“Uh-oh,” Nate said, noticing a place where the roof leaked—water dripping through the thin, stained boards that made up the ceiling. He grabbed a bowl and put it beneath. Just then, Helen noticed another drip splatter onto the peeling linoleum floor. She got a saucepan. Soon, the two of them were doing a strange dance, hurrying to put vessels beneath quickly multiplying leaks.

“Better hurry up and get the second floor and roof done,” Nate said. “I don’t know how much longer this place is going to last.”

Helen smiled in agreement. She couldn’t wait to be out of their tiny sardine can of a trailer.

Nate settled in on the couch with a book on bird behavior. He turned on the lamp on the side table and the kitchen light flickered. Helen opened her laptop and checked her email to find a note from her friend Jenny, saying only: How are things going in the Great North Woods? You ready to come back home yet? I’ve got martinis waiting…

Helen looked around at the containers catching drips in the leaking trailer and tried to formulate a witty reply, but her attempts just sounded pathetic. She’d write Jenny back later.

The rain pounded the tin roof, adding to the percussive music of the steady drips into the pans, bowls, and cups scattered around the trailer.

Helen decided to don her rain gear and go into town. It had been three weeks since they’d arrived in Hartsboro, and she had been busy with building and starting the garden, and honestly, it felt a little selfish to take time off for research when there was so much work to do each day. And by the time work ended each day, she was too sore and exhausted to do much more than settle in with a glass of wine and early bed.

“I’m going to take advantage of the rainy weather to go check out the town hall and library and see what I can dig up on our property and local history,” she announced. “Want to come?”

Nate shook his head, eyes focused on his bird book. “I think I’ll stay in and catch up on some reading,” he said, clearly pleased to have the afternoon to himself to read. “Have fun,” he added when she paused to kiss the top of his head on the way out.

Helen stopped into Ferguson’s General Store to pick up a loaf of bread. It sold everything from hunting rifles to fresh pies with labels that had clearly been made on someone’s inkjet printer (Nate called them “grandma pies”—bumbleberry was his favorite). There was a teenage boy with a crew cut and a blaze-orange camo T-shirt working the register. A police scanner was squawking from a shelf behind him: chimes, followed by voices uttering codes.