The house is well on the outskirts of town with little more than a roughly beaten horse-worn track that links it to town but that's the way her papa always liked it when he was still around. The house, itself, is big and damp and creaky and was falling apart shortly after the family built it. Mama's in the kitchen, cooking something up that smells like boiled potatoes and rabbit, and the guts of that rabbit and its skin is still sitting outside near where the trap had been pulled in. She's humming and smiling for the first time in a long time like she's suddenly happy and knows what to do. Well, that's what she said, anyway. That she knows what to do now. That she knows how to bring papa back. Maybe that's true, maybe not, but at least she's smiling. Who knows where everyone else is? Her brother's playing hide and seek again. He always seems to be doing that.
