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Marge Westerbrook shook Francie’s hand by the fingertips and called her Fanny.
    “Pleased to meet you,” said Francie. “We’re so glad you could come out.”
    “Oh, my goodness,” gasped Marge Westerbrook, “this is my pleasure , this is my job , and all the way from New York you are, too. Oh, my. I am late, aren’t I?”
    “Yes,” said Colt.
    “It’s really okay,” said Francie quickly. “We’ve got the day off.
    Colt does, I mean.”
    “Oh, how nice!” said Marge. “And what do you do, Mr. Hart?” “Finance.”
    “Oh, my, New York City and finance! How interesting. Listen, let’s go in, shall we?” She lowered her voice and leaned in toward Francie. “And we’ll just leave him out here, until he changes his at titude,” she said.
    For one uplifting moment, Francie thought she meant Colt, un til she looked in the Volkswagen and realized there was a giant, sullen teenager lurking there, so hunched over that despite his size he was practically hidden by the dashboard. The teenager perked his head up, sensing he was being discussed, and then ducked again when the stares of two strangers confirmed it. Francie caught a luridly red flash of acne splashed across his cheeks like buckshot. Instantly she felt sorry for him; her cheeks had looked
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    like that once, when she was young, and she remembered all too well how much easier it was to stay hidden.
    “Oh, he doesn’t have to,” she said. “He can come in, too, I mean. Don’t keep him out here on our account.”
    “I wouldn’t think of it,” said Marge, her voice suddenly tight as a jib. Whatever the teenager had done, he’d sinned mightily, that much was clear. “I’ve got the keys right here. Mr. Hart, would you do the honors, please?” She handed him a key. “The door sticks,” she explained. “You’ll probably have to put your shoulder into it.”
    Colt mounted the steps, inserted the key, “put his shoulder into it” three or four times, and the ancient, heavy door swung open.
    “Needs to be planed,” he muttered.
    He became aware that the house was breathing on him open- mouthed, exhaling the taste of unknown years of emptiness. It was a bitter fragrance, not unpleasant, and it reminded him of something too deep to retrieve at the moment. He stepped down the house’s throat, a long foyer that led into a central room. The two women came along behind him as he paused for a moment, uncertain, and then strode forward, a willing Jonah now. He was already trying to imagine himself living here.
    “The For Sale sign was hidden under some leaves,” he told Marge Westerbrook over his shoulder.
    “Kids,” said Marge, though she didn’t say which kids; possibly she meant her own, thought Francie.
    Marge crossed the room to a massive fieldstone fireplace and lay one plump hand on the mantel, which was a single slab of rock nearly six feet in length and about four inches thick. The fireplace opened on the back to an opposite room; apparently it was meant to provide heat to both areas. Its grate was clean, Francie noticed. No one had had fires here for a long time.
    “Now, this is the living room, or one of them, I should say. You can see the other through there, plus there’s an upstairs parlor. This house has nearly ten thousand square feet in all.” Marge paused and bowed her head, as if such a place deserved her rever
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    ence. “Four bathrooms, six bedrooms, a study and a den, a beauti ful dining room, pantry, servant’s quarters on every floor, a games room, an unfinished basement, an unfinished attic, a kitchen you’ll have to see to believe . And the property itself is almost fifty acres.”
    Francie gasped. “Fifty acres! Colt, did you hear that?”
    Colt had only half heard. He was scanning the beams in the ceil ing and corners of the living room as he listened. For an old house, the room was high. He was exactly six feet tall, and yet if he reached upward he could barely brush