The Johnstown Girls

CHAPTER 1

Nina

Saturday, April 15, 1989

NINA FEELS AN UNEASINESS that borders on guilt. She is in her hometown. Her mother still lives here in Johnstown, but Nina never told her mother she would be here today, pretended instead that she's hitching a ride in tomorrow. She hasn't yet told her mother about Ben.

Ben's reservation specified that they wouldn't be able to get into their room at the Holiday Inn until three, but they came by at noon and the guy at the desk said blithely, Oh, sure, you can go up now.

The room has that motel tang of cleaning fluid and air-conditioning, but it's spacious, the drapery and bedspread fabrics are pink and green, and the whole is not horrible.

Ben is on assignment. Nina is the tagalong, the paramour, the other woman—not true, only it's likely to look that way. He's not divorced yet. She came into his life after the separation.

Ben has to interview a hundred-and-three-year-old woman tomorrow. It was Nina's story idea, her tip. Since she comes from here, she knew about the woman. After a search in which she discovered Ellen Emerson was still alive, she pressed Ben to get the story assignment. And not just because she's in love with him.

Other journalists cut corners—crib earlier articles, juice them up, send in a photographer, and add a jazzy paragraph at the end about the last couple of years. But Ben, who doesn't paste or recycle, pitched a whole series of stories, at Nina's suggestion, to their editor, Hal, who said, Okay then, but get me something new. I want something new.

Good old Hal. New is the business they're in all right, but new is not that easy to get.

Mrs. Emerson is going to be the jewel of the series because of her age.

Ben frowns now. I'm not used to really old people. In my family we die politely at fifty.

Don't say that.

It's only a slight exaggeration. I can't imagine her.

He's pulling plastic wrap off plastic glasses, looking forlornly at the bottle of Scotch he's brought along. Not for now—I know it's a bit early in the day, but won't this be sweet tonight? I wish there were real glass glasses. Scotch out of a plastic cup just doesn't do it.

I saw real glasses. She moves across the room and unearths them from a tiny tray almost hidden by the card that lists TV stations.

He puts the plastic glasses aside.

She sits on the edge of the bed and says, You have to live way past fifty. I'll need you. In my life. What she wants to talk about this weekend in between his self-imposed work schedule is their relationship, where they are, how his divorce is progressing, when they will publicly become a couple, and what happens after that.

They plan to see a good bit today, three of the crucial historic sites so that he will feel grounded before his interview with Mrs. Emerson tomorrow morning. It was Nina's idea to stash their things in the room, to unearth combs and toothbrushes and freshen up and get something quick for lunch. They need to get out to the National Park site at 1:30.

The woman Ben will see tomorrow, Ellen Emerson, née Ellen Burrell, is the last survivor of the Johnstown Flood of 1889. Of course she was little more than a toddler at the time, so she's a hundred and three now, almost one hundred and four. And she has a hell of a story to tell. The only trouble is, in journalistic terms, it's yesterday's news, been told before. Still, survival is an appealing lure.

The assignment is a big deal. Ben, lucky Ben, gets to do up to six articles over the next month in a buildup to the centennial of the flood. It's the kind of assignment Nina wishes she got, but Hal would never give it to a newbie.

Ben gets that look on his face, that thing that men do when they're about to make a move, raised eyebrows, that look of appealing, even pleasant, evil. I think…I think I'm going to tell Hal I need many visits to Johnstown and the old lady, oh, say, eight times over the next few weeks. What do you say?

She laughs agreeably, knowing what he's agitating about. He hates going to her place.

She's told him she can't break a lease just like that. Plus she likes her place. And that, like old news, is an old argument between them.

Now he says, Isn't this great—not having to worry about who is going to be tapping on the door, watching out the front window?

But the sad fact is he can't afford multiple overnight assignments at Holiday Inns. He's paying for today out of his own pocket because Hal Carson would surely point out that the trip could be made back and forth in a day and would not necessitate an overnight stay. The overnight excuse is really for Ben's estranged wife, who doesn't want him but wants to keep tabs on him.

If you'd asked Nina two years ago if she could handle all this mess, she would have said a definite no. But every day she's still with him. She wants a future with Ben, that's the only thing she's certain of. Today is meant to be special—just time away from their usual grind.

He leans forward to kiss her.

Then he begins lowering her to the bed.

Oh, he is so gorgeous. He's exactly who she wants, the man she has always dreamed of. Earthy, not overly neat or buttoned up. Dark hair, a great smile. A sturdy six-foot, olive-skinned, highly intelligent hard worker. With good sense. With a heart.

Oh, man, he says. I dream about this, you know. You. Just hours and hours with you.

His hands caress her body—waist, hips.

Now? Are you sure? She's a pretty game girl, but they haven't had any lunch and they need to be up the road some fifteen miles for a 1:30 appointment at the flood site and it's already—

His head goes under her skirt. Soon her underwear is off. She gasps at the suddenness of his move, but his groan is so happy. She doesn't really like it when he goes straight for the goods, but she usually gives up any resistance after a few minutes and simply enjoys it.

She likes best when they have kissed and kissed and then he climbs up and props himself over her.

His jeans come off, then his underwear. He wants the whole ball of wax, so she opens herself to him. She loves to watch him work—whether for a story or for her pleasure or his. He's bent on his own pleasure now, paying attention to sensation, timing himself, thrusting slowly, then fast. She pulls him toward her and kisses him. Someday soon she will have a future with him, with his existing kids, then their own, blended it's called, maybe four children for her to fuss over—and in her imagination these kids keep having his hair and eyes and she can't stop hugging and kissing them. She wants a family. Kids. Chaos. Ballgames. All that.

After he comes—she doesn't today though she does most times—they lie there. He holds onto her tight as if he's drowning.

Ah, how will they support those four gorgeous children? Let alone buy tickets to sports events. Is that what he's thinking when he holds on tight? They're too old to have the problems they have. She is twenty-seven but lived jobless for two years trying to be a writer and now has plenty of pressure to pay off her college loans. He's thirty-six and doesn't make a huge salary at the paper even though he's really, really good at what he does. His two boys, eight and six, are always needing something. And his wife will need alimony. He can't fit in a second job though he has contemplated it. As it is, he works long hours at the paper, for the paper. Between her debts and her low-level position at the paper, she's not sure how they will manage when they finally live together, only that they will.

The first problem with her apartment is that it's small. Revise that. Tiny. The second problem is that another low-level employee at the Post-Gazette, Michelle, another general assignment reporter, has the apartment on the first floor of the house Nina rents in. Michelle is the one who told Nina about the place being available, which was good. But Michelle badly needs a friend; she's a bit nosy; she doesn't observe boundaries—pokes her head into the hallway when Nina goes out or comes in, often comes up to tap on her door. Michelle doesn't know about the relationship between Nina and Ben. Or…if she does, she is circumspect enough not to say anything. They both got speeches when they were hired from the woman in personnel, a mean old thing, about not getting romantically involved with colleagues.

Who can uphold such a rule? People are people. And the job is about the only place a hard worker can meet anybody else.

There are other awkwardnesses, though. Their fellow workers think of Ben as a married man and he's very private. He doesn't talk to his colleagues about the fact that he and Amanda are separated. It's one of those things—he and Nina started in secrecy and somehow it seems to continue that way. And it feels sort of icky.

Her stomach growls. She shakes him. I love you but I have to eat something.

Errrrr.

What?

I don't want to move.

Come on. We have to.

I don't want you to move.

She kisses him a few times until he props himself on an elbow and then slowly gets up. There's that smile she loves as he pulls on his clothes. I like motel rooms, he says.

Oh, sure, she teases. They give you those free tissues and an ice bucket and everything. Glasses, too, plastic and otherwise.

He starts to laugh and shake his head. See, you understand me. Meaning Amanda doesn't. Then he's back on the bed, an arm around her, trying to tug her back down.

ON THIS SATURDAY, Ellen Emerson makes her way to the dining table where there is a BLT all ready and well presented, including the toothpick. On most days lunches at her apartment are huge, warm meals: meat loaf, chicken, pork chops. Today is different, a sandwich—because she was telling Ruth how good BLTs were in the Penn Traffic restaurant years ago and Ruth said, I can make you one good as that!

What a funny notion Ellen has that she is independent at all. It's not true. Without Ruth, what would she bother to eat? Applesauce and cottage cheese and perhaps ice cream. Soft things, right out of the jar or cup. Because she's old, ancient, the fact that her body gets her from the chair to the table is a bit of a miracle. She can walk; she just hasn't walked terribly far for a while. Today she wears a pair of loose, wide cotton pants and a quietly flowered blouse that is a little like a jacket. Ruth always teases her that she's a fashion plate, hardly true; but she's very clean and neat, always was. Tomorrow she will put on a dress for when that reporter comes to visit.

Ruth asks, "Iced tea?’

Yes.

You're excited. You wish it was tomorrow, don't you?

I never wish myself into the future. I don't want to shorten anything that's left to me.

Ruth shakes her head, smiling. I didn't mean…

I know. You're not rushing me off.

People are amazed and puzzled that Ellen sends Ruth home at night and doesn't get anyone else in. She still wants that feeling of being able to handle things on her own. She goes to bed at eight, reading for hours, uses the walker for safety when she needs to go to the bathroom, and otherwise doesn't stir things up with visits to the kitchen or the living room. Ruth even keeps water and a tin of cookies and crackers at Ellen's bedside in case she gets hungry during the night. Ellen is an ordinary old thing and also a miracle.

Today she and Ruth were busy. They dug out, dusted, and looked at several photo albums. Sometimes it tired her to explain to Ruth what everything was, but Ruth's utter fascination rewarded her. She showed pictures of places she'd lived when married, widowed—and even the apartment buildings where she lived in the old days in New York. Some of the photos are brown and small.

Ruth is African American, sixty years old. She says Ellen changed her life by giving her the right to ideas and that she will never forget that gift. Ellen pays Ruth, her former student from eons ago, as handsomely as she can. The two of them have become friends, though Ruth can't quite give up the student stance.

Ruth sits across from her now. They eat applesauce, potato salad, and their BLTs. The bacon is a little scratchy going down, but there is plenty of mayo to ease the way. The tomato is surprisingly tasty for the early season. Small pleasures. Don't ever dismiss them, Ellen thinks. Tastes, smells, the feel of things, the sounds of birds, music. And talk. Small conversations with people you like. A good book. That's all she asks for these days.

But it's all starting up again! That's what she gets for living past a hundred years. A guy from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette called her. Once more they've found her.

NINA KNOWS about floods—she comes from this town, so she has to know. Everybody knows. Her own mother who survived the flood of 1936 told Nina when she was a child not to worry, the town was now, as publicity said, the flood-free city. Ha. Not true. The town made a liar of her mum. Nina saw with her own eyes the aftermath of the flood of 1977 when she rushed back after the disaster to find her mother and father. That's a memory she can't shake. She wants Ben to write about that flood, too, her flood, and he has promised he will find a way to angle it in. But because she witnessed that flood and read about the earlier ones—the Great Flood of 1889 and the 1936 flood—she's very aware of the proneness of Johnstown to flooding. Her mother lives in the same little box, the one Nina grew up in, the one that survived waters rushing by in 1977, waters that carried refrigerators, bikes, porch furniture. The destruction that year was so bad it's almost impossible to get her mind around anything worse. And 1889 was definitely worse. It's in all the history books. The town was laid flat. It became an ocean, then a debris-ridden landscape.

Nina, who comes from the not-flood-free-city and whose idea this series is, has been preparing Ben, having told him about the site they are going to see at 1:30, the place in the mountains that used to be a lake—the lake that caused the flood, the big one of 1889, though she's never actually been to see the dam site before.

The infamous lake was man-made of what began as a hole in the earth. A dam was built at one end and voila, the result was a gorgeous body of water on a mountaintop, twenty million tons of water, filled with the best fishing the rich tycoons could buy. The lake was three miles long and one mile wide, sixty-five feet deep. It was surrounded by flora and fauna and felt deeply remote, hidden, and precious. Rich people came to summer there (many from Pittsburgh), but really rich people, storybook rich, like Frick and Mellon and Carnegie. The lake was the center of the club they had founded, the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club. This vacation or summer property was an escape for the privileged, up high, looking down, fourteen miles above the city of Johnstown. A train from Pittsburgh took them right there.

Nina now lives in Pittsburgh. Mostly the migration impulse goes Johnstown to Pittsburgh, small town to big, but one hundred years ago people who could afford it were trying to get out of the burgh to relax at the mountain lake where it was cooler and prettier. Oh, what a story it is. The best and worst of humankind. The wealthy people who vacationed there did not want to think about the dam being faulty. To think about it would be to give up their pleasure for a week, a month, a year while the problem was fixed. And what would they do if it were deemed unfixable? They did not want to know that plants were growing through the huge structure of rocks, creating cracks, they did not want to think about debris pushing at the rocks. It had always held, that's what most of them kept telling themselves. There were leaks, yes, but the workmen patched the leaks. That's what workmen were for. The dam would simply have to be shored up as needed. It would hold.

But of course it didn't. After a punishing rain that added another eight inches to the lake on May 30, and then more and more the next day, the dam collapsed. It gave way on the afternoon of May 31, 1889. In a matter of minutes a town was destroyed and 2,209 people died. And the story made international news and stayed in the headlines for weeks in a time long before radios and TV were invented. It was the major news of the day.

She selfishly wishes it were hers to write, but she did the next best (and logical) thing: she gave it to Ben.

You asleep? he asks.

No. Thinking about what we're going to see. Going over facts. Preparing to be Girl Friday.

Nina knows her numbers—eight inches, 2,209 dead, fourteen miles, 4:07 p.m. She wrote all this down for Ben.

Now she gets up and does the toothbrush and comb business, but Ben doesn't move. Get your notebook. Come on!

He looks at his watch. I'm sorry. I need five more minutes.

Oh. She has to eat. I'm going to go see if they can make us milkshakes downstairs. While you get yourself going. If she runs into somebody her mother knows, what then? Oh, she can't think about it. Her mother is very old-fashioned.

She goes down by the elevator and enters the sunny dining room. It seems very clean, but then everything in Johnstown is clean. It's part of its heritage, she jokes to herself, water washing over everything.

Do you make milkshakes?

Nooo, says the girl at the hostess podium. And before Nina can come up with something else she might order fast, the girl disappears, saying, But I'll go ask if they can make you one.

Now that is Johnstown. Clean. And filled with people who wish to please. Right there is the whole spirit of the city.

She sits, poring over the menu. What are they saying in the kitchen? Oh, gosh we really do need a blender.

Ben is still not downstairs. What else can she order that's fast and portable?

The girl comes back. She has one of the happiest walks and faces Nina has ever seen. He says he will make you one! she announces proudly. What kind?

I need two. One chocolate, one vanilla. She'll give Ben a choice.

You must be very hungry, the girl teases. She looks too young for the job. Seventeen? She appears to be Hispanic. That's new, recent, in the town's population. Johnstown has always welcomed hard workers, has always been the ultimate melting pot. Clean. A wish to please. Hard-working.

She pays cash for the shakes, which are just ready by the time Ben emerges from an open elevator door and chooses the chocolate.

She points him, once they get to the parking lot and climb into his car, toward the exit they will take. After that, a few seconds in the car, sucking at their thick shakes, she directs him: Market Street to Vine Street to Napoleon, then to Route 56 East. By the time they've finished the shakes except for the last desperate slurps, she reminds him, You're going to need 219 North.

Okay, Sacajawea.

He's been studying everything, too. He probably doesn't need her facts. He only brought her along to have time together, like a real weekend date, something they've never had.

You were gorgeous this afternoon.

Oh, pooh. I mean, thanks.

Together, a week ago, they sat at her place and looked at pictures of the incredible disaster, a whole town flattened. She told him about her flood, the one she'd seen in 1977—cars wrapped around each other, construction tractors on the tops of telephone poles. Houses downed to nothing but splinters and mud. And about what it was like to fear that she had lost her parents.

For a while now they drive in silence. He puts on the radio trying to find something, maybe a Pirates’ game.

She says, They play tonight.

Ah. You always know. He puts a hand on her thigh, smoothing it affectionately. Good. We can watch them while we're rolling around.

It's a good thing I like baseball. Many women would find that very unromantic.

He gives her a slow, sly smile. She's hopeless when he smiles like that. She could forgive him murder.

He has to turn the radio off because the reception is impossible on the highway.

An idea hits her. Did you call Amanda when I went for the shakes?

I did.

Did she ask if you were alone?

He pauses. No.

Was she at the house?

At her mother's this weekend.

Nina doesn't blame Amanda for anything. And not Ben either. It didn't work out. That's enough for her. Was it a bad phone call?

It wasn't good.

She feels a new uneasiness, but doesn't pursue more.

Finally when she thinks they ought to be close to the dam site, she sees an old man taking slow goosesteps along the road. She asks Ben to pull over for a second. She rolls down her window to wave to the old fellow. "Excuse me, sir. Could you tell us if we're near the old lake?

Oh, it's right up the road here. No water in it these days. It's not a lake anymore.

I think that's a good thing.

He nods. I'd say so. There's a guy works it. Young guy. It's a park now.

She bids him goodbye. Men don't ask for directions, but women like to know where they are and to get various other messages along the way. The old guy was telling her, You can joke about anything when you get old and can't walk. Perfectly acceptable.

She is going to see her mother tomorrow morning when she will pretend she just got into town—unless somebody tells her mother they saw her about town or at the motel. If that happens, she'll take a deep breath and explain about Ben. Her mother won't like his not being divorced yet, but at least there won't be any lies between them.

Here we are, Ben says. Here we go.

A modest sign points them down a road where there is room for about ten cars to park, though there are no other cars parked there at the moment. Up ahead, indeed, is a young fellow working at the lake site as the old man said there would be. She and Ben have gotten out of the car and approach where the fellow sits in a little kiosk, reading. He's red-haired and sports muttonchops, perhaps trying to look as if he comes from the last century. Yes, close inspection shows he's wearing a costume of sorts—nothing official—just a pair of overalls with a battered sports coat over them, but he's achieved a look. He's clearly a theatrical fellow so he must be in need of an audience.

Where are the crowds? she asks. I thought there'd be crowds. Somehow she's formed her question of memorable lyrics. I thought there'd be clowns. From A Little Night Music.

Don't know. We'll work it up in a couple of months with publicity for the centennial. We'll get some crowds then. You two want to go in?

We do, Ben says. I called ahead for an appointment.

Oh, right! Oh, yes, of course. I was just expecting one person. You must be Ben Bragdon.

Right. My colleague is helping on the story.

Sure.

Nina Collins, she says, offering a hand, which the boy takes, flushing. Women don't shake hands in his world.

What constitutes going in? There is only land around them. The airs smells fresh, of springtime mud and new growth.

Ben takes out a wallet. Is there a fee?

The boy waves Ben's money aside. Not yet. We're just working up to it. Working up to is a phrase he likes.

Then the boy places the book he was reading title down on a shelf, making Nina wonder what it is that keeps him fascinated as he sits up here alone. It looks like a novel. Good. She likes a reader. She used to think she would write novels.

Here we go, down this path. Follow me.

They follow him and soon they are looking at a canyon, a hole in the ground, huge.

This was the lake, he says. Once filled with water and a wonder to all who heard of it until it failed and killed more than 2,000 people.

She knows—a terrible death toll.

There are steps cut into the hillside. They remind her of city steps in Pittsburgh, leading from one hilly neighborhood to a flatter one below it.

Want to walk down into it? he asks. By the way, my name is Silas Andrews. You can ask me anything you want to ask.

I'm just taking it in right now, Ben says, trying to see what a stranger sees. I'll have plenty of questions later. I can call you?

Certainly.

As they walk down into it, Nina can hardly breathe, the idea of it overwhelming her. She feels like she's drowning under all that imaginary crystalline water she's read about. And also she feels thrilled. She can't explain it. Maybe she feels she's defying death.

I'll be sending a photographer in a couple of days or a couple of weeks, depending on when they run the story.

Okay. I'm here. Ten to five. Six days a week.

They all stand in the lowest part of what once was Lake Conemaugh. This expanse of air about them would all have been water. It makes them quiet. Yes. Imagination grows in the quiet. Little sailboats, like beautiful toys, would have dotted the surface seventy-two feet above them. Seventy-two feet! Ben will need those numbers. He's a little slapdash and romantic in the early stages of a story; he goes for the big picture and looks up facts at the last minute.

The breast of the dam was there, Silas Andrews says. See? Andrews points to a narrow hill. It gave. And the water flowed right over that way, can you see, down to Johnstown. Well, I'm lying. It wasn't simple. The water took an indirect path at times. Circuitous. She and Ben catch each other's eyes. They understand each other and are amused by Andrews who apparently likes books and words—which they do, too, though Andrews seems more naked in his passion, young.

This place is amazing, Ben says. He begins scribbling in his small notebook, the one that fits in his pocket. He writes against his hand, then against his thigh.

She wonders what he is putting down. What would she write if it were her story? She would write that they are standing amidst full trees and bushes, next to little park placards, which explain the sanctity of animal life here, that what was once a lake is now back to its original identity—a green valley, a canyon lush with trees, rhododendrons, wildflowers, and ivy, that it defies fact, making it seem impossible the other identity was ever true.

She reads little placards set in the earth. Dandelions of course, she knew those. Yellow trout lily, Mayflower, bloodroot (little delicate white things, wherefore the name?), buttercup—little and delicate again, but this time yellow flowers. And more. Someone has been here to identify them. Lovely.

Sunlight plays on the plants and trees in Lake Conemaugh. Above, there is only clear, cool, spring air, a sky so blue and clouds so white in their popcorn outlines that Nina feels almost dizzy with the pure beauty of it.

It's a wonder anybody lived, Andrews offers.

Yeah, Ben says, writing.

There are stories of people who rode trees for miles and miles and were saved—Nina knows a little of those miracle stories, but the best one of all is the one Ben will be tracking—a little girl who rode on a bed, or a mattress rather, and survived and lived another ninety-nine plus years, just a month and a half shy of a hundred. Over two thousand died in a matter of minutes, but some were right in the wild waters and managed to survive. Ellen Emerson is the last of them.

Ben is super lucky to be doing this story. Oh, she's grateful she has a job, just impatient with working on the ground floor since she wants badly to be writing stories like this one, that make her heart pound.

Ben, perhaps reading her mind asks Andrews, sounding casual, Many journalists coming by to look at all this?

Nobody much yet. I'm sure we'll have plenty coming up on it, maybe a month from now.

They start to climb back up, the men allowing her the middle between them. At the top of the steps, Silas Andrews leads them to a small building that wasn't visible from the kiosk. We're going to expand this building, he explains. There isn't much here now. Just this lobby and the movie theater.

What's there right now is a place for ticket sales and a few maps along the wall. In the center of the room is a little model of the valley, well done and detailed, like a good train set. And, aha, there is even the train from Pittsburgh included. Visitors of any adult size will look down on the valley like gods—seeing, accepting, maybe even complacent.

Wow! Look at this! Ben says, coming up to the model Nina has been studying. Not too shabby.

Andrews, when he feels they've had enough time with the model, says confidentially, Not that I'll put it this way to other visitors, but you'll want to know, this whole area is a floodplain. The problem is the city was situated badly, just off from where it should be. But if you try to tell people that, it's hopeless, they don't want to hear it, they can't get it in their heads. The city exists. It's there. It's theirs. They won't move. They have their businesses, their jobs, their homes, their families.

Ben says, I don't blame them. It's a risk, yes. But it's human nature. People in California don't move even though they know they have a danger of earthquakes.

Right, says Andrews. He frowns. He has a comic face. It will happen again, he says, wide-eyed, with a shrug. I guarantee it. I hope not for a while. And I hope I'm up here when it does. Or gone somewhere.

He's right of course. Her mum won't move.

Ben scribbles a few more notes.

Twenty minutes later, with Silas Andrews's help in the way of a hand-drawn map, Nina and Ben are in Ben's rattling Civic, headed to an area known as St. Michael to see what is left of the storied South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, where the Mellons and Carnegies and Fricks and all their cohorts enjoyed some good snoozes and some splendid meals. After the flood, those club owners went back to Pittsburgh, abandoned the club totally. Ha. They couldn't go back, couldn't face the survivors. They left the structures, never to be inhabited again. But buildings tend to stand for a while even when they are not cared for, and the actual clubhouse is reportedly still there. Also, according to her research, three other buildings have managed to stand—houses she or any normal person would think of as mansions but, at the time, were called cottages.

Must be just around the…yes, there, she says eagerly.

Is this it? Is this right? Ben asks. They have come upon a small crop of buildings. Since they're the only buildings around and his map is accurate, the question is rhetorical. He's just surprised.

The clubhouse is falling apart—of course, she knew that. But it's different from the classic mansions; it's a huge nineteenth-century building, wooden, three stories, with a big rambling porch. It was once painted red with white trim. I read about it. You know, it must have looked—at one point—kind of like the Sea Mist beach house in Cape May, New Jersey.

"Hm. That's what it looks like. A seaside resort…a haunted one."

They exit Ben's car. There is nobody around. Once more, she shows off her numbers. There were forty-seven rooms and a huge banquet hall that could seat 150 dining guests.

Hmpf. He pulls out his notebook and writes. You don't have to be my assistant. That's just a pose.

It happens I'm interested in this too. It's her town, the story of her town after all. She takes in a deep breath. For a moment, they just breathe through their flash of irritation with each other.

I'm sorry. For a moment it felt like you think I can't do it.

Of course you can.

Talk. I'm sorry.

She adds more carefully, Some of the members had their own cottages, sixteen of them had cottages, but there are only—. Before she can point, he does. Right. Them.

Cottages!

Rich thinks big, I guess.

There is nobody to stop them. They move forward and soon walk right into the clubhouse. Ugh, he gasps.

It smells of rot. Things are falling apart and she supposes she and