The House on Creek Road. Caron Todd

      Eleanor set aside the photographs on her lap. “I think we’ve had enough sorting for this evening. Tea?”

      Emily jumped up. “I’ll make it. I’ll even make toast.”

      Stepping over boxes, Liz carried the album she’d been holding to the hutch cupboard. “Leave the boxes, Grandma. I’ll get them.”

      “In that case, I’ll help your cousin.”

      When she heard her grandmother’s footsteps in the kitchen, Liz reopened the album, easily finding the page with Andy’s photograph. He looked younger than she remembered. They had been sure they were all grown up, eager to jump into their lives, impatient with the restrictions put in their way. But his cheeks were smooth, still slightly rounded. It wasn’t a man’s face.

      She hadn’t packed any pictures of him when she’d left Three Creeks. She’d gone quickly, hardly thinking, leaving most of her things behind. Andy was so much with her then, real and vivid, she never would have believed she’d need a picture to remember him. Somehow, unbelievably, the details of his face had slipped her mind. Whenever she’d tried to draw him after the first year, he’d looked like a stranger, someone observed in a crowd.

      “Liz? Tea’s ready.”

      “Coming!” She slipped the photo into the pocket of her jeans before putting the boxes and albums away.

      CHAPTER FOUR

      PAM AND EMILY HAD TOLD LIZ all about the new school, but she still went into town expecting to see the old one. It was a bit of a surprise to find a new cement-brick building stretching across the spot where the four-room schoolhouse, baseball diamond and maple grove had been. Inside, walking past the gym and the band room, standing at the front of Pam’s large, bright classroom, she didn’t even feel as if she was in Three Creeks. She could be in any town or city. Except that her niece was sitting a couple of arm-lengths away, looking at her with pride and embarrassment.

      Liz held up a single piece of paper covered with tiny, hand-drawn squares. Inside each square was a simple pencil sketch. “This is the first draft of my new book, There’s a Dinosaur on Your Right.”

      Jennifer and fourteen other children sitting at three round tables leaned closer. Kids loved the idea of a book in miniature, no matter how little detail was in each drawing.

      “It looks like a comic strip,” one boy said, tilting his chair so it balanced on its back legs. He wore an Edmonton Oilers’ hockey jersey that reached halfway to his knees. Only the tips of his fingers showed at the end of the sleeves.

      “Stephen,” Pam said.

      He rocked the chair forward so all four legs touched the ground.

      “It’s called a thumbnail layout. You can see why.” Liz held up one thumb so the children could compare her nail to the squares she’d drawn. “It’s a quick and easy way to find out if there’s enough going on in the story you’re planning.”

      “You should call it a two-thumbnail layout,” Stephen said.

      Liz smiled. She moved closer to the blackboard, where she’d lined up a series of larger drawings, the ones she’d brought to show her grandmother. The final paintings were with her publisher, but she thought the sketches of a ten-year-old heroine trapped in a subterranean world of dinosaurs would appeal to the children.

      “After the two-thumbnail layout gives me an idea what will happen, I make a mock-up, also called a dummy.” She heard the expected giggles. “I draw bigger, more detailed versions of the sketches I’ve decided will do the best job of telling the story, with a few words added, so I can keep track of what I want to say on each page. Then I spread it all out like this to see how the story flows.”

      Liz pointed to the first two sketches. “The story opens with a girl, ten years old, falling into a dark hole in the ground, so deep there’s no way out. She sees footprints. Huge, three-toed footprints.”

      “Dinosaur tracks!” A dark-haired boy leaned forward, his elbows on the table, one foot on the floor, the other knee on his chair. He pointed at the third drawing. “And that’s a shadow of a Tyrannosaurus Rex.”

      Pam spoke firmly from her corner of the room. “Sit down, Dave.”

      He sat, without taking his eyes off the line of pictures.

      “Why did I draw the T-Rex’s shadow, rather than the T-Rex itself?”

      “It’s scarier,” Dave said.

      “That’s right. Not knowing is always scary, isn’t it? We start with a dark hole in the ground, then the footprint. Both of those things are scary, but our heroine is sure there must be a reasonable explanation.”

      “Until she sees the shadow,” Jennifer said.

      “With that huge head and those little arms and those long sharp teeth and claws…we know what’s coming, don’t we?” Liz had placed the next drawing with its back to her audience. Now she turned it, so the kids could see the T-Rex close up and suddenly, the way her heroine did in the story.

      “Whoa,” said Dave.

      “These first three pictures build suspense and the fourth one delivers. Now our heroine has some problems to solve. Any ideas what those might be?”

      “Not getting eaten,” Stephen said.

      “Getting out of the hole.”

      “Finding out what happened! How come there’s a live dinosaur down there?”

      “Yeah, and how does it fit? T-Rexs are huge.”

      Liz caught Pam’s eye. Now that their interest had been tweaked, it seemed like a good idea to let the children start their own projects. “Answering those questions gives us the plot,” Liz concluded, “and as the girl in the pictures solves those problems, we’ll find out what kind of person she is.”

      Pam began distributing paper and pencils. Liz leaned against the desk at the front of the room, keeping out of the way while the children got settled. She couldn’t imagine starting a first draft with someone peering over her shoulder.

      Stephen looked as if he could use some help, though. He slouched in his seat, twitching his pencil back and forth, knocking an eraser across his empty paper. After a few minutes, Liz joined him. “Having trouble getting started?”

      He shrugged. “I don’t like make-believe stuff.”

      She decided not to mention comics or movies or video games. “Your story doesn’t have to be fiction.” She held her pencil over his paper. “Okay if I show you something?”

      Stephen nodded grudgingly.

      She started by drawing a series of small squares. Inside one, using the first idea that came to mind, she sketched a man wearing jeans and a button-up shirt. She rolled up his sleeves to show he was hard at work. Inside the next square, the man crouched down, putting something small and oval into a concave spot in the ground.

      “A guy planting seeds,” Stephen said.

      The boy next to Stephen was watching, too. Liz had to think for a moment to remember his name. Jeremy. He was smaller than the other children, enough that he looked two or three years younger. “Hey, that’s Mr. McKinnon, isn’t it? My dad worked with him in the summer. Planting and stuff.”

      “Your dad works all over the place,” Stephen said. “Odd jobs.”

      Liz noticed a slight, protective recoil from Jeremy. “Good for him. That means he knows how to do all kinds of things.” The boy’s small body relaxed.

      Tiny leaves unfurled in a third square, grew bigger in a fourth and snaked all across a fifth. Small fruit with vertical ridges appeared on the vines.

      “Pumpkins,” Stephen said.

      Finally Liz drew long-fingered hands carrying