He warned me about it. “The thing is,” he said, “you shouldn’t expect too much. It was only my father who was ever interested in it, and he didn’t keep it up all that well. It was just a place he went to to get away, and he didn’t care much what it looked like. I haven’t seen it myself for a while, but the last time I was up the inside needed a lot of work. Outside — well, really there’s no point. It’s not good farm land, it’s all rocky, that area, and there’s just the woods and a small pasture and a stream and the area around the cabin, which is mostly just bushes and weeds. Except there’s a big willow by the cabin. As I said in the ad, it is winterized, there’d be no problems there, because my dad did like his comforts. There’s a fridge and stove there already, they’ve always worked, and a big kitchen. The other rooms are a pretty good size, too, and the plumbing is all modern. I wouldn’t want you to expect too much, though, it’s an old place. And it’s pretty far back from the road, and even the road is pretty far back from the main route that goes into town.”

He started to laugh at himself, a kind of heaving that caught in his throat and turned into a cough.

“You’re going to think I don’t really want to sell it, the way I’m talking. Maybe I should have turned it over to a real estate type — it sure doesn’t sound like I’m much of a salesman. Actually, it’s a great place if you like that sort of thing.”

“It’s all right,” I said. I was watching out the car windows, seeing how the countryside changed as we went along, driving fast over the expressway past small cities that might be so much like the one where I had grown up, the kinds of cities I dislike from memory.

I smiled at him. “If you were a real salesman, I likely wouldn’t believe what you said. We’ll wait and see. Even if it isn’t in really good shape, we might still be interested. It’d only be a retreat away from the city. Although the price ...” I left that hanging, doubt in my tone, because I really didn’t know if we could afford it. And I was wondering now if Stephen would agree that we should buy a place so far away, so expensive for a piece of useless land and a cabin that needed work, when we had specifically bought the city house to give us space and freedom enough.