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would have to figure out everything on her own.
    â€œIt’s just mortar and wood,” she said unconvincingly to her brother. She held the cell phone uncomfortably close to her ear as she sat parked in the beat-up yellow truck in front of the Costello place. On the second story, the house had three gabled windows that stared back at her, their dark green shutters like mascara on three eyes. A widow’s walk perched on the top of the house, a tiny room ringed by a deck. A wide porch faced the road. She had called the agent who handled the property the night before, after making two more calls to the number that Natalie gave her.
    â€œLet’s see if I’ve got the whole picture,” said Caleb. “Unless you can do therapy long distance, and I so hope you can’t, this means you’re quitting your job at the college. Have you told them yet? Have you told Mom yet?”
    â€œNegative,” said Rocky. “You know I always talk to you first.”
    Aside from college and graduate school, Rocky and Caleb had never lived more than twenty miles apart. Until Rocky moved nearly four hours away after Bob died. Summer was Caleb’s busy time painting houses; she had reached him on the job, two stories up on an old colonial in Leeds. In the winter months, Caleb made sculptures of musicians: euphoric, sax-playing women and spine-tingling men, arms held high with a fiddle. Rocky had sold five of them through a gallery in Portland over the winter, with a list of people who were willing to wait. She chose not to tell him about Natalie. Not yet.
    â€œF ull disclosure means that I have to tell you of the dire circumstances related to this house before I sell it,” said the Realtor. He was a young man with a sober demeanor who had introduced himself as a first-generation Puerto Rican from Brooklyn. His body was compact and muscled. He drove an old Ford Bronco.
    â€œDoes that mean your family has been in the States for one generation?”
    â€œMy parents were born in PR, and I was born here. Like I said, first generation.”
    Rocky already knew all about the dire circumstances of the house. This was where an old fisherman had killed himself after the debilitating illness and death of his wife. His wife had been dead and buried for two weeks when Mr. Costello had cleaned the house, carefully covered the stacked firewood with a blue tarp, and nailed a warning note to his front door that admonished the visitor to call the Portland police and not to enter until the police got there. Then he covered his head with the side bag from his lawn mower and shot himself. His attempt at tidiness was not entirely successful: the cleanup crew was forced to wash down the living room walls with bleach. Who would want a house that was soaked in pain, remembrance, and unbearable tragedy? Which was precisely what Caleb would ask later when she called him back.
    â€œWhy do you want to buy a crap house that’s got mouse shit for insulation when you have a good solid house back here? And that is just plain gross about the lawn mower bag.”
    Why did she want this house? There were over fifty houses for sale on Peaks. But a house where grief took a stranglehold on a widower more than three years ago? Somehow that seemed within the realm of good judgment; she understood the landscape.
    When Carlos the Realtor showed her the house, he said, “I assume you’ll be tearing down the old house and building new. It’s a valuable lot, almost big enough for three parcels if you apply for a variance.” He stood in the entryway and made sure that he touched nothing. His thick black eyelashes grazed his glasses as he spoke.
    Rocky leaned her spine against the molding of the kitchen door. “This house has good bones.” She had heard people say that before but never imagined that she’d be the one saying it.
    â€œNothing’s going to happen without an inspection. Can’t get a mortgage