Dream House. Catherine Armsden

all that much.”

      Silently, they continued sorting through boxes; for Gina, the martini created a pleasant haze between her and their situation.

      When the landline rang, it startled them both. Cassie jumped up to get it.

      “Annie!” she said into the phone, “Yes, we’re buried. Okay, sure, thank you—we’d love to. See you soon.”

      “I thought you didn’t want to go to Lily House,” Gina said, thinking, I certainly don’t.

      Cassie slugged the last of her drink. “I’ve had a martini. Things look different.”

      Gina and Cassie drove past the stone wall built by the Historical Society to buffer Lily House from the road. At the end of it, a modest sign hung from a post.

      Lily House

      Home of Sidney Banton

      Built 1785

      Open to the Public

      (By appointment only)

      In her mind, Gina saw her mother shake her head at the sign with disapproval.

      Cassie sighed as she pulled into Lily House’s driveway. Though it was more than a hundred years older than the rental, it was evident that the generous-sized Georgian colonial, with its bright yellow clapboards, black shutters, and welcoming wide porch, had been much better cared for.

      As the sisters climbed the porch steps, Cassie asked, “When was the last time you were here?”

      Gina tried to answer but her breath caught in her throat.

      “Cassie! Gina!” Annie beamed when she opened the door. “Lester? They’ve come!”

      Annie wrapped an arm around Cassie and then Gina, reeling each of them in for a hug. Gina felt small and limp next to her. At five-foot-nine, Annie was eleven inches taller than Gina’s mother, and Gina always imagined those inches balanced the power in their friendship. When Annie pulled back from them, she wiped tears from her eyes. “Oh, you girls,” she said.

      Lester appeared at the end of the hall with a broad smile. “Well, well! Cassie and Ginny! How wonderful!” He made his way toward them on one metal crutch, his companion since childhood polio.

      “Gina,” Annie corrected Lester. “She hasn’t been Ginny in years.”

      Cassie grabbed Gina’s wrist and squeezed. “Wow, it’s exactly as I remember it!” she exclaimed, stepping into the living room ahead of Annie and Lester.

      The darkness that had enveloped Gina all week suddenly deepened. The last time she’d been in Lily House was thirty-five years ago, the day her Aunt Fran committed suicide here. That the arrangement of furnishings had been frozen in time by the Historical Society seemed macabre. She tried to maintain the slight blur from the martini to keep her mind skittering along the surface of things.

      But Cassie’s big eyes widened. “Wow!” she exclaimed. “I think I remember every single thing in here. The Shaker chairs . . . the gorgeous tea set? It was Martha Washington’s.” She ran a finger along the belly of the teapot. “And the lolling chair that George Washington sat in when he came here,” she said, her hand brushing the velvet seat. “We never got to sit in it because it was always ‘Fran’s chair.’”

      “Welcome to your family museum!” Lester said. “We’d love to entertain you here in the living room but it’s off-limits, of course—no sitting allowed.”

      They followed him into what Gina remembered her mother calling the “piano room,” though now it was clear to her that it had been built as a library. “This is Annie’s and my living room.”

      “So which rooms can you and Lester actually use?” Gina asked.

      Lester explained they used the piano room, the large kitchen, and as their dining room, the sunroom. They slept in the “summer ell,” an addition off the kitchen that originally had been built for summer guests but had since been winterized.

      “How about a glass of wine?” Annie offered. Gina was about to say, no, thank you, but Cassie said, “We’d kill for a glass of wine!”

      Cassie winked at Gina, and Gina resigned herself to whatever Cassie had in mind. At least she’d always liked Annie and Lester. When she was young, she’d recognized them as unusual: a mother with a profession playing violin in the Maine Symphony, a father who worked as a high school guidance counselor. Both tall, they filled a room, and in their frequent visits to her family’s house, Gina felt their physical presence like old, comfortable furniture as much as family friends. She’d memorized Annie’s big, arty necklaces and her perfume, Lester’s tweedy sweaters and his penny loafers—exotic, because her father had never owned a pair—and their party drinks: Annie—gin and tonic, Lester—Michelob beer. They’d loved her father’s puns and her mother’s cheese soufflé. Their two sons, now in Alaska and Boston, were quite a bit older than Gina and hadn’t been around much when she was growing up.

      “Dearies, how’s everything going over there?” Annie asked when she returned with the wine. “You poor things. Is everything set for the funeral? What can we do to help?”

      “It’s an unholy mess!” Cassie said. She described the house cleaning in detail, including the adventures with the dead skunk, but not, Gina noted, the discovery of Martha Washington’s hair or George’s cloak piece. While Cassie chattered, uneasiness rolled through Gina as she imagined memories, nested wasp-like in these walls, ready to swarm.

      “Gina?”

      Annie stood over her with a wine bottle. Gina looked at her wine goblet and seeing it was empty said, “No, thank you.” Annie refilled Cassie’s glass.

      “There’s something different about this room,” Gina said.

      “Wow, the architect speaks!” Lester laughed. “You don’t miss a trick. We moved the piano some. In the summer, the sun coming in that window was murder on the instrument.”

      Below the bookshelves, under the piano, were panels that Gina knew were actually secret cabinets where toys had always been kept. She thought about those toys now: wooden animals, small sailboat models, an old doll with one arm missing; her fingers itched to touch them. She stood, realizing the alcohol had gone to her head. “Would it be okay if I ...” she laughed. “I just can’t resist.” She ducked under the piano and slid on her knees to the wall where the panels were. She knew just how to press them to make them slide open.

      “What the heck, Gina?” Cassie said. “Oh, are you looking for the toys?”

      Gina opened each of the three doors and peeked inside: empty. “They’re not there,” she said, feeling ridiculous.

      “Your ancestor Banton was a secretive guy,” Lester said. “That’s not the only hiding place he had.”

      Cassie gasped and jumped from her chair. “Did you find the Washington letters?” she shouted.

      Mortified, Gina crawled out from under the piano, bumping her head as she tried to stand. Did Annie and Lester know about the Washington letters? she wondered. Their mother had always told them they were a secret. As George Washington’s private secretary, Sidney Banton had supposedly hidden some important letters of the first president’s in Lily House.

      “No, no,” Annie said. “Good heavens! You’ll be the first to know if we find the Washington letters.”

      Cassie’s flushed face sagged with disappointment. As if possessed, she walked the perimeter of the room, pressing on the panels of the wainscoting.

      “Over here,” Lester said, squeezing behind the piano bench. “Take a look.” Placing both palms on one of the wall panels, he easily slid it to the side, revealing a cavity about eighteen inches wide.

      Cassie and Gina peered into the compartment. “This must’ve been where Sidney Banton hid all the important stuff he had of George Washington’s,”