The new people make their presence known. Ticking clocks. Television news. Chicken tacos on the kitchen stove.
The townspeople take notice, too.
Today, Fanny is in the orchard picking apples. Her husband, Mr. Dufray is reading a book under the shade of a tree. He wonders how long these people will stay. How much he will have to endure.
The three story Second Empire house sits on Saunder’s Hill. Mr. and Mrs. Clark have done their research. Cupola, classical pediments, paired columns. They like the preservation.
Fanny stands in the kitchen now bringing a pot of water to boil on the wood stove. Mr. Dufray slides past her running a rough hand across her back. He slapped her in the orchard for flirting with a boy at church. Someone her own age. Fanny reaches into the sink. A glass shatters and a small sliver of glass has gutted her finger. The sink is full of blood.
One afternoon Mr. Clark stands outside. Some of the trees in the orchard are incredibly old. He sees a white skirt flutter under an apple tree. A man in wire glasses looks up. The sound of a slap makes Mr. Clark bite his lip and all at once, the light is too light. Back inside he puts on some lonely song from the 60s and it echoes through the long hall and up the stairs.
The town library is generous. Old newspaper clippings and a picture reveals that Mr. Dufray was a decorated soldier from World War I. He returns home a hero and takes a wife, Frances Shire. Fanny. Sixteen years his junior. Five years later Mr. Dufray dies of what can only be described as – sudden heart failure.
Fanny is nauseous in the morning. Mr. Dufray wishes for a son, but in one afternoon shoves her across the bedroom. Pushes her to the floor. There are no visible bruises.
“How wonderful their lives must have been,” Mrs. Clark comments the next afternoon on the warm open porch while it rains. The summer has been hot. “Life was easier back then,” she says drinking her cold tea. A gust of rain-soaking wind sweeps a pot of geraniums down the long front steps.
Fanny’s belly doesn’t grow. Mr. Dufray is angry. He wants that baby. Fanny pictures the boy from church and remembers what his lips taste like.
Mr. Clark hears someone crying in a room at the end of the hall. He can’t concentrate. His client’s drawings should have been done two weeks ago.
Mr. Dufray would like Fanny to bring him coffee.
The mood has changed and in one afternoon Mr. Clark peels the skin off an apple from the orchard. Mrs. Clark is upstairs in the tower now; the rain has made her sad. And it’s when Mr. Clark puts the sharp knife back into the drawer that he sees a woman at the other end of the kitchen pouring something from a small dark bottle into a white porcelain mug. She looks up.
Mrs. Clark dries her eyes and dresses for work. She has a busy night ahead.
The crying has stopped and so has the rain. Mr. Clark feels the dry cool air falling in; autumn is coming. It doesn’t take long, and his drawings are complete.
In the morning, a doctor is called. By afternoon Mr. Dufray is laid out in the parlor.
Fanny is out in the orchard.
Let the mourners come.
Having grown up in the rural Midwest, Jan Darrow connected to the natural world at an early age. She graduated from the University of Michigan and currently lives in Michigan with her husband and daughter. Ghost stories are her favorite and she finds abandoned places utterly beautiful.