It was a long time before I understood what it meant to be one of the August Women. The lessons were learned in pieces, and the first piece was the pear grove.

The August House belonged to the women. All of us, living and dead, had ownership in it. And that gloomy behemoth had a claim on each of us as well.

Although the family had spread out over the years, my Gamama still lived in the house that had been built by her grandfather, and we visited more often than I or my siblings liked.

I hated Gamama’s house as a child. It was full of clocks: some running, some not. One clock for every baby girl born in the line descended from Stayson and Aurelia August. The only toys were almost as old as the house itself – playthings from a century ago that seemed to inhibit the imagination more than they encouraged it.

“Play outside,” my mother would say when we complained of boredom and stuffy rooms.

“Don’t go in the pear grove,” Grandma would add. Grandma didn’t live in the house anymore but was always there when we visited Gamama, and her sisters, Gamama’s other daughters, were usually there too.

Grandma was Gamama’s oldest daughter. One day she would be the one to live in the house, and wait for the grandchildren and great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren to visit.

We would go outside, and there we could find pleasant diversions while the adults sipped tea and talked of days gone by. There was the chicken coop, and a berry patch, and the vegetable garden, as well as the flower gardens that Gamama still fussed at on her better days. The property was a wonderland for children freed from a long car ride, with copses and spinneys sheltering all-but-forgotten potting sheds and tool cribs and ice houses just waiting for a curious child to explore.

The point of contention was, of course, the pear grove.

The pears that hung from those trees looked too perfect to be real. Glowing golden, plump and round, those pears promised cool, sweet refreshment to a child gone sticky and hot from an afternoon’s adventures.

The grape arbor was a poor second choice. The bees liked the grapes too, and no matter how many grapes we ate, there was always a corner of hungry stomach left, hoping for one of those perfect pears.

“Get us some pears,” Danny would say to me, grape seeds on his chin and purple-blue juice staining a bib on his shirt.

“Pears!” Marjie would agree.

It fell to me as the oldest to either dare the grove or remind them of the rules. I always chickened out, and reminded them Grandma had said to stay away. It didn’t make sense to let those pears go to waste, but Grandma was not a woman to be questioned.

Once, homeward bound after another visit, I summoned the courage to ask about the pear grove. Dad was with us that day, and he made a funny sound when I asked.

“Hush,” Mom said to him. “It’s your great-aunt’s grove,” she told me, turning so she could look at the three of us in the back seat. “They are her trees, her pears. We all respect that. If she wants you to have a pear, she’ll give you one.”

“Which great-aunt?” I asked innocently. I of course planned to spend our next visit to Gamama petitioning that great-aunt for one of her perfect fruits.

“My aunt Vivian,” Mom answered. “She died years ago, before you were born, Ashley.”

“Then how can she give me a pear?” I demanded, seeing my fine plan dissolve like mist before dawn’s light.

Dad made a funny sound again. “The August women have their ways,” he said.

Mom gave him a look that was kind of angry. “Jack, I’ve told you – ”

I would not be dissuaded. Now, we not only had a challenge before us, but a mystery as well.

On our next visit, I left Danny and Marjie playing outside with some cousins who had also come to see Gamama. Stealthy as one of the cats, I snuck back inside through the seldom-used door on the side of the house that overlooked the driveway. Once inside, however, I realized I had no idea what I planned to do to unravel the mystery of Great-Aunt Vivian’s pears.

Opposite the “Even Parlor,” where Gamama received her visitors and sipped her tea, was the “Morning Room.” The first was on the west side of the house – the evening side – and the other on the east. But while the rooms may have been aptly named for the light they received, I had always thought the better name for the east room would have been the “Mourning Parlor.”

I carefully pushed the doors open and looked inside. The room was a shrine to those August women and their husbands and sons that had died. Photographs were everywhere, as well as framed newspaper clippings, scrapbooks, and curious mementos left behind by those dearly beloved deceased.

Here, I thought, I might find some clue to Vivian and her glorious grove.

I was flipping through an album carefully filled with sepia photos when Bruce found me.

“Ashley’s gonna get it,” he taunted from the hall. He’s the oldest of the cousins, and a monumental pain in the neck.

“Come help me,” I said, refusing to be baited. Bruce wavered a moment on the threshold, then his own curiosity won out.

“What are you doing?” he asked as he neared.

“Looking for Great-Aunt Vivian.”

“Why?”

I looked at him carefully. I didn’t want him to ruin this. “You know the pear grove? The one Grandma says to keep away from?”

“Yeah. So?”

“It’s Vivian’s.”

“So?” he said again, the very picture of boredom. Boys have no imagination.

“So why can’t we go in there? Why can’t we have some pears? What do they do with them – just let them rot on the ground?”

“That’s stupid,” Bruce said. “There aren’t any on the ground.”

I wanted to argue, but something told me he was right. Instead, I carefully replaced the album on its side table and led the way back outside.

The younger kids were playing tag, running and screaming on the far side of the house. Bruce and I slunk along the foundation, scurrying beneath the windows of the Even Parlor where our mothers sat with their mother and aunts and grandmother.

From the corner of the house we could see Vivian’s grove. The afternoon light suffused it with an unearthly glow, cool and warm, dark and light, and it seemed that every season existed at once in harmony among the branches.

Here was a tree with fragrant blossoms, and beside it another laden with ripe fruit. Behind them a third dropped golden leaves in its own personal autumn, and beyond that the bare limbs of a winter-struck pear could be seen.

We crept to the edge of the grove, ears straining for any sound that indicated our daring was about to be discovered. Birds sang, insects buzzed and clicked, the voices of children rose and fell in their game. Ahead of us, only the breeze stirred among the pear trees.

Darn if Bruce wasn’t right, too. On the ground between the trees, not a single fallen pear was to be seen. As I continued to look, it occurred to me that there weren’t any squirrels or birds picking at the perfect fruits either.

I summoned my courage and took another step. Now I could feel the cool coming out of the grove, feel the soft perfume of growth and sunlight touching my face. I glanced around, assuring I was still safe in my exploration, and saw that Bruce had ventured no further.

One more step, and I would leave the lawn for the more uneven ground of the grove. One more step, and I would be disobeying the only rule Grandma gave us on our visits to Gamama’s house.

“Go ahead,” Bruce said from his safe spot. “Go ahead and get one. I won’t tell.”

An “I won’t tell” from Bruce is generally a lie – he loved to goad me on and leave me to take the punishment by myself after tattling to his mother. But this time, perhaps it was the perfume of the grove or the intoxication of a mystery, it seemed to me he actually meant it.

I looked back at the nearest tree, huge, fragrant pears barely hanging on, their stems nearly groaning from the weight of their juicy goodness. The tree seemed to urge me on as well, the closest branch seeming to bend a bit lower as if to bring those golden fruit within my reach.

One pear, I decided. I would pick just one pear, take a bite, and get Bruce to take a bite too so he couldn’t rat me out later. And I knew that the pear would be delicious, cool and warm, sweet and tart, an emblem of all seasons in a flawless golden wrapper.

I fixed my eyes on the pear I wanted – the most perfect fruit of them all, hanging just at shoulder height from a branch that seemed ready to fall from the weight of pears upon it.

Just one pear. No one would know. I lifted my foot and stepped forward onto the uneven earth of the grove.

“What are you doing!”

It felt as if my heart had burst from my chest. I must have screamed, but when I glanced wildly over my shoulder for the source of the voice it seemed that my straining lungs had never known air.

The air beneath the pear trees hung oddly in the afternoon light, so that the woman advancing angrily upon me only vaguely resembled Grandma. But it had to be Grandma – no one else would be so adamant about my trespass of a single step.

My trembling fingers still hung near the choice pear, unable to fall and deny their shame. Her glittering eyes seemed to spear my hand right through.

“Don’t you dare touch that!” she snapped, upon me at last and giving my ear a sharp pinch in passing. I cried out, more in shock than pain – Grandma never laid a hand on anyone, even when Bruce got into the sugar as a youngster and let the chickens out into the yard.

Unmindful of my protest, she shoved between me and the tree, fussing as if concerned I’d hurt the precious fruit or delicate foliage. I took a step back and glanced over to see if traitorous Bruce had stayed to witness my disgrace or if he had high-tailed it for more innocent pastures.

Bruce was gone, but that wasn’t surprising. What make me look back a second, then a third time, was the hedge.

A step or two past the edge of the grove, a thick, furiously green hedge grew, forming a natural fence around the pear trees. Just at the place I had crossed from flat lawn to bumpy grove was a picket gate, painted the same golden yellow as the pears.

I knew there was no hedge there, and certainly no gate the shade of a perfect pear.

“Grandma, I – ” I began, turning back to apologize.

“I keep telling you children to keep away from here,” she snapped out, still not looking at me, still fussing over the branch I had nearly defiled. “Now, go on, get out, before I tell your parents. And don’t come back.”

Never had Grandma been so harsh. I turned and fled, tears springing free and coursing down my cheeks.

“Watch it!” Bruce yelled, shoving me. I stumbled and fell, landing on my hands and knees as I sobbed. “What’s your problem!”

I could only cry harder. Of course he knew, he was just trying to rub it in. He must have been standing there the whole time, laughing his head off.

“Ashley,” Bruce said, and something in his voice made me stop crying long enough to look up. Was Grandma coming for me again?

He was looking at me, and although it made no sense at all he looked scared.

“Ashley,” he said again. “What happened? Where did you go?”

“What?” I asked in return, rolling onto my seat and swiping at the tears on my cheeks with grass-stained palms. I glanced at the grove but we were alone.

“I thought you were playing a trick on me,” he said, and I could see now that his face had gone white as snow. All at once his knees folded and he sat down hard too.

I couldn’t believe it, but Bruce wasn’t trying to put anything over on me. After a few minutes he was able to tell me what he had seen.

“I thought you jumped behind the tree,” he told me, still staring at the grove and the thick bars of sunlight falling at lazy angles through the branches. “You were gone, all of a sudden. Then you jumped back out and ran into me. And …”

“And what?” I prompted, my own fear and shame forgotten in our mutual confusion.

“You were cold,” Bruce said, looking at me at last with his eyes wide and his cheeks still ashen. “It was like ice.”

“You didn’t see her?” I demanded. “Or the hedge?”

“What are you talking about?” Bruce looked at the grove, and when his gaze returned to mine his face was regaining some color and his eyes were losing their glassy stare. “Who?”

“Grandma,” I said, my own fear receding into aggravation with my cousin. Surely he was teasing – how could he have not seen her bearing down on me, and chastising me the way she did?

“You’re crazy,” Bruce said. “You didn’t even get a pear.” He got up, brushing grass from his pants as he continued to stare at the grove.

I looked down at my hands. I didn’t even get to touch one, let alone taste one of those succulent, perfect pears.

Bruce stalked off and I got onto my feet. Grandma was nowhere to be seen, nor the mysterious hedge that had sprung from nowhere behind me and disappeared again when I left the grove.

The grove. Bruce said I disappeared, jumped behind the tree. But I hadn’t. I’d just been standing there, ready to pick a fruit before Grandma …

But that wasn’t Grandma. All at once I was sure of it. There was only one explanation for what I had experienced.

I must have seen Great-Aunt Vivian’s ghost.

The memories came then, a flood of them, every spooky tale told over cups of autumn cider, every off-hand reference exchanged over the fine china tea set. And it seemed in the first few moments of recollection that, within the house of the August women, the only tales worth telling were in memory of the dead.

Ghosts, the house was full of ghosts, the grounds, the whole hamlet that had been founded by our forefather Stayson August and his partner Davis Burnham. Abruptly I remembered one Christmas when the adults had been talking tensely about something, and one of the uncles declared in a drunken righteousness that one couldn’t cross a room in that house without trodding upon the stories of a half-dozen family ghosts.

So, it seemed to me, Aunt Vivian haunted the grove.

Fitting, to my young mind, for the stories I recalled of her painted a picture of a woman more concerned with her precious pear trees than anything else, including her family, husband, and own children. The grove was her pride, and, it seemed to me from hazy memories, somehow her downfall as well.

I found myself trotting quickly toward the kitchen door, nervously wiping my hands on my shorts as if the grass stains would look better there. Bruce was nowhere in sight, and the game of tag must have ended. For a moment it seemed I was the last person alive in the world.

“There she is!” I heard Danny call out. Peering, I could barely make him out behind the kitchen window. He waved, and another blurry face popped up next to his.

My relief at not being alone after all was boundless, and I forgot ghosts for a moment as my feet grew wings and I floated into the kitchen.

Danny was full of news of the baby rabbits they had found in a shallow burrow. Bruce was just settling into a chair at the breakfast bar, not looking at me but all his color back to normal.

Lemonade, sugar cookies, left-over tea sandwiches; I held an ice-cube in my mouth, using my tongue to press it up against the roof of my mouth until it felt like my whole head went numb.

After the snack, I ventured up the hall toward the Even Parlor, where I could hear the voices still chattering away. As I left the kitchen behind I could hear one of the clocks standing in the hallway prepare to chime.

Those old standing clocks, with their winding chains and swinging pendulums, make a peculiar grinding noise just before the hammer strikes the bell. As the sound began I froze, and I waited, motionless, as it seemed to grind on forever.

Chime, I thought desperately. My heart was straining, my lungs aching with stale air. Chime, please, and let me go!

Grind, grind, grind. I was going to die here, standing in a hallway, frozen by a clock.

Finally, the clock made one last sickly sound and uttered its small, half-hour tone.

Before the sound died I was flying again, my feet barely touching the wine-colored runner as I sprinted up the hallway.

“Whoa, there,” Great-Uncle Arthur said, catching me by the shoulders before I crashed into a table.

“Sorry,” I said, trying not to shake.

“Got yourself spooked, huh?” he asked, a laugh in his eyes but his face somber.

I allowed myself a nod. Great-Uncle Arthur chuckled softly.

“Well, you wouldn’t be the first, in this old place. Why don’t you come have a seat in the cool air and catch your breath.”

“Okay,” I agreed, grasping at inspiration. “Could we look at some pictures?”

He blinked, then smiled warmly and put a hand on my shoulder. “Sure, Ashley. I like looking at pictures.”

I led him into the Morning Parlor, and we sat side-by-side on the couch near the album I had been looking in earlier.

Great-Uncle Arthur reached for a book on the low table before the couch. “Not that one,” I said, suddenly certain as his hand neared one volume. “The other one – the blue one.”

“This one?” he asked, lifting the album with the navy satin and gold braid adorning the covers.

“Yes,” I said, leaning forward eagerly.

“I don’t think you’ll recognize anyone in this one,” Great-Uncle Arthur said musingly as he turned the first few pages.

“That’s okay. I just like to see,” I said absently, trying to catch a glimpse as faces flashed by.

“Well, all right,” he said, settling back and letting the album lay open in his lap. “This is my uncle’s wife’s brother, who repainted the barn for us in, oh, I think it must have been nineteen-forty-six. And this sunny little lad is your grandfather, his family lived just up the road. We knew from the start that he and Doris would end up together.”

“That’s the hedge,” I said, not thinking, only seeing it jump out of the black and white photograph at me.

“Well, yes, that’s the hedge Richard planted to keep the critters out,” Great-Uncle Arthur confirmed, lifting the page a bit so he could get a better look at the photo through his bifocals. “You can’t see it in the picture, but your grandmother tried planting flowers all along the bottom, there – petunias, I think it was. They refused to grow, for some reason.” He clucked his tongue.

“And that’s Great-Aunt Vivian,” I said, pointing to the stern-faced woman standing behind the hedge.

“It sure is. Vivian and her pear trees.” Great-Uncle Arthur clucked again. “She sure had a way with those trees, though. Nobody had finer fruit than hers. You know the species is considered very valuable today. A collector’s tree.”

“Uh-huh.” I wasn’t so much interested in hearing about Great-Aunt Vivian’s blue ribbons as I wanted to hear some clue to why she haunted the grove, why she was so greedy with her pears.

“Ashley,” I heard my mother call. Her ‘time-to-go’ voice. I felt my spirits sink. I was so close. But Great-Uncle Arthur had turned his head at the sound, so I couldn’t even pretend I hadn’t heard her.

“How come the hedge isn’t there anymore?” I asked, getting slowly to my feet.

“Oh. Well. Well, it had to be, er, removed, after the, uh, unpleasantness.” He snapped the album shut. “Sounds like your mom is ready to go. You have a safe tip home, huh?”

“Sure thing. See you later,” I said in farewell.

The very next weekend was a baby shower for one of my mother’s cousins, and so I was able to continue my investigation into Vivian’s mystery.

All week long I had suffered nightmares of Great-Aunt Vivian chasing me down twisting aisles between pear trees that clutched at me with thorny braches. By the time we got back to Gamama’s house, I felt ready to burn the grove right to the ground if I didn’t find some answers.

It seemed like ages before I was able to slip away from the party and sneak outside. I wasted no time once out and headed directly to the grove.

“All right, Vivian,” I thought bravely to myself. “You won’t scare me this time.”

But my heart began to pound as I neared the trees, and each step that brought me closer to the edge of the lawn – that line that I now knew was the only remnant of the hedge that had once surrounded the pear trees – seemed to weight my heart a little heavier until it was thudding in my stomach.

One more step, I told myself. I held my breath and stepped.

Thunder growled in my ear.

I jumped, and suddenly my skin was being pelted by rain hard as pebbles, my hair pulled about by chill gusts of air.

“Hurry!” Vivian was shouting, one hand holding the trailing ends of a soaked scarf under her chin, the other pointing frantically to the trees. “The basket, get the basket!”

I looked down and saw a bushel basket at my feet. As if in a dream, I did as Great-Aunt Vivian ordered, grabbing it by one handle and scurrying forward, my head bent under the onslaught of rain.

It seemed there were people everywhere among the trees, dripping faces blurred in the rain, glistening hands holding flickering lanterns that mocked the idea of illumination with their glows weak in the storm. Under Vivian’s brisk direction the precious fruit was stripped from the branches before the weather could shake it loose from the trees. Not a single pear could be lost.

The basket’s handle was biting into my fingers, and when I looked down I saw with surprise that it was nearly full. I could see some one toting another basket toward the house, but as I turned to follow I saw a pear hanging just before my nose.

It was perfect, smooth and unblemished, its color a deep uniform gold from stem to blossom scar. It was the dream of every bud, the very symbol of what such a fruit should be.

The voices were calling, the rain pouring down, thunder booming from the sky. No pear could be wasted. I reached out and plucked it from its branch.

Great-Aunt Vivian screamed.

The next thing I remembered was my mother’s worried voice and a crazy view of the pear trees jumping up and down. Then I realized that I was being carried, and each step made my head bounce on a supporting shoulder.

“Oh, Ashley, oh my God, you’re all right,” Mom sounded like she was crying but her cheeks were dry. “Oh, you gave me a scare.”

“What happened?” I asked weakly. What had happened to the storm? And the afternoon … darkness was creeping over the land.

“I told you to stay out of that grove,” Grandma fretted on the other side.

I hung my head. “I know. I’m sorry.”

“What were you doing, going in there anyway?” Mom asked, starting to sound angry now.

I knew I should find something to say that wouldn’t cause more trouble, but I felt exhausted and I couldn’t think clearly. “Aunt Vivian needed me. The rain was ruining the pears.”

I couldn’t see their faces, but both Mom and Grandma said nothing more until we were inside the house. Great-Uncle Arthur set me down on the couch in the den, then left the room, leaving me alone with my mother and grandmother.

“Ashley,” Mom began, “Grandma has a very good reason for telling you kids to keep out of that pear grove.”

“I know, Mom. Great-Aunt Vivian doesn’t want anybody in there. She haunts it.”

Now I could see them exchange glances. Some of my exhaustion faded, and my curiosity began to perk up again.

“Ashley, when we told you that your Great-Aunt had passed away, well, that wasn’t entirely accurate.” Mom was looking at Grandma, as if the words that seemed reluctantly forced from her lips were written on that wiser face. “You see, it’s a rather, uh, complicated issue, and rather than give you the wrong idea we made up a little story until you were old enough to understand.”

“What do you mean?” I said, sitting up and hardly feeling tired at all now.

“What your mother means, Ashley,” Grandma took over, “Is that your Great-Aunt, my sister, is still alive. She’s alive in the grove.”

“Like, she lives out there?” I said, confused and not sure they weren’t making fun of me.

“No, well, maybe, in one sense,” Grandma said, sitting beside me. “You see, a long time ago, Vivian got hurt, and she used that as an excuse to do something very bad. And our mother – your Gamama – had to punish her for it, even though she was an adult by then. Since she had put her trees before everything else, your Gamama told her she would have to stay with them until she learned better.”

“I don’t understand,” I said, looking at Mom. She was looking back at me with an earnest, concerned expression. “Is that why she haunts the grove?”

“Yes,” my mother told me. “But she isn’t dead. She’s just … changed. And that’s why you have to stay out of there. She’s still angry about being punished.” Mom reached over and smoothed my hair. “She had you for hours before we could get you out.”

“But …” I rubbed my eyes, feeling tired again.

“It’s time to show the child,” Gamama’s voice came suddenly from the doorway.

“Mama, it’s late,” Grandma said, getting to her feet.

“Don’t be foolish. Come on, now,” Gamama ordered, thumping her cane on the floor. “Before she gets her second wind.”

Grandma didn’t protest further but my mother’s fingers were tight on mine as we followed Gamama on this strange errand.

In silent procession we followed her back outside and to the edge of the grove. Without hesitation Gamama made her way to the spot where the gate had been in the hedge that was no more.

“Vivian,” she called sternly. “Vivian, come out here, girl.”

I heard wind rustling in the leaves, and the sound of sleepy birds chirping softly to their companions as they roosted. We all waited for a moment, then Gamama cleared her throat, thumped her cane, and called again. “Vivian!”

All at once, between one moment and the next, Great-Aunt Vivian stood before us, just inside the line of the hedge. “Have you come to let me out?” she asked peevishly.

“No,” Gamama said. “Meet your great-niece, Ashley.”

“You,” Vivian said, narrowing her eyes at me. Now I could see that the resemblance to Grandma was only kin deep, her features sharper, somehow more aggravated than Grandma’s. She looked as if she had spent most of her life angry about everything.

“I’m sorry,” I said quickly, wanting to hide behind my mother.

“This is your Great-Aunt Vivian,” Gamama told me. “Her husband had a problem keeping his vows and Vivian had a problem keeping her temper. Rather than see her lost in the criminal justice system, I came up with a way to both keep her safe and give her an opportunity to make up for what she had done.”

“She turned me into a tree,” Vivian snapped. My jaw dropped. “Don’t stand there gaping like a simpleton. It’s a simple enough spell when you know what you’re doing.”

“Spell?” I repeated in a small, choked voice.

“Mama’s one of the most powerful reality-shifters ever born,” Grandma said with warm pride.

“And when you’re done with your tantrums and self-pity you can come back,” Gamama said to Vivian.

“Maybe I don’t want to,” Great-Aunt Vivian said sulkily. “Maybe I prefer the company of trees, as you all accused me of.”

“Maybe you are a stubborn, spoiled child,” Gamama said without giving an inch. “Maybe it will take a hundred years, but you will learn your lesson. I have nothing but time.”

Gamama turned back toward the house and began to walk without looking back at Vivian. Grandma followed, and after a moment Mom moved to go too, but I pulled my hand free and stepped to the spot Gamama had stood.

“This is your gate,” I said, and when I put my hands out I could feel the painted wood beneath my fingers. “I won’t go in your pears again, Great-Aunt Vivian. I’m sorry. I … I just wanted one.”

She looked down at me for a long moment while my mother hovered just behind me. Finally she sighed and shook her head.

“Not one of these,” Vivian said, casting a gaze gone sad across her precious trees. “Not one of these pears, child. These are bitter fruits indeed.”

With that, she faded into the darkness before us, and rejoined the dreaming trees.

“Mom,” I said as we walked back toward the house, “Why doesn’t she just tell Gamama she’s sorry so she can get out?”

Mom put her arm around my shoulders and gave me a squeeze. “It’s not what she says, Ashley, that’s so important. That’s one of the things she has to learn, too.”

As we reached the kitchen door I looked back, and perhaps I saw a lone figure walking among the pear trees. When I blinked, it was gone, and Mom led me into the kitchen for cocoa and toast as another clock began to chime.

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