Birthright

romping. Old houses made from local stone, or their contemporary counterparts of frame or brick or vinyl, stood on rises or flats with plenty of elbow room between them.
    Cows lolled in the heat behind wire or split-rail fences.
    The fields would give way to woods, thick with hardwoods and tangled with sumac and wild mimosa, then the hills would take over, bumpy with rock. The road twisted and turned to follow the snaking line of the creek, and overhead those trees arched to turn the road into a shady tunnel that dropped off on one side toward the water and rose up on the other in a jagged wall of limestone and granite.
    She drove ten miles without passing another car.
    She caught glimpses of more houses back in the trees, and others that were so close to the road she imagined if someone came to the door she could reach out and shake hands.
    There were plenty of summer gardens in evidence, bright plops and splashes of color—heavy on the black-eyed Susans and tiger lilies.
    She saw a snake, thick as her wrist, slither across the blacktop. Then a cat, pumpkin orange, skulking in the brush on the shoulder of the road.
    Tapping her fingers on the wheel in time with the Dave Matthews Band, she speculated on the outcome if feline should meet reptile.
    Her money was on the cat.
    She rounded a curve and saw a woman standing on the side of the road pulling her mail out of a dull-gray mailbox. Though she barely glanced toward the Rover, the woman raised a hand in what Callie assumed was an absent and habitual greeting.
    She answered the wave, and sang along with Dave asshe rode the roller coaster of a road through the sun and shade. When the road opened up again, she punched it, flying by a roll of farmland, a roadside motel, a scatter of homes, with the rise of mountains ahead.
    Houses increased in number, decreased in size as she approached Woodsboro’s town line.
    She slowed, got caught by one of the two traffic lights the town boasted, and was pleased to note one of the businesses tucked near the corner of Main and Mountain Laurel was a pizza parlor. A liquor store stood on the other corner.
    Good to know, she thought, and inched up as the light went green.
    Reviewing Leo’s directions in her mind, she made the turn on Main and headed west.
    Structures along the main drag were neat, and old. Brick or wood or stone, they nestled comfortably against one another, fronted with covered porches or sunny stoops. Streetlights were old-timey carriage style, and the sidewalks were bricked. Flowers hung in pots from eaves, from poles and porch rails.
    Flags hung still. American, and the bright decorative banners people liked to hoist to announce seasons and holidays.
    The pedestrian traffic was as sparse and meandering as the vehicular. Just, Callie supposed, as it was meant to be on Main Street, U.S.A.
    She noted a cafe, a hardware store, a small library and a smaller bookstore, several churches, a couple of banks, along with a number of professionals who advertised their services with small, discreet signs.
    By the time she hit the second light, she had the west end of town recorded in her mind.
    She made a right when the road split, followed its winding path. The woods were creeping in again. Thick, shadowy, secret.
    She came over a rise, with the mountains filling the view. And there it was.
    She pulled to the side of the road by the sign announcing:
HOMES AT ANTIETAM CREEK
    A Dolan and Son Development
    Snagging her camera and hitching a small pack over her shoulder, Callie climbed out. She took the long view first, scanning the terrain.
    There was wide acreage of bottomland, and from the looks of the dirt mounded early in the excavation, it was plenty boggy. The trees—old oak, towering poplar, trash locust—ranged to the west and south and crowded around the run of the creek as if guarding it from interlopers.
    Part of the site was roped off, and there the creek had widened into a good-sized pond.
    On the little sketch Leo had drawn for her, it was called Simon’s Hole.
    She wondered who Simon had been and why the pond was named for him.
    On the other side of the road was a stretch of farmland, a couple of weathered outbuildings, an old stone house and nasty-looking machines.
    She spotted a big brown dog sprawled in a patch of shade. When he noticed her glance, he stirred himself to thump his tail in the dirt twice.
    “No, don’t get up,” she told him. “Too damn hot for socializing.”
    The air hummed with a summer