Apparently, I’d gotten used to taking up space.

I’d had Bear teach me how to make coffee in the high-end machine he had. It produced just regular coffee—nothing fancier than we had at work. I set it up and went out back to smoke a cigarette, standing, because all the patio furniture had been covered for winter.

First snow was possible as early as next week.

I let Buddy out to run in the back, watching his lean, athletic body leap through waves of tall, brittle corn, golden and dry, rustling like paper in the breeze.

The Land Rover was gone.

I was going to try finishing the basement, pull up the masking, touch up the edges where I needed to. The painting calmed me. The clean smell of it. The steady coverage. The straight grid of color going on thick. I imagined staying in the house until work tomorrow, a long free day, an evening with Bear. Maybe a walk with the dog.

But instead I heard the doorbell. And a baby.

I thought, there aren’t even neighbors up here.

And then whoever had rung the bell was now trying the knob, knocking it in its casing. Buddy was too far out to hear or care. I left him out there, chasing a swallow that teased him over a flat part of the field, swooping so low it looked like he could get it and then darting swiftly back up again. Buddy leaned and barked. Barked and ran. He would be tired.

I went in, crossing the great room like I belonged there, and swept open the big, heavy front door that had only a small window to peer out of, the window having its own tiny door, like in a medieval castle.

“Hi,” the woman said to me, impatient. She shifted the baby on her hip and pushed past me, walking into the open dining room.

She had red-gold hair, pulled up in a perfectly messy bun with soft, curved wisps hanging down at the temples. A sprinkle of freckles. The baby had the same copper hair, pierced ears. A blue corduroy dress.

They were the people in the pictures. The ones I had thought were fake. An advertising family.

I heard the coffee finish brewing. I thought, maybe that’s what they are. They are models, and Bear needs to pay them.

“Can I help you?” I asked, soft.

She laughed. “I don’t know,” she said. “Is Bear even here?”

“No,” I said, suddenly glad I was dressed and hadn’t wandered into the kitchen in my shorts and T-shirt, one of Bear’s flannels over my shoulders.

She swung a diaper bag onto the formal dining room table, the one I’d never seen used for anything other than occasional pieces of mail. It sat eight. She stuck her hand in the side pocket of the bag, digging until she pulled out a small green pacifier and gave it to the baby, who sucked it right in.

“She’s tired,” the woman said. Then, “I’m sorry; you are?”