The Curse of Hollister House

Monday

By the time the sun had begun its descent toward the horizon on the previous afternoon, the barn had been transformed into a house of horrors. The group that had shown up had consisted of both old friends and new neighbors I’d yet to meet. When I’d first returned to Foxtail Lake, I’d been broken both in body and spirit, but as I sat in the attic window watching it rain, it occurred to me that in the time I’d been here, both body and spirit had turned a corner and appeared well on the road to recovery.

“Is Alastair up there with you?” Aunt Gracie called up the stairs.

I smiled at the cat sitting beside me as I sipped my morning coffee. “Yes, he is up here.”

“I need to run into town to do a few errands. Do you need anything?”

“No,” I called back. “I’m going to finish my coffee, and then I am heading over to the shelter for my first dog training class. I’m not sure what time I’ll be home.”

“Okay, dear. Have fun.”

“I will.” I glanced out the window and wondered if Hope would even hold the class. Perhaps it was indoors. “It’s raining pretty hard. Be careful. The roads will be slick, and I know your arthritis has been bothering you with all this funky weather.”

“Tom is coming with me, so he’ll drive.”

I wasn’t sure that was any better but all right.

I continued to watch out the window and saw Tom help Gracie into the car. He walked around to the driver’s side, got in, and slowly drove away. Gracie had turned seventy on her last birthday, and I would guess that Tom was older than that. They were energetic and healthy for their age, and both appeared not to let the little aches and pains they did have slow them down. I glanced toward the lakeside cabin where Tom lived and wondered about his life before he’d been caretaker for Hollister House. I’d once heard Gracie say that he’d been here for more than forty years, but I had no idea what she’d meant exactly by more than. If he was, say, seventy-five, more than could mean he’d first started working here when he was thirty-four. It could also mean that he’d been working and living on the land since his twenties. Maybe one day I’d ask Gracie exactly how it was that he had come to live here.

I glanced out at the lake. Heavy clouds hung over the surface, cloaking the shoreline that extended beyond the Hollister property line. When it was dark and overcast like this, and the wind pushed the water toward the shore, Foxtail Lake looked more like an ocean than a lake. I loved the lake in all its moods. I loved it when it was dark and brooding, as it was today, and I loved it when it was a deep royal blue that contrasted the white dots on the surface created by a dusting of sailboats and geese.

Sliding my feet to the floor, I stood up and looked around the attic. Paisley and I had done a stellar job getting the place cleaned up on Saturday. The boxes and furnishings we’d decided to keep were neatly labeled and stacked, leaving room to move around. I crossed the room and sat down at the old piano. I’d been so sure I’d never play again, and I wouldn’t, at least not with the same perfection I once had, but somewhere along the way, I’d forgotten that an imperfect melody from the heart meant much more than a precise and accurate stroke of the keys. I slowly moved my fingers over them, pecking out a simple song. I let the joy I’d felt as a child playing this very song penetrate my shattered heart. I could spend the rest of my life mourning what could and should have been, or I could pick up the pieces of my life and move on.

On any other rainy day, with the house empty and Alastair as my only critic, I might have tested the limits of my new condition, but today I had a dog training class to get to, so I closed the piano lid, called to the cat, and headed downstairs to shower and dress.