Someday I’d make my granny proud, though she was dead. ” and my hands rose to my head to shut out the sound. “Scumbags,” I seemed to hear ringing like church bells in the darkness all around me, “no good, never will be no good, none of ’em. What a trusting soul she’d been, believing her youngest son Luke would sooner or later prove himself worthy enough to lift up the scorned and ridiculed name of Casteel.

Poor Granny with her ignorant, innocent brain. My mother, a beautiful runaway Boston girl named Leigh. Poor Granny had led me out into that cold, wintry night so many years ago, to visit a cemetery where she could tell me I wasn’t Sarah’s first child, and show me my mother’s grave. Why had my mother run away from a house like this? As I sat there on her bed, the vibrations in her room aroused the troubled thoughts that always crowded into the darkest corners of my brain. And so like a bride I waited for all those wonderful things to appear and decorate me, but they didn’t come. And around my neck I’d wear the pearls of culture, wisdom, and breeding that would keep me free from harm, from scorn, from contempt.

Here in these rainbowed rooms of dreams fulfilled I’d find the golden pot of family love-the kind I’d never known. The longed-for home that had called to me when I livéd in that mountain shack in the Willies called loud and sweet into my childish ears so I had been beguiled by thoughts of all the happiness waiting just for me, once I was here. This was my mother’s home, my dead mother’s home. The shadows whispered of secrets, of incidents best forgotten, and hinted of dangers, but said nothing at all about the safety and security I needed most. ALL ABOUT ME THE LARGE House Loomed Dark, mysterious, and lonely.

Casteel angel