He nodded. “Apology accepted. Sorry I acted like one.”

“That’s okay. But next time you get stressed out about Horatio, try not to question the depth or breadth of my vocabulary, okay?”

He nodded again. “I’ll work on that.”

“Thanks.” I leaned in for an official making up kiss. “Okay, moving on. Have you seen Polly?”

“She and Johnny drove off in her car a little while ago.”

“That’s great,” I said. “Nice of her to take a Johnny shift. Hey, you know what I was just thinking? What if we got our stuff all moved down to the love shack today instead of waiting till Sunday? My other brothers are coming over to move Johnny out to the trailer, which will free up my parents’ old room for Polly, so she could move, too.”

“Good idea,” John said. “Once we get everybody relocated, we might even be able to knock down some walls before Joe and his crew get here on Monday.”

“Somebody’s been watching too much HGTV,” I sang.

“It doesn’t look that hard.” John’s Heath Bar eyes were shining. “Especially if Joe would let us borrow a couple of those big mullets.”

“Mallets,” I said.

John raised his eyebrows. “I gave you that.”

“Thanks,” I said. “And I deserved it.”

John and I managed to get the king-size bed frame taken apart. We figured it wasn’t worth the hassle of putting the bed frame back together again for such a short stint, so we stacked the pieces up against one wall in the front parlor, making sure we kept them a safe distance from John’s prized vintage pinball machines.

We crammed the two small bureaus into one end of the dining room, made sure the drawers were facing out so we could get to our clothes. Then we put the mattress on the floor of the former cat room, set up our rickety book piles on either side. We were afraid the teething kittens would chew through the cords of our alarm clocks, so we decided to rough it and use the alarms on our phones instead.

We jammed as many of our hanging clothes as we could into the front closet. We hung some more on the shower curtain rod in the downstairs bathroom. The rest we draped across the dining room table.

Our new old house was heated by oil. The inside temperature fluctuated between extreme hot flashes from the steam radiators and icy cooling off periods. As soon as John and I started sweating from all the relocation exertion, we’d cycle into another round of goosebumps.

We’d just circled out to the kitchen for a water break when my sister Christine walked in. She was carrying a sledgehammer, which was apparently what we really needed to take down a wall. As opposed to a mullet.