would account for—so Lila turned most of her attention to picking her way around discarded bits of machinery, random-seeming piles of wood so weather-worn that it could serve no earthly purpose except as tinder, and assorted potholes and rocks that formed an unofficial minefield.
Neither she nor Ella spoke until the car stuttered to a stop a few yards from the porch. The engine clattered a couple of times after Lila had turned the ignition off, then with a shudder, died.
“So here we are,” Ella said into the silence. “The old Stevenson place.”
“Yes. The last one.”
“Last?”
“I’ve gotten quit-signatures for all of the other farms in Shadow Valley. That’s the last formal act of transferring ownership from the families to the government.”
“Ah, so that is what you are doing out here. I was wondering. You didn’t look familiar and you certainly weren’t familiar with the area. And it’s not exactly the perfect place for a picnic.” There was an unspoken question in the casual comments, one that Lila chose not to answer.
“No,” she said, “I’m not from here.”
They sat in silence for a while. A rather uncomfortable silence, if truth be told, because Lila really didn’t want to discuss why she found herself at this derelict of a farm, and Ella seemed unwilling to introduce any new topics of conversation.
Finally, Ella broke the silence.
“Why are you out here?”
This time, faced with the direct questions, there was little Lila could easily do but respond. And truthfully, there was no reason not to.
“Here? Well...it’s not quite the same situation as the other farms. I held off coming here until the end, until I had met with all of the other families. I had hoped that....”
“Yes.”
“Well, to be frank, I hoped to see someone out here. I would even have been glad...well, perhaps relieved would be a better word...to see an angry homeowner glowering at me from the porch. This silence...this emptiness...it’s disconcerting.”
“So no one lives here?”
It seemed a bit odd to Lila that Ella, who obviously knew how to get to the Stevensons’, didn’t know what had happened. But before she could say anything about it, Ella continued. “Why did you make the long trip, then, if there’s no one here?”
“That’s just the problem, Ella. I don’t know if anyone lives out here or not.” Lila sighed. “It’s...it’s complicated.” She felt like an actor in a badly scripted soap opera, falling back on triteness and cliché.
“I don’t have anywhere to be in the next little while,” Ella said, fussing with a fleck of invisible dust on her blouse. That was an open invitation for Lila to tell all, even while the phrasing skirted any direct questions.
“Okay. Let’s get out and check the front door. And I’ll explain.”
They opened their doors and got out, their feet crackling on bits of dried grass and weeds. Together they made their way up three rather precarious steps, wobbling once or twice as the wooden risers threatened to give way, then stopped at the dark wooden door. Its panels were splintered and rough. Lila felt sorry for any hand that tried to knock on that surface.
The only thing breaking the unrelieved black of the wood was a small square of white paper covered with tiny print.
“That,” Lila said, pointing to the paper as if it were a source of lethal contamination, “that is an Eminent Domain declaration.”
Ella looked at her blankly.
“That means that unless someone shows up today to sign for transferral of ownership, this house, the outbuildings, the land will all belong to the state government without any restitution to the current owner. The state gets it free. The owner gets screwed.”
“But I thought you said that no one lived here.”
“That’s the problem. I don’t know if anyone does or not.” Not for the first time today, Lila sighed deeply. She glanced around. At the far end of the porch an old wicker-work swing hung from two thick, rusted chains.
“That looks strong enough to support us,” she said. “Let’s sit down for a bit and I’ll try to explain.”
The swing sagged slightly at the weight of the two women but gave no indication of giving up entirely. Ella brushed her foot lightly against the wooden porch, making the swing move slightly, as if it had caught an errant breeze.
“You know about the reservoir,” she began.
Ella nodded. “I’ve heard bits and pieces. Probably everyone in this part of the state has.”
“Well, the state—my boss, actually—wanted to make sure that everyone involved got fair treatment...as fair as possible, given that the reservoir was going to be built and the people here were going to have to leave...regardless. So about three months ago, once all of the details for constructing the reservoir were completed, he organized a meeting here in Shadow Valley. In the old church.”
“That would be before it was knocked down, of course,” Ella said with a faint smile.
“Uh...yes. A week or so before.... Anyway, everyone in the Valley attended, mostly because final financial transactions were underway and my boss wanted to make sure there were no questions.”
“Were there any?”
That seemed like an odd response. Lila glanced at Ella, but the other woman was sitting in the swing, apparently relaxed, her foot still brushing the rough planks of the porch.
“A few. But really only one of any importance.”
“Yes,” Ella said when Lila seemed reluctant to continue. “What was it?”
“It was whether or not the owner of this property would show up. Anna Stevenson. The last surviving member of her family.”
“And did she?”
Lila stood up and began pacing back and forth, her movements unconsciously parodying the slow rocking of the swing. To the porch rail turn, then back to the house, turn, to the porch rail, turn....
“No. Actually, she didn’t. Most of the people there saw nothing unusual in that, though.”
She turned to face Ella.
“According to them. Anna Stevenson hadn’t been seen outside of this house in over twenty years. Almost no one had even spoken to her in that time, except over the telephone she had installed just after she moved in. She was a recluse. Neighbors would leave supplies for her on this porch when she asked, and she always paid them for the supplies, with a bit extra for their taking the time to come all this way out.
“But they never saw her. Except perhaps as a movement, a shadow behind the curtains.”
Lila gestured to the two large front windows, actually noticing for the first time that—unlike the windows in so many of the houses she had visited recently, these were still closed off by draperies. The visible material was faded and stained, as if the drapes had been hanging in place for decades without being either opened or taken down for cleaning.
“So she didn’t know about the plans for the reservoir?”
“Oh, she knew, all right. I even spoke to her once...by telephone. There was a bad connection, a great deal of static, so I had to hang up fairly soon, and we really didn’t get to say much to each other, but she knew what was happening. She knew how much she would receive for her place...more than she would have gotten if she had tried to sell it, actually. Land values here in the Valley have dropped a lot over the past decade.”
Ella remained silent, swinging rhythmically back and forth. She turned to look out at the vista from the porch.
Lila