Nathaniel

"Just look at it," she said. "It's perfect-just perfect."

"It did come out nice," Amos agreed. He glanced at Michael, beside him, but the boy remained silent. "We better get on up there before the movers wreck everything," Amos said. He started to put the car in gear, but Janet stopped him.

"No! I want to walk. I want to enjoy every second of it. After all the work, I just want to soak in what we've done. Come on, Michael!"

While the elder Halls drove on up to the house, Janet and Michael strolled slowly, enjoying the crunch of gravel under their feet.

At the top of the newly installed ramp that paralleled the steps to the front porch, Amos and A

"Except for the fence," A

"It's not practical," Amos interjected, picking up the argument that he and A

A

"Let's forget about the fence and go look inside before it gets all cluttered up."

Inside, the dinginess, and neglect were gone, replaced everywhere with a bright newness that belied the age of the structure. The off-white paint had, as Janet hoped, given the small rooms a more spacious feeling than had existed before. She moved from room to room slowly, placing furniture in her mind's eye, selecting papers for the walls that would bring the rooms to life while retaining their feeling of coziness.

In the kitchen, a blue-painted table with cane-seated chairs, rescued from someone's attic, sat next to the window, and an old, but serviceable, refrigerator purred next to the wood-electric stove that Janet had already come to love. She patted the imposing hunk of cast iron affectionately.

"I haven't seen one of those since I was a child. I'd have sworn they all wound up in the junkyards years ago."

"Out here we still need them," A

Suddenly Michael's voice interrupted them, shouting from the backyard. "Mom! Mom, come quick! Look!"

Janet stepped out onto the back porch, with A

It was Shadow, trotting slowly up the field, his tongue hanging out of his mouth, his tail low to the ground.

"Shadow!" Michael yelled. "It's Shadow, Mom! Come on, boy. Come on, Shadow!"

The dog's tail came up and began waving like a ba

As Janet watched the scene in the yard, she heard A

Amos, however, made no reply to his wife's remarks. Instead, he simply turned and wordlessly went back into the house.

A few minutes later, with Shadow on his heels, Michael burst excitedly into the kitchen. "Can I take him upstairs, Mom? I want to show him my room." Then he paused and cocked his head. "Mom? Can we sleep here tonight?"

"Of course," Janet replied. "Where else would we sleep? This is our home now."

"Oh, but how can you, dear?" A

Janet stopped her with a gesture. "A

A

Janet, who was already halfway up the stairs, paused and turned back to face her mother-in-law. "It wasn't you who let it go," she said, her voice low and her expression serious. "It was Mark."

A

Janet hesitated, wondering what exactly she had meant by her words. Indeed, she hadn't meant to say them at all. They had just slipped out, unbidden and unconsidered. And yet, as she thought about it, she realized she meant the words, realized that during the past weeks, as she'd worked so hard to restore the house to what it had once been, she'd begun to resent Mark's neglect of the place and, more and more, come to resent Mark himself. Mark, who had lied to her. A feeling had grown inside her that the past was not the only thing Mark had hidden from her and that as she began going through his papers-all the files he'd kept locked away in his office at the university, but that were now packed in cardboard cartons in the little parlor at the front of the house-she'd find more hidden things, find another Mark, one he'd kept as well hidden as this farm, whom she'd never known and wasn't at all sure she wanted to meet. And yet for A

"Nothing," Janet finally said. "Nothing at all, really. It's just that I don't want you to feel bad about the condition the house was in. After all, you gave it to Mark, didn't you? So it wasn't really your responsibility."

"But Mark was our son," A

Janet met the older woman's intense gaze for a moment, wondering what, if anything, to say. Then, at last, she turned silently away, and continued on up to the second floor.

"It's perfect," Janet repeated an hour later when they were all gathered together again in the little parlor. Her eyes moved from Amos to A

"You don't have to," Amos Hall told her. "We did it because we belong to you, and you belong to us. You're ours, Janet. You must never forget that."

Janet returned her father-in-law's smile. "I won't," she whispered. "You can be sure I won't."