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she doesn’t exist.”
    “What’s a carpetbagger?” Jeff asked.
    Instead of answering his question, Julie got to her feet and started down the gentle slope that led to a group of ramshackleoutbuildings a hundred yards from the house. “Let’s go see what’s here,” she suggested.
    A moment later Jeff had darted ahead of her, disappearing through the half-open door of a vine-covered barn whose roof was almost barren of shingles. A few minutes later she stepped through the door herself. The barn had apparently once housed a stable of horses, but most of the stalls had long since collapsed. Sunshine filtered down through the slats of the roof, providing a soft, cool light which was tinged with green by the profusion of foliage that had penetrated the siding over the years. Perched on a loft at the rear, Jeff was grinning down at her. “Isn’t this neat?” he called. “If there were any hay, I could jump down into it!”
    “You be careful,” Julie warned. “It looks like the whole place could fall down any minute.”
    Jeff’s grin only widened. “The stairs already have. Is there a ladder in here?”
    Julie searched the barn, finally finding a splintery wooden ladder in the tack room at the rear. She propped it up against the loft, and Jeff scrambled down. “What were you going to do if I hadn’t been here?” Julie asked.
    “Jump,” Jeff replied with the self-assurance of his eight years. “I’ve jumped from the roof at home, and it’s a lot higher than that.”
    “And if Mom had caught you, she’d have cut you off TV for a week.”
    “But she didn’t,” Jeff reminded her. “Come on.”
    They left the barn and made their way farther down the slope to the row of collapsing cabins that had once served as slave quarters. Pushing his way through the tangled vines, Jeff found himself in a tiny room with only a single window and door. There was a rickety shelf on one wall and a couple of pegs still hanging precariously from the doorframe. Most of the floor space was taken up by four rusty iron beds, long since stripped of springs or mattresses. Just looking at it made him shudder, and he looked up at his sister in awe. “Did they really make people live here?” he asked, his voice dropping to a whisper.
    Julie shrugged. “I guess so,” she ventured. “Sometimes whole families had to live in rooms like this.”
    Jeff’s brows furrowed seriously. “How come Dad never told us about this?”
    “Because he’s probably ashamed of it,” Julie replied. “I mean, I certainly wouldn’t want anyone to know my family had made people live like this.”
    “M-Maybe they didn’t,” Jeff suggested. “Maybe these were just storerooms or something.”
    “And maybe elephants can fly,” Julie shot back. “Let’s go—this place gives me the creeps.”
    They pushed through the vines once more, glanced into a garage that contained an aging Buick and a rusty hulk that neither of them could identify, then started toward what had once been cultivated fields. As they approached a marshy area, a figure suddenly stepped out of a patch of bushes and stood in the path, staring at them curiously.
    It was a boy, about Jeff’s age, with an unruly mop of tangled black hair curling over his forehead. He was wearing a pair of torn blue jeans and a T-shirt that must once have been white but was now a dingy gray.
    “Who are you?” he demanded, his brown eyes fixing belligerently on Jeff.
    Jeff stared back at the boy. “Jeff Devereaux,” he replied. “Who are you?”
    The boy took an uncertain step backward. “Toby Martin. How come I never saw you before?”
    “ ’Cause I just got here,” Jeff replied. “How come you’re here? Nobody but my grandmother and my aunt’s ‘sposed to live here.”
    Toby glanced furtively at the house. “I just come out here sometimes. I don’t hurt nothin’. I just look around. You won’t tell, will you? The old lady doesn’t want anybody here.”
    Jeff glanced at Julie, who was