Helen reached over the pizza box, picked up one of the glossy New England real estate flyers, and flipped to the back, to where the land listings were. She started looking at pictures of vacant lots, doing her best to imagine her dream house standing there, she and Nate tucked safely inside.

. . .

This is where our house will go, Helen thought now as she watched the men work on the foundation. She could almost imagine the lines of it, the shadow it would cast, the roof reaching up to touch the impossibly blue sky. The clouds were so low, so vivid, she was sure that if she climbed the hill, she’d be able to reach out and touch them. It was like being in a child’s drawing of the perfect landscape: trees, sky and clouds, happy yellow sun, and, beneath it, a square box of a house with a smiling couple standing outside.

They had discovered this piece of land back in January and made an offer that day. The craziest part was it wasn’t even on their list to look at—they’d found it when they got lost looking for an old covered bridge Helen had seen signs for. They stopped at a general store for directions and there on the bulletin board was an ad for the land: forty-four acres in the small village of Hartsboro, Vermont. They called the realtor and arranged to meet him out there that afternoon. Half of the land was wooded, but the western part of the property consisted of the Breckenridge Bog. Land not useful for farming or building. Land that, local legend claimed—the realtor said this with a chuckle—was haunted. As they trudged out through a foot and a half of freshly fallen snow to look at the property, Nate chuckled with him. He said, “Do you think the seller would accept a lower offer on the basis that the land is known to be haunted?”

“I think,” the realtor said, turning serious again, “the seller is highly motivated and would consider any reasonable offer.”

They were in a large clearing with a hillside in front of them, woods to the right and left, the single-lane dirt road behind them. As they walked, it began to snow big, thick flakes that caught on Helen’s eyelashes. Their feet sank in the perfect white snow and Helen looked at the trees, blanketed in white, softly bent with the weight of it. Helen was struck by the quiet, the serenity of the landscape.

“Haunted?” Helen asked, circling back. “Really?”

The realtor nodded, then looked a little like he was sorry he’d mentioned it. “That’s what people say.” He shrugged, as if he didn’t really know the story, and he started telling them that the back of the property was bordered by a class three road that became a snowmobile trail in the winter. “You folks get yourselves a couple of snow machines and you’ll be in business,” he said. “But seriously,” he added. “What you’ve gotta understand is that even though this place is forty-four acres, only about four acres are suitable for building. The rest is just too hilly or marshy. That’s why the low price.”