The Secret of the Painted House by Marion Dane Bauer Page B

sat there, side by side, looking off into the trees.
    “My mom’s taking a nap,” Emily said. “Should I go wake her?”
    “Goodness, no! Let her sleep.” GrandmaRose looked into her eyes. “It’s you I came to see, anyway.”
    “Me?” Emily was so shocked that “me” came out as a squeak.
    Grandma Rose nodded. “I saw you go off into the woods this morning. Did you find it?”
    Find it?
What was this woman talking about? But before she even had a chance to ask, Emily knew. “You mean the playhouse?”
    “What else?”
    Emily took a deep breath. “Yes. I found it.”
    Was Grandma Rose going to scold her? Maybe she wasn’t supposed to go near the playhouse. Maybe it belonged to Grandma Rose or to some long-ago daughter of hers.
    “It’s …” Emily didn’t know what to say about it, really. “It’s nice,” she said finally.
    “Nice!” The word exploded with a laugh.
    Emily stared.

    “Weird would be more like it.” Grandma Rose shook her head. “Built over there across the creek. Practically lost in the woods. All that painting on the walls.”
    Emily took a breath. “The woods inside the house,” she said.
    “And the house inside the woods,” Grandma Rose added.
    Emily sighed. She wasn’t the only one who found the painting strange!
    “It’s like they go on forever,” Grandma Rose said. “Each one gets tinier and tinier.”
    So Grandma Rose got the same feeling from the painting she did. “Who built it?” Emily asked. “Who was it for?”
    “It was for Pin.”
    “Pin?”
    “Her name was Penelope. Penelope Hanson. But folks called her Pin. ‘See a pin andpick it up. All the day you’ll have good luck.’” Grandma Rose paused. She seemed to be thinking.
    Then she added, “She didn’t, though. Have good luck, I mean.”
    Emily held her breath. She knew the beginnings of a story when she heard one.
    “Pin’s dad had money … as you might guess. Building a whole house like that for a child. Not that his money did him much good.” Grandma Rose folded her hands in her lap. They were wrinkled in a friendly way.
    She turned to Emily. “His wife ran off and left him, you see. She left them both. She was an artist—a painter. They say she went off to be with her own kind. She just left that girl behind. Nothing to remember her by but the paint on those walls.”
    So Pin’s mother had done the painting. And then she had left. Somehow that made everything even stranger.
    “What happened to Pin?” Emily asked.
    “She died.” Grandma Rose’s voice grew soft. “Her dad’s fancy mansion burned down, and she died in the fire. Some folks even said she started it. Nobody knows, really. She was just a girl, no older than you.” Grandma Rose’s eyes were a sad blue.
    Emily leaned forward. “When did it happen? The playhouse and the fire? Was it a long time ago?”
    “Yes. It was a long time back. In the fifties. They are probably all dead by now. It seems I heard about her mother dying recently. She must have been pretty old.”
    Emily looked around the small circle of houses. “So there used to be a mansion here.”
    “Right here,” Grandma Rose agreed. She swept a hand to take in the whole area. “There used to be just one big house in all this space.”
    “And a playhouse,” Emily added.
    “And a playhouse,” Grandma Rose agreed. She stood up and slapped dust off her white slacks. “I’m not sure anybody ever played in it, though.”
    There were a hundred questions Emily wanted to ask. A thousand, maybe. But she didn’t know where to start. And before she could ask a single one, Grandma Rose was gone. She waved good-bye. Then she marched back across the gravel road.

3
Flowers for Mommy
    “W here are you going?”
    Emily turned back. Her mother stood on the porch. “Just for a walk. I won’t be long.”
    Yesterday she had worked all afternoon. Today she wanted to see the playhouse again.
    She
had
to see it.
    Mom wiped her flushed face with the back of her arm. “I