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about putting a john in the attic."

She spent the next hour with him, the electrician and one of the carpenters in the musty attic outlining her vision, then adjusting it when their suggestions made sense to her.

With the music of hammers, drills, saws jangling, she began the laborious task of sorting and hauling the attic contents out to the old barn. There, where the ghostly scents of hay and horses haunted the air, she stored both trash and treasure. While spring popped around her, Cilla watched old windows replaced by new, and old ceramic tiles hauled to the Dumpster. She breathed in the scents of sawdust and plaster, of wood glue and sweat.

At night she nursed her blisters and nicks, and often read over the letters written to her grandmother.

One evening, too restless to settle after the various crews had cleared out, she hiked down to study and consider her iron gates. Or she used them as an excuse, Cilla admitted, as she'd seen Ford sitting out on his veranda. His casual wave as she stood on her side of the road, and Spock's wagging stunted whip of a tail, made it easy, even natural to cross.

"I saw you rebuilding your veranda," he commented. "Where'd you learn to use power tools?"

"Along the way." After greeting the dog, she turned, looked back at the farm. "My veranda doesn't look too bad from yours, considering mine's not finished or painted. The new windows look good, too. I'm putting bigger ones in the attic, and adding skylights."

"Skylights in an attic."

"It won't be an attic when I'm done. It'll be my office. That's your fault."

He smiled lazily. "Is it?"

"You inspired me."

"I guess that's tit for tat, so to speak." He lifted his Corona. "Want a beer?"

"I really do."

"Have a seat."

She slid into one of his wide Adirondacks, scratched Spock's big head between his tiny pointed ears while Ford went inside for the beer. It was a good perspective of her place from here, she thought. She could see where she needed new trees, shrubs, where it might be a nice touch to add a trellis to the south side of the house, how the old barn wanted to be connected to the house by a stone path. Or brick, she thought. Maybe slate.

"I imagine the sound carries over here," she said when Ford came back out. "All that noise must be annoying."

"I don't hear much when I'm working." He handed her the beer, sat. "Unless I want to."

"Superior powers of concentration?"

"That would be a lofty way of saying I just tune things out. How's it going over there?"

"Pretty well. Fits and starts like any project." She took a pull of her beer, closed her eyes. "God, cold beer after a long day. It should be the law of the land."

"I seem to be in the habit of giving you alcohol."

She glanced at him. "And I haven't reciprocated."

He kicked out his legs, smiled. "So I've noticed."

"My place isn't fit for even casual entertainment at the moment. Neither am I. You see that iron gate?"

"Hard to miss."

"Do I have it restored, or do I have it replaced?"

"Why do you need it? Seems like a lot of trouble to be stopping the car, getting out, opening the gates, driving through, getting out, closing them again. Even if you put in something automatic, it's trouble."

"I told myself that before. Changed my mind." Spock bumped his head against her hand a few times, and she translated the signal, went back to scratching him. "They're there for a reason."

"I can see why she needed them, your grandmother. But I haven't noticed you using them since you moved in."

"No, I haven't." She smiled a little as she sipped her beer. "Because they're too much trouble. They don't fit the feel of the place, do they? The rambling farmhouse, the big old barn. But she needed them. They're just an illusion, really." God knew she'd needed her illusions. "Not that hard to climb over them or the walls. But she needed the illusion of security, of privacy. I found some old letters."

"Ones she wrote?"

She hadn't meant to say anything about them. Was it two sips of beer that had loosened her tongue, Cilla wondered, or just his company? She wasn't sure she'd ever met anyone so innately relaxed. "No, written to her. A number of them written to her in the last year and a half of her life. By a local, I'd say, as the majority of the postmarks are from