Midwinter rain was the worst, she'd decided. Never sure whether to sleet or
ice or just make everything muddy. The woods were knee deep in places, you
had to carefully place each step if you left the paths. No fun, really, so
she spent most of her time cooped up in the house.

It wasn't a big place, but it was added on to many times over the years --
half of it, electricity was an afterthought, and all the knobs, plugs and
everything were in now-strange places. The kitchen still had old trappings
of the original build, a big metal pump sitting by the basin on the back
porch, and the oven stood in an awkward nook that wasn't quite near enough
to anything else.

Today's romp had inclued poking through all the funny cupboards and
under-stair corners in the upper floor of the house, the bit that couldn't
decide whether it was second or third story, or maybe a bit of both at once.

The house had two separate attics, she'd found. The main was easy to get to,
a little staircase cut into the end of the hall with a door that always
seemed cute, being short and wide, and had an old-fashioned lock on it,
never closed.

["My perpective changed about"]

The other attic door was hidden inside the closet under the stairs. The door
was't much more than a few old, wide plants nailed together, same material
that the floor-runners were made of. Her aunt's abandoned quilting projects
lay in the closed, all neatly bagged and labeled. She squoze past them,
trying not to disturb anything. The second attic smelled old, piney,
unfinished boards, heaps of sawdust where the floor met the outside wall.

The end nearest the door had names written on the wood, neat hand after neat
hand, names in a row. "Edna and John White" "Jacob Smith. 1945." "Henry
White. 1917" "Carvers, six, 1916" "Kelloggs. 1944." "Harvey. 1952." "King.
1968."

She noticed the gaps in the dates immediately. All war years, memories of
leafing through her father's books, heavy black and white photo-laden
histories of wars, all the pictures of smiling pilots and ladies hanging on
uniformed men, counterpointed with pictures of bombed to ruins. Bald
generals, puffed up with importance.

She ducked out to grab her notebook. She traced each name and date onto the
pages.