Maestro by Samantha van Dalen

wearily along what was not much more than a dirt track. She opened the car windows hoping to hear a bird or a voice. Not a single bird flew past. There was no robin here.  
    Sara began to sense that her presence here was tantamount to sacrilege. She glanced nervously at the chrysanthemums next to her: a small inadequate recompense for those whom she expected to reveal themselves. In this place. A place where one came to be alone. When there was nothing left in the world that you wanted to be part of. The only ones to find Angels Rest would be those searching for it. 
    The track rose steeply ahead of her. She switched gears and drove the car up and down again. On the way down, she saw a white cottage, nestling at the foot of the sloping hills. She stopped and got out of the car. She looked around her and could see nothing else. The track continued on for some distance. Like a piece of string stretched along a bright green canvas. It might go on forever.   The solitary cottage could be the home of a mad hermit.  
    Sara decided to drive on, to follow the track and see where it would take her. 
    Five hundred yards on, the track vanished into a pile of rocks. The cottage behind her had to be Angels Rest. 
    The prospect of having found Sarah's family filled her with trepidation. Sara turned the car around and sat staring glumly at the cottage. Her search for Sarah Lunn now seemed an immense responsibility to have taken on. Just as the track had literally vanished into a pile of rocks, going to that cottage was a point of no return. An end. An absolute. Sarah Lunn would no longer belong to her imagination but perhaps to a dreadful reality which she was not sure if she could face. To go any further, would require a leap of faith, a belief that something good would come out of it. 
    Sara's mouth felt dry. She began to cough. The sweat was dripping under her arms. She needed to empty her bladder. She was alone and on her own with no other resources to rely on than her diminishing determination.  
    She approached the cottage slowly, turning off the track and onto the grassy path leading to it.  The cottage itself was bigger than Downswold and quainter with its large wooden porch and baskets of hanging flowers. To one side, a wooden barn-like structure for storing tractors maybe. 
    Sara stopped the car and deliberated whether she should sound the horn or get out and knock on the door. The decision was made for her when a young man came out of the cottage and stood on the porch squinting at her. He heard the car and had come out to investigate. 
    Sara hesitated getting out of the car and rolled down the windows instead. She kept her hands firmly on the steering wheel and the engine running. 
    "Good morning!" she managed a smile at the young man who nodded back.  "I'm...I'm looking for the Lunn family. Do they live here?" 
    Barely twenty or twenty-one, too young to conceal his surprise, the man appeared taken aback by her question. He looked over his shoulder as if seeking confirmation that it was all right to reply. An elderly man, a great mop of silver hair on his head, sleeves rolled up, came out onto the porch. Despite being very tall, he was thin and wiry. Sara observed that he was leaning heavily on a cane. 
    She repeated her question. 
    The man cupped his hand over his ear as she spoke and yelled back:  "I'm Philip Lunn!" 
    The young man who had come out first, retreated into the house and an elderly woman came out. She looked remarkably like Mag, although a much slimmer version. 
    Sara switched off the engine and got out of the car. She walked up to the foot of the stairs leading to the porch. 
    "You must be Mrs. Lunn," she said smiling at the woman.  
    "This is private property," came the stony reply, "What do you want with us?" 
    From the words and their delivery, Sara could sense that this woman was both unyielding and unforgiving. 
    Mr. Lunn began to retreat into the house, knowing no doubt, that it