Sarah and Nick Heart were married in the formal gardens of his centuries-old historic property, and their new life together is everything Sarah had dreamed of. Adding to the fun are the occasional visits from the Rowdy Girls, a band of friends devoted to each other and their horses.

This eclectic sisterhood of six were planning a Friday night sleepover and a following morning ride at Long Leaf Farm. With Nick away on business they would have the house all to themselves-or would they? Was the upstairs, apparition, "Gladys," as she had been named, real? Or did that old house creak and moan on its own?

It is also the century mark of the suspicious death of Birdie Hedgecomb. Elizabeth, the petite member of the sorority, and her husband had purchased and transformed Hedgecomb's Mill years ago, and she confesses to hearing a woman crying out from time to time.

Sarah, a retired teacher and bestselling author, uses these and other events to weave the tapestries of her novels. Occasionally, her imagination gets the best of her, but she knows in her heart that the walls of Long Leaf hold some unfinished business of generations past. But what is this old house trying to tell her? How can she unearth the truth, and does she truly want to know?