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materialize.
    The third story is one that Miles told me. It involved Duncan Robert and Reggie, just after they'd finished high school, and a house-sitting job they had undertaken together in the next village over. Duncan Robert had been excited because they were sharing an adult responsibility for the care of a home, out of town, together. It was a new and empowering experience for him. They left town enthusiastic and determined to leave the place better than they found it so that they would be asked again.
    “What happened in that house was a significant event for Duncan Robert,” Miles said. “He recorded it as a story in his journal and re-wrote it over and over in his effort to settle the effect it had on him. That was probably my influence—to write it in order to understand it. He had me edit it for clarity, along with punctuation and spelling. He was compelled to tell it and to work to capture it exactly, and he further refined the details each time he re-wrote it.”
    When I heard Miles talk like this, I wondered if Duncan Robert was looking for a vocabulary that would be a faithful reflection of the alternative reality he experienced, even though he knew he was deflecting that reality as he did so, making it harder to believe. In other words, the better he captured it with his words, the better job he did of clarifying just how outlandish it was.
    “It's a charming two-story cottage,” Miles said. “I've visited several times. It was built in the late 1700s and is still pretty much the same as it has always been. Duncan Robert's story began the first morning of their weekend stay there, when he was in the upstairs bathroom, brushing his teeth.”
Three
DUNCAN ROBERT'S JOURNAL
    Toothbrush in my left hand, I reached over with my right hand to open the small casement window to the side of the small sink. Pushing the window out, I looked down over the sill, expecting to see the large backyard vegetable garden .
    Instead, I was looking out on a small, carefully manicured garden from another time and place, a time closer to the origins of the house. I could see flat green fields extending far beyond the boundaries of the garden. Within the garden, I could see people strolling, dressed in clothes from that other era, talking quietly as they stopped to examine the flowers and blooming shrubs that were there now. Closest to me were a man and woman, and the first thing that caught my attention was the woman's slowly twirling parasol. It was shaped like a small white gazebo with a tassel on top. It competed in size with the swaying side bustles of her skirt, which stopped just short of her ankles, leaving her small feet exposed. I followed the flat panel of the center of her dress up to the bodice, which was fitted tightly to her narrow frame, forming slight wrinkles at each rib. The print of her dress was small enough to be almost indiscernible, but looking closer I could detect violet-colored flowers edged in pale green.
    Further up, I could see her neck and the lower half of her face, both powdered white, and her narrow tinted lips. As her lace-gloved hands shifted the parasol, I got a profile view of a tower of tight blonde curls topped by a tiny-brimmed straw hat, adorned with deep purple grapes, shiny red miniature raspberries, overlaid with a trailing of honey suckle vines that bobbled at her slightest movement. Fascinated by the combination of the hair and the hat, I wondered how both were attached—the hat to the hair, the hair to her head. My attention could not have left her if the man had not moved to take her arm, guiding her toward another display of flowers, and the couple stopped, now directly beneath my window.
    Before I could do more than get a quick glance at the man's muted yellow waistcoat and matching knee-length pants, I froze. She was lifting her head to bring her slightly slanted blue eyes to mine. I turned my head and looked at her, through the opening between the small glass double doors of the