In the Shadow of the White Rose [antikvár]

ONE At first, Tom said it was the lovely little valley and my own inner longings that had spoken to me so that day, that had made me see the house as I'd wanted to see it. But I knew better. I'd seen that house as plainly as I'd seen the woods and meadow around it, and it had reached out to me as no house ever had. For some time I had wanted an old farmhouse like this one, as old as time, with restless memories and scarred woodwork and floors that showed evidence of those who had lived here. The weathered silver-gray wood of this house, with its steep-sloping roof and wide overhanging eaves, was exactly what I had in mind. I stopped my '57 Chevy—affectionately called Annabel—in the middle of the road and sat absorbing the scene—the sunlight glinting on the small win-dowpanes, the dusty smell of summer intermingled