaret Burgess\n\nOlive McCrone\n\nAnne Ratigan\n\nCaroline Scott\n\nNicki Slater\n\nAlison Wood\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nEdinburgh, Winchburgh\n\n# PANEL 135  The First Edinburgh Festival\n\nGrim austerity followed the end of the Second World War but one sparkling innovation lit the gloom. In 1947, the first Edinburgh Festival took place. The brainchild of Rudolf Bing, the director of Glyndebourne Opera and Lord Provost Sir John Falconer, it brought orchestras, ballet, theatre and exhibitions to the city each August. The official festival programme was immediately joined by the Festival Fringe \u2013 eight groups who wanted to add their largely amateur performances. Apparently, 1947 saw a warm and sunny summer, something which added greatly to the atmosphere of optimism. The Fringe has come to dominate the Edinburgh Festival and it is now the largest and best arts festival in the world. It operates like no other. Performers may join the Festival Fringe Society, hire a venue and put on a show. There is no central artistic control and this openness has been the stimulus for the successful beginning of many brilliant careers, from the playwright Tom Stoppard, through the Cambridge Footlights of 1981, with Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, Emma Thompson and Tony Slattery, to the brilliant impressionist Rory Bremner. Cultural entrepreneurs have begun to exercise a degree of selection and few have had the impact of Bill Burdett-Coutts over the last 30 years with Assembly Productions. Collectively, as Beethoven is played alongside stand-up comedy and the Scotsman Fringe First Awards for new drama are up for grabs, Edinburgh is simply the best place to be in August \u2013 in the world. No question.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Festival Group_\n\nJo Allen\n\nAnn Campbell\n\nMairi Campbell\n\nHeather Davidson\n\nAlice Henderson\n\nEleanor Horton\n\nJackie Kemp\n\nJan Kerr\n\nLe-Anne Koh\n\nSue Lougheed\n\nDelia Marriott\n\nJanis McGravie\n\nMoira Nelson\n\nKirstin Norrie\n\nSigridur Oladottir\n\nFfion Reville\n\nFiona Roche\n\nPatsy Seddon\n\nHeather Swinson\n\nLinda Swinson\n\nMargareta Thomson\n\nCatriona White\n\nLois Yelland\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nDalkeith, Ontario, Port Seton, Edinburgh, Gorebridge, Eddleston\n\n# PANEL 136  East Kilbride and the New Towns\n\nOn 6 May 1947 East Kilbride was designated as Scotland's first new town. Overcrowded housing in Glasgow was a stimulus for the Clyde Valley Regional Plan and it envisaged satellite new towns and peripheral housing estates to relieve pressure. Planners created neighbourhoods in East Kilbride, each with local shops, services and primary schools, and in the centre was a series of linked malls. When the first residents came, it must have seemed like the New Jerusalem. The old, decrepit tenements of Glasgow, with shared toilets, vermin and a cheek-by-jowl existence were replaced with houses with proper bathrooms and heating. East Kilbride has grown to a population of almost 74,000. In 1948, Glenrothes was founded around a mine that never fully functioned, but that source of employment was replaced by the introduction of major electronics companies. To the east of Glasgow, Cumbernauld was founded in 1956 and, near Edinburgh, Livingston in 1962. Irvine completed Scotland's five new towns in 1964.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\nSandy Andrew\n\nAnn Arnot\n\nSandra Douglas\n\nJoanna Young\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nEskbank, Edinburgh, West Linton\n\n# PANEL 137  The National Health Service\n\nBritain's greatest post-war achievement was the foundation of the National Health Service. This key element of the incoming Labour government's manifesto was difficult to deliver. Many doctors had been used to charging for their services and were unwilling to cooperate but Aneurin Bevan, the Minister of Health, later said he had 'stuffed their mouths with gold'. In his book, _In Place of Fear_ , Bevan wrote that 'no society can legitimately call itself civilised if a sick person is denied medical aid because of a lack of means'. That remains the guiding principle of the NHS. The National Health Service (Scotland) Act brought the new service into being with the intention of care being free at the point of need. Some prescription charges were brought in and have continued in England but, in Scotland where healthcare is devolved, there are no such charges. With an ageing population living longer, the cost of the NHS in Scotland is rising and stood at \u00a311.35 billion for 2010\u20132011. But the service is also Scotland's largest employer. In 2007, the Scottish government announced its opposition to partnerships between the NHS and the private sector and, a year later, it abolished the much-resented car parking charges at all hospitals except those funded by a private finance initiative scheme in Dundee, Edinburgh and Glasgow. The history of the NHS in Scotland is filled with remarkable statistics. In the year it was founded, around 500,000 Scots who needed them were prescribed spectacles and, partly due to consistent campaigning, the number of smokers in Scotland has declined from 80 per cent in 1954 to 23 per cent in 2011.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Friends in Fine Embroidery_\n\nLydia Lawson\n\nJune McAleece\n\nIrene Wood\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nDunfermline, Dalgety Bay, Kirkcaldy\n\n# PANEL 138  Television Arrives\n\nIn the 1950s, the BBC's monopoly was broken with the introduction of ITV in Scotland. STV was first, launching in 1957, and its programmes were what one regulator called 'distressingly popular'. The _One O'Clock Gang_ developed a devoted following and the programmes STV took from the other ITV companies soon out-rated the BBC's. Based in Glasgow, STV served the Central Belt and most of the population. Grampian Television set up in Aberdeen in 1961 and, to serve southern Scotland, Border Television began broadcasting from Carlisle in the same year. Diversity was the keynote as three separate daily news services were added to the BBC's national bulletins. And, as brands, STV, Grampian and Border were well recognised and well loved. They also supplied a local training ground for many behind and in front of the cameras. Many famous faces first appeared on _Scotland Today_ , _North Tonight_ or _Lookaround_. These three stations supplied a huge volume of local features, news and drama for about 40 years. But, when Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher decided that the ITV companies should make cash bids to renew their franchises and takeovers would be allowed, the old system began to disintegrate. Most of the invaluable regional coverage supplied by STV, Grampian and Border was swept away in a series of mergers and regulatory changes after 2008.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Musselburgh Stitchers_\n\nGaynor Allen\n\nSusan Finlay\n\nSue Henderson\n\nRosemary Taylor\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nMusselburgh\n\n# PANEL 139  The Washer Women\n\nAs Scotland became more affluent and the cost of white goods in particular came within the reach of ordinary people, society shifted a little. Washing machines installed and operated at home effected one of the most striking changes. The 'steamies' or the communal washhouses began to close down. Before the coming of cheaper appliances, most women had taken their weekly wash to the steamie and these buildings, still recognisable in many towns and cities, were social hubs, part of the fabric of a neighbourhood. Also, professional washerwomen became redundant. And clothes probably became a little less well cleaned and pressed.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\nGail Hughes\n\nKate MacKenzie\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nMontrose\n\n# PANEL 140  Cumbernauld New Town\n\nThe new town was originally designed without any pedestrian road crossings and was widely believed to be dominated by the needs of drivers rather then walkers. In 2002, Cumbernauld was voted the worst town in Scotland and, in 2005, its Town Centre won an unwanted public nomination for demolition in a Channel Four TV series. But action was taken. Parts of the Town Centre were indeed demolished and the housing stock's high quality was emphasised. And far from being a concrete jungle, Cumbernauld has space and greenery and the Campsie Fells can be seen from many places. In 2010, the new town was voted the most improved town in Scotland.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Boulton_ \\+ _Conley_\n\nElizabeth Boulton\n\nHelen Conley\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nCumbernauld\n\n# PANEL 141  North Sea Oil\n\nIn September 1965, a British Petroleum drilling rig found gas under the bed of the North Sea and, four years later, oil was also discovered. As the huge Brent and Forties fields came on stream, Britain began to enjoy an unlikely oil boom. Aberdeen became a city of business and high property prices while construction further north at Nigg Bay and terminals at Sullom Voe on Shetland have supplied employment. Linked by a 230km-long pipeline to the Piper and Occidental fields, Flotta on Orkney is also a major focus. Grangemouth is the centre of the petrochemical industry. Scotland became and remains the largest oil producer in the European Union and it is estimated that the industry employs more than 100,000, about 6 per cent of the total workforce. Production has begun to decline but vast reserves, perhaps 20 billion barrels, still remain under the chill waters of the North Sea. Most oil fields will remain in production until 2020 and, as oil prices rise, companies are very motivated to explore and exploit further. Teams have already been exploring more of the north-east Atlantic Basin around the Hebrides and to the west of Shetland \u2013 areas that were previously thought to be uneconomic.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Lundie_\n\nCatharina Dessain\n\nJudy Drysdale\n\nKatherine Ellvers\n\nSusan Houstoun\n\nSylvia Learoyd\n\nSusan Macgregor\n\nFiona Macphie\n\nGeorgie Middleton\n\nGeorgie Sampson\n\nCaroline Southesk\n\nMargaret Taylor\n\nGriselda Thornton-Kemsley\n\nPatsy Walker\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nForfar, Angus, Brechin, Laurencekirk\n\n# PANEL 142  Aberdeen\n\nFor many centuries, Aberdeen has been a vibrant urban centre. Made a royal burgh by King David I between 1124 and 1153, it quickly became busy and, for the times, populous. Its situation at the mouth of the River Dee, with a harbour, good sea and land communications and facing a North Sea trading area all helped to make the city the third largest in Scotland by the 17th century. Uniquely, Aberdeen had two universities. King's College was founded in 1495 by Bishop William Elphinstone and, in 1593, Marischal College was endowed by George Keith, the Earl Marischal of Scotland. The two universities only united in 1860 and they are the fifth oldest in the English-speaking world. In the first half of the 19th century, Aberdeen redeveloped its harbour as the fishing and shipbuilding industries became busier. In the later 20th century, the oil industry once again filled the quaysides with ships that serviced the rigs and most oil companies run offices in the city. The impact on house prices has been marked. Perhaps one of the most glorious chapters in Aberdeen's history has been the phenomenal success of its football team under the management of Alex Ferguson. During Ferguson's reign, they won the Scottish League Premier Division three times, the Scottish Cup four times, The Scottish League Cup once and both the European Cup Winners' Cup and the European Super Cup in 1983.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Inverdon Stitchers_\n\nNeil McMillan\n\nMary Middleton\n\nDiane Stanley\n\nUrsula Thompson\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nBridge of Don\n\n# PANEL 143  Linwood and the Hillman Imp\n\nAmongst the wreckage of Britain's once-vibrant car industry, the story of the Hillman Imp stands out. To compete with the Mini and find a niche as a second car for more affluent families, the Rootes Group took a huge gamble. Without much experience of building smaller cars, they built a huge new, computerised plant at Linwood, west of Glasgow, which opened on 2 May 1963. It lay close to a rail depot and its output could be transported quickly to showrooms all over Britain. But an early problem was that the railway was also needed to bring parts north from the Rootes plant at Ryton, near Coventry. Affordable, good-looking and innovative, the Imp initially sold well but it proved to be unreliable and sales dropped off. Half of the whole output of Imps were sold in the first three years of production. But it was seen as a Scottish car and continued to sell well north of the border. Rootes were bought by the American car maker, Chrysler, in 1967 but, despite price discounting, sales of the Imp declined. Production finally ceased in 1976 and, five years later, the Linwood plant closed. But Imps live on and models are lovingly cared for, many of them polished in Scottish garages.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Tillicoultry 'Needles & Gins'_\n\nMargaret Callander\n\nMorag Clark\n\nShirley Galletly\n\nJoan Gibson\n\nMyra Legge\n\nGill Pritchard\n\nLesley Thornton\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nDevonside, Alva, Tillicoultry, Menstrie, Cambusbarron\n\n# PANEL 144  Pop Music Booms\n\nWhen the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and many other groups broke on to the popular music scene in the early 1960s, their success had at least two effects. First, it quickly became clear that young people were a separate market for much more than music. Fashion changed and very large numbers of teenagers and men and women in their twenties suddenly appeared to have spending power \u2013 enough money to create many new markets. The second effect was the worldwide success of British pop. It inspired a generation of Scottish musicians and singers. In contrast to the more traditional appeal of Kenneth McKellar and Moira Anderson, the likes of Donovan and Jack Bruce were genuine innovators. Born Donovan Leitch in Maryhill in Glasgow, his 'Catch the Wind' reached number 4 in the UK charts in 1965 and was followed by a string of hits on both sides of the Atlantic. Cream was the name of the band that included Jack Bruce, Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker. Their third album, _Wheels of Fire_ , was the world's first platinum-selling double album. Others added to the variety of pop music coming out of Scotland, ranging from Lulu and the Bay City Rollers to the Incredible String Band.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Jacquie & The Juniors_\n\nImogen Allen\n\nJacquie McNally\n\nCharlie McNally\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nMusselburgh\n\n# PANEL 145  Glenrothes\n\nHaving been established in central Fife to house miners who were to work at the new Rothes Colliery, this new town grew out of failure, prospered and became the administrative capital of the region. Opened by the Queen and designed as the first super-pit with state-of-the-art technology, the new colliery was supposed to produce 5,000 tons of coal a week but, beset by geological problems and flooding, it lasted only four years and closed in 1963. But Silicon Glen came to the rescue. A Scottish variant of Silicon Valley south of San Francisco, this was a collective name for the establishment of hi-tech industry in Scotland. In 1960, Hughes Aircraft opened its first factory outside of the USA to make semiconductors. It was followed by Elliott Automation in 1965 and several others. Rodime of Glenrothes pioneered the 3.5-inch hard disk drive in 1983 and it collected royalties from many manufacturers. The town was well laid out with open spaces and good access from the A92 dual carriageway. It had merged well into the countryside and the other villages and small towns around it.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_The Coo's Tail_\n\nRuby Henderson\n\nJan MacArthur\n\nPatricia Macindoe\n\nMairi Stewart\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nOld Kilpatrick, Helensburgh, Glasgow\n\n# PANEL 146  The Upper Clyde Shipbuilders\n\nUCS was formed in 1968 from a group of shipbuilders on the Clyde to become more competitive and achieve economies of scale. But very quickly, in 1971, the company went into receivership after the Conservative government of Edward Heath refused a loan of \u00a36 million. The consortium had a full order book and forecast profits for 1972. Instead of going on strike, the workforce voted to continue working and fulfil the orders. The UCS work-in was led by Jimmy Reid, Jimmy Airlie, Sammy Gilmore and Sammy Barr. All were members of the Communist Party and Reid was a gifted orator. In a speech to the workforce, he emphasised that their demeanour and image were vital. The world was watching and there would be 'no hooliganism . . . no vandalism . . . [and] no bevvying'. The work-in successfully stirred public sympathy, cash was raised and, when John Lennon sent a cheque for \u00a35,000, some wag feigned amazement, saying, 'But Lenin's deid.' In 1972, the government agreed to restructure the yards around two new companies \u2013 Govan Shipbuilders and Scotstoun Marine Ltd \u2013 and to inject \u00a334 million. It was a victory and shipbuilding continued on the Clyde.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_West of Scotland Guild of Weavers, Spinners and Dyers_\n\nSusan Black\n\nMargaret Cameron\n\nAlison Christie\n\nLyn Dunachie\n\nBron Ellis\n\nMaryel FitzRandolph\n\nJean Mabon\n\nLiz MacKinlay\n\nMargaret McBlane\n\nJoan McDowall\n\nChristina McLachlan\n\nMarlen McMaster\n\nKatie Shirley\n\nFlora Smith\n\nCaroline Thomson\n\nMary Wilkinson\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nKilmacolm, Glasgow, Paisley, Fintry, Johnstone\n\n# PANEL 147  Stop Yer Ticklin', Jock!\n\nPrincipally known as a singer and songwriter, Harry Lauder was also very funny. He was the first British artiste to sell a million records and his songs, such as 'Keep Right on to the End of the Road', 'Roamin' in the Gloamin'' and 'A Wee Deoch-an-Doris' are still popular. Lauder came out of the music hall traditions and music has long been associated with Scottish comedy. Perhaps the greatest of Scottish comedians, Billy Connolly, began his performing life with the Humblebums and played the banjo. But there have been other strands. Chic Murray had a surreal brand of humour and Scottish sketch comedy with the likes of Rikki Fulton has been sublime. The Rev. I. M. Jolly is an immortal character. There appears to be such a phenomenon as Scottish humour and what is cheering is that, through the success of Connolly and others, it is understood worldwide.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Liz & Marilyn_\n\nBarbara Bell\n\nUrsula Doherty\n\nElizabeth Duke\n\nTessa Durham\n\nCatherine Jones\n\nMarilyn Nicholson\n\nDawn White\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nDalkeith, Dunbar\n\n# PANEL 148  The Rise of the Scottish National Party\n\nArguably the most dynamic force for change in post-war Scottish politics has been the Scottish National Party. It has grown from little more than an irrelevant fringe to become the majority party of government in the new Scottish Parliament. Its rise began with Winnie Ewing's stunning victory at the Hamilton by-election of 1967 and continued with the victories of 11 MPs in the 1974 general election. Ewing has been a central figure in the success of the SNP ever since, winning election after election. Her party forced serious consideration and eventual implementation of Scottish devolution and the resulting Scottish Parliament is now dominated by the SNP. The first referendum on the issue was held in 1979 but hi-jacked by a London Labour MP, George Cunningham. He successfully argued that, if majority of Scots voted yes, then it would have to reach 40 per cent of the electorate. In the event, there was a small majority but it fell short of that percentage. When Labour came to power in 1997, a second referendum was held and the result was an overwhelming majority, 74%, in favour of a Scottish Parliament.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Stitchers Ecosse_\n\nFrances Cohen\n\nRuth Currie\n\nFrances Gardiner\n\nRhona MacKenzie\n\nLinda Watson\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nLongniddry\n\n# PANEL 149  Scotland at the Movies\n\n'The name's Bond, James Bond.' Immortal words, uttered by Sean Connery, they established him as one of the most famous film actors of all time. Other Scots, such as Ewan McGregor, Brian Cox, Kelly Macdonald, Tom Conti and Tilda Swinton, have followed. Behind the camera, Alexander MacKendrick, Bill Forsyth and Lynne Ramsay have directed memorable work. And one of the most commercially successful films of all time, _Braveheart_ , told the story of a Scottish hero \u2013 William Wallace. Definitions can be elusive. Many films have been made in Scotland but can Alfred Hitchcock's wonderful _The 39 Steps_ be called a Scottish film? It was adapted from a novel by John Buchan, a Border Scot but directed by an Englishman and had English actors in lead roles. Even Peggy Ashcroft played a crofter's wife. Perhaps one of the very best was _Local Hero_ , written and directed by Bill Forsyth in 1983. It starred Americans, Peter Riegert and Burt Lancaster, but also Denis Lawson and Fulton Mackay. But what it portrayed was very Scottish \u2013 a Lowlander's use of imagined Highland attitudes to create a modern fairy tale. And, with its superb dialogue and acting and a haunting theme by Mark Knopfler, it was very successful.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Boatie Blest Stitchers_\n\nJackie Berg\n\nJohn Berg\n\nCarmel Daly\n\nJon Gerard\n\nBernie Goslin\n\nAgnes Greig\n\nMarion Harkin\n\nLucy Hyde\n\nShelly Jones\n\nGareth Jones\n\nJennifer Nesbit\n\nBill Peach\n\nMartine Robertson\n\nJoyce Souness\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nPort Seton\n\n# PANEL 150  Scotland's World Cup in Argentina\n\nDashed hopes and overblown optimism characterise one of the most calamitous episodes in Scotland's sporting history. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Scotland's football team had occasionally been inspired and, when they left for the 1978 World Cup in Argentina, crowds filled Hampden Park and lined the route to Prestwick Airport. They believed they could win the trophy. An opening defeat by Peru made that seem unlikely and a dismal draw against Iran meant that they had to defeat a brilliant Dutch team by three clear goals to avoid going out of the competition. Finally, playing the football of which they were capable, they beat Holland 3\u20132, with Archie Gemmill scoring one of the greatest goals of all time. From the ridiculous to the sublime, as so often with Scottish sport. At the time of writing, national football languishes in mediocrity, with Scotland ranked 50th in the world, one place below the Cape Verde Islands but above Panama. Fans must sometimes pine for the crazy, heady days of 1978 and marching with Ally's Army.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Allanwater Stitchers_\n\nAnn Gambles\n\nLibby Hughes\n\nFrances Rankin\n\nCatriona Whitton\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nDunblane\n\n# PANEL 151  The Miners' Strike\n\nThe Miners' Strike of 1984\u201385 seemed like the end of an era. In the 1970s, the National Union of Mineworkers had humbled a Conservative government but Margaret Thatcher was determined that history would not repeat itself. After stockpiling fuel and deploying police forces all over the country, she succeeded in forcing the miners back to work and pushing through a programme of closure. Secret papers recently released show that she was willing to involve the army in an industrial dispute. Thatcher was fortunate to face Arthur Scargill, a miners' leader who polarised opinion but whose predictions of the demise of deep mining turned out to be accurate. In Scotland, many famous collieries, such as Monktonhall, Bilston Glen, Polmaise, Seafield and Longannet, shut down in the year following the unsuccessful strike. There are no working deep mines left in Scotland and heavy industry has also been drastically reduced. The strike not only changed the face of Scottish industry, it also altered the course of Scottish politics and some would argue not for the better.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\nAgnes Greig\n\nPauline O'Brien\n\nLibby O'Brien\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nTranent, Prestonpans\n\n# PANEL 152  Gaelic Resurgent\n\nIn a very surprising announcement, the Conservative Secretary of State for Scotland, Malcolm Rifkind, announced the creation of a fund to pay for Gaelic television programmes. On 18 December 1989, he outlined a plan to provide \u00a38 million for programmes to be broadcast by the Scottish ITV companies, STV and Grampian. Two hundred hours of new programming was to be commissioned by the Gaelic Television Committee. It proved a massive stimulus and, with the success of the likes of _Machair_ , a Gaelic-language soap opera, it put Gaelic back at the centre of Scottish life. At the same time, Gaelic rock music was becoming more and more popular through the phenomenon of Runrig. Formed in Skye, this remarkable band developed a hybrid Gaelic\u2013English form of rock music which often used the narratives of Highland history as its subject matter. The songs were written by the brothers Rory and Calum Macdonald, and the lead singer, Donnie Munro, possessed a sublime voice. Others, such as Capercaillie, were also popular bands. But the twin impact of Gaelic television and Runrig prevented Gaelic from fading from the national agenda. The number of speakers is tiny but there appears to exist a political will to ensure survival of some sort.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\nChristine Haynes\n\nPauline Elwell\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nMorar\n\n# PANEL 153  Glasgow \u2013 European City of Culture\n\nReinvention lay at the heart of Glasgow's successful bid to become European City of Culture in 1990. An idea formed by the actress Melina Mercouri, the Greek Minister of Culture, and her French counterpart Jack Lang, the intention was to highlight both the diversity and commonality of European culture. Athens, Florence, Amsterdam, Berlin and Paris all preceded Glasgow and all were perhaps more obvious choices. But the old industrial heart of Scotland rose brilliantly to the challenge. All of the city's galleries and theatres took part and some were specially created. At a huge Harland & Wolff engine shed, a play called _The Ship_ recalled great industrial traditions. Written by Bill Bryden, it was enormously popular. The celebrations ran for a year and Glasgow capitalised on the exposure to promote itself as a tourist destination.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\nFiona Hamilton\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nEast Renfrewshire\n\n# PANEL 154  Dolly the Sheep\n\nBorn in July 1996, Dolly, the first mammal to be cloned, became the world's most famous sheep. At the Roslin Institute near Edinburgh, Ian Wilmut, Keith Campbell and their colleagues succeeded in creating Dolly from an adult somatic cell using the process of nuclear transfer. The donor cell was taken from a mammary gland and the birth of the sheep proved that a cell taken from a specific part of the body could be used to create a complete individual. When Ian Wilmut was asked where the name of Dolly came from her replied, 'Dolly is derived from a mammary gland cell and we couldn't think of a more impressive pair of glands than Dolly Parton's.' Having lived her whole life at the Roslin Institute and given birth to six lambs, Dolly died in 2003. Since she was born, many other large mammals, such as bulls and horses, have been successfully cloned.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\nYvonne Beale\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nOrkney\n\n# PANEL 155  The Scottish Parliament Reconvenes, 1999\n\nWhen Sheena Wellington sang Robert Burn's great lyric, 'A Man's a Man for A' That' at the opening of the Scottish Parliament in 1999, her beautiful, crystal voice caught the mood of the nation perfectly. All rejoiced on 1 July, Scotland's day. And setting party allegiances aside, all agreed that Winnie Ewing MSP should preside over the opening session. Her memorable words were:\n\nThe Scottish Parliament, adjourned on the 25th day of March in the year 1707, is hereby reconvened.\n\nAnd despite initial scepticism that Scotland was the most over-governed country in the world and the appalling cost overruns on the construction of the parliament building, the new institution has been a success. It is now difficult to imagine Scotland without MSPs and the debates at Holyrood. No doubt the Scottish Parliament will change, as all vibrant political institutions do, but it is unlikely to disappear as it did in 1707.\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Scissor Sisters_\n\nLinda Jobson\n\nIsobel Reilly\n\nDorie Wilkie\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nEskbank\n\n# PANEL 156 AND 157  Parliament of the Ancestors, Parliament for the Future\n\nHistory is about change and change always involves loss. But moments such as the opening of the Scottish Parliament may be seen as a pause and the freeze-frame of a tapestry panel is an attempt to catch that moment and hold it still. The Great Tapestry of Scotland may never end, may be added to over the coming times, but this version pauses with a Parliament of the Ancestors, the men and women who helped make Scotland, and a Parliament for the Future. Two panels show leaders \u2013 the four Presiding Officers and the four First Ministers who have held office since 1999. Other living Scots are there and our ancestors below and beside them. They are all flanked by the stitchers \u2013 the women who not only made the tapestry but also made a version of Scotland when they first picked up their needles and thread.\n\n**Panel 156 stitched by:**\n\n_Cupar Needles_\n\nIshbel Duncan\n\nLisbeth Kervell\n\nJoyce MacRae\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nCupar, Ladybank, St Andrews\n\n_Liberton Ladies_\n\nShirley Dawson\n\nSheila Farquhar\n\nDorothy Morrison\n\nSylvia Robertson\n\nAnn Weir\n\nMargaret Wilson\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nEdinburgh\n\n_Firth of Forth Stitchers_\n\nSheila Chambers\n\nCelia Mainland\n\nJenny Mayor\n\nIsabel Weaver\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nPrestonpans, Port Seton\n\nSylvia Robertson\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nPitlochry\n\n**Panel 157 stitched by:**\n\n_Hands Sewlo_\n\nSheila Chambers\n\nSheena Dolan\n\nCelia Mainland\n\nJenny Mayor\n\nIsabel Weaver\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nPrestonpans, Port Seton, Edinburgh\n\n_Strathmore Stitchers_\n\nDoris Black\n\nNancy Craig\n\nMary Daun\n\nValona Gouck\n\nSusan Greaves\n\nSheila Hawick\n\nNanette Henderson\n\nVal McDonald\n\nTessa Mendez\n\nIsobel Ovens\n\nAlison Robertson\n\nMargaret Stanford\n\nIssy Valentine\n\nIrene Ward\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nAlyth, Forfar, Letham, Guthrie, Broughty Ferry\n\nDoreen Scotland\n\nNan Duffy\n\nDilly Emslie\n\nMaggie Sturrock\n\nTeresaWallace\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nEdinburgh\n\n_Sewster Sisters_\n\nAnnabelle Broadhurst\n\nAlexa Dewar\n\nCatherine Gerrard\n\nWillie Grieve\n\nFanny Grieve\n\nJane Jowitt\n\nIrene Martin\n\nNorma McCaskill\n\nKaren Skilling\n\nElspeth Turner\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nEdinburgh, Lasswade\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\n_Strathendrick Stitchers_\n\nMargaret Burgess\n\nLyn Dunachie\n\nMargaret Gibb\n\nMargaret Harrison\n\nChristina McLachlan\n\nMoira Murray\n\nCarol Omand\n\nMorag Proven\n\nSusan Rhind\n\nBette Scott\n\nMarion Tyson\n\nPam Waller\n\nHeather Wright\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nGlasgow, Mingavie, Fintry, Bearsden, Drymen, Blanefield, Killearn\n\n**Panel stitched by:**\n\nMeg Porteous\n\n**Stitched in:**\n\nEdinburgh\n\n# Endnotes\n\n. Panel to be completed after publication.\n\n. Panel to be completed after publication.\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}}
+{"text":"\n# **Making European Breads**\n\n**Glenn Andrews**\n\n## **CONTENTS**\n\n**Introduction**\n\n**Basic Breadmaking Techniques**\n\n**Using the Best Ingredients**\n\n**Recipes for European Breads**\n\nGrambrot \u2014 Hearty German Wheat Bread\n\nSicilian Semolina Bread\n\nPumpernickel\n\nKatie's Bulgur Bread\n\nLimpa \u2014 Swedish Rye Bread\n\nBasque Sheepherders' Bread\n\nFrench Bread\n\nCiabatta\n\nFocaccia\n\nAlsatian Mixed-Grain Bread\n\nPortuguese Sweet Bread\n\nIrish Soda Bread\n\nChristiania Kringle\n\nBrioche Bread\n\nGerman Farmhouse Graham Bread\n\n**Using European Breads **\n\nBruschetta\n\nHerbed Bread\n\nGarlic Bread\n\nAmerican Fondue\n\nThe Alpine Sandwich\n\nCroute au Fromage\n\nPanzanella \u2014 Italian Bread Salad\n\nOyster Loaf \u2014 A Pacifier\n\nNew Orleans Bread Pudding\n\nProvence Spread\n\n## **Introduction**\n\nThe breads of Europe are wonderful! They're honest, healthful, and greatly loved around the world. These days you can find a variety of European breads not only at bakeries but also at your local grocery store.\n\nYou'll find two important chapters immediately following this introduction. The first gives detailed instructions for basic bread-making techniques, and the second describes the ingredients used. Please read these sections carefully before you begin, and refer back to them as you bake (unless you're already a semipro at bread making) \u2014 the recipe instructions will assume that you know the information contained in the techniques section (below).\n\nAfter the actual bread recipes, you'll find some great ideas for using what you've made \u2014 Bruschetta, Garlic Gorgonzola Bread, Alpine Sandwiches, American Fondue, Italian Bread Salad, and many others.\n\nHave fun! \n\n## **Basic Breadmaking Techniques**\n\nMany of the same techniques are used for making different kinds of yeast breads. The most basic steps include proofing, combining the ingredients, kneading, rising, shaping, baking, and cooling.\n\n**Proofing.** Proofing has two functions: It activates the yeast, and it's a way to be sure that the yeast is still good (it may have expired while on the store or kitchen shelf). To proof your yeast, stir it into warm (95\u2013110\u00b0F) water, usually along with a little sugar (the exact amount will be specified in each recipe). Allow the mixture to sit for five minutes, or until it is foamy. If the mixture does not foam after five minutes, then you know that your yeast is no longer active \u2014 throw it out and start again with a fresh supply.\n\n**Combining the ingredients.** Mixing is done differently for different breads, so refer to the individual recipes for complete instructions. However, if you are using a food processor to combine the ingredients and knead the dough, put all of the dry ingredients into the bowl first and mix them well before adding and processing the other ingredients.\n\n**Kneading.** Here's where you finish up the combining process and give your bread texture. Many bread bakers do this in a food processor, pulsing off and on until a nice dough is formed, then giving the dough a final turn or two by hand.\n\nTraditional kneading is done by hand on a floured board. Keeping your hands well-floured, form the dough into a pancake shape. Use the heels of your hands to push the dough away from you. Then fold the dough over and rotate it a quarter turn. Keep doing this, adding more flour to the board and your hands as necessary, until the dough is elastic and has lost its stickiness. A proper dough has been accurately described as feeling like a baby's bottom! (Doughs containing rye flours, however, will always seem a little sticky.)\n\n**Rising.** After the dough has been kneaded, place it in a greased bowl and rotate it until the dough is greased on all sides. Cover the bowl with a damp towel and let it sit in a warm place (between 80\u00b0 and 85\u00b0F, preferably) until the dough has roughly doubled in size (usually about an hour). A gas oven with a pilot light is often the perfect temperature for rising. If you have an electric oven, maintaining the proper temperature may be difficult. The best way to achieve the proper temperature for rising is to keep the heat in the oven off, boil a pan of water and place it on the lower rack of the oven, and put the covered bowl on the higher rack.\n\nThe dough of yeast breads will often need to rise more than once. See the recipe instructions for the appropriate number of rising times.\n\n**Punching down.** Punching down is the more emphatic term for deflating risen dough. Just bang your fist into the center of the risen dough \u2014 this is fun! A thorough punching down also involves turning the dough out of the bowl onto a floured board and kneading it just a few turns.\n\n**Shaping.** Before it can be baked, the dough needs to be shaped into a loaf form. For an elongated loaf, flatten the dough into a rectangle; the shorter end represents the length of the bread you want or the pan you're using. Roll up the dough tightly from this short end, then pinch the ends and tuck them under.\n\n**Baking.** Breads can be baked on baking sheets or, if they're in pans, right on the oven's racks. But, especially for French bread, focaccia, or any other free-form bread, it really is nice to use a baking stone, which approximates an authentic baker's brick oven. These are rather expensive, though. You might want to try an easy substitute: Purchase some unglazed terra-cotta or quarry tiles from a store that sells ceramic tile. They're usually inexpensive, and come in 6-inch squares \u2014 if you buy nine of them, you'll have an area 18 inches by 18 inches, about the size of a baking stone, and you'll have spent about one-sixth as much money. Use these tiles to line a regular oven rack and bake your bread on top of them.\n\n**Testing for doneness.** The classic way to find out if a loaf has baked long enough is to remove it from the pan and rap it with your knuckles. If the bread sounds hollow, it's done.\n\n**Finishing the bread.** Sometimes it's nice to rub the top of a warm baked loaf with a little soft butter or milk. With or without that final touch, put the finished loaf on a rack until it's completely cool. If the bread was baked in a bread pan, let it cool in the pan for about 15 minutes before removing the loaf and setting it on the rack.\n\n**Keeping bread on hand.** When the bread is thoroughly cool, put it into a plastic bag. Keep it at room temperature for immediate use or freeze it for later use. Bread can be frozen and thawed any number of times \u2014 but if you want the bread sliced, it's best to do so before you freeze it.\n\n## **Using the Best Ingredients**\n\nIt's truly amazing how such a limited number of ingredients can turn out so many different \u2014 and wonderful \u2014 breads. The quality of ingredients you use can make the difference between spectacular breads and those that are just ho-hum. So go for the best!\n\n**Flour.** Ideally, you should try to find whole-grain flours (including cornmeal) that are freshly milled. If you're lucky, you'll have a local food co-op or health-food store that grinds different types of flour in-store and keeps them refrigerated. Otherwise, buy the best brands you can find. White flour (also called all-purpose) can be unpredictable. If possible, use flour that is labeled bread flour, which will be especially rich in gluten, an important ingredient for high-rising breads. Other than bread flour, by far the best flour to use is unbleached white, but measuring the proper amount to use is sometimes difficult. Start by using a little less than the recipe calls for, then keep adding more, spoonful by spoonful, until you get a proper dough (see page 3 for a description of a proper dough).\n\n**Yeast.** Long ago, yeast was only available in cake form. Today, you'll find cakes of yeast occasionally, but usually what you'll see is called active, or dry, yeast. You can buy it in packets from your local grocery store or in bulk at health-food stores and co-ops. There's also \"Rapid Rise\" yeast, which seems very vigorous. (Ignore the package instructions and use it just as you would any other dry yeast.) One package of dry yeast contains about 2\u00bc teaspoons.\n\n**Liquid.** Use the liquid called for in the recipe instructions \u2014 but if you're feeling inventive, you can experiment with other liquids such as beer or orange juice. Water is the most common liquid used in European breads, but be sure it's good clean water. If you have to buy bottled springwater to ensure purity, it's worth the cost to avoid any \"off\" tastes that impure water may impart to your finished bread.\n\nIt's also important that the liquid used in the proofing process (see page 2) be at the proper temperature. If it's too cool, the bread making will be slowed down. If it's too hot, the yeast will be killed and your bread won't rise properly. The temperature you want the liquid to be is between 95\u00b0 and 110\u00b0F, just a comfortable lukewarm.\n\n**Sweetener**. Yeast thrives on sugar, so most breads contain at least a little bit of it, usually added when the yeast is proofing. Honey can be substituted for small amounts \u2014 up to a tablespoon \u2014 of cane sugar, but on no account should you use artificial sweeteners!\n\n**Fat.** If butter is called for, use just that \u2014 butter. Margarine is not suitable for bread making (though I have heard that it's widely used in Denmark in their pastries). If it's olive oil that's called for, use the extra-virgin kind, which is the purest and has the best taste.\n\n**Salt.** Any salt will do, but sea salt is especially lovely. Don't skimp here \u2014 undersalted bread is terrible, and the amount of salt that actually ends up in each slice of bread is quite small.\n\n## **Converting Recipe Measurements to Metric**\n\nUse the following formulas for converting U.S. measurements to metric. Since the conversions are not exact, it's important to convert the measurements for all of the ingredients to maintain the same proportions as the original recipe.\n\nWhile standard metric measurements for dry ingredients are given as units of mass, U.S. measurements are given as units of volume. Therefore, the conversions listed above for dry ingredients are given in the metric equivalent of volume.\n\n## **Recipes for European Breads**\n\nThere are so many recipes for European breads that it would be impossible to list them all in one place. Here is a sampling of some of my favorite varieties \u2014 experiment at will with the flavoring ingredients to create new and wonderful variations of some time-honored recipes.\n\n**GRAMBROT**\n\n**_Hearty German Wheat Bread_**\n\n_This is an old German recipe that suits today's tastes \u2014 there's no fat and no sugar!_\n\n**1 package dry yeast**\n\n**1\u00bd cups warm water**\n\n**1 teaspoon salt**\n\n**3 cups whole-wheat flour**\n\n**1 cup white flour**\n\n1. Proof the yeast in the warm water. Use oil or nonfat margarine spread to grease the inside of a large bowl.\n\n2. In another large bowl, combine the salt, whole-wheat flour, and white flour. Add the proofed yeast mixture and mix well until you've achieved a proper dough.\n\n3. Knead the dough for 10 minutes on a floured surface, then place it in the greased bowl, rotating the dough until it is greased all over. Cover the bowl with a moist cloth, set it in a warm place, and allow it to rise until roughly doubled.\n\n4. Punch down the dough, then shape it into a loaf and place it in a roughly 8 x 4-inch bread pan. Set in a warm place to rise. Preheat the oven to 375\u00b0F.\n\n5. When the loaf has roughly doubled in size, place it in the oven. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes. Remove from the oven and set on a rack to cool.\n\n**SICILIAN SEMOLINA BREAD**\n\n_The flour you want here is the very fine, high-gluten semolina used for making pasta. It's as soft to the touch as bath powder, and makes a yellowish, dense (but light), quite engaging bread._\n\n**1 package dry yeast**\n\n**1 cup warm water**\n\n**1 teaspoon honey**\n\n**1\u00bd cups semolina flour**\n\n**2 teaspoons salt**\n\n**1\u20132 cups white flour**\n\n**1 tablespoon olive oil**\n\n**Egg wash (1 egg beaten with 1 tablespoon water)**\n\n**\u00bc cup sesame seeds (optional)**\n\n1. In a large bowl, proof the yeast in the warm water with the honey. Grease the surface of a large bowl with butter or oil.\n\n2. Stir in first the semolina flour and the salt, then I cup of the white flour.\n\n3. Place \u00be cup of the white flour on a bread board. Place the dough onto the board and knead the flour into it, adding more as necessary. Then put the dough in the greased bowl, cover, and let it rise until it has roughly doubled in size.\n\n4. Punch down the dough and allow it to rise again. Shape into one large round loaf or two oval ones. Use the olive oil to grease a baking sheet. Place your bread on this. Cover loosely and set it in a warm place to rise. Preheat the oven to 375\u00b0F.\n\n5. Let the dough rise only until it's almost doubled (about half an hour). Slash diagonally, two or three times per loaf, across the top(s). Then brush with the egg wash and sprinkle on the sesame seeds, pressing them in lightly. Bake for 35 to 40 minutes, then remove and cool on a rack.\n\n**PUMPERNICKEL**\n\n_Slices of pumpernickel spread with sweet butter were my favorite snack when I was young. Later I learned that most pumpernickel contains cocoa \u2014 now I realize why I love it so much._\n\n**1 package dry yeast**\n\n**3\/4 cup warm water**\n\n**\u00bc cup molasses**\n\n**1\u00bd teaspoons salt**\n\n**1 tablespoon dry cocoa**\n\n**2 teaspoons caraway seeds (optional)**\n\n**1 cup rye flour**\n\n**1 cup white flour**\n\n**1 cup whole-wheat flour**\n\n**2 tablespoons cornmeal**\n\n**Egg wash (1 egg beaten with 2 tablespoons flour)**\n\n1. Proof the yeast in the warm water with the molasses. Grease the surface of a large bowl with butter or oil.\n\n2. In a large bowl, combine the salt, cocoa, caraway seeds (if you're using them), and rye flour. Add the yeast mixture and mix well.\n\n3. In another bowl, combine the white flour and the whole-wheat flour. Add about 1\u00bd cups of this mixture to the rye-flour mixture and mix well until you've achieved a proper dough.\n\n4. Turn out the dough onto a floured board and knead in the rest of the white and wheat flour mixture. Place in the greased bowl and allow the dough to rise, covered, until it has roughly doubled in size \u2014 this may take an hour or even two.\n\n5. Punch down the dough and let it rise again. Then shape the dough into a round loaf. Sprinkle the cornmeal on a baking sheet, place the loaf on it, cover, and set it in a warm place to rise. Preheat the oven to 375\u00b0F.\n\n6. When the loaf has roughly doubled in size, cut across its top in two or three places with a single-edged razor-sharp knife. Brush with the egg wash. Bake for 40 to 45 minutes.\n\n**KATIE'S BULGUR BREAD**\n\n_Here's a robust and tasty middle-European type of bread, with a few additions divined by a clever cook._\n\n**1 package dry yeast**\n\n**I cup warm water**\n\n**1 cup bulgur wheat**\n\n**3 tablespoons butter**\n\n**1\u00bd cups hot broth (chicken, beef, or vegetable)**\n\n**1\u00bc cups cold water**\n\n**2 teaspoons salt**\n\n**\u00bc cup honey**\n\n**\u00bc cup molasses**\n\n**1 teaspoon caraway seeds**\n\n**3 cups whole-wheat flour**\n\n**3 cups white flour**\n\n1. Proof the yeast in the warm water. Grease the surface of a large bowl with butter or oil, and grease two 8 x 4-inch bread pans.\n\n2. In a large bowl, combine the bulgur wheat and butter. Bring the broth to a boil, stir it in, and let the mixture sit for half an hour. Add the cold water, salt, honey, molasses, caraway seeds, and proofed yeast. Mix well.\n\n3. Now stir in the whole-wheat and white flours. Mix until you've achieved a proper dough, then remove from the bowl and knead well.\n\n4. Place the dough in the greased bowl, cover, and let it rise. Then remove the dough from the bowl, punch it down, and shape it into two large loaves. Put the loaves into the greased bread pans and set them in a warm place to rise. Preheat the oven to 375\u00b0F.\n\n5. When the loaves have risen so that the dough reaches the tops of the pans, place them in the oven. Bake for 40 to 45 minutes, remove from the oven, and allow them to cool on a rack.\n\n**LIMPA**\n\n**_Swedish Rye Bread_**\n\n_Limpa, a rye bread from Sweden, is extraordinarily good. The aromatic touch of orange peel and spice makes it a bread you won't soon forget._\n\n**2 packages dry yeast**\n\n**\u00bc cup warm water**\n\n**\u2153 cup brown sugar**\n\n**\u00bc cup molasses**\n\n**4 tablespoons butter, cut in 4 pieces**\n\n**1 tablespoon salt**\n\n**Grated zest of 1 large orange**\n\n**2 teaspoons anise seeds**\n\n**1 teaspoon fennel seeds (optional)**\n\n**2 teaspoons caraway seeds (optional)**\n\n**13\/4 cups boiling water**\n\n**3 cups rye flour**\n\n**3 cups white flour (or a little less)**\n\n**3 tablespoons milk**\n\n1. Proof the yeast in the warm water along with a pinch of the brown sugar you'll be using later. Grease the surface of a large bowl with butter or oil, and lightly grease a large baking sheet.\n\n2. In another large bowl, combine the molasses, the rest of the brown sugar, butter, salt, orange zest, and seeds. Add the boiling water and stir. When this mixture cools to lukewarm (around 100\u00b0F), add the proofed yeast mixture and mix well. Then stir in the flour, beginning with all of the rye flour, then adding the white until you have achieved a proper dough.\n\n3. Knead the dough for about 10 minutes, adding the rest of the white flour as needed. Put the dough into the buttered or oiled bowl, turning it so that all sides will be greased. Cover the bowl with a damp cloth and set it in a warm place.\n\n4. When the dough has doubled in size, punch it down, cover, and let it rise again.\n\n5. When the dough has doubled in size again, remove it from the bowl. Shape it into two oval loaves, each about 12 to 14 inches long. Place the loaves on the lightly greased baking sheet. Cover and place in a warm spot to rise. (Don't place the loaves too close together, as they will spread.) Preheat the oven to 375\u00b0F.\n\n6. When the loaves have fully risen, slash their tops diagonally in several places, French-Bread style. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes. Remove from the oven, brush the tops with the milk, and allow them to cool on a rack.\n\n**BASQUE SHEEPHERDERS' BREAD**\n\n_The Basque country, high in the Pyrenees between Spain and France, is the ancestral home of this monumental loaf, but it's also made by the Basque sheep-herders of the American West. One loaf will feed \u2014 and make happy \u2014 a good-size crowd!_\n\n**3 cups water**\n\n**\u00bd cup (1 stick) butter**\n\n**\u2154 cup sugar**\n\n**1 tablespoon salt**\n\n**2 packages dry yeast**\n\n**8\u00bd cups white flour**\n\n1. In a large saucepan, combine the water, butter, sugar, and salt. Heat gently just until the butter melts. Cool to lukewarm, then add the yeast and let it proof for 10 minutes.\n\n2. Mix in 5 cups of the flour, then turn out the dough onto a floured board. Knead in the remaining flour. Form the dough into a ball, place it in the greased bowl, and let it rise, covered, until doubled.\n\n3. Punch down the dough and form it into a ball.\n\n4. Let the dough rest while you prepare the pan. Use a 10-inch Dutch oven. Grease it well, including its cover. Put a circle of foil in the bottom of the pan and grease that, too. Then put in your ball of dough. Put on the lid and set in a warm place to rise. Preheat the oven to 375\u00b0F.\n\n5. Let the dough rise until it pushes the lid up about \u00bd inch. Then bake, with the lid still on, for 12 or 13 minutes. Remove the lid and bake for another 30 to 35 minutes. Turn out onto a rack, remove the foil, and let it cool.\n\n**FRENCH BREAD**\n\n_This is as close as you can come to the perfect bread turned out by French bakeries. It's the large, fat loaf used most often for Garlic Bread (see page 25). I make this in a food processor, putting the flour and salt into the bowl, then adding the yeast mixture followed by the combination of the rest of the ingredients._\n\n_Many recipes for French Bread contain no fat, but the loaves made that way turn stale in about half a day._\n\n**1\u00bd packages (or a scant 3\u00bd teaspoons) dry yeast**\n\n**\u00bc cup warm water**\n\n**\u00bc teaspoon sugar**\n\n**1 cup cold water**\n\n**2 tablespoons butter**\n\n**3\u00bd cups white flour**\n\n**1 teaspoon salt**\n\n**2 tablespoons cornmeal**\n\n1. Proof the yeast in the warm water along with the sugar. Grease the surface of a large bowl with butter or oil.\n\n2. In a small saucepan, mix the cold water and the butter and slowly heat until the butter has melted.\n\n3. In a large bowl, combine the flour, salt, proofed yeast, and melted butter and water. Mix until you have achieved a proper dough. Then knead well, form the dough into a ball, and allow it to rise, covered, in the greased bowl.\n\n4. Punch down the dough, knead it briefly, and let it rise again in the greased bowl.\n\n5. Punch down the dough again and form it into a loaf about 13 inches long. Sprinkle the cornmeal on a baking sheet. Place the loaf on the baking sheet and set it in a warm place to rise. Preheat the oven to 450\u00b0F.\n\n6. When the loaf has roughly doubled in size, use a very sharp knife or a single-edged razor blade to cut three long diagonal slashes in its top. Slide the loaf onto tiles, if you're using them, or put the baking sheet in the preheated oven. Immediately throw 4 ice cubes onto the oven floor. (This will create the steam that would be present in a French baker's oven.)\n\n7. After 5 minutes, throw in 4 more ice cubes. Ten minutes after that, turn the oven down to 400\u00b0F and bake for about 20 minutes more. Then remove the loaf from the oven and allow to cool on a rack.\n\n**Boules:** A boule is simply a round loaf of French bread. Make French Bread dough as directed, letting it rise twice. Then divide the dough in two. One at a time, form the halves into round balls. You want to create a tight skin on each ball, so stretch it tight in all directions, tucking it under as you go. Slash an X in the top of each loaf and bake as directed.\n\n**CIABATTA**\n\n_Most of the Italian bread you see in this country is pretty indistinguishable from French Bread, but not this one! Olive oil makes the difference and gives it a subtle tang. Note also that there's only one rising._\n\n**1 package dry yeast**\n\n**1 teaspoon sugar**\n\n**I cup warm water**\n\n**3\u00bd cups white flour**\n\n**\u00bd teaspoon salt**\n\n**\u2154 cup olive oil (plus a bit more for the top of the loaf)**\n\n1. Proof the yeast with the sugar in the warm water. Grease a baking sheet.\n\n2. In a large bowl, combine the flour and salt. Add the olive oil and the yeast mixture and mix well until you achieve a proper dough.\n\n3. Knead, but not as thoroughly as with other breads \u2014 stop when the dough is still a little rough. Form it into an oval loaf and place it on the greased baking sheet. Coat the top lightly with more olive oil. Cover and set it in a warm place to rise. Preheat the oven to 400\u00b0F.\n\n4. Allow the dough to rise for about an hour. Then sprinkle the top of the loaf with flour. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes, remove from the oven, and allow it to cool on a rack.\n\n**FOCACCIA**\n\n_Focaccia, from Italy, is an example of the exceptional European breads that we have recently discovered in this country. It's a flat bread often served these days in upscale restaurants. Here's the basic recipe, followed by a few variations. The dough also makes a perfect pizza crust._\n\n_This amount of dough makes two Focaccias. You can, if you wish, freeze half of it, before shaping, for future use._\n\n_I once ran out of regular unbleached white flour when making this, and substituted self-rising flour for_ H _cup of it. The result was exceptional!_\n\n**1 package active dry yeast**\n\n**1 \u2154 cups warm water**\n\n**2 teaspoons sugar**\n\n**4 cups unbleached white flour (or 3\u00bd cups unbleached white flour and \u00bd cup self-rising flour)**\n\n**1 teaspoon salt**\n\n**8 tablespoons olive oil**\n\n**Kosher or coarse sea salt**\n\n1. Proof the yeast in the water along with the sugar.\n\n2. In a large bowl, combine the flour and salt. Slowly stir in the proofed yeast and 2 tablespoons of the olive oil. Knead the dough on a floured board for just a few minutes until it's satiny, then cover it, place it in a warm spot, and let it rise for 40 minutes.\n\n3. Punch down the dough, then divide it into two parts. Form each into a flat disk, then stretch each one with your hands into a 12-inch circle. Put onto one or two baking sheets. Cover and set them in a warm place to rise. Preheat the oven to 425\u00b0F.\n\n4. Let the dough rise for 30 to 45 minutes. Then \"dimple\" the dough by pressing gently all over it with your fingertips. Drizzle on the remaining olive oil, then sprinkle lightly with the Kosher salt. Bake for about 20 minutes, or until light brown. Serve warm, cut into wedges. Some people also brush \u00bd cup of melted butter over the Focaccias the moment they come out of the oven. This will disappear into the bread after just a few minutes.\n\n**Rosemary Focaccia:** Before baking the Focaccia, combine \u00bd cup olive oil, 2 tablespoons minced fresh rosemary, and 3 teaspoons minced garlic, mix well and drizzle on top of the dough. Don't try this with dry rosemary \u2014 there just isn't enough moisture in the top-ping or enough time to reconstitute it.\n\n**Sage Focaccia:** Add 2 tablespoons minced fresh sage to the dough as you knead it.\n\n**ALSATIAN MIXED-GRAIN BREAD**\n\n_As the Alsatians have done for many years, here you can add varying combinations of ingredients. Make a three-grain bread, a five-grain bread, or whatever suits your taste._\n\n**1 package dry yeast**\n\n**2 cups water (or 1 cup water and 1 cup milk)**\n\n**2 tablespoons honey**\n\n**1\u00bd cups (total) of any combination of: cornmeal, barley flour (or pearl barley, soaked or parboiled), raw oats, millet, triticale, quinoa, rice flour, or soaked or sprouted wheat berries \u2014 whatever you want! You can also try using an all-natural mixed-grain cereal from a health food store or co-op.**\n\n**1 tablespoon salt**\n\n**2 cups whole-wheat flour**\n\n**3 cups white flour**\n\n1. In a large bowl, proof the yeast in the warm water with the honey. Grease the surface of a large bowl with butter or oil, and grease two 8\u00bd x 4H-inch bread pans.\n\n2. Stir the combination of grains and the salt into the proofed yeast. Then add the whole-wheat flour and 2 cups of the white flour. Turn out the dough onto a floured board and knead in the rest of the white flour.\n\n3. Let the dough rise in the greased bowl, covered, until doubled. Punch down. Shape it into two loaves, place in the greased bread pans, and set them in a warm place to rise. Preheat the oven to 350\u00b0F.\n\n4. When the loaves have roughly doubled again, place them in the oven and bake for about 1 hour. When done, place them on a rack to cool.\n\n**PORTUGUESE SWEET BREAD**\n\n_If you live in New England, you can probably buy Portuguese sweet bread in a supermarket, since so many Portuguese sailors and their families ended up living there. (Your own will be better, though.) It's not the sort of sweet bread you might expect \u2014 just a light and delicious egg bread._\n\n**1 package dry yeast**\n\n**\u00bc cup lukewarm water**\n\n**\u00bd cup plus 1 teaspoon sugar**\n\n**4 tablespoons soft butter**\n\n**\u00bc cup warm milk**\n\n**2 eggs, lightly beaten**\n\n**1\u00bd teaspoons salt**\n\n**2\u00bc cups (or more) white flour**\n\n1. In a large bowl, proof yeast in the warm water with 1 teaspoon of the sugar. Grease the surface of a large bowl with butter.\n\n2. In a small bowl, combine the butter with the warm milk. Then add the rest of the sugar and mix well. Add this to the yeast mixture and stir well. Reserve a small portion (about one-quarter of the total amount) of the beaten eggs and add the rest, along with the salt, to the mixture. Mix well.\n\n3. Then add 2 cups of the flour, 1 cup at a time, kneading it in with your hands, right in the bowl. Move the dough to a floured board and keep on kneading, adding more flour as needed, until the dough is smooth and elastic. Place the dough in the buttered bowl, cover, and allow it to rise until doubled.\n\n4. Punch down the dough and shape into a ball. Put it into a 9-inch buttered ovenproof skillet or a large bread pan. Cover (but not tightly) and set it in a warm place to rise. Preheat the oven to 350\u00b0F.\n\n5. When the dough has risen, brush the top of the loaf with the remaining beaten egg. Bake for about half an hour, remove from the oven, and allow it to cool on a rack.\n\n**IRISH SODA BREAD**\n\n_This is probably the easiest bread you could ever make. Luckily, it's also one of the best, with a smooth texture and great taste._\n\n**4 cups white flour**\n\n**1 tablespoon salt**\n\n**I teaspoon baking powder**\n\n**1 teaspoon baking soda**\n\n**\u00bd cup raisins or dried currants (optional)**\n\n**1\u00bd\u20132 cups buttermilk (or use regular milk combined with 2 teaspoons white or cider vinegar)**\n\n1. Preheat the oven to 375\u00b0F. Butter a baking sheet or cake pan.\n\n2. Mix together the dry ingredients, then stir in the raisins or currants (if you're using them). Add enough buttermilk to make a soft, kneadable dough.\n\n3. Turn out the dough onto a floured board and knead it briefly until you have a proper dough. Shape it into a round loaf and place it on the baking sheet or cake pan. Cut a cross in the top of the loaf with a single-edged razor blade or very sharp, floured knife.\n\n4. Bake for 35 to 40 minutes. Remove from the oven and allow it to cool on a rack.\n\n**Irish Whole-Wheat Soda Bread:** Follow the same recipe as for Irish Soda Bread, above, but use 3 cups whole-wheat flour and 1 cup white flour instead of the 4 cups white flour, and change the amount of baking soda to I teaspoon.\n\n**CHRISTIANIA KRINGLE**\n\n_A friend with a Danish background gave me the recipe for this good-anytime-of-day treat. It's a piecrust sort of dough, topped with a cream puff pastry and lightly glazed and flavored with almond. You could serve it for dessert, but it's at its shining best for breakfast or with morning coffee or afternoon tea._\n\n**_For the pastry base:_**\n\n**\u00bd cup ( 1 stick) butter**\n\n**1 cup white flour**\n\n**1 tablespoon cold water**\n\n**_For the cream puff topping:_**\n\n**\u00bd cup ( 1 stick) butter**\n\n**1 cup water**\n\n**1 cup white flour**\n\n**3 eggs**\n\n**\u00bd teaspoon almond extract**\n\n**_For the almond glaze:_**\n\n**1 cup confectioner's sugar**\n\n**1 tablespoon soft butter**\n\n**\u00bd teaspoon almond extract**\n\n**Milk (enough to make the glaze spreadable)**\n\n1. **The pastry base.** Cut the butter into the white flour, add the cold water, and mix well. Pat the pastry dough out onto a baking sheet, making two long strips, each 3 inches wide and roughly 16 inches long.\n\n2. **The cream puff topping.** Preheat the oven to 400\u00b0F. In a medium saucepan, combine the butter and the water and heat until boiling. Remove from the heat and add the white flour; stir until smooth. Add the eggs 1 at a time, beating after each addition, then stir in the almond extract. Spread the topping over the pastry strips. Bake for 45 to 50 minutes.\n\n3. **The almond glaze.** Combine the confectioner's sugar, soft butter, almond extract, and enough milk to make the mixture spreadable. Frost the strips with the glaze while they're still warm. Serve at room temperature, cut into crosswise slices about 1 inch wide.\n\n**BRIOCHE BREAD**\n\n_The brioche dough of France can be made into a marvelous loaf bread. A food processor makes this remarkably simple._\n\n**1 package dry yeast**\n\n**\u00bc cup warm milk**\n\n**1 tablespoon sugar**\n\n**2\u00bd cups white flour**\n\n**1\u00bd teaspoons salt**\n\n**\u00bc pound cold butter, cut into 8 pieces**\n\n**2 eggs**\n\n1. Proof the yeast in the warm milk with the sugar. Grease the surface of a large bowl with butter or oil, and grease a 5-cup loaf pan (a Pyrex bread pan is this size).\n\n2. Combine the flour and salt in a food processor bowl. Buzz for a few seconds. Add the butter and process until the mixture looks like coarse cornmeal. Pour in the proofed yeast and process very briefly. Then add the eggs and process until the dough forms a ball.\n\n3. Remove the dough from the food processor bowl and place it in the greased bowl. Let it rise, covered, until it's doubled in size (about 1\u00bd hours).\n\n4. Punch down the dough, knead it a time or two, and shape it into a loaf. Put into the greased bread pan, cover, and set it in a warm place to rise. Preheat the oven to 350\u00b0F.\n\n5. Allow the loaf to rise until it has roughly doubled in size (about 1 hour). Then place it in the oven and bake for about 40 minutes. Remove from the oven and allow it to cool on a rack.\n\n**GERMAN FARMHOUSE GRAHAM BREAD**\n\n_There's something about this good bread that seems to give you instant strength and energy \u2014 especially if you make it with freshly ground whole-wheat or graham flour._\n\n**1 cup whole-wheat or graham flour**\n\n**1 cup white flour**\n\n**1 teaspoon baking soda**\n\n**1 tablespoon sugar**\n\n**\u00bd teaspoon salt**\n\n**1 cup milk mixed with 1 teaspoon vinegar**\n\n**1 egg, lightly beaten**\n\n**\u00bc cup molasses**\n\n1. Preheat the oven to 325\u00b0F. Butter a 5-cup loaf pan.\n\n2. In a large bowl, combine the wheat or graham flour, white flour, baking soda, sugar, and salt. Stir in the milk, egg, and molasses. Mix well and put it into the loaf pan.\n\n3. Bake for 1 hour, then remove from oven. Allow it to cool on a rack.\n\n## **Using European Breads**\n\nEuropean breads are the foundation of many a wonderful dish. Try any of the following recipes using your homemade European bread for mouthwatering treats.\n\n**BRUSCHETTA**\n\n_In Italy, this is the only garlic bread served. These little toasts are just right as an appetizer or to serve with soup or salad. You can make them with slices of large French bread, but they're at their best when made from baguettes, sliced on the diagonal._\n\n**Bread**\n\n**Garlic cloves, sliced in half**\n\n**Extra-virgin olive oil**\n\n**Salt and freshly ground black pepper**\n\n1. Slice your bread however you prefer \u2014 from \u00bd to 1\u00bd inches thick. Toast (preferably over charcoal, if you can).\n\n2. While the toast is still warm, rub each slice with the cut face of the garlic cloves. Drizzle on quite a bit of extra-virgin olive oil, and top with salt and pepper to taste.\n\n**Variation 1:** The Italians often cut a tomato in half and rub the cut side into the toasts, along with the garlic. The garlic and tomato disappear into the bread.\n\n**Variation 2:** You can also mince the garlic and finely dice the tomatoes and just spread them on the toasts. A little chopped fresh basil is a fine addition (and traditional) here, too.\n\n**American Bruschetta:** In typical fashion, Americans have fun with their bruschetta. We put anything and everything on it \u2014 cheese, capers, sun-dried tomatoes, and more.\n\n**HERBED BREAD**\n\n_Herbed Bread is a good place to start your exploration of the wonderful world of long-loaved bread. Not only is it good on its own, but it can serve as a base for many other variations._\n\n**1 tablespoon butter (or more)**\n\n**1 tablespoon olive oil (or more)**\n\n**Fresh or dried herbs (any combination)**\n\n**1 loaf French Bread (see page 14)**\n\n1. In a small saucepan, melt the butter. You may need to use more butter and oil for larger loaves of bread.\n\n2. In a small bowl, mix together the melted butter and olive oil. Then add herbs to the mix. Which ones? How much? It doesn't matter! You can use any herbs you want (fresh or dried), and in any amounts. Some days I'm in the mood for just tarragon; other times it's a mixture of tarragon and rosemary; often it's basil or oregano with a liberal sprinkling of fresh Italian parsley chopped finely.\n\n3. Cover a baking sheet with foil. Slice a loaf of French Bread lengthwise, as though you were making a giant sub, and lay it flat on the foil.\n\n4. Spread the herbed mixture onto the open face of the bread. Just before you're ready to eat, put the baking sheet about 3 inches beneath the broiler unit in your stove. Broil until the edges just start to brown. Now close the bread back up so it looks like a loaf again and slice through it at 1- to 1H-inch intervals. Or, if you'd rather, you can slice without closing up the loaf. It's up to you.\n\n**Cheese Bread:** You can make a fantastic Cheese Bread by top-ping an Herbed Bread creation with your choice of cheese. Try using grated or shredded Parmesan, cheddar, Swiss, or whatever comes to mind.\n\n**GARLIC BREAD**\n\n_Some meals \u2014 and some people \u2014 scream for garlic bread. It couldn't be simpler to make. (For a true Italian garlic bread, see Bruschetta on page 23.) For larger loaves, increase the amounts of the ingredients listed below._\n\n**1 tablespoon butter**\n\n**1 tablespoon olive oil**\n\n**1 teaspoon minced garlic**\n\n**Fresh or dried herbs (optional)**\n\n**1 loaf French Bread (see page 14)**\n\nProceed as directed in the instructions for Herbed Bread (page 24), but add the minced garlic and herbs to taste to the olive oil and butter mixture before spreading it on the bread. Depending on the garlic tolerance of the people who'll be eating, you may want to increase the amount of garlic proportionally. You can also substitute garlic powder or garlic salt, but fresh is best.\n\n**Garlic Gorgonzola Bread:** Before broiling the garlic bread, top it with some Gorgonzola cheese, sliced or crumbled. Keep an eye on it as it broils to make sure the cheese doesn't burn, and don't put the loaf back together after broiling \u2014 it's meant to be served open faced.\n\n**AMERICAN FONDUE**\n\n_American Fondue contains the cheese and bread used for a traditional Swiss fondue, but is much simpler to make and is served from a baking dish rather than around a fondue pot. It's the perfect dish for many occasions, and can be made to seem totally informal, rather hearty, or quite elegant, depending on what bread, mustard, and liquid you use._\n\n**_Homestyle Fondue_**\n\n_This is what I always made when my husband, trying to spare me work, said, \"Let's just have a cheese sandwich.\"_\n\n**4 tablespoons soft butter**\n\n**1 tablespoon prepared mustard (your favorite)**\n\n**6 slices Ciabatta (see page 15) or other firm white bread**\n\n**3 eggs**\n\n**2\u00bc cups milk**\n\n**3\/4 pound cheddar cheese, shredded or in small cubes**\n\n1. Preheat the oven to 350\u00b0F. Thoroughly butter a large baking pan.\n\n2. Combine the butter and mustard and spread the mixture on the sliced bread. Then cut the slices into roughly 1H-inch squares and put them into the buttered baking pan.\n\n3. Run the eggs, milk, and cheese together in a blender or food processor until well blended. Pour over the bread squares.\n\n4. Bake for 35 minutes, or until golden brown.\n\nMAKES 4\u20136 SERVINGS\n\n**_Hearty Fondue_**\n\n_This version is perfect for a cold, blustery day._\n\nFollow the recipe for Homestyle Fondue, but with these changes:\n\nUse a hearty bread such as pumpernickel instead of white, and spread it with a mixture of butter and German mustard. Use beer (light or dark) in place of the milk.\n\n**_Elegant Fondue_**\n\n_This one comes closest in flavor to the Swiss original. To make it even more so, you can add a tablespoon or two of Kirsch to the liquid mixture._\n\nFollow the recipe for Homestyle Fondue, but with these changes:\n\nUse Gruy\u00e9re or Emmentaler cheese instead of the cheddar; Dijon mustard; and a mixture, in place of the milk, of white wine and milk or cream. Add a dash or two of nutmeg on top.\n\n**THE ALPINE SANDWICH**\n\n_For me, this is a calming, soothing combination, reserved for moments of stress and chaos. It came into my life as a restaurant sandwich served alongside a tarragon-laced salad, and is an example of the fact that you can add absolutely anything to bread and come up with a winner._\n\n**1 loaf French Bread (see page 14)**\n\n**Wine vinegar**\n\n**Extra-virgin olive oil**\n\n**Tarragon and other herbs of choice**\n\n**Swiss cheese (or another variety)**\n\n**1 small onion, thinly sliced**\n\n1. Preheat the oven to 400\u00b0F.\n\n2. For each sandwich, cut and split a 4- or 5-inch piece of French Bread. Sprinkle a little wine vinegar on the opened-up rolls, followed by a little olive oil. Top with tarragon and\/or other herbs to taste.\n\n3. Slice the Swiss cheese, or any other cheese you want (I usually use cheddar), thinly, and layer over the herbs on the bread. Finally, top the sandwich with slivers of the onion.\n\n4. Because you don't want to burn the onion, this open-faced sandwich is best baked rather than broiled. Bake for 10 minutes, or until the cheese has melted.\n\n**CROUTE AU FROMAGE**\n\n_I first had this luscious dish in a Swiss restaurant. My attempts to obtain the recipe got me nowhere. (All they would tell me was that the bread was marinated. Marinated? Yes, with wine.) So I figured it out myself, with a few embellishments. If you're ever looking for a Sunday-night supper or festive brunch dish, this one's perfect._\n\n_To serve three, cut the recipe in half and divide everything between three ovenproof plates, then broil._\n\n**2 medium onions, chopped**\n\n**4 tablespoons butter, divided**\n\n**18 slices French Bread (see page 14)**\n\n**\u00bd cup white wine**\n\n**2 medium tomatoes, chopped**\n\n**6 slices bacon, diced and cooked (optional)**\n\n**1 pound Gruy\u00e9re or Swiss cheese, grated**\n\n**8 ounces cream cheese or Neufch\u00e2tel**\n\n**Freshly ground black pepper**\n\n1. In a small saucepan, brown the onion lightly in 2 tablespoons of the butter.\n\n2. Place the bread in a 9 x 13-inch baking pan. Drizzle on the white wine, and strew the onion, tomatoes, and bacon (if you're using it) over the bread.\n\n3. In a small saucepan, melt the rest of the butter, add both cheeses, and stir until melted. Add pepper to taste and spoon the mixture over the bread slices, being careful to leave some edges of the bread exposed.\n\n4. Broil briefly until the cheese is bubbly and the exposed edges of the bread are brown.\n\nMAKES 6 SERVINGS\n\n**PANZANELLA**\n\n**_Italian Bread Salad_**\n\n_To be authentic, you should use an Italian bread to make this unusual Florentine salad, but any of the yeast breads in this bulletin will do very nicely. This is a somewhat untraditional version \u2014 the more common method in Italy is to soak stale bread in water, then squeeze it hard._\n\n**6 slices Ciabatta (see page 15) or other good bread, in 3\/4-inch cubes**\n\n**6 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, divided**\n\n**1 large ripe tomato, peeled and cut into 1\/2-inch cubes**\n\n**1 small sweet pepper (any color), in 1\/2-inch cubes**\n\n**1 small red onion, quartered and sliced thin**\n\n**1 tablespoon chopped fresh basil leaves**\n\n**1 tablespoon red wine vinegar**\n\n**Salt and freshly ground black pepper**\n\n1. Brown the bread cubes in 4 tablespoons of the olive oil, stirring constantly. Drain on paper towels.\n\n2. Combine the tomato, sweet pepper, onion, and basil leaves in a salad bowl. Top with the bread cubes.\n\n3. Make a simple dressing from the remaining 2 tablespoons of olive oil, the vinegar, and salt and pepper to taste. Add to the salad bowl and toss. Chill for half an hour before serving\n\nMAKES 4\u20136 SERVINGS\n\n**OYSTER LOAF**\n\n**_A Pacifier_**\n\n_New Orleans and San Francisco share an old custom of using the Oyster Loaf as a pacifier. When a husband had been out late, he brought his wife one of these as a peacemaker._\n\n**1 loaf French Bread (see page 14) or Ciabatta bread (see page 15)**\n\n**2 eggs**\n\n**20 frying-size oysters (save their liquor)**\n\n**1 cup cracker crumbs**\n\n**6 tablespoons butter, divided**\n\n**Salt and freshly ground black pepper**\n\n**3 tablespoons cream**\n\n1. Preheat the oven to 375\u00b0F.\n\n2. Cut the bread in two lengthwise, making the cut near the top of the loaf. Hollow out the insides by removing most of the soft bread and setting it aside.\n\n3. Beat the eggs with 2 tablespoons of the oyster liquor. Dip the oysters in this and then in the cracker crumbs. Saut\u00e9 them in 3 tablespoons of the butter for about 3 minutes, or until their edges curl. Place them in the hollowed bread shell. Now fill in any large gaps between the oysters with some of the bread you removed from the shell.\n\n4. Melt the remaining 3 tablespoons of butter and mix it with 3 more tablespoons of the oyster liquor. Sprinkle about three-quarters of this over the oysters and bread. Put the top of the bread back on and brush it with the rest of the butter-and-oyster liquor mixture.\n\n5. Bake for 10 minutes, or until hot.\n\nMAKES 2\u20134 SERVINGS\n\n**NEW ORLEANS BREAD PUDDING**\n\n_I've seen a recipe that instructed me to make bread pudding from the worst bread I could find. I tried that once. No! Now I know that the better the bread, the better the dessert._\n\n**1 large loaf slightly stale bread**\n\n**3 eggs, lightly beaten**\n\n**1\u00bd cups white sugar**\n\n**\u00bc cup brown sugar**\n\n**1 small can evaporated milk**\n\n**1 tablespoon pure vanilla**\n\n**\u00bd teaspoon nutmeg**\n\n**1 cup raisins**\n\n1. Preheat the oven to 350\u00b0F. Butter a 9 x 9-inch baking pan.\n\n2. Tear the bread into small pieces. Put the pieces in a bowl, cover with cold water, and let sit for a minute or two. Squeeze out the water and add the eggs, white sugar, brown sugar, evaporated milk, vanilla, nutmeg, and raisins. Mix well.\n\n3. Put the mixture in the baking pan, and bake for 50 minutes. Serve warm, with hard sauce.\n\nMAKES 6\u20138 SERVINGS\n\n**PROVENCE SPREAD**\n\n_This recipe was excerpted from_ Herbal Breads, _by Ruth Bass (Storey Publishing, 1996). Top quality olive oil is the ticket here. Don't look at the unit price, just keep tasting until you find a fine olive oil that you like. Some chefs swear by Spanish olive oil, others only use Italian. Saying they are all alike is like saying all potatoes are the same._\n\n**\u00bd cup pitted black olives**\n\n**\u00bd cup pitted green olives**\n\n**I cup extra virgin olive oil**\n\n**6 garlic cloves**\n\n**2 tablespoons capers**\n\n**Juice of \u00bd small lemon (2 teaspoons)**\n\n**Salt and freshly ground pepper**\n\n**Crusty Italian or French bread**\n\n1. Finely chop enough black olives to make 1 tablespoon. Do the same with the green, mix the two, and set aside.\n\n2. Pour the oil mixture into a blender and add the garlic, capers, and lemon juice. Blend until almost smooth.\n\n3. Put the oil into a small bowl and stir in the chopped olives. Add salt and pepper to taste.\n\n4. Spread on thin slices of toast made with crusty bread.\n\n1 CUP\n_The mission of Storey Publishing is to serve our customers by publishing practical information that encourages personal independence in harmony with the environment._\n\nEdited by Nancy Ringer  \nIllustrations by Mary Rich  \nCover design by Carol J. Jessop (Black Trout Design)  \nText production by Nancy Lamb  \nProduction assistance by Sarah Crone\n\n\u00a9 1997 by Storey Publishing, LLC.\n\nAll rights reserved. No part of this bulletin may be reproduced without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages or reproduce illustrations in a review with appropriate credits; nor may any part of this bulletin be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or other without written permission from the publisher.\n\nThe information in this bulletin is true and complete to the best of our knowledge. All recommendations are made without guarantee on the part of the author or Storey Publishing. The author and publisher disclaim any liability in connection with the use of this information. For additional information please contact Storey Publishing, 210 MASS MoCA Way, North Adams, MA 01247.\n\nStorey books and bulletins are available for special premium and promotional uses and for customized editions. For further information, please call 1-800-793-9396.\n\nPrinted in the United States by Walsworth Publishing Company\n\n**Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data**\n\nAndrews, Glenn  \nMaking European breads \/ Glenn Andrews  \np. cm  \nISBN 978-0-88266-998-4 (alk. paper)  \n1. Bread. 2. Cookery (Bread). I. Title.  \nTX769.A67 1997  \n641.8'15\u2014dc21\n\n97-13175  \nCIP\n\n##  **M ORE COUNTRY WISDOM BULLETINS YOU WILL ENJOY!**\n\nThese and other Storey Country Wisdom Bulletins are available for $3.95 at your local bookstores, garden centers, farm stores, and gift shops. Use the order numbers listed under each bulletin to make your requests. You can also order directly from Storey Publishing by writing to us at 210 MASS MoCA Way, North Adams, MA 01247 or by calling 1-800-441-5700. For more information about our books and bulletins, visit our Web site at _www.storey.com._\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}}