She wasn’t kidding. As we walked through a series of tiny rooms, we were assaulted on all sides by a sort of trompe l’oeil nightmare. There were “windows” painted into walls, furniture painted to look like animals, walls that seemed not to exist at all. Harriet led me to the kitchen, which was done up like ancient ruins, painted with pillars and statues and crumbling walls, fallen to reveal lovely gardens and more statues “outside.”

I suppose it could’ve been lovely were it not so overdone. But then I looked at Harriet’s cousin, the woman sitting at the table, and I realized it probably suited her perfectly. She looked warm and friendly but eccentric in a paint-speckled shirt and overalls. She wore a baseball cap on her head over wiry gray curls, and she had the weather-lined face of someone who had been many places and seen many things.

Harriet introduced Lorraine as her “first cousin, once removed,” and the woman rose to shake my hand and offer me some coffee. I glanced at my watch and then reluctantly accepted. We needed to be on our way in ten minutes or so if Harriet wanted to make her train.

“We were just about to get out some of the old photo albums,” Harriet moaned when I told her we needed to leave soon. “Some of the family reunion pictures, from when I was younger and prettier, if you can imagine such a thing.”

I looked at Harriet, settled comfortably in the warm kitchen of her relative, and felt a twinge of guilt.

“Well, why don’t you stay, then?” I said, pulling out a wad of money and peeling off a few twenty dollar bills. “This should cover cab fare back to the station, not to mention a nice dinner.”

“If you say so,” she replied, grinning, taking the money from me and tucking it into her pocket.

I sat down then and joined them for coffee, thinking I needed to get going. My head felt like it was swirling with unanswered questions, my mind a blur. But it seemed impolite to drink and run, so I allowed myself ten minutes to unwind, sip coffee, and chat with the two older women.

As we talked, my eyes wandered out of the window beside the table. Though houses pressed in on both sides, the backyard was lovely, filled with autumn leaves, shady and beckoning. The end of the property seemed oddly defined until I realized that it backed up on some sort of water.

“Is that a pond out there?” I asked, squinting to look through the bushes.

“A creek, sort of,” Lorraine replied. “A branch of the Schuylkill.”

“Lorraine’s grandson keeps a fishing boat out there,” Harriet said. “You can see it, propped up against that biggest tree.”