7am- based off of hoppers 7am

The free and easy Nantucket air created a soft and silky breeze that was only noticeable through the constant chatter of leaves. The grand white house had seen its share of summers come and gone, but this coming summer would be its last, and it somehow conveyed this through its windows and doors. There was a sad but strong sense to the house, full of light yet empty of life. The house had been abandoned for years, and the last owners had left a myriad of objects on the front porch as a sort of reminder that someone at some point in time called it home. An old brass clock hung on the porch, stuck and rusted reading seven am. Old ginger ale bottles and small sketches the old mother had made littered the bench that stretched the façade of the old white house. The late afternoon light poured over the white wood and cast dark and long shadows that crept in and out of the many rooms that made up this mystic residence. Like an island among a raging sea, the immaculately white house shone bright amidst a forest teeming with green life. Dogwoods, Pines, Oak and Maple trees climbed high around the house and stopped only at the widow’s walk that crowned this unloved jewel. This effect was so astounding, that when the family would spend time on top of the house, it was as if they were atop the canopy of some primordial jungle. It was easy to lose one’s way on the island, especially in such an isolated area, and when the children lost their way in the forest, the white bars and railings that encased the widow’s walk became the northern star of daytime activity. The warm yellows whites and greens that made up the surrounding structures created a heavenly ambiance, a carefree and lacsidaisical aura that belied the last scene that took place in the old white house. One couldn’t tell from the surrounding hills if one was screaming. One couldn’t sense from the town below if someone was begging or pleading. In fact, the old white house wasn’t exactly visible from the cobblestone streets that swarmed beneath it. The only observable characteristic of the residence from the busybodies down below was a momentary clearing in the forest for the small and inconspicuous widow’s walk that barely jutted out from the surrounding tree branches. The remoteness of the cottage was a characteristic always scorned by the mother, and had her husband not promised to finally visit her parents that year, the house would’ve been demolished as scheduled. But, as chance would have it, this agreement appeased his wife, and he finally purchased the summer home he had always hoped of living in. What he did not know, however, was that the first and only summer spent in his beloved old white house would be the summer home he would be murdered in.