Nate came out of the house to meet her when she pulled into the driveway. He looked excited. “Look what I found in the hunting area at the general store,” he said, holding up a box. “I walked into town to grab a sandwich for lunch and spotted this.”

Helen looked. “An outdoor wildlife camera?”

He nodded enthusiastically. “It’s got night vision! It’s motion activated. And I can set it up so that it sends the images and videos right to my laptop.”

Helen looked at the orange price sticker: $110.

“Great,” she said, thinking that she could only imagine the rumors going through the town now. Witchcraft books, night-vision cameras—she could almost understand why people were freaked out by the two of them.

“Oh, and I got most of the plumbing finished in the downstairs bathroom,” he said. “All that’s left is the flange for the toilet.”

“Fantastic,” Helen said. She’d been amazed by how fast Nate had picked up working with the copper pipes. He had a real knack for soldering—all his joints were perfect every time. “I think maybe you were a plumber in a past life!”

He grinned at her. “How were your errands?” he asked.

“Look what I got for us,” she said, showing him the pile of bricks she’d loaded into the back of the truck.

“Wow! Where’d they come from?”

“An old mill. They’re renovating it, turning it into condos and offices. I got the bricks for free.”

“Cool,” Nate said. “How’d you find them?”

Hattie sent me.

“Craigslist,” Helen said without missing a beat. “I thought we could use them for the hearth for the woodstove.”

“I thought we were going to use slate from the quarry in town,” Nate said, frowning a little. They’d visited the quarry, and Nate had loved the texture and gray-green color of the stone.

“We can still get that and use it for something else. Maybe the kitchen floor?”