He saw steel hardening in her veins and knew it was time to change the subject. “Why were you named Tuesday?”

Tuesday shrugged. “I was born on Tuesday. Why were you named Ketch?”

“My folks loved to sail, I guess. A ketch is a kind of sailboat.”

She smiled for the first time. “I guess you’re a leftover kid too. You know, a couple has a great time, and nine months later you pop out. Maybe they love you for a while, but you’re just left over after the party’s forgotten.”

“That how you feel?”

“That’s how I’ve always felt.”

He leaned closer and brushed her hair back from her face so he could study her. A whole world of sadness lived behind her green eyes. “I don’t want to ever have a leftover kid,” he whispered as if he was making an oath. “If I ever have a kid, he’ll never doubt for one day that I love him.”

“Me too,” she answered as she slowly straightened away.

A silence settled between them as they finished eating. She didn’t show much interest when he pulled a four-foot pipe forward.

As he leaned back in his chair and grabbed the rusty pipe, he said, “I found the strangest thing under the porch.”

He held out the pipe like it was a treasure. “At first I just thought it was trash left behind, but then I noticed a tube inside the pipe. I recognized it as an architect’s tube, like we use on commercial buildings to store blueprints.”

They moved to a table he’d rigged with a few boards and a sawhorse. As she helped him unroll the paper, Tuesday got excited. “It’s my house.”

Ketch studied the plans. “This is no ordinary house plan. This one was done in great detail. Look here how the window is turned sideways, not straight. That man named Tony must have designed the entire house and then built it in stages. That’s the only way this place could have fit together so seamlessly.”

Tuesday moved in front of him, her back fitting nicely against his chest. “That’s the dining room. That window catches the morning light in spring. And this window that I thought was always put in the wrong place catches the winter sunrise.”

The hole in the porch was forgotten as they examined their find. Ketch could read the plans and Tuesday remembered the odd turns in the house. They were both Christmas-morning excited.

“The guy who built this house was an artist, and every detail was built with love.”

Lifting the plans, they hurried inside to explore. “By the time I moved in with Grannie, we only lived on the first floor. I’ve walked the rooms on the other two floors, but I didn’t know them.”