twenty-foot, slanted ceiling, then walked toward the large windows on one wall. They covered most of the west-facing side of the living room and the wall on the right. Lake Michigan—with all of her striations of cerulean, sapphire, cobalt, navy, and mint—was below and beyond, and the vast basin rippled and undulated as far as the eye could see. The Great Lake met the pale blue sky somewhere miles away, and nearly a hundred miles beyond that were the shores of Wisconsin. Layers of long clouds lined the sky, echoing the horizon: some puffy on top, some slender like a brush stroke, swathed above the line of the lake.
The house was situated so that the land and its surrounding throng of trees seemed to cup it protectively, holding the structure out over the water. But it was just an illusion from the inside, for there was at least a half mile of land between the base of the bluff and the shore, and the house was fully supported by the land. It was the clever design of the windows that made it seem as if the front of the house was suspended in midair over the lake.
“Go on out there.” Jake pointed to the side wall, which wasn’t only windows, as she’d thought, but a large sliding door. “You’re going to love that.”
Feeling a sort of tightness in her chest that she couldn’t identify, Vivien did as he suggested and found herself on a flagstone patio with its own breathtaking view. Located on the side of the house, it was protected by a tangle of trees and bushes on two sides, which, despite the chaos, offered some shade. A third side was the sliding door and wall of the house. And the fourth direction offered its own unobstructed view of the lake.
“Wow. Mike and Carol certainly did well for themselves,” she murmured, drawing in a deep breath of fresh air coming in from the lake.
“Mike and Carol— Oh, ha. The Bradys. Got it.” Jake folded his arms as he stood next to her. “It needs a lot of work and some updating, but this was the no-brainer selling point.”
“I’ll say.”
“I’ve got a ton to do with the landscaping,” he said, gesturing to the overgrown, encroaching trees. “I don’t think those vines are supposed to be there, and they look like they’re choking everything out. The arborvitae is way out of control—I think that’s what that is.” He shrugged. “Or maybe it’s boxwood. I can’t remember what the realtor called it.”
Vivien gave a little laugh. “City girl here. I haven’t faintest idea. The closest I ever got to a garden was walking through Central Park and trying to grow a tomato plant on my teeny balcony. It died.”
“I had a condo in Baltimore, so I didn’t do much there. I should probably just hire someone who knows what they’re doing.”
“Well, don’t do what Trib did and put in a pergola—I think that’s what it’s called—with vines growing on it,” she said with a little giggle that sounded nervous to her ears. Why am I so nervous? “He’s all freaked out because the birds perch all up in it and crap all over the tables below.”
He laughed. “Ouch. Well, nothing I do could be any worse than the tree that was growing in the middle of the living room when I moved in.”
She looked at him, squinting a little in the afternoon sun. “A tree? Like, in a pot? Or something that had taken root and took over the house?”
He shook his head. “Neither. The previous owners—who built the place back in the sixties—deliberately planted a tree in the middle of the living room. It was over eighteen feet tall with a branch span of about the same.”
She stared at him. “A real tree? Planted?”
“Yes. They had a huge, sunken area in the center of the room that had low walls around it like a raised garden sort of thing. It was filled with dirt—and the roots of the tree.” He shook his head as if he still couldn’t believe it. “They had built-in seating around it—wooden benches. It was very…ah…different.”
“What kind of tree was it?” Vivien asked, still trying to picture such a thing.
“I have no idea. It wasn’t a pine tree; it had leaves—small leaves—and the damned things fell off. They were scattered all over the dirt bed and the floor. It’s bad enough that you’ve got to rake your yard, but to rake—or sweep—leaves inside your house? Forget that.”
She