Page 20 of On the Line

I pause on the front porch, wondering if I should wait out here. There’s a slight breeze this morning, and it’s blowing the fluffy snow that fell last night off the tree branches. Mid-February in the Northeast is the coldest time of year—too cold to be standing outside with little kids.

“Why isn’t Jameson here yet?” Paige asks.

“Well, wearelike ten minutes early. But I have the code, so I guess we can go in.”

I reach over and punch in the six-digit code that Jameson sent me when he had new locks installed on the house. It’s my anniversary date—easy to remember, but confusing as to why he knows it.

It feels like we’re breaking and entering, even if all the paperwork has gone through and my name is now officially on the deed to the house.

I push the front door open tentatively, and we stand there looking at the opening for what feels like forever, but is probably only a minute, before we step through.

“It’s not”—Paige stands in the entryway with Iris in her arms—“that bad?”

When Iris squirms to get down, Paige hugs her a little closer to her body, as though she’s afraid to let her go. I hold Ivy just as tight to me. Having only seen the listing photos, I’d had visions of my daughters running around empty rooms, exploring their new home this morning. Jameson had told me the house still needed some more updating before I moved in, but this is so far from what I expected to see that I don’t know what to think.

The entryway is narrow, mostly taken up by a grand staircase with an ornate, rounded post at the bottom. To our right is a sitting room, and the frames of the large windows that face the street have peeling paint, but at least the windows themselves are new. The walls are open to the studs with new wiring and new pipes running between the two-by-fours.

With Ivy on my hip, I walk through the front hallway.

“I don’t know what to think at the moment,” I say over my shoulder to Paige as she follows me.

“Let’s just see what the rest of it looks like.” At the end of the hallway, we enter the kitchen. Or, what used to be the kitchen. It’s been partially gutted—the cabinets and flooring are gone, and all that remains is an enormous and gorgeous soapstone sink resting on a carved soapstone pedestal under double windows overlooking the backyard.

I slide my hand along it’s softly rounded time-worn edges, as I admire the beautiful white veining running through the faded gray stone. No matter what else changes in here, this sink will stay.

Josh had to have known how much I’d love a classic sink like this—that has to be why it’s the only thing still in this kitchen. It feels like a gift he intentionally left me in this house he bought for us.

My throat tightens as I imagine him thinking how much I’d love this old-fashioned detail, but then Ivy pulls my hair and says, “Mama, go,” as she points to the doorway where Paige—completely unaware of the significance of this sink—has moved to.

“Well, this is kind of lovely,” Paige says as she stands in the arched entrance that leads from the kitchen to the dining room.

“Wow, this is more than I expected, based on what we’ve seen so far,” I say as I trail a finger along the glass doors of a dark walnut built-in that runs the entire length of the far wall.

“This view.” Paige sighs as she looks out the casement windows above the built-in.

I have to resist the urge to roll my eyes because my sister is not height challenged and can see through them, whereas when I look up all I can see, all around us, are the bare branches of trees. When I mention that, she sighs. “Thatisthe view, Chicken.”

The nickname grates like it always has, and I shoot a look her way, but given the way her lips turn up at the ends, it seems like my annoyance amuses her. I had knobby knees as a kid and was always craning my neck up to try to see what my taller siblings saw—so they started calling me Chicken and it stuck.

“Chick-chick?” Iris says, craning her own neck to look around the room as if a chicken might be strutting across the floor. Then Ivy leans down so quickly she almost slips out of my arms before I catch her, hugging her to me. “Where chick?” she asks, still trying to get down to go look for a chicken that doesn’t exist.

Paige and I lock eyes and burst into laughter.

“No, girls,” I say, smoothing my hand over Ivy’s hair and smiling at Iris. “No chick-chick here.”

“Auntie Paige was just being silly,” Paige tells the girls as we walk out of the dining room. “Should we take a look upstairs?”

I’m trying not to be disappointed that we’ve already seen all there is to see on the first floor: a big front living room off the front hallway, the large but empty kitchen at the end of the hallway, and the dining room off the kitchen. The house is probably the perfect size for the girls and me, but after living in our Park City house for the past few years, it does feel a little on the small side—even though I wanted something smaller and more manageable.

I sold the Park City house fully furnished, which is the only reason I walked away from that property with any money at all. Hopefully, it’ll be just enough to fix up this property and furnish it, but I was not anticipating living in a construction zone with two toddlers.

“Wait,” I say, looking across the kitchen, “what’s that?” I point toward an old exterior door at the opposite end of the room. It’s wooden and the stain has faded in places, so it’s patchy, but the top third of the door is glass and I’m not seeing trees through it, I’m seeing a ceiling.

As I turn the deadbolt and swing the door open, I’m greeted by a beautiful room that runs the length of the side of the house. It seems like at one point it may have been an exterior side porch, but it’s been completely enclosed. The beadboard ceiling is painted a pale blue, and the three exterior walls are made up of enormous floor-to-ceiling windows. It overlooks the driveway, which right now is covered in so much snow it’s unusable, and on the opposite side of that are several large evergreen trees blocking the view of the neighboring house.

“This room is amazing,” Paige says.

“I’m starting to be able to picture us in this house,” I tell her. “I can see the girls playing in this room while I make us dinner ... you know, once we have an actual kitchen.”

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