Rose offered to make Adonie a sandwich. "If you're going up to the house," she said.
"That would be perfect. Make us several," Adonie said, including me.
I began to wonder farther out from the tight little knot where I had been and its limited realm of awareness.
But before I could speak Rose said to me, "You mentioned to Bob the last time you were here you could do something for the old bar." She added, for Adonie, "Bob's my brother. He keeps the saloon next door. There's an old bar. It's historic. But it needs...." Rose moved her hands.
"A carpenter," I supplied.
Adonie turned her eyes to me.

"I'm a carpenter."
"Ah," she said as though that clarified every question she possessed about the nature of the world.

Even though I didn't mean to I said, "I'll try to talk with him before I leave." He couldn't pay, and I was broke. Really and sincerely broke. "Good." Rose's smile lit up her brown eyes, her face, in a remarkable way. I had never noticed that before. "That will please him." She started away to make the sandwiches. "And it will be good for the bar." I finished my coffee and turned the heavy old mug in my hands. Most people didn't talk about wood that way. Maybe I should try to do something about that old bar.

"I thought you must work outside," Adonie said.
If she expected a question about that I wasn't going to give it to her. "Where do you work?" I sounded belligerent.
"Anywhere." She added with a little smile, "I'm an architect."
"Oh." I searched my pockets for change to leave Rose.

Adonie nudged her cup and saucer aside and turned in her chair, sitting forward and leaning her arms on the table. "I'm beginning renovations on an old house near here. Maybe you know it. The old Ripley house."
My heart slammed once in my chest painfully. Did she know? Did she lay it out like that, knowing?
I stilled, forgetting my search for loose change. My eyes probed into hers; if they could have cut through to the core they would have.
"You do know it." Then a frown drew her brows. "I have said something unpleasant to you."

Her concern was something so true that I shrank from it, denied it. I shrugged.
"I am sorry. What is it?"
"It's nothing. I was surprised, that's all. That's where I was going when that damn drunk screwed things up."
"To the Ripley house?"
"Right. I went there a lot as a kid."
"The Ripleys are part of your family?"
I nodded, looking away. My throat closed. She couldn't see that, but she could see the tension. I hated them, but there I was, there the house was, and it meant something to me.
Molly--we had talked--

to the porch

"You ought to go out to the old house again. Take some time away from everything. Listen. Feel. Think things through."

Adonie once told me she worked anywhere. She should have added any time and everywhere.