The property, he said, was about a hundred and thirty miles northwest of Toronto. He wanted forty-four thousand dollars, which he said was a good price. Nothing grew but weeds and trees. The one actual field had not been cultivated for some years. There were deer, which would make it a satisfactory hunting retreat, but it wasn’t good for much else. There was a small town not far away, but the place itself was off an old country gravel road.

Was I a hunter, he asked, amused. No, I said, I just thought it might be an interesting — second home. Suddenly I thought, “Yes, that’s it, if we could afford it, it would be good for the kids and I to have another place to go in the summer, and Stephen too on his holidays, he doesn’t hunt but still....”

And that’s what I was thinking when I agreed to go with Mr. Chapman two days later to see it. Irv, he said, call me Irv.

The knowledge of the place gave me an energy that carried me swiftly, easily, through those two days. I had an adventure to look forward to. I shopped and cooked and cleaned and listened to Elliott and Katie and Stephen, and I loved them. “You look wonderful,” Stephen said hopefully.

I tried to tell myself the property might be nothing, that we couldn’t afford it, or that Stephen would think it was a stupid idea. But those doubts weren’t real, and the advertisement and the draw it had on me were. Something was out there waiting for me, I saw it clearly, there was no hesitation, and my heart was ahead in the time when Mr. Chapman-call-me-Irv and I would travel to this place. There wasn’t even a picture of it in my mind; just an idea. It felt like something solid.

(I find it odd now, remembering who I was then, that I did not question that feeling.)

The property, Mr. Chapman told me in the car, had been left to him by his father, who had liked to go there in the fall to hunt, or perhaps just to escape. His father had died just a few months before; Mr. Chapman didn’t hunt, didn’t like the outdoors, and wanted to use the money to invest back into his dry cleaning business. He didn’t want to sell through a real estate agency because he didn’t want to have to pay a commission; he figured that with a lot of people “flush”, as he called it, and wanting to get away from the city periodically, there might be a market for it. He himself couldn’t be less interested.

“I’d be bored stiff,” he said. “My father used to take me up there sometimes, but I couldn’t take it. Drove me stir crazy, nothing but trees and birds. I couldn’t sleep. And there wasn’t anything to do up there. My father killed things, that was his entertainment, but I don’t want to do that. Why the hell he left it to me, when I couldn’t have cared less and he knew it, I’ll never understand. He must have known I’d want to sell, so I guess he didn’t care any more.”