777kkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk66#33 can restore to suit any new owner. Fix. I know you out there.

I buried something. They dug it up for me.

Am mostly beyond all tired. mst. ctch winx … Treated 2×6s∘^I“Smokehouse roof leaki. Fix first. Alwys fix roof first, I keep … I forget. All keys, hall drwer.

hi

HERE GOES

IV.

I end by remembering a meal we had together. (One thing I must blame him for is how readily he knocked me off my diet. He’d show up with two bags of stray ingredients from Wellspring Market in Chapel Hill, asking, “But whatever shall we DO with all these perishables? As Marse Wilde said, ‘Simple pleasures are the last refuge for the complex.’”)

We were seated at my back table, finishing some raw oysters. This was when you could still eat those raw without worrying so. We’d only just acquired Shadowlawn, work had just started. But already, when he got up to fetch something, Tad was forced to reach out for the counter to support himself. Of course, he made it look quite natural, you know. Regal. Like, oh, he was solemnly recalling something.

Tad had been worrying over some legal issue involving right of way, easement to the entrance of the Shadowlawn big house, and he was frustrated and weak, a combination new to him. He said, “I really don’t know nothin’ ’bout rebirthin’ no houses, Mizz Scarlett.” He stopped, head dropping and knuckles going white along my counter’s ledge. I’d never seen him conventionally depressed before. Then I understood just how enraged he was at all the details, all the work left undone, and with only us amateurs trying to fake it in our way. However earnest, we all lacked his genius for vamping, guessing, making it LOOK right and therefore FEEL right, in that order of zoning.

“I know it must be frustrating,” I said, clumsy but well meaning. “And yet, do think of everything you’ve saved, 56 or ’7 masterpieces that were headed only for the wrecking ball. Tad, do remember what-all you have achieved, m’dear.” “Well, it’s true we’ve set aside a single-family dwelling or two. But that’s such a fraction. Of what’s lost, M.E. Plus, I is so tired of keeping house, keeping on keeping on sweeping them flo’s. Turns out, I do do windows after all.”

“You are a window, honey.” I was about to get started. “You are a window in a door.” But he stopped me from saying something even more sappy and far too comforting. Too easy, I mean.

Then he pointed out the kitchen window toward his truck. Circa, yappy, was guarding it. I saw all these clothes piled up in the back. “Everything I’ve never been able to fit into, till today. And I feel some runway turns coming on. Point me toward your nearest changing room, per favore, Coco?”