Site Unseen (40 page)

I sat down on the steps, rested my crutch against my knee,
and felt the sun warm my face. A mockingbird hissed and chattered, then swooped down from a maple and across the street. I looked up and saw two large, rusted S links hanging from the inside of the porch roof, five feet apart. It took me a minute to figure out that it was for a bench swing. I couldn't imagine anything more perfect. Across the street was nothing but a field and woods.

Then I tried thinking about all the raking, the repairs, the potential plumbing problems, and the tax bills and decided that I would happily trade them all for the possibility of a porch swing. Any day.

"How much?" It took me a couple of moments to ask the all-important question: I was already starting to feel possessive and couldn't bear the thought of someone else in our house.

Brian hesitated, then gave me a figure. "It's on the far side of what we can afford, with the repairs, but I think we can do it. I want to."

When I heard his answer, my fears vanished. I smiled lazily and leaned against the porch railing: Brian might have found our dream house, but I would secure it for us. "No problem at all, sweetheart. That's only the asking price. I can knock that down, wail about all the work it needs, how remote the place is, and
then
start gouging into the commission. I'll play this limp and the cast for every cent they're worth. Just watch me, it'll be epic." I made a show of cracking the knuckles on my right hand, a display of ready, capable aggression. I knew real estate agents well enough to play their games like a pro.

"I'm glad you're on my side," Brian said. He didn't even like mentioning bill discrepancies to waiters when we ate out. "I never thought that listening to your father yammering about real estate would be anything but an exercise in ripping hangnails."

"Well, this is my one chance to make use of all that, and I want to be sure I squeeze it for all it's worth!" I nodded to my darling. "Let's do it."

He helped ease me off the stairs and we walked slowly around the place, taking note of the garden in the back, the earthy smell of the field beyond the back courtyard, a splintery pile of firewood already stacked and seasoning. I noticed there were a lot of exterior doors, and that made me frown briefly.

Brian noticed and read my mind. "You know, if you really think you can reduce the price by a bit, I think we'll have enough to cover a good alarm system." He shrugged. "We don't know anything, but it never hurts to be careful. There's crime in the country too."

I nodded, relieved that he was the one to bring it up first. Since I had left the hospital, I thought long and hard about getting a gun of my own, but decided that I just couldn't do it. I settled for asking Meg to show me how to fire hers, just so I'd know the mechanics of the things, and decided to arrange for some private lessons in self-defense. As Brian said, it never hurt to be careful.

Because I knew, sure as I breathed, that Tony was still out there, alive and waiting.

We let the subject drop, wanting to enjoy this moment, so we spoke idly and inconsequentially, flitting like butterflies from the subject of curtains to the question of drainage, from supermarkets to linoleum, without lingering so long on any one topic that the talk could pall. Details are anathema to castles in the air, and so we wandered back to the car, content to leave the real planning and calculating for later.

I looked back at the house: Our place wasn't typical, architecturally speaking, and I loved its eccentricities.

Brian echoed my thoughts out loud. "It's a little different, isn't it? It's got that extra side addition I've never seen around here."

"And it looks like someone finished the attic. Maybe raised the roof, even."

"It's a bit quirky." Brian added quickly, "Quirky, but nice. I love it."

"Quirky, but nice." I thought about it a minute longer,
made a connection with a long-ago memory, and smiled contentedly. "And you know, it's only what you warned me about all along."

He looked at me quizzically as he fastened his safety belt and turned the key in the ignition.

"You always said that one day, if we weren't careful, we'd end up at the Funny Farm."