The Silver Star Read Online Free PDF

two-story brick buildings painted in fading colors, were quiet and had plenty of empty parking spaces. The bus
stopped at a brick depot with a black metal roof. I had never seen a metal roof on anything except a shack.
    We were the only passengers who got off. As the bus pulled away, a middle-aged woman came through the door of the depot. She wore a red sweatshirt with a bulldog on it and was carrying a ring of
keys. “You all waiting for someone?” she asked.
    “Not really,” Liz said. “You don’t happen to know how to get to Tinsley Holladay’s house, do you?”
    The woman studied Liz with sudden interest. “Mayfield?” she asked. “The Holladay house? You all know Tinsley Holladay?”
    “He’s our uncle,” I said.
    Liz gave me a glance that said I should let her do the talking.
    “Well, knock me over with a feather. You all are Charlotte’s girls?”
    “That’s right,” Liz said.
    “Where’s your momma?”
    “We’re visiting on our own,” Liz said.
    The woman locked the depot door. “It’s quite a hike to Mayfield,” she said. “I’ll give you all a ride.”
    The woman obviously wasn’t a perv, so we put the suitcases in the back of her battered pickup and climbed into the front. “Charlotte Holladay,” the woman said. “She was a
year ahead of me at Byler High.”
    We drove out of the town and into the countryside. The woman kept fishing for details about Mom, but Liz was evasive, so the woman started talking about Mayfield, how twenty years ago there was
always something going on there—oyster roasts, Christmas parties, cotillions, moonlight horseback rides, Civil War costume balls. “In those days everyone was hankering for an invitation
there,” she said. “All us girls would have given our left arm to be Charlotte Holladay. She had everything.” The woman gave a little nod.
    A couple of miles outside town, we came to a small white church surrounded by tall trees and a group of old houses—some big and fancy, some fairly run-down. We continued past the church to
a low stone wall with a set of wrought-iron gates held up by thick stone pillars. Carved into one of the pillars was MAYFIELD .
    The woman stopped. “Charlotte Holladay,” she said once more. “When you all see your momma, tell her Tammy Elbert says hello.”
    The gates were locked, so we climbed over the low stone wall and followed the gravel driveway up a slope and around a thick stand of trees. There at the top of the hill stood the house, three
stories high, painted white, with a dark green metal roof and what looked to be about twenty brick chimneys sprouting up all over the place. There were six fat white columns holding up the roof of
the long front porch and, off to one side, a wing with a row of French doors.
    “Oh my gosh,” I told Liz. “It’s the house I’ve been dreaming about all my life.”
    Ever since I could remember, I’d been having this dream at least once a month about a big white house at the top of a knoll. In the dream, Liz and I open the front door and run through the
halls, exploring room after room after room of beautiful paintings and fine furniture and flowing curtains. There are fireplaces and tall windows, French doors with lots of panes of glass that let
in long shafts of sunlight, and wonderful views of gardens, trees, and hills. I always thought it was just a dream, but this was the exact house.
    As we got closer, we realized the house was in pretty sorry shape. The paint was peeling, the dark green roof had brown rust stains, and brambly vines crawled up the walls. At one corner of the
house, where a piece of gutter had broken off, the siding was dark and rotting. We climbed the wide steps to the porch, and a blackbird flew out of a broken window.
    Liz rapped the brass knocker and then, after several seconds, rapped it again. At first I thought no one was home, but then, through the small glass panes on the sides of the door, I saw some
shadowy movement. We heard the