Free Here I Stay by KATHY Page B

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    "No, thanks," she said, "if I'd known what you were up to, I'd have forbidden it. I can't imagine what you find so fascinating about a horrible place like that."
    Martin was eating lunch with them that day. For an exorbitant additional fee, Andrea had agreed to let him forage for sandwiches and soup when he didn't feel like going out.
    "Am I invited?" he asked. "I didn't know you had a cemetery on the premises. How convenient."
    "Sure you're invited, Mr. Greenspan," Jim said. "I didn't think you'd be interested."
    "I'm interested in practically everything. That's why I'm always behind schedule."
    "You don't want to see it," Andrea protested. "It's all overgrown with weeds and poison ivy—"
    "Not now," Jim said. "What it is, Mr. Greenspan, is the old Springer cemetery. That's the name of the family that owned this property in the eighteenth century. Back then there were a lot of private graveyards. Most of 'em were abandoned as the population grew and travel was easier."
    His elbows on the table, Greenspan listened with the absorbed attention he always offered Jim and Kevin, even when they told him something he already knew.
    "Jim's got a book that tells about the old cemeteries," Kevin explained. "Some guy made a survey, back in the thirties or forties. Must have been quite a job, because even then some of the sites were overgrown and forgotten. Since then a lot more of them have disappeared."
    "But this house appears to have been built—oh, I'd guess mid-nineteenth century, give or take a few decades," Greenspan said. "Much later than the period when the cemetery was in use."
    "We figure there was a house here before this one," Kevin explained. "Not necessarily on the same site, but part of the same estate."
    Greenspan nodded. "That's reasonable. Have you checked it out?"
    "Oh, no, we're not going in for anything resembling homework," Kevin said with a grin. "Just some honest manual labor."
    From outside the graveyard looked unchanged. The brick wall was crumbling and uneven, and overhanging cedars cast a somber green shade. But the interior was almost unrecognizable. Formerly the entire enclosure had been a mass of weeds and intertwined brambles. The boys had chopped down intrusive saplings, rooted out honeysuckle and wild blackberry bushes, and cut the weeds down to an uneven stubble. It wasn't pretty, but it was less ugly, and a few stones remained in place. Others, in varying stages of decrepitude, had been lined up along the brick wall.
    Kevin flung the gate open and assumed the role of guide.
    "We didn't move any of the gravestones that were still in place. And we made a plan of where we found the others." He cocked an eye at Greenspan and received the nod of approval he had hoped for. "A lot of them had fallen over or been uprooted by trees. But look at this one—look at the date."
    " 'John Springer,' " Greenspan read. " 'Born Apr. 17, 1712, died...' When?"
    "We couldn't read it either, it's all worn down. But isn't that something? Seventeen twelve!" He tugged Greenspan away to examine the other stones.
    Andrea looked at her brother. His lifted face was illumined by a ray of sunlight that filtered through the cedar boughs. His expression was dreamy and remote.
    "Jim!" she said sharply.
    He turned toward her, using one crutch as a pivot, his dreamy smile unchanged. "I thought we could fix it up. Plant grass and some flowers. And put a bench there, under the trees."
    "Jimmie, I wish you wouldn't—"
    Greenspan was at her side, his hand on her arm. "It's fascinating, Jim. You guys must have busted your biceps here."
    "It was one hell of a lot of work," Jim said. "But it's just the beginning. I thought we would fix it up..."
    He went on to repeat and expand on his plans. But for some reason, this time they didn't sound so—so alarming? So morbid? Yet Andrea's dislike of the place was not lessened. She was about to suggest that they leave when Greenspan said, in a voice sharp with excitement, "What's