The Silver Star(10)

A couple of miles outside town, we came to a small white church surrounded by tall trees and a group of old houses—some big and fancy, some fairly run-down. We continued past the church to a low stone wall with a set of wrought-iron gates held up by thick stone pillars. Carved into one of the pillars was MAYFIELD.

The woman stopped. “Charlotte Holladay,” she said once more. “When you all see your momma, tell her Tammy Elbert says hello.”

The gates were locked, so we climbed over the low stone wall and followed the gravel driveway up a slope and around a thick stand of trees. There at the top of the hill stood the house, three stories high, painted white, with a dark green metal roof and what looked to be about twenty brick chimneys sprouting up all over the place. There were six fat white columns holding up the roof of the long front porch and, off to one side, a wing with a row of French doors.

“Oh my gosh,” I told Liz. “It’s the house I’ve been dreaming about all my life.”

Ever since I could remember, I’d been having this dream at least once a month about a big white house at the top of a knoll. In the dream, Liz and I open the front door and run through the halls, exploring room after room after room of beautiful paintings and fine furniture and flowing curtains. There are fireplaces and tall windows, French doors with lots of panes of glass that let in long shafts of sunlight, and wonderful views of gardens, trees, and hills. I always thought it was just a dream, but this was the exact house.

As we got closer, we realized the house was in pretty sorry shape. The paint was peeling, the dark green roof had brown rust stains, and brambly vines crawled up the walls. At one corner of the house, where a piece of gutter had broken off, the siding was dark and rotting. We climbed the wide steps to the porch, and a blackbird flew out of a broken window.

Liz rapped the brass knocker and then, after several seconds, rapped it again. At first I thought no one was home, but then, through the small glass panes on the sides of the door, I saw some shadowy movement. We heard the scraping and sliding of bolts, and the door opened. A man appeared holding a shotgun across his chest. He had rumpled graying hair, his hazel eyes were bloodshot, and he was wearing only a bathrobe and a pair of argyle socks.

“Get off my property,” he said.

“Uncle Tinsley?” Liz asked.

“Who are you?”

“It’s me. Liz.”

He stared at her

“Your niece.”

“And I’m Bean. Or Jean.”

“We’re Charlotte’s daughters,” Liz said.

“Charlotte’s girls?” He stared at us. “Jesus Christ. What are you doing here?”

“We came for a visit,” I said.

“Where’s Charlotte?”

“We’re not exactly sure,” Liz said. She took a deep breath and started explaining how Mom had needed some time to herself and we were fine on our own until the police got snoopy. “So we decided to come visit you.”

“You decided to come all the way from California to visit me?”

“That’s right,” Liz said.

“And I’m supposed to just take you in?”

“It’s a visit,” I said.

“You can’t simply show up here out of the blue.” He wasn’t expecting guests, he went on. The housekeeper hadn’t been around in a while. He was in the midst of several important projects and had papers and research material spread throughout the house that couldn’t be disturbed. “I can’t just let you all in here,” he said.

“We don’t mind a mess,” I said. “We’re used to messes.” I tried to peer behind Uncle Tinsley into the house, but he blocked the doorway.

“Where’s Aunt Martha?” Liz asked.

Uncle Tinsley ignored the question. “It’s not that it’s a mess,” he said to me. “It’s all highly organized, and it can’t be disturbed.”

“Well, what are we supposed to do?” Liz asked.

Uncle Tinsley looked at the two of us for a long moment, then leaned the shotgun against the wall. “You can sleep in the barn.”


Uncle Tinsley led us along a brick path that ran beneath towering trees with peeling white bark. It was twilight by then. Fireflies floated upward like little points of light in the tall grass.

“Charlotte needed time by herself, so she just took off?” Uncle Tinsley asked.

“More or less,” Liz said.

“She’s going to come back,” I said. “She wrote us a letter.”

“So this is another one of Charlotte’s debacles?” Uncle Tinsley shook his head in disgust. “Charlotte,” he muttered. His sister was nothing but trouble, he went on. She was spoiled as a girl, a pampered little princess, and by the time she had grown up, she expected to get whatever she wanted. Not only that, whatever you did for her, it wasn’t enough. Give her money and she thought she deserved more. Try to set up a job for her and the work was beneath her. Then, when her life got difficult, she blamed Mother and Father for everything that went wrong.