We found the house, although it took a year of intermittent searching. I was assigned to that, and when I found something promising, Stephen and I would look at it together. There was always something wrong: ancient plumbing or the wrong kind of heating, or not enough privacy, until that last one, with the acre of land and the hedges, and if it seemed to me to be simply too big to be manageable, Stephen thought it would be just right. And it would set the right tone for his job, which was something we had to think about. We were buying a setting for a career play, along with everything else.

There was no reason for me to dislike the place, and I did not, in fact, dislike it. It just was not a home, and no matter what we did, it never became one to me. It was always “the house.”

Katie and Elliott had never moved before, and they were both excited and hesitant, uprooted for the first time, taken away from their friends, but also the ones to be leaving, so that the gain was all theirs. They ran joyfully through the new house when we showed it to them, and because the house was empty it echoed with their shrieks and their discoveries. We let them pick out their own bedrooms.

It was too much change for Elliott, who had been looking forward to going to school with his friends and now was on his own. He began to have nightmares, both before and after we moved, almost every night for several months. I would hear him calling me, “Mommy,” he would cry, “I had a bad dream.” So I would get up and cuddle him until he went back to sleep, although sometimes Stephen said I was foolish because he must be having the dreams to get more attention, more security; but I thought that was a good reason to go to him, and continued until gradually the nightmares dwindled, then disappeared, for by then he had made friends at school and was too busy and tired to be bothered with bad dreams.

Elliott only went to kindergarten in the mornings, and during those hours I had time, new time, to give Katie the attention that Elliott had had, all the reading and the walks and the discussions that had slipped by me with her because Elliott was always there.