“It’s all right, Frank,” the old man said, holding up his hand against the younger man’s irritation. “I know just where it is. Won’t take a minute.” And he hurried off again, down into the basement, leaving the two of us wordless, hostile, at the counter, waiting for him to come back and break between us again. I wondered what it had been that, without words or incident, had made us enemies, and why I cared.

When he returned, the old man had an idea and a question. “Say,” he said, handing the coal oil containers over absentmindedly to the young man, “you wouldn’t by any chance be the lady living up at the old McAllister place?”

“I’ve heard it called that,” I told him, remembering the farmer. “But I didn’t buy it from any McAllisters. It was a man whose father had it for a kind of retreat or hunting lodge.”

“Oh no,” he said, “it wouldn’t be the McAllisters. They haven’t been there for years, it’s just they were the last people who were there full-time, and that’s how it’s known. I guess you’ll have heard the story?”

“I haven’t heard anything about it, except that the father of the man I bought it from used it. I never asked what happened before that.” I wasn’t really encouraging, but something perverse in me wanted to stay in the store, talking to him and annoying Frank.

“Well,” said the old man, “it’s quite a story. Goes ’way back twenty years, and maybe you don’t want to know about it, if it’s you living there now. You’re on your own, I hear?”

“That’s right. But please tell me. If whatever it is happened twenty years ago, it won’t bother me.”

“Dad,” the younger man began, warningly.

“It’s all right,” I said, waving my hand in Frank’s direction but keeping my eyes on the old man. “I’m interested.” And oddly, I was.

“Well, all right then, if you’re sure,” he said doubtfully. He took a deep breath and his eyes hazed into the memory.

“It’s a good twenty-five years ago that the McAllisters first turned up around here. A young couple they were, from down East I think, not from around here, anyway, and they had some savings. He’d been working in the city and they were looking to buy a place around here for some modest farming. Which,” and he grinned, “is the only kind of farming goes on around here.