“Her name was Margaret. She wasn’t bad. Stiff. Very businesslike. She contacted me about selling the place shortly after Arthur’s accident. She didn’t want to deal with the bad memories and the gossip, and who could blame her? She said she never liked it there anyway. It had all been Arthur’s idea, his project. She was perfectly happy to spend summers with their families on Lake Geneva, but Arthur and his dad didn’t see eye to eye. He wanted their kids—”

“Wait. Kids plural? There was more than one?”

“Twins. Arthur, Jr., and Charlotte. I think that was her name.”

Now that Sherri had a child herself, she couldn’t imagine being involved with someone and keeping Violet a secret.

“They were little, must have been about two years old at that time. Anyway, the market wasn’t good. I told Margaret to wait to sell. And she did. Anyone with that much money can keep an extra house the way some people keep a pearl necklace in their drawer. The place fell apart. The trees grew around it so you couldn’t even see it was there.”

It pained Sherri to think of the house dying, too, after all the work she and Arthur had done to bring it back. He’d really loved that place.

“Last I heard, Margaret passed on, and the kids tore the old cottage down and built their dream house.”

“Oh, it’s new all right. I hate it. It looks like a prison.”

“That’s what they like, I guess. If we all liked the same kinds of houses, the world wouldn’t be what it is.” Jerry’s smile is kind. “Speaking of real estate, about this place—” He pulls out a legal-sized envelope filled with documents and hands it to Sherri. “These are all the receipts for work that’s been done here. We got a new boiler just last year, and the roof is only six or seven years old. Here’s Lee’s lease, and the assessment if you decide to sell. This is all the stuff you’re going to need. I sure hope you don’t do what Arthur’s kids did and tear this place down. It needs work but it has good bones and an important history.”

“The thought never would have occurred to me.” She couldn’t imagine the square without her building, couldn’t imagine East Troy without the square, couldn’t imagine a world without East Troy.

“Isn’t it funny? I dealt in real estate all these years but I’m like the cobbler’s son with the torn-up shoes living here in a rented apartment. Turns out I don’t much like owning my own place.”

Sherri holds the envelope with trembling hands. She’d been so preoccupied with Arthur that the gravity of Jerry’s prognosis starts to hit her. She worries she might start to cry.