Carolyn scuffed her feet in the leaves as she walked back to the stone wall, leaving her own trail, and threw the baseball as hard as she could across the Taylors ' yard, shouting, "Ball!" It landed next to the birdbath and knocked over a garden gnome. She headed away from the sudden clamor.
No one had used the path in a while. Saplings blocked her way and sprang back, hard, across her arms as she pushed through. Twigs snagged at her ankles, and her white socks were soon covered with a carpet of tiny green burrs that would take forever to pick out. But it was a path, and every hundred yards or so she found another pile of rocks. Some of them had tumbled over, but one stone always had the same mysterious crosshatch.
The woods were cool and shady. Carolyn could smell the earth, almost sweet from decomposing logs, with a bitter undertaste of autumn after autumn of fallen leaves. No breeze, and except for the sound of her feet crunching along, all she heard were birdcalls and the occasional rhythmic knock-knock-knock of an unseen woodpecker.
The path paralleled Stony Brook for a little while, then veered off to the left and ended at an old wooden fence with a narrow stile, its boards warped and moss-covered. Carolyn put one careful foot on the bottom step. It creaked, but held her weight, and she climbed up and sat at the top, looking into the ruins of what had once been a large and elaborate garden, not just a backyard.
Rosebushes taller than her surrounded stone benches and a sundial. The edges of a gravel walkway were blurred with weeds, and wildflowers grew knee-high. A dozen bees droned lazily in midair.
The walkway led to the back of an old barn. A huge maple tree, still thick-leafed with summer, blocked her view of all but one wing of the house-a single story with a bay window below a magnificent stained-glass peacock. She sat on the stile for a few minutes, savoring the discovery of a new place and debating about exploring further.
She had come this far, and didn't want to turn back now, but entering the garden wasn't just being in the woods. It was trespassing. If anyone still lived in the house-which didn't look too likely-she'd get caught. They'd call her mother and then she'd really be in trouble. She'd spend the last week of summer doing laundry and dishes and ironing. Inside.
After several go-rounds with herself, curiosity won and she clambered into the garden. Gravel skittered and the bees flew off to a safer distance, but nothing else happened.
The walkway continued around the barn. She turned the corner and barely stopped an out-loud gasp. The house on the other side of the wide drive was enormous, with gabled windows and a cupola, every inch covered in ornate Victorian gingerbread that needed painting.
She still thought the place was deserted-until she saw the round-fendered Buick, parked with its nose just inside the "barn," which turned out to be a four-car garage. The Buick had a Princeton sticker on its bumper, and New Jersey plates, 1952, just like her mother's car, all legal and up-to-date.
Carolyn stepped into the shadows and scrunched down. She eased around the corner of the house, planting each foot carefully so her Keds were almost silent. The wide porch held a line of peeling Adirondack chairs and wrapped all the way around to the front. That was even grander-stone pillars and more stained glass, green-limned copper letters over the entrance that said THE BRAMBLES.
It was a mansion, the biggest house she'd ever seen outside a magazine. But, except for the Buick, it would be easy to believe no one had been here for years.
"Hullo. Have you ever seen a giant turtle?"
Carolyn gave a little yelp and jumped back, whacking her elbow on a drainpipe. Cradling her arm, she looked around to see who had spoken.
It took her a moment to notice that the massive front door was open, just a crack, a foot in a leather oxford wedged into the gap.
"How giant?" she asked. Her brain was full of other questions, but that was the one that came out of her mouth.
The oxford moved and the door opened to reveal a boy about her age, sitting cross-legged on the floor. He made a circle with his arms, wider than his body. "Like this."
"Wow." Carolyn climbed the steps and stood on the porch.
"He's very old," the boy said. "Grandaddy sent him from China for my daddy's birthday. He's magic."
"Sure he is." Carolyn tried not to laugh, because the boy sounded serious, but she was a practical girl. She didn't believe in magic and fairy tales and all that baloney. Her family? Not so happily ever after.
The boy shook his head. "Not Daddy. Lotion."
"Lotion?" Was that what he'd said?
"My turtle."
"Funny name for a turtle." Even an imaginary one.
"He's Chinese." The boy stood up and pushed the door all the way open. He had short brown hair and was taller than Carolyn, by a couple of inches, but she could tell right away that there was something wrong with him. One side of his head was shaped funny, and his eyes didn't look straight at her, just a little beyond.
Real. Imaginary. Didn't look like it'd make much difference to him.
"Who're you?" he asked.
"I'm Carolyn. I live on Mercer Street, on the other side of the woods," she said, slowly, the way she talked to the little kids she babysat.
"I'm Bibber." He stopped and shook his head again. "No. The man from the bank says I'm too old. Now I have to be Robert." He looked from side to side, as if someone might be hiding on the porch, then whispered, "You can call me Bibber."
"How old are you?"
"Eleven. Last month."
"Oh. Me too. But not until December." She leaned against one of the pillars. "Do you live here?"
Bibber nodded.
"You must have a really big family."
"No. Just Higgins and Cook and Mrs. Addison, the housekeeper. But she's having a Day Off."
"How 'bout your mom and dad?"
"Mommy died having me and Daddy's in the war hospital. He's sleeping and he won't wake up."
"I'm sorry," Carolyn said. She wondered if it was Korea, or the last war.
"I know. That's why the bank man makes the rules for me." Bibber pointed at the doorway. "You wanna come in?"
"I guess so." He didn't look dangerous, and Carolyn felt sorry for him. Not just because he was-slow, but because she knew how it felt to have a war steal your father.
The inside of the house was cool and dark, darker than the woods. Heavy velvet curtains covered the windows, and massive furniture loomed around her. The walls were encrusted with big, gilt-framed paintings of dead birds and fruit.
"I don't play in here," Bibber said. "But Lotion sometimes hides under the sofa."
They walked through three rooms with high ceilings and fireplaces tall enough to stand up in. A long table with twelve chairs around it was bigger than her whole dining room at home; another eight chairs lined the walls. Twenty people could have dinner, she counted without really thinking.
The next room was one she didn't know a name for. Her house had a living room and a dining room, a kitchen and a utility porch, but this room was none of those. It had high-backed leather armchairs and small side tables and cabinets full of foreign-looking objects: curved knives, lacquered boxes, intricately carved figurines. On the walls were animal heads, stuffed and mounted, their glass eyes glinting in the dim light as she walked by.
"What did your grandfather do?" she asked.
"He went far away on boats. He bought things for museums." Bibber pointed to a cabinet. "He kept some of them."
"Yeah. I can see."
"I like this room," Bibber said, opening the double doors.
It was a library, floor-to-ceiling bookcases with rails that held two wooden ladders. At the far end, beneath the stained-glass window she had seen from the stile, was a bay window with a cushioned seat. The curtains were tied back, and in the sunlight, the leather spines of the books-brown, maroon, deep green-felt like an extension of the woods.