Now it was abandoned, slated to be leveled tomorrow by an onslaught of bulldozers and backhoes. The remains would be carried away and deposited in a landfill—actually, a nearby canyon that boasted neither arable soil nor slopes suitable for winter skiing or summer hiking. Or, if the surveyor gave his approval, what was left of the house might simply be left there for the water to bury, assuming that would be at a sufficient depth not to interfere with the projected influx of boaters and water-skiers that would turn the dead valley into a recreational paradise.
Supposedly.
Lila listened.
Nothing.
Not a creak or groan from an ancient joint. Not a rattle of time-worn panes in weathered frames. Not even the scurrying of mice in the sudden emptiness.
Probably they had all moved out by now also, Lila decided.
“Oh well,” she said, abruptly aware of how loud her voice sounded. Then, more quietly, “Oh, well.”
She walked out of the house, being perversely careful to close the front door softly but firmly. That much she had learned from her grandmother, dead over a decade now, who—she had always said—learned it from her own grandmother, who had once lived somewhere on the far side of Shadow Valley. Beyond that, Lila realized, she knew remarkably little about her family. Neither her mother nor her grandmother had been very forthcoming on the subject.
She might even have relatives—or have had relatives—in the valley, she thought for the dozenth...or perhaps the hundredth time. She didn’t know. If so, they had long since dropped out of touch with her branch of the family.
The city branch.
The branch that had split and wound its way through time, through time, until finally she had bloomed at the furthermost tip of one small limb, city-bred, university-educated, official spokesperson and—truth be told—lackey for a government that had decided in its great wisdom that nearly two centuries of farming families, with all of their traditions, were of less value than one more reservoir to carry water to...the city.
She turned, made certain once again that the door was closed, then headed toward her car.
CHAPTER TWO
Lunch was a sandwich in the shade of the single standing wall of the old stone church at the crest of the rise. As always when she stopped there, Lila wondered what vagaries of the state planning officials had decreed that that one wall should remain upright. She could think of no good reason for it but, again as always, she was grateful for the relative coolness and the break from the sun beating down on the rest of the valley.
She had made the sandwich herself—tuna with pickles and Miracle Whip. She had never been able to develop a taste for mayonnaise, not after so many years of her mother’s cooking with nothing but the creamy, tangy salad dressing.
Oh, well.
It had remained cold in the small ice chest that she had gotten into the habit of taking with her every time she had to come out to Shadow Valley. Once there had been a store of sorts where the main road split just to the north of the small settlement, a kind of poor-man’s general store that carried a little bit of everything, not much of anything.
It had been out of business for nearly twenty years, she had been told by one of the long-time residents, who still used the blackened quarter acre where it had stood before fire had destroyed it as a point of reference: Just stop a hundred yards before you get to Aames’s Store and you’ll find them blackberries right along the roadway.
There had never been a Mickey-D’s in Shadow Valley.
Never would be now.
Unless you counted the possibility that the Marina, scheduled to be build about a half-mile up the hillside, might someday merit its own fast-food haven.
But night now, all that Lila could count on was her small ice chest and its reserves of bottled water, four more sandwiches, and a bag of cookies from the Albertson’s a block or so from her one-bedroom apartment.
Just in case.
She finished the sandwich, folded the empty plastic bag in half—waste not, want not, as her grandmother would have said—and stowed it inside the ice chest.
She fiddled with the controls on the driver’s side of the rental until the seat reclined in just the right position, and settled back for a short nap.
The car was warm. The sun through the side window was warm.
All was well.
For the moment.
She did not dream.
When she woke, she was startled to find that she had not slept for the usual few moments.
Instead, the sun was well on its way toward the crest of mountains to the west. It wasn’t twilight yet, not by a long ways, but there was a hint of golden brilliance to the light that suggested late afternoon.
“Oh no.” Her plan had been to take care of the last pieces of business and be home long before sunset.
So much for planning.
She had one final stop to make. Ideally it would take even less time than she had spent at the Tuttle place, which itself had set a personal-best time for in-and-out.
Abraham Tuttle had barely spoken to Lila.
At the final stop, there would be no one to speak to her at all.
Probably.
She sighed again at the thought of the last house, checked her hand-drawn map of Shadow Valley, started the car, and pulled out of the shadow of the single, barren wall.
Main Street of Shadow Valley was a narrow gravel road, barely wide enough for two small cars to pass, certainly not wide enough for a car and a tractor or combine at the same time. That accounted for the wide borrow pits that separated the dusty roadway from the straggling remains of crumbling picket fences that had at one time surrounded neat front yards.
Lila followed Main—actually Only Street—until it dead-ended a mile to the south at a T-intersection. Along the way, she passed the remnants of three farms: denuded fields where no one had bothered to plant for the last summer; century-old poplars lopped at the base and left like ancient monoliths where they lay; skeletons of homes and outbuildings rotting where they had fallen...or in one case, the blackened ash of the fire that had wiped out every other trace of the farm.
At the T-intersection, Lila turned left—east—and abandoned the main road for what seemed like little more than a cattle trail with an advanced degree. Bushes of yellow wild roses overhung the roadway on both sides, broken only here and there by even narrower driveways leading to abandoned farms. The roses were well past their prime flowering period, so even the remaining blooms seemed faded and despondent.
The road continued straight east for a mile or so before it began to meander, following the course of one of the larger streams that would ultimately be backed up to flood the valley. The roses, in such close proximity to moisture year round, grew thicker, denser. Where before Lila could catch occasional glimpses of pasturelands overgrown with thistles and runners from the hedges, all she could see now were dark green leaves, smudged petals, and occasional canes that, studded with wicked thorns, would shoot out across the road. She actually began to worry about whether or not the insurance on her rental would be good for scratches to the paint.
Even though the road itself had forced her to slow, she found herself almost stopping every time it twisted away to one side or the other, disappearing for the moment into the bushes. At times, it looked as if the road might simply dead-end at a hypertrophied mass that would finally deny her permission to drive further.
But each time, the turn revealed another bend in the road, another half-shaded passageway through the thorns.
At one of the turns, Lila angled the car just enough