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She lived there for close to twenty-five years. On the rough walls of the outhouse she
pasted quotations by Thoreau, pictures cut from magazines--many of the sea--and poems she
liked. Robert Service's "The Cremation of Sam Magee" was a favorite.

"The Cremation" covered much of the door. The relatives said such silliness just proved
Sophie wasn't all there. But I loved it, even at night when I couldn't read it. It tickled me just to
know it was there, to think of the line, "...I didn't like to hear him sizzle so."

When a picture or poem got too wrinkled and spotty from the dampness, she just pasted
over it. The inside of the outhouse became a hodgepodge collage of art that appealed to her.
Another thing that pleased me was that the outhouse was a two-holer, with one of the holes being
child-sized. I never like those big holes with all the dark below.

In Aunt Sophie's last years Uncle Boyd added on to the little house, making room for an
indoor bathroom. The outhouse collage was lost, but she wrote up a new copy of "The
Cremation" and put it on the inside of her bathroom door. She had a sense of fun, Aunt Sophie
did.

The house's two bedrooms were small, one upstairs reached by a narrow stairwell, one
off the living room. The kitchen and pantry were miracles of planning. Shelves lined the walls
and hooks hung from the ceiling, all in use. Dried herbs hung next to the wood stove she used for
cooking and heating. The wood cookstove was there even after Uncle Boyd had the place
electrically wired. That was when he had a small refrigerator put in. Sophie admitted the electric
lights were better for the close needlework she did, and electric heat in the winter was convenient
on cold nights, but she never gave up the morning warmth and comfort of a wood fire in the
kitchen stove. There was also a small, stone fireplace in the living room. On wintery nights she
would build a fire. She watched the flames or listened to the crackle of the fire while she
"...stitched something up." I believe that is the main reason she loved the house so; the fireplace
reminded her of the one in David and Amy's house.

The fireplace, and the little bedroom upstairs. It was Uncle Boyd's room. There was a
high, four-poster bed, and mirrored chest of drawers. His fishing gear and hunting and camping
clothes hung on nails behind the door. A mounted deer's head stared at us from the wall--I guess
it was his. It always kinda spooked us kids. Other than the deerhead, the room looked more like a
child's room than a man's.

A box in the closet held an elaborate electric train that we sometimes set up on the floor.
A slingshot hung on a peg on the wall. There were toy trucks and cars on the windowsill. On
rainy days we cousins pulled a puzzle box off a shelf and, depending on the intricacy of the
design, amused ourselves for hours. Over the years our parents had filled the bookcase under the
sloping roof with blocks and books, and sometimes we even took them out, read or played with
them. But more often we mixed up the trucks and cars, the toy farms, the blocks and the boy and
girl dolls, into stories we made up to amuse ourselves. It was essentially a boy's room, one where
you did something, didn't just sit around reading or coloring.

Whenever us children stayed with Aunt Sophie, and we did as often as possible, the
room was ours. There was a familiar warmth about it, not only because I spent so many nights
playing and sleeping there, but because it was always the same.

My favorite thing in the room was the quilt on the four-poster. A simple tied quilt with
bright colored squares, the design fascinated me, and the other cousins, for it was embroidered
every which way with names. The whole family was there, all the aunts, uncles, cousins, and
grandparents. I was up near the top so that my name was raised by the pillow when the bed was
made up. We called it the Name Quilt.

When bored I'd read the names and take comfort in being surrounded by all the people I
loved, and even some I didn't but who were nevertheless of my blood. There was a mystery
contained in the quilt. The names in the center, below "Sophie Elm" did not belong to
us
: David Smithers, Amy Smithers, and, in bright blue, J. Sampson Smithers and Lily
Smithers. None of the other names were in such a bright color. The first time the oddness of it
struck me I was about eight or nine. I puzzled over the names, trying to fit them to some relative
seldom heard of or some long dead ancestor. I finally took the mystery to my aunt to solve.

She was no help. "Oh, those are some people I used to know a long time ago who I was
very fond of. They don't mean anything to you." That only made me more curious. After much
nagging through the years I got no further than a promise that maybe some day she would tell me
about them, but she'd always deflect penetrating questions.

"Just look at your hands." I curled them tightly into my brown palms. "Aren't you
ashamed to have such dirty fingernails?" I was. One of the penalties of staying with Aunt Sophie
was having to adhere to her standards of how neat a little girl should be. Clean and neatly
rounded fingernails, clean and untangled hair, which meant tight braids, or, if I was lucky, or she
had the time, ringlets. And every night without fail, visiting children suffered a maddening
tickling, lying flat on our backs in bed while she squeezed a dropper of chilly fluid into our
noses.

"Stop squirming, and be quiet,' she would demand. "It's no skin off my back if you catch
cold, but as long as you're with me you can at least try to help yourself." She swore the drops
kept us from catching colds. I don't know what her medical information was but we tried not to
sneeze or drip when we were with her. The only relief from this maternal torture was reaching
the magic age of thirteen.

"Now you're thirteen, you should be able to take care of yourself," she stated, when, a
few days after my birthday I lay, apprehensive, beside my ten-year-old cousin Teri as she
suffered the drops. Finished with Teri, she handed me the bottle. "At least as far as drippy noses
is concerned." She left the room. I knew I was supposed to put the dang drops in my own nose,
but, grinning at Teri I just set the bottle on the bed table.

"More for you." I said.

Now I had forgotten the mystery of the names, but upon her first statement of, "David
was mine," I remembered.

Aunt Sophie stopped talking when we were done with the blackberries. The kitchen
smelled sweet, the counters were sticky from berry juice and sugar, the room was hot and damp
from our work and all the boiling of water and berries. The jars were stored on the pantry
shelves.

"We've earned a rest, my girl," she said, as she wiped her forehead with the edge of her
apron before taking it off. She sounded as tired as me, and went to take a nap in her back
bedroom. I was relieved to go upstairs and open the window to let the little breeze of the late
afternoon into the room. Looking forward to my rest on the four-poster bed I started to pull back
the Name Quilt, but stopped and examined it. As always I checked my name first.
Annie
Elm.
It was now quite worn as were most of the cousins' names, from our eternal running of
our fingers over them. But
David
,
Amy
,
J. Sampson
and
Lily
Smithers
were scarcely touched. I felt of them now, tracing the letters gently in some
wonder, as if meeting new, but old, friends for the first time. The quilt held less mystery, but
more warmth than ever.

As I laid the thin quilt aside to nap on the sheets in the hot room, I didn't think of
gray-haired Aunt Sophie downstairs, tired from a hard day's work, but of young, black-haired, perhaps
even lusty--the thought was still difficult to admit--Sophie, as young as myself, and obviously
not so innocent as I'd always thought.

After our naps, the evening cooled off enough that I brought in a few pieces of wood
and stacked them by the fireplace. We ate tomato sandwiches with pieces of cheese and apple,
drinking buttermilk in front of a small fire, 'cause she knew I liked it, not for need of warmth.
After dinner she got out an afghan she was knitting, and with very little prodding, she picked up
her story again.

The whole lower floor was one big living room. The large fireplace was the first thing I
saw clearly, almost as clearly as I saw David coming toward me. Amy's hand dropped from my
back; I was alone.

David's face at that moment is as clear to me now as if I had taken a photograph. His
eyes were especially bright, his face was flushed from the fire, his hair was slightly dark and wet
with comb marks. His usual grin was absent, his sweet mouth slightly open like he'd been
breathing deeply. I must of looked as frightened as I felt, because his expression changed as he
reached for me. His forehead wrinkled and his mouth tightened at the corners.

As aware as I was of David, I was even more aware of Amy, she was a blur of
movement. While I stood frozen by the door and David moved in slow-motion towards me, Amy
was busy to an extreme.

She'd thrown her coat onto a peg behind the door. I heard pans being banged around and
dinner being made. Now faced with David, I wanted to flee to the safety of women's work with
Amy, but stood rooted to the spot.

Almost without me being aware of it, David reached me and gently, hugged me. He
would have kissed me right on the mouth, but I squirmed away so he only brushed my cheek.
Amy was right in the same room. I tried to cover my embarrassment with movement, like Amy
was doing. I struggled to get out of my coat, David helped me, then hung it up beside his and
Amy's.

We stood still for a long time and even the kitchen area was quiet. I saw Amy looking at
us, her face without expression. She caught my glance and once again she was full of purpose,
her eyes focused on her husband. "David, take Sophie to the fire. She must be cold." It broke the
spell.

"I was just going to. Sophie, you must be cold."

"Well, I'm just a little chilly," I admitted. In truth, a cold fear shook my very heart.

David put his arm easily around my shoulders and sat me in his chair by the fireplace,
pulling up a stool for himself. He no sooner sat down than he was up again, poking at the fire,
adding another small log from a hole in the right side of the fireplace.

"What a beautiful fireplace. I like this room." I chattered on about the room until David
regained his composure.

He and Amy filled the evening with stories of how they'd found this area, selected the
place, built the house, how happy they were with it but there were improvements they wanted to
add. Amy made coffee and fried ham sandwiches, which we ate at a table set close to the big
window facing the sea. The view was the same as mine but more so, including my cabin.

Every time either of them stopped talking, I asked another question about something in
the room, a piece of furniture, the house plants, a pretty or interesting picture on the wall. I
wanted to listen to them talk all night. The thought of what lay ahead petrified me.

After what seemed like hours, the talk ran out. We sat at the table in the stillness, with
only a slight popping from the fire and an occasional hiss as a rain drop fell through the chimney
into the flames. We could hear the ocean but the sounds within the room were most noticeable. I
wanted to run out the door and down the path and into my cabin and lock the door.

Instead, I sat, waiting.

Amy breathed a deep sigh, which was loud in the quiet room.

"Well." She stood up. "Might as well do the dishes."

"I'll help." My voice sounded strange. I picked up my dish and lurched up to help her,
relieved to end the stillness, to have something to do that would further prolong the, I now know,
inevitable step. But that wasn't her intent.

"No." She took the plate from my hand. "David, take Sophie to her--" She corrected
herself. "To your room. She's tired and needs to sleep."

Amy was right. At that moment I wanted nothing more than to be in bed, away from her,
however normal she was trying to make this all seem. I wanted to escape. Firstmost in my mind
were her words just before we had come in, that David was mine.

Did she mean it? What was going to happen now?

Though it was David's idea and my final compliance that had got us into this situation, it
was Amy who had managed this step to get me into the house. She'd helped smooth the evening
with almost normal talk. David now needed to regain control, and so he did.

"Sophie, the staircase is right over there. The, uh, your room is to the right. I'll be up in a
few minutes." I took my bag from beside the door and David led me to the steps which he didn't
need to do as they were right in plain sight. I'd been aware of them all evening.

He said again, "I'll be right up." As I started up he called, "Be careful, the steps are
steep."

I didn't need that advice, either. In my heavy and frightened condition all I could do was
lug myself slowly and carefully up the steps. There were firm rails on either side, which helped
some but two rails weren't necessary. Before I was ready, I was at the top. Their room was at the
left, over the living room; my room was to the right, over the kitchen. So long as I lived there I
never stopped thinking of them as
their
room and
my
room.

I no sooner got to my room and set my bag on the bed than I realized that I hadn't gone
to the bathroom. It had been a nagging fullness all evening, I'd ignored it. I wasn't going to make
it through the night. I looked under the bed. No chamber pot. Lord!

I wanted to stay in the room but I had to go. I left my bag on the floor by the bed and
headed back for the stairs. I wasn't trying to be sneaky, I was concentrating on being careful as I
came down the stairs. I got to the bottom with so little noise that they didn't notice me.

They were by the sink, with his arms around her in a loving embrace. She was kissing
his face, murmuring, "I know. It's okay. I love you, too."