Summary

The Whitshank family mythologizes themselves through stories, and through this they believe themselves to be better than the vast populace. Red, Denny's father, tells a story about how they came to live in such a nice house. Red's father built the house for some other people but loved the house and hated the people who were living in the house he built, so he spooked them away by staging a break-in and then telling them offhandedly that there had been a large number of crimes in the area. The people moved out the next week and Red was able to purchase the house for way below market value. The whole family has the same qualities and are all quietly calculating.

The other family story that has been handed down through the generations is the story about Aunt Merrick, Red's sister. She'd decided that she...