“Until recently, they couldn’t because it was entailed until the twenty-first century. Some McDowell a couple hundred years ago made out a will saying the farm couldn’t he sold until—”
“The year 2000,” Mike finished for her. “So where does the historian come into this?”
“I don’t know all the story, but I think Mr. Lang’s mother ran off with someone when he was just a boy.” Sara shrugged. “After she left, Mr. Lang’s father quit taking care of the buildings, so Uncle Alex moved the two men—I think Mr. Lang was seventeen or eighteen then—into another house, and that’s when he rented the farm to the historian. The man had just been married and they raised a family here. But all that was a long time ago. By the time I was born, Mr. Lang’s father was dead and he, the son, was living alone in this house.”
“Are you saying that Lang has another house somewhere? Someplace he can go?”
“You are thinking of moving here, aren’t you?”
“Maybe. What with Tess and her kid and—”
“Don’t forget Ramsey.”
“Oh right. Him.”
“Do you want your sister all to yourself?”
“I think,” he said softly, “that I’d like someone all to myself.?
?
For a moment, their eyes locked. Sara was the first to turn away. “Ready to go upstairs?”
“I’ll follow you wherever you go,” he said.
“Then I’m going back to the barn.”
“Over my—” Mike grinned. “Okay, so you got me. Lead on.”
They wandered about upstairs to see the four bedrooms and the one big bath. It was tiled in perfect 1930s fashion, all black and white. “I’d leave it just as it is,” Sara said.
“I know, because it’s ‘original.’”
Sara’s voice was prim. “When I use that term concerning this house, I mean original to when it was built in 1674. For your information, that bathroom is quite modern.”
Mike looked at the old pedestal sink and the unusually high toilet. “That room is new?”
“Yes.” She went on talking about moldings and paneling, but when she again said “original” he laughed at her.
“You do not appreciate the significance of this house!” she said, but she was smiling.
“As long as I have you to take care of it, I’ll be fine. You can do anything you—” When he realized what he was saying, he broke off. “Does this place have a kitchen?”
Sara practically ran down the stairs, while Mike took his time. It still astonished him to think of the house as belonging to him. As he stood at the head of the stairs and looked down, he thought of screen doors slamming and kids running in and out—and Sara calling to all of them.
“Come on, slow poke,” she said as she looked up the staircase. “The kitchen is horrible. Wait until you see the floor.”
He went down, then out to the addition that she said had been stuck onto the house sometime in the 1930s. “Probably when the bathroom was put in,” she said.
For all that the bath had charm, the kitchen didn’t. The old linoleum floor was worn through to the boards below. The appliances were 1970s avocado, and the cabinet doors were barely hanging on.
“This room could be redone,” Sara said.
“I know, with white marble countertops. Please let me hear you say those words again.”
“Ask Ariel on Saturday. She’s the one who’ll be living here with you. Unless Erica gets you first.”
Maybe it was the mention of reality or maybe it was the sound of a squirrel in the chimney, but it brought them both back to the present. For a minute they stared at each other.