After trying to have children of their own, they adopted me, then my two brothers. My father, also from an old Maryland family, is African-American. My mother, coming from a deep-rooted Eastern Shore family, has more English blood in her than Prince Charles. Well, I hadn’t expected “love and kisses” from a woman who cut off her only daughter when she had decided to marry someone of a different race. I have enclosed a check to cover airfare.

This summer I will see you at Scarborough House. I took out her invitation, the first message I’d received from her in my life, and reread it-two sentences, sounding as stiff as a textbook exercise. Several months later I was on a flight from Arizona to Maryland, still resisting my grandmother’s royal command to visit. Why should I have anything to do with her?” She has never had anything to do with Pete, Dave, or me. “I’m not going,” I had told my father back in June.

But one thing I knew for sure: Someone on the other side of the door was trying hard to keep me out. Was there something dangerous outside the house from which I was fleeing? Was there a person in the house who needed my help? It was as if the first part of my dream was missing. Something was wrong, but now I can’t say what. That’s how I awoke, trying with all my strength to open it, desperate to get inside. I guess I was never shy, not even at six in the dream I always opened the door, walked inside, and played with the toys. No wider than the front steps, it has facing benches that I like to sit on. The part I remember most clearly is the covered porch. It is tall, three stories of paned windows, all brick with a shingle roof. I’ve never seen the house in real life, at least not that I can remember. It looked as it did ten years ago, when I dreamed about it often.

Dark Secrets 1 by Elizabeth Chandler