The Missing Pictures

The house is a mystery that one enters and pieces together in a long, slow exploration of the library, an elegant parlor, a bedroom, and a servant’s sparse bedstead.

A door that says No Entry leads up the attic stairs where one can find uniforms, oars and riding boots, costumes, banners, letters, books … and that mysterious wheelchair they said was FDR’s. Sunlight filters through a curtain of tattered American flags and sets the dust dancing.

When it’s time to leave, one descends to the ground floor and finds the light has completely changed, becoming wintry and cold. And snow has begun to fall. The visitor hurries out, shuts the door tightly, and trudges across the field.

Then he stops and looks back. There are his footsteps in the snow just behind him. Farther back by the house, they are gone.

And in a second-floor bedroom window … light.