Cassie didn't answer. She didn't want to see the trees in the fall because she didn't want to be here.
They passed through Boston and drove up the coast-up the north shore, Cassie corrected herself fiercely-and Cassie watched quaint little towns and wharves and rocky beaches slip by. She suspected they were taking the scenic route, and she felt resentment boil up in her chest. Why couldn't they just get there and get it over with?
“Isn't there a faster way?” she said, opening the glove compartment and pulling out a map supplied by the car rental company. “Why don't we take Route 1? Or Interstate 95?”
Her mother kept her eyes on the road. “It's been a long time since I drove up here, Cassie. This is the way I know.”
“But if you cut over here at Salem…” Cassie watched the exit go by. “Okay, don't,” she said. Of all places in Massachusetts, Salem was the only one she could think of that she wanted to see. Its macabre history appealed to her mood right now. “That's where they burned the witches, isn't it?” she said. “Is New Salem named for it? Did they burn witches there, too?”
“They didn't burn anyone; they hanged them. And they weren't witches. Just innocent people who happened to be disliked by their neighbors.” Her mother's voice was tired and patient. “And Salem was a common name in colonial times; it comes from 'Jerusalem.' “
The map was blurring before Cassie's eyes. “Where is this town, anyway? It's not even listed,” she said.
There was a brief silence before her mother replied. “It's a small town; quite often it's not shown on maps. But as a matter of fact, it's on an island.”
“An island?”
“Don't worry. There's a bridge to the mainland.”
But all Cassie could think was, An island. I'm going to live on an island. In a town that isn't even on the map.
The road was unmarked. Mrs. Blake turned down it and the car crossed the bridge, and then they were on the island. Cassie had expected it to be tiny, and her spirits lifted a little when she saw that it wasn't. There were regular stores, not just tourist shops, clustered together in what must be the center of town. There was a Dunkin' Donuts and an International House of Pancakes with a banner proclaiming grand opening. In front of it there was someone dressed up like a giant pancake, dancing.
Cassie felt the knot in her stomach loosen. Any town with a dancing pancake couldn't be all bad, could it?
But then her mother turned onto another road that rose and got lonelier and lonelier as the town fell behind.
They must be going to the ultimate point of the headland, Cassie realized. She could see it, the sun glinting red off the windows on a group of houses at the top of a bluff. She watched them get closer, at first uneasily, then anxiously, and finally with sick dismay.
Because they were old. Terrifyingly old, not just quaint or gracefully aged, but ancient. And although some were in good repair, others looked as if they might fall over in a crash of splintering timbers any minute.
Please let it be that one, Cassie thought, fixing her eyes on a pretty yellow house with several towers and bay windows. But her mother drove by it without slowing. And by the next and the next.
And then there was only one house left, the last house on the bluff, and the car was heading toward it. Heartsick, Cassie stared at it as they approached. It was shaped like a thick upside-down T, with one
wing facing the road and one wing sticking straight out the back. As they came around the side Cassie could see that the back wing looked nothing like the front. It had a steeply sloping roof and small, irregularly placed windows made of tiny, diamond-shaped panes of glass. It wasn't even painted, just covered with weathered gray clapboard siding.
The front wing had been painted… once. Now what was left was peeling off in strips. The two chimneys looked crumbling and unstable, and the entire slate roof seemed to sag. The windows were regularly placed across the front, but most looked as if they hadn't been washed in ages.
Cassie stared wordlessly. She had never seen a more depressing house in her life. This couldn't be the one.
“Well,” said her mother, in that tone of forced cheerfulness, as she turned into a gravel driveway, “this is it, the house I grew up in. We're home.”
Cassie couldn't speak. The bubble of horror and fury and resentment inside her was swelling bigger and bigger until she thought it would explode.
Four
Her mother was still talking in that falsely bright way, but Cassie could only hear snatches of the words. “ … original wing actually Prerevolutionary, one-and-a-half stories… front wing is Postrevolutionary Georgian…”
It went on and on. Cassie clawed open the car door, getting an unobstructed view of the house at last. The more she saw of it, the worse it looked.
Her mother was saying something about a transom over the front door, her voice rapid and breathless. “ rectangular, not like the arched fanlights that came later-“
“I hate it!” Cassie cried, interrupting, her voice too loud in the quiet air, startlingly loud. She didn't mean the transom, whatever a transom was. “I hate it!” she cried again passionately. There was silence from her mother behind her, but Cassie didn't turn to look; she was staring at the house, at the rows of unwashed windows and the sagging eaves and the sheer monstrous bulk and flatness and horribleness of it, and she was shaking. “It's the ugliest thing I've ever seen, and I hate it. I want to go home. I want to go home!”
She turned to see her mother's white face and stricken eyes, and burst into tears.
“Oh, Cassie.” Mrs. Blake reached across the vinyl top of the car toward her. “Cassie, sweetheart.” There were tears in her own eyes, and when she looked up at the house, Cassie was astounded at her expression. It was a look of hatred and fear as great as anything Cassie felt.
“Cassie, sweetheart, listen to me,” she said. “If you really don't want to stay-“
She stopped. Cassie was still crying, but she heard the noise behind her. Turning, she saw that the door to the house had opened. An old woman with gray hair was standing in the doorway, leaning on a cane.
Cassie turned back. “Mom?” she said pleadingly.
But her mother was gazing at the door. And slowly, a look of dull resignation settled over her. When she turned to Cassie, the brittle, falsely cheery tone was back in her voice.