This desk matched the sleekness of our lives back then. It didn’t fit here, not with the decorative millwork. But here it was. An oversized computer stood at one end. At the other lay long rolls of architects’ drawings in a pick-up stick mess. Seeming to know which of the rolls he wanted, Edward pulled one out, pushed the others aside, and unrolled it.
Then he rethought that. Letting go so that the edges curled up on themselves, he woke up the computer instead and pulled up the same plan, now in a full-color rendering. Positioning the desk chair, he urged me to sit—and oh, I knew that chair, too. I had sat in it many, many times with Lily on my lap. The memories warmed a little something in me. The familiarity of it was bittersweet, but not painful, as it once might have been.
Leaning over my shoulder with his free arm on the back of the chair, Edward moved the mouse. Starting with the front exterior, he talked me through the architect’s rendering of the house, which showed a repaired and cleaned-up version with stone on the façade and dormers added to the smaller second floor.
“Local granite,” he said, hovering the cursor over the stone, then sweeping it around a circular drive that was pictured with an artful gathering of plants and shrubs. “New drive, new landscaping. What do you think?”
“It’s beautiful,” I said. The drawing certainly was. I hadn’t yet seen the house in daylight, but I could easily translate my night glimpses into what was on the screen. “I can’t get my bearings. Where’s the river?”
“Out back.” He clicked to the next page to bring up a charming view that included a fieldstone patio, a large lawn dotted with trees, and a waterfront of sand and stones. The river itself was no more than thirty feet wide at that point. On the far side were woodlands. “Deer come out to drink. I’ve seen raccoons and once, at dusk, a really ugly cat—”
“Fisher.”
“Really ugly?” He was looking at me with Lily-eyed distaste.
I laughed. Totally inappropriate with the hell back in town. But I couldn’t help it. He was adorable. “Really ugly and mean, but not a cat, a weasel.”
“What does it eat?”
“My cats if they ever got out.”
“Not a pretty picture.”
“Nope.”
“What about foxes?”
“Same picture.”
“But they aren’t ugly. I saw one the other day from the kitchen window. It was handsome, a rich orange-red against all that green.” His face had grown wistful. He might only be starting to know the good and bad of the woods, but he had liked seeing that fox and those deer.
Total agreement here. Our eyes met and held.
Then, with a quick intake of air and the shift of his arm to my shoulder, he returned the other to the mouse and used it to point. “As the crow flies, we’re a half-mile from the highway. Those woods are a buffer. Car, truck, semi—don’t hear a thing.” With another click of the mouse, an interior floor plan appeared.
Though I hadn’t seen much of the inside of the house last time either, my first impression was that the proposed work was extensive, transforming a traditional design of many small rooms into one with fewer, larger. In the drawing on the screen, the kitchen was joined with the room just beyond it—a den, apparently—to make a huge open space. Adding to that even more, the entire back of the house would be bumped out a dozen feet, significantly enlarging the master bedroom to allow for a sitting area, walk-in closets, and a huge bathroom.
As he narrated, Edward’s jaw was at my temple so that he could view the plans from the same angle as me. His hand was deft on the cursor, his narration steady, but his voice held the same mix of excitement and nervousness I’d sensed in the car.
He had just clicked into closer views of these first floor rooms when he murmured, “Lift up a second.” His hands elaborated, bringing me to my feet. In no time, he sat where I’d been and drew me back onto his lap. “Better,” he sighed and stretched his spine.
It actually was better. Like my holding Lily on my lap, Edward’s holding me in his lap was familiar, too. We had always fit together well like this, and being five years older hadn’t changed that. My right arm fit his neck, his left fit my waist, and the narration resumed.