I parked at the end of the driveway on the side of the house, just short of the red with white-trim barn. The barn was almost as big as the house and had been home to five horses at one time. The inside still smelled of old leather saddles, hay and manure. The stalls bore teeth marks where the horses had chewed the wood. I loved going in there. Sometimes I could almost hear the horses whinny. I fancied I might get one myself someday.

I opened the car door and Pandora shot across my lap and ran onto the porch on the side of the house. Looking back at me, she meowed impatiently as I limped up the porch steps—it had been a long day and my leg was starting to hurt.

The porch led straight to the kitchen and Pandora didn’t waste any time getting over to her food bowl.

“Meow!” She paced back and forth, rubbing her face on the whitewashed country cabinets.

I pressed the button on my answering machine, then opened the cabinet and pulled out a bag of cat food. I had a cell phone like most people, but still preferred people to leave messages on my home phone. I guess I was kind of old-fashioned and didn’t really like being all that accessible or being interrupted at all hours of the day on my cell.

“Willa, it’s Barry. Just wanted to let you know I picked up a box of books in my travels for you. Let me know when we can get together—Beep.”

Barry was one of the local antique dealers. Most of the antique dealers in the area had a good working relationship. If one of us was at an auction or yard sale and saw something that we thought another dealer would be interested in selling for a ridiculously low price, we’d pick it up for them. Last summer, I’d purchased a set of sterling silver Tiffany nut dishes at a yard sale for Barry for only a dollar. He’d made a bundle on them and I’d gotten a steak dinner as a ‘thank you’.

“I wonder if there will be a treasure in that box of books,” I said to Pandora as I bent down to fill her dish.

Something in the living room caught my eye. A greenish glow. I realized it was the round crystal paperweight my elderly neighbor, Elspeth Whipple, had given me as a ‘moving-in’ gift. From my bent-over position, I must have been looking at the paperweight at just the right angle to catch the reflection of light.