“Our roofs are joined together. I walked from mine to yours.” He sighed. “Speaking of roofs…” He put his foot on the bottom rung of the swing-down stairs. “If I fall through your ceiling again, feel free to stimulate me back to life.”

“You mean like cold water, a slap on the face?”

“I was thinking more along the lines of mouth-to-mouth, loosening my clothes…”

Kate watched him disappear into the darkness and decided he was a little outrageous. She liked that. She was outrageous, too. Outrageous felt comfortable to her.

“What are you doing out there?” she yelled. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah. I’ve got the fence in place. Now all I have to do is cover it with the plastic and put a few bricks around to hold everything down.”

The third floor of Kate’s house was nothing more than a stairwell and one huge room. Sound echoed off the curtainless windows and hardwood floors, and light from the bedroom below splashed in crazy patterns against the bare walls. “This is not a pleasant sight,” Kate said, when Dave returned. “This is… horrible. Like in horror-movie horrible. And my bedroom is even more depressing.”

Dave watched water drip from the edge of his slicker onto his shoes. “I need to get dry. And you need to cheer up. How about we both go over to my house for a while.”

“I don’t know. I feel sort of guilty about leaving my sinking ship.”

He nudged her down two flights of stairs toward the front door. “Your ship isn’t sinking. And it won’t mind being left alone. Trust me. I know about these things.”

“Oh, yeah? How do you know?”

“I’ve been left alone, and I never minded.”

Kate raised an eyebrow. “Never?”

“Almost never. Actually, I hated it, but that’s because I’m a person, and this is a house, and I don’t think houses mind so much. I suppose you don’t own a raincoat.”

“No. I had this really great black coat, but it got ruined at the cleaners today. I used to have an umbrella somewhere…”

The coat was ruined. What a shame. Dave could hardly keep the smile from spreading across his face. He took his slicker off and wrapped it around her. “Just make a dash for it. My door’s unlocked.”

His house was almost as narrow as hers, but its mood was entirely different. Two forest green wing chairs filled the alcove created by the half-turret facade. A large overstuffed plaid couch had been placed across from the chairs, and a dented copper milk-jug lamp cast warm light around the front room. Embers of a dying fire glowed in the small black marble fireplace. Kate closed her eyes and inhaled. Charred applewood and fresh-baked spice cake.

“Every house in America should smell like this,” she said. “This is Mom’s apple pie.”