Lost Marbles

And a Lesson in Continuity

The weathered old farmhouse stood on the side of a back road somewhere in West Texas, surrounded by a cotton field. It didn't look like much and probably never had, but once it’d been someone's home.

Hardly more than a clapboard shack, with a corrugated metal roof and tan faux-brick tarpaper covering its sides, it once protected a family from the sun, ra…