In such a way, I came again to Grange House in July of 1896, this place at once familiar and always strange. Long ago, my father had invested in the Grange quarry, but then the place itself took hold. When the quarryman’s mansion turned hotel to a few select city families, he fixed the habit of returning every year, though Mama protested, bemoaning the distinct lack of variety in a landscape of spruce and pine. Nonetheless, the enormous old house suited the high pitch of my nerves that summer. At seventeen, I was as eager to know the world as it seemed eager to shroud itself from me, and fretful at what I thought were my bonds, I had begun to wear my white dresses like flags, a slim Crusoe signaling for the distant triangle of sails to break the flat line of what appeared to me but an endless, dulled sea.

As I followed behind my father and mother, I looked up at the top of the House to see if I might spy a figure there watching our advance up the lawn from the windows of her attic room. I never thought of Grange House without that figure standing in it. That afternoon, I did not see her, but, hoping she still looked for my return, I held my gloved hand up in a small salute.

“Maisie,” Mama called from the top stair of the verandah.

“I am here,” I replied, dropping my hand down to my side, but she had already swung round to follow my father across the threshold into the House, not lingering to take in the view. I cast one last glance upward, and then, gathering my skirts, took the remainder of the lawn with quick feet.

My parents were stopped just inside, next to Mrs. French, the long, wide front hallway stretching past them, with its several doors to the public rooms swung open and the hubbub of teatime voices issuing into the air. It was ever so, year after year: here in the front hall the mix of salt air and cut bayberry, the branches stuffed into matching copper pots upon the table, the silvery green leaves waxy as ever against the paper roses upon the wall. It was only I who seemed to change, a knife cut in the vergeless surface of the place, my arrival cleaving one summer from the next. And that afternoon in July, I remember thinking I was like the Prince returning to the Sleeping Beauty’s castle. Let the story begin, I thought impatiently, now that I am here—though what I meant by that, I had not the slightest idea.

“Well, well, my dear!” the housekeeper cried out on seeing me upon the threshold, and she beamed the compliment over to Mama, who smiled absently, pulling off her gloves.

“Are we to have our usual rooms, Mrs. French? I am quite in need of a little rest.”