I wear my favorite lime green bonnet, bought in a milliner's shop on the streets of Paris during my wedding trip abroad. I found out it's entirely possible to love a man's body but hate his very soul.
The giant picture window faces Sunflower Street, the lawn no longer a glistening emerald jewel lined with scarlet roses coaxed to grow by my own hands. Paul, my brother-in-law, allowed it to go wild and unruly these past ten years or so.

Today, my granddaughter parks her Ford Comet right in front of my house. I've not seen her here since she fled that one night. Her black hair has been butchered into some sort of near military style, her face bears no trace of cosmetics, and her clothes resemble that of a servant. Gray, drab, baggy.

She drives a baby blue Ford Comet, with a dent near the back tire. Her daughter, whose name is something like Belinda or Melinda, gets out as well. She stands at least six foot tall, with a man's span of shoulders. I call her the Amazon.

My own grandmother had that height, that build. A more imposing, impossible woman than Ermangarde Pennington had not yet been invented.

Ermie Pennington was the one responsible for our modest wealth. She had a head for figures and business.

I almost miss the passenger in the back seat.

A spotless white shirt, crisp black trousers on long, well-formed limbs, that head of black hair that never got a chance to turn white.

Quinlin Langhope looks at me through the car window.

But he vanishes before I can get out there or fly into battle. I remember him now mostly with the chicken hatchet buried deep in his skull, the pretty red blood soaking into the pale cotton of his shirt. It's a lovely, bitter memory. Not a month after that, my heart quit.

You get asked if you wish to stay or go. That's all you get asked, just that. A woman's cool, impersonal voice. You're still befuddled. Everything is dark and strange.

I had no wish to leave my house or my roses or all the things I knew. I am a creature of habits set into stone. I have not heard that voice since.

The two stomp up the cracked front steps, turn the key in the lock.

"You start in the kitchen. I'll start upstairs. Leave that basement alone. The steps have probably rotted by now. Paul can dock our pay, but I am not about to break my neck. Everything goes out back."

"I know, mama. I read the list," the great-granddaughter breaks in, her hair the everyday brown of the clan.

Her face is Quinlin's, except pitifully ugly, in a way no loving God should ever give to a woman.

Market slump for an old behemoth I had heard muttered by Paul, Quinlin's brother. No one wants these old dinosaur places. Too expensive to heat. Maybe it can be turned into a bed and breakfast or apartments, had been tossed out as well.

The Amazon's hand plucked my old lime green hat off the nail sticking out of my wall. Carolina stopped halfway up the once grand staircase.

"That was her favorite," she clumped back down, took it from her daughter. "Lime green, with a bit of lace. All the way from London or some city like that. No, Paris. She wore it with everything. She didn't care. Put it back. She probably wants it kept there."

"She's not here to tell us that, mama." Belinda or Melinda put the hat back on the nail.

The real one sat on my head, at a jaunty angle. I just liked it. It conformed to my head. I adored the bright indecent color of it, as my entire life had to be spent in dour earnest motherhood and marital bondage.

Quinlin peeked at me from behind the kitchen door, which hung on a single hinge, the other rusted through.

The pipes had burst that one very bad winter, flooding the entire first floor before someone had shown up to turn the water off. Paul himself. How he had cursed, before fumbling out his tallywhacker to piss into the flood waters.

"Did she really kill your grandpa and bury him in the basement?"

Quinlin rolled his black eyes, slipped around the two who proceeded to rehash family legends with no regard to the truth.

"No, you didn't," he told me, before holding up both hands to stop me just chasing him out of my house like a dog chasing a cat. "Peace now, Tru. It wasn't sporting how you snuck up behind me like that."

"You're a great deal taller than me," I pointed out. "It took me a few days to work up my courage. But you drank your coffee same time every day, read the financial section. Left the lady pages, as you called them, for me to read in the upstairs bathroom."

"You read them, didn't you?" He grinned, snapped his suspenders.

The two living caught their breath as if they had heard that. His black head turned, I wished I had that hatchet yet. Essie had sharpened it for me, without asking why. She might have been shanty Irish but she understood how some things had to be.

"I kicked her out. It was right to do so. No woman in our family has ever disgraced us so openly and blatantly."

"What a scoundrel yet."

"Scoundrel!" He laughed long and hard and again, the two-living stopped arguing over how fast they could clean 66 Sunflower to stare around. "I believe they yet call you a murderer, my dear."

"You hear that? Maybe there's a raccoon or something in the walls. Let's get started. Granny Tru, you let us be so we can clean."

I noted that Carolina looked right at me. She saw me.

I twitched my finger, she twitched her finger. I had been the only mother she had ever known.

Her eyes flicked to Quinlin, hatred sparking black lights in each eye. Quinlin nodded back. He produced the hatchet from behind his back as our kin parted ways, the Amazon to the kitchen and Carolina upstairs.

"What is that for? Are you hungry? You never had to prepare your own meals," I prepared myself for whatever battle would start.

Unlike stories of ghosts, I do get hungry and thirsty and tired. I sometimes have a need to relieve myself but there's nothing to pass. Memories playing games with me.

"You're not welcome here. This was always my house, from the moment I stepped over that threshold to the moment I came back here for good."

"I don't care about that, Gertrude," Quinlin patted my cheek, as he did when yet alive as he knew it irritated me. "I'm not here for long. Did you know this is a murder house? That's what it's called, my dear. Didn't we indulge just that morning before you killed me? That's the only thing you liked… now don't get upset and put on that pretend Sunday School face. Not for me, honey! I have mischief here to do. I have something to finish. I won't find any rest, but it will be finished." He smacked the flat of that hatchet against his palm. "How did I get a wife that liked all the bed stuff but hated all the rest of it? How does that happen to a good man?"

"You're not a good anything," I told my dead husband.

-