"Where the hell is this place?"

    Then she saw it, sitting far off the road on a graceful but neglected knoll. There, washed brilliant by the morning sunlight,stood the pride of Georgian architecture. Immediately, thoughts of a potentially high selling price and investments and a retirement fund raced through her mind.

    She admired the sight all the way up the curving drive until the angle of the sun shifted and left the house in shadow. What had looked white in the sunlight was actually weathered clapboard and peeling paint. Apparent now from close range was a century of accumulated scars.

    Old wooden shutters, some clinging stubbornly from one rusted hinge, offered a smile flawed by missing teeth. Once grand steps now sagged with age and neglected porch columns showed evidence of infestation.

With her hopes fading by the second, Dhari emerged from the car with a groan. Who in their right mind is going to want this? She started cautiously toward the side of the house following the remnants of an old plotted flower garden. Left now to compete against the weeds on their own, the dead remains of liriope and rudbeckia share the once trimmed plots with thistle and chickweed.

    She rounded the corner of the house where the sight of a tree, larger than any she had ever seen, stopped her in her tracks. What had seemed from the road to be a clump of tall tress was in fact one monumental tree. The width and breadth of it was nearly incomprehensible. Dhari looked above her as she walked beneath the canopy of its braches. City trees, planted in tiny plots of dirt between sidewalk and street, were merely trigs in comparison. Even without the leaves the tree created a shadowed world beneath it where only spears of sunlight reached the ground. Dhari shivered in its coolness. Only the giant sequoias, known to her only in pictures, Dhari imagined could best the magnificence of this tree.

    She had nearly forgotten about the house. Maybe there was some hope. She continued to the edge of the shadows. Maybe I can sell it for the land, she thought. Her gaze wandered past an old trellis, covered with thorny vines, to what she could see of the property beyond the house. "The acreage alone has to be worth something," she muttered. I wonder how many acres...

    "Been waitin' for ya."

    Startled, Dhari whirled around to find an old woman sitting on a bench in the shadow of the huge tree. She caught her breath as the woman moved.

    "You scared me," Dhari managed. "I didn't see you sitting there."

    Although the old woman was standing now, she wasn't noticeably taller than when she was seated. "You believe in ghosts?" She asked moving forward and stopping short of the edge of the shadow.

    Dhari recoiled a step. "No," she replied quickly. What the hell kind of question is that? Only a crazy woman would ask such a thing.

    "Mm, no matter," she said as she closed the distance between them.