When the bed was assembled and the cloud of a mattress in place, she tipped the movers and walked them out.

She waited until the van disappeared and then headed around to the side of the house to panic over the lack of work being accomplished. Where the uneven terrace and tumbling retaining wall had been was now an expanse of freshly flattened dirt. The terrace stone, what was salvageable of it, was stacked neatly in the backyard.

The fountain and its four horses, frozen in time, had been cleared of the decade of debris and stood silent and empty. The undertaking seemed more out of reach than on other days.

She blew out a breath and looked at the house. The siding was spectacular, she had to admit. The new windows, with their pops of white and the sharp lines of the grilles, added to the fresh look.

The glass and architectural details on the third floor broke up the dark of the siding. She needed to figure out what she was doing with the third story of the turret. It was too much of a selling point to leave unfinished.

A party, she imagined. With people gathered on the terrace, spilling out of the house from the kitchen and the sunroom. There would be enough room for tables and chairs. Even a dance floor. She could string lights from the house. Guests, dancing or drinking wine, would pause to look up at the lights and then see the expanse of sky beyond, admiring the glow from the windows.

Something tugged at her subconscious. There was something off. Something not quite right. But before she could zero in on it, Silas pulled her attention away.

“You’re not thinking about work, are you?” he said, ambling down the porch steps.

“Not on Bonus Day,” she lied.

“That’s my girl. How do you feel about getting a little dirty?” he asked.

“I feel pretty good about it,” she said, linking her hands behind his neck.

“Good. Get your shovel,” he said with a wink.

“This is not what I had in mind when you said getting dirty,” Maggie complained as she helped him drop the rootball of the five-foot-tall Black Hills spruce.

“Help me break up the roots a bit,” Silas instructed, reaching into the hole while Kevin romped by, the kittens on his heels.

She did as he asked and then sat back on her heels to admire it. “It looks like a Christmas tree,” she observed.

“That’s right,” he said, swiping his forearm over his brow. “Figured the family tree would go back in the library with the fireplace and all those windows. And this is close enough to the house to run lights to it.”

“Your family is obsessed with Christmas trees,” she observed, although she couldn’t help but think about peering out of the back windows and seeing warm white lights on a snowy December night.