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the worst ones in pits," he told her. "With only a hole on the top that they drop food through, and a metal lid so they can't climb out."
    The St. Albans of their fantasies was no less grim than their imaginings about the sanatorium. "I don't even want to talk about it," their father told them the few times they'd asked him what it was like. "My uncle threw my father out, and he never went back. Hated the place till the day he died, and hated my aunt and uncle, too. Said he'd rather burn in hell than live in St. Albans." The image the children conjured from this grim declaration was composed of bits and pieces of the worst things they'd ever seen-rotting shanties with no windows and sagging roofs, jumbled together on grassless tracts of worn-out land facing unpaved roads; a crumbling, heat-baked main street with a few stores with peeling paint and filthy windows displaying dusty, unwanted merchandise. In their minds, St. Albans was all but deserted-most of the population, of course, having been confined to the sanatorium, which they'd imagined as looming darkly in the center of the town.
    What they now saw was even more surprising than their wild imaginings. The little town appeared almost out of nowhere as they came around a bend in the highway. Rather than narrowing, the road widened as it came into St. Albans, and became a boulevard with a broad median strip separating the two lanes. A row of ancient oak trees marched down the median, spaced widely enough when they were planted so that now their branches, dripping with Spanish moss, provided a perfect canopy for the street and the front yards of the homes that faced it. After half a mile the street opened into a large oak-shaded square that held a bandstand, some picnic tables, and a small playground for children. On one side of the square a row of shop fronts glistened from buildings at least a dozen decades old, but as freshly painted as the day they'd been built. Everywhere, the influence of New Orleans was clear, from the gated facades that promised sun-dappled courtyards hidden behind them, to the ornately worked wrought iron that decorated second-floor balconies. Jalousied shutters were closed against the morning heat, and only small windows pierced the thick walls of the shops, which were identified by ornately lettered signs hanging from curlicued iron brackets.
    "It looks sort of like the French Quarter," Jared said as they passed through the center of town.
    "But a lot duller," his father observed darkly, and a moment later turned right, away from the square.
    The side streets appeared to be as well kept as the main street and the area around the square, and were lined with houses that also echoed New Orleans, with French, Georgian, and Victorian styles jumbled together in a pleasant melange brought together by the moss-draped trees that spread over the lawns and gardens. These offered shady respite from the pervading heat that lay over the town even now, in early fall.
    "It's beautiful," Kim breathed as her father turned left after driving two more blocks. Here, the oaks gave way to willows, their branches draping gracefully to within a foot of the ground. Then, in the next block, placed in the center of a large lawn, she saw a sign:
     
    The Willows At St. Albans
    The sanatorium was not at all what she and Jared had imagined. A white limestone structure whose core section rose two stories, it was fronted by a broad porch with five Corinthian columns rising all the way up to support the roof. Single-story wings spread out from the center, also constructed of white limestone. The windows, far from being barred, were flanked with gray wooden shutters, held open with wrought-iron hooks. Bougainvillea blooming in a profusion of scarlet, red, and pink was banked against the twin wings, and a low fence of sculpted wrought iron surrounded a broad lawn that boasted two of the largest willow trees Kim had ever seen.
    Ted pulled the car to a stop in a parking area at the