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The Shrinking Pond — Juanita Tyree Osborne
There was no mistaking Landreth Galton. The tall blue-jeans-clad man with sun-streaked hair was undoubtedly her brother-in-law, but Gail Bannister could no account for the striking change in Land's personality since the death of her sister, Ellene, nearly a year ago.
The grief and shock of being a widower, whose children Gail had come to the rambling plantation to care for while the housekeeper recovered from a sprained ankle, was insufficient explanation for Land's sudden attraction to her dark beauty. She had never before been his type. He had been devoted to fair-haired Ellene and their six children, regarding with brotherly amusement Gail's spinsterish and solitary life. Now he displayed a seemingly sincere and disturbingly unbrotherly interest in her. Though she tried, Gail could not regain her old footing with Land.
Worse still, she could not dispel her ominous feeling that the Victorian manor house was somehow haunted, that Ellene's spirit lingered in the rooms and on the cellar steps where she had plunged to her death. The heavy silent air seemed filled with urgency, laden with a terrifying knowledge--casting an indictment of Land that Gail could not bring herself to decipher.
As oppressive as the August drought that parched the grass, withered the leaves, and shriveled the mosquito-infested pond was Gail's dawning awareness that something was gravely amiss at the Galton plantation.
The grief and shock of being a widower, whose children Gail had come to the rambling plantation to care for while the housekeeper recovered from a sprained ankle, was insufficient explanation for Land's sudden attraction to her dark beauty. She had never before been his type. He had been devoted to fair-haired Ellene and their six children, regarding with brotherly amusement Gail's spinsterish and solitary life. Now he displayed a seemingly sincere and disturbingly unbrotherly interest in her. Though she tried, Gail could not regain her old footing with Land.
Worse still, she could not dispel her ominous feeling that the Victorian manor house was somehow haunted, that Ellene's spirit lingered in the rooms and on the cellar steps where she had plunged to her death. The heavy silent air seemed filled with urgency, laden with a terrifying knowledge--casting an indictment of Land that Gail could not bring herself to decipher.
As oppressive as the August drought that parched the grass, withered the leaves, and shriveled the mosquito-infested pond was Gail's dawning awareness that something was gravely amiss at the Galton plantation.