Free A Stranger's House by Bret Lott Page B

night, but then things had been different: the endof a workday, the setting sun shining in our eyes as we headed down here, other cars of other commuters to contend with.
    The houses stopped. We went another quarter mile or so along that stream, and took the dirt road off to the left. Slowly we drove another hundred yards back in, and we were there.
    He turned off the ignition, and we sat in the car, just looking.
    It was a different house now, here in daylight, the sun straight above us, no shadows to hide things, give darkness to detail.
    A porch sat in front of the house, a makeshift thing, just two-by-fours and planks nailed together, two wooden steps leading up to it, no railing. Just a platform under which could live any number of small animals. The roof was covered with asphalt shingles, and looked strong enough. At least the roofline seemed straight. The chimney, though, needed some reworking, and I wondered how much that might cost, a few of the bricks at the rim looking as if they might fall off any second now.
    â€œThe porch will have to go right off,” Tom said. “And we’ll put up a new one. Probably in the spring. But I’d tear that thing off right now, if I thought we could get away with it.”
    I said, “But that would be jumping the gun.”
    Tom turned to me, and smiled. We kissed.
    He pulled the keys out of the ignition, popped open his door. I was still sitting, looking; the cool gust of air from outside filled the car. He closed the door.
    I climbed out. My left arm was still useless, and gingerly, steadily, I held it next to my abdomen, pushed shut the door with my hip.
    The house had been painted an ugly sky blue years ago, the paint on the clapboard bubbled, chipped, in some places nonexistent; you could see the gray wood in patches across the front of the house.
    I said, “The house has age spots. Those unsightly liver spots.”
    He laughed, and we moved to the front of the car. He put his arm up and I came to him, leaned against him with his arm around my shoulders. We took a couple of steps toward the house, but Tom stopped. He stood still, and I felt his body stiffen.
    â€œShit,” he said.
    I looked up at him. His arm was still around me. “What?”
    â€œThe keys,” he whispered. “I forgot the keys. I forgot to go to the realtor’s and pick up the stupid keys. Shit”
    We were quiet, the two of us staring at the house, the engine ticking, a breeze high in the trees behind the house.
    â€œWell,” I said, and broke the quiet.
    Tom looked down at his feet, then back to the house. He took his arm from around me, put both hands in his pockets. His shoulders sank as he moved toward the porch. He went up the two steps, those boards, it seemed, ready to break under his weight.
    I followed him. Our footsteps on the planks of the porch were hollow, loud.
    Tom had his hand at the door. The door, too, was scarred with bubbled and broken paint, and had nail holes in the wood where, I imagined, someone had once put a knocker or hung bunches of Indian corn. The exposed wood of the door was just as gray as anywhere else, and I was already starting to picture what we would do: how the front door would be scraped of its paint; the exposed wood stained; this porch, if I could talk Tom into it, kept, reinforced and replanked, a railing put on, maybe a roof put up over it so that we could sit out here on days like this and eat lunch or dinner, watch fireflies come out in the summer. There was so much I wanted to do, and I even envisioned a dried grapevine wreath from the General Store on the front door, some final, simple touch that would turn this Handyman’s Dream into our home, regardless of the fact we would have no children to fill it, bring it alive with hope and care.
    I wanted to go inside, too, to see what the place looked like in daylight, to see exactly where things would start, with exactly which room we would begin to rebuild. I