Wildwood by Drusilla Campbell

gathering with his shopping cart. “Mostly you see them.”
    “I’m usually too busy for the park.”
    “Maybe we could work out a babysitting co-op. I used to do that with my friends.”
    “I don’t go out much.”
    “You might change your mind. Once the novelty’s worn off.” She wiped Tootsie-Pop drool and sand off her toddler’s face. “What’s your name?”
    “Hannah.”
    “I’m Judy.” The toddler tugged her pant leg and whined to be lifted. Judy groaned. “No rest, I guess. Gotta go. See ya, Hannah.”
    “See ya, Judy.”
    In the distance a school bell rang and from farther away a siren screamed. No harm done. She kissed the top of Angel’s head. When you’re mine it’ll all be true anyway.
     
     
    Hannah made a late lunch of cold meat loaf sandwiches and chocolate chip cookies with milk. After eating she and Liz stood at the sink and put the dishes in the dishwasher. Liz talked about her neighbors in Belize City: the fortune-teller named Divina, the man who drove a Cadillac and sold bananas by the stem door to door, Petula who chartered boats to tourists. She described frogs the size of softballs that squatted on her steps and sang while the rain poured down.
    Hannah listened and tried to pretend she was interested. All the while she observed Liz for signs of illness, but the amazing thing was she had never looked better. The years had softened her rather sharp features and she smiled a lot and her laugh came from somewhere deep inside. She must be happy, Hannah thought. Happy or sad, the young were always pretty. But to be a pretty middle-aged woman, happiness was more important than cosmetics or surgery.
    If she’s not sick, why did she go to the doctor?
    Hannah couldn’t stand the waiting. “Liz, tell me what—”
    “I almost forgot your present. I brought you something special from Florida.” Liz went upstairs and in a moment she came back into the kitchen. “Close your eyes and stand with your back to the sink.”
    Hannah did as she was told. “It’s not a bug or anything? From Belize?”
    Liz laughed and then Hannah heard a soft unidentifiable squeak and water in a fine spray touched her cheeks and wet her eyelids.
    “What? . . .”
    “It’s rain,” Liz said. “I brought it from Florida like you said I should.”
    Tears again.
     
     
    They walked down to the barn.
    When Dan and Hannah bought the house on Casabella Road, there had been nothing on the lower field but a long, ramshackle old henhouse—a sinister place, thick with webs and shadows and the hint of snakes. Even the Fearsome Threesome, intrepid at eight and nine, had been reluctant to explore it until one hot autumn afternoon when Jeanne led the way and pried open the door with a screwdriver.
    They had peered down a long empty space striped by mustard-colored shafts and plates of sunlight entering through knotholes and gaps between the boards. Through a cloud of shimmering motes they saw straight ahead of them, dead in the middle of the barn and spotlighted in dark gold, an oversized wooden chair joined by bolts the size of silver dollars with a high square back and chunky square-edged arms and legs. In a hushed voice, Jeanne said it was an electric chair without the juice. It was easy to believe her.
    Years later on the day the builders demolished the old coop, Hannah stayed on the hill and watched, eager to see the electric chair brought out. The workman found a wooden kitchen chair with arms, the kind mass-produced in the Twenties and Thirties.
    “It was nothing at all,” she told Liz as they walked through the paddock gate and were immediately surrounded by clambering dogs and cats with their tails straight up and quivering. “Just a chair. All those years we were so afraid of it . . .”
    Liz nodded and inhaled as if she were about to say something. Now she’ll tell me, Hannah thought. Tell me, tell me.
    Instead Liz gestured toward the animals. “Are they all yours? There must be a dozen cats.”
    “The