White visitors hurried past Mira to get their tickets to the Woodsman house. They skipped and trotted and bumbled along. It was a holiday experience for them, a vacation, maybe for some a celebration. They’d come to relax, to enjoy a little revelry, to escape. She was not like them. She did not feel revelry. Nothing about this experience relaxed her. With an unsteady gait, she took short steps, pausing with each one. Her stomach made little lurches signaling to her the unsettled feeling that she might soon vomit on the grass. She did not want this. They wanted to be here and she had to be, but did she? Should she have come? How could Celine have brought her here for this?

Near the entrance an elderly black man sat in a cramped booth. He peered through the glass, glanced at her once to tell her the price before turning to the small computer screen in front of him. His ambivalence toward her, a black visitor at a place like this, was a slight comfort that tempered her embarrassment.

“Are there always this many people here?” Mira asked.

The man focused on her again, this time surveying the area around her to see she was alone before he shifted up in his seat. “It’s been pretty crowded since it opened a few months ago. What with all that’s happened.” He paused, rubbed his chapped lips together, seeming to debate with himself what to say to her.

“I haven’t heard,” Mira told him, hoping he’d be urged on.

“The man who bought all this, Alden whatever. A couple months ago workers found his body splayed across the grass in front of the house, his face all contorted, twisted up like. Wild dogs had got at his entrails, leaving the remains scattered across that lush lawn he’d paid so much money for. They had to scare away the vultures hovering above, ready and waiting to swoop down for the rest of him. The story is his death was a heart attack, but try telling anyone visiting to believe that. Ever since, people have been flocking to this place, wanting to see if all those rumors are true. It gives them a thrill, I think.”

They exchanged a knowing look and the man settled back in his seat. “I’m actually only here for the Hunnicutt wedding,” Mira said. “I’m not sure where I need to be. Do I need to go up to the house?”

“Hunnicutt? Oh, yes. You’ll need to go to where the cottages are. There’s a check-in building. Here’s a brochure with a map.”