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no trace of humor on his face.  “Did you get the brushes?”
    Phoebe sighed with relief and smiled, then nodded.
    Half an hour later Isaac was dipping into the paint, making long strokes on the house. 
    Ada's voice rang out behind him.  “Good heavens!  Pink, Isaac?  When are you going to learn to say no?”
    Isaac smiled.  “It's raspberry.”
    “Well, I guess we know who rules the roost around here.”  Ada sighed.   A moment later she stood by his side with a paintbrush in hand.

Chapter 5
    The Mail Order House
     
     
    The house hadn't felt like it belonged to her until she stood facing it, in all its pink majesty, with the key biting into her palm.  The paint had faded to an odd shade over the years, and had cracked and peeled until it resembled a tired showgirl who had seen better days.
    Until today she had only looked at it from the street, staring into the windows as if she might catch a leftover glimpse of life inside.  She had envisioned her Great-Grandmother Elaine picking out the house from the pages of a Sears catalog, her index finger firmly planted on the picture.  “That one.”
    How many trucks would it take to deliver the materials for a whole house?  And how many men had pulled on thick gloves and work boots and gathered to help her great-grandfather build the house?  She liked to think it was a neighborhood project, the way things used to be.  Or perhaps she was thinking of the Amish.
    Lila walked up the sidewalk for the first time, noting the multiple fractures that had been invaded with grass and weeds.  She was already making a mental checklist of things that would need fixing:  new paint, sidewalk, trim shrubs.  It made her feel like her old self again;  the one who had been responsible for taking care of Grandpa Isaac during his last year.
    The rails that bordered the porch were uniquely shaped.  They reached toward each other and met at the top in a pointed arch.  The white paint was badly chipped, and a couple of them had toppled over, but she could see they were all accounted for, and that should make it a fairly easy fix.  She visualized the charming porch in its former glory, and it pulled her up the weathered steps and wrapped around her in a welcoming embrace.
    If her mother could see the dreamy look in her eye she would laugh.  She always said Lila was 'sentimental.'  Her mother had worked at an insurance company in Bozeman, and seemed to put more of herself into her job every year after Lila's father passed away.  Lila had almost finished her second year of college when her mother remarried, and the little apartment they shared quickly became crowded. 
    Grandpa Isaac was her father's father, but her mother must have felt just sentimental enough to be concerned about finding a home for him in Green River when he became ill.  Lila decided to pack up her things and take a Greyhound bus to Wyoming to take care of him instead.  She had only visited him a couple of times before that, although he'd sent her a birthday card every year.  Her early memories of him consisted of the way he had towered over her, the deep but soft sound of his voice, the impressive whiteness of his thick hair, and how he always kept lemonade in his fridge.  She also remembered his sense of humor and his big, yellow guitar.
    He was just as she remembered him when he opened the door and took her suitcase, only he didn't seem quite as tall.  Living with Grandpa Isaac had finally given her a feeling of roots.  One more connection in this world.  Even though he was gone, she felt a little more steady on her feet from having known him.  He told her so many things;  about Grandma Phoebe's affinity for the thrift store find, and her father's innocent pocketing of the waitresses' tips in the diner until age seven.  But he had never explained why, at fifty-two,  he left his home-town, where he had married Grandma Phoebe,  moved into the house his father had built with his own hands, and