He led the way, and they all trooped around one corner, then another, to the back stoop, with its boarded-up back door.
"Nailed fast, of course, and the nails are rusted," Uncle Jake said. "Well, let's have a go at it."
It took a while. Foster and Davey grew bored and began to roughhouse, tumbling on the dead grass. The women poked about the shrubbery trying to identify the bushes and decide which ones were still alive. Portia sat on one of the buckets, turned upside down, watching and whistling between her teeth; trying to, anyway; her tooth braces made it nearly impossible.
Her father and uncle and cousin worked and worked at the barricade, and finally, as they pried them loose with a crowbar, the nailed boards were wrenched free, with loud, protesting snarls.
The door they had hidden all these years was painted dark green; just an old ordinary door with a brown china doorknob, but Portia jumped up to have a look at it, and everyone else came running.
Uncle Jake waggled the knob uselessly and gave the door a kick or two.
"Locked, of course," he said. "But not bolted inside, I trust. Even Mrs. Brace-Gideon couldn't depart from a house leaving every door bolted inside."
"Maybe she departed from a window the way we did," Foster suggested, but no one listened to him.
Uncle Jake brought a jumble of keys from his pocket.
"From Gone-Away: old keys from other old locks," he explained. "Uncle Pin's idea. He thought that one might fit."