This fish house was my dad’s sanctuary and workshop, boat storage and smokehouse. He listened to Cubs games on the radio while he tinkered on his first boat before the Adie Lou, he’d fire up his smoker—to smoke whitefish and salmon, turkey and ribs—and sit in the door all day and watch it as closely as if he were watching a newborn, adding hickory chips and his own special concoction of “juice” to keep it all moist and tender. He cleaned his fish right outside the fish house, and at night raccoons would swarm the yard looking for remnants. I’d sit on my dad’s lap, and he’d pull out a flashlight and shoot it into the dark, the light paralyzing the raccoons in the midst of their midnight raids.

“There’s nothing to fear in nature, Adie Lou,” my dad would whisper to me. “Fear those who try to control it.”

The walls in the fish house are still dotted with my father’s favorite things: his prized catches from the lakes—big bass, menacing muskie, supersize salmon—vintage Helmscenes, lighted pictures of lakes and mountains from the 1950s, as well as my drawings, progressing from crayons to watercolors.

I learned a lot from my father in this tiny space, mostly that he was a good, simple man who loved me more than anything and believed I could be anything in the world.

“You haven’t touched this place since your parents passed,” Frank says, knocking me from my memories.

I shake my head but can’t bring myself to vocalize why I couldn’t change anything. How much it all meant to me. That I had to protect some sacred space as a way to protect myself from a world that was collapsing around me. Instead, I walk over to one of my father’s beloved Helmscenes, a pretty picture of a pristine lake surrounded by pines, a tiny canoe in the middle of the water holding a father and daughter who are fishing. I click the knob on the side of the picture. For a moment nothing happens, but then I can hear it click and zap, coming to life, and it flickers for a moment before illuminating.

“Still works,” Frank says. “Now, that’s amazing. So, speaking of bright ideas, what are you thinking out here? Honeymoon suite, for sure?”

“Yep,” I say. “Open concept, master bath, maybe a small kitchen if people want to make a meal and stay in... Keep the view out the back, maybe add a small porch on one side away from the patio.”