Home Safe by Elizabeth Berg

says. “I have to tell you. The kitchen is a masterpiece.”
    “Six-burner stove?” Helen asks.
    “You've got a six-burner stove with a griddle at the center. Burr elm contrasted with pale elm cabinets. There's—”
    “How much do you think I can get for it? Can I get my money back?”
    Tom sits back in his seat. “You want to sell it? Wow.” He stares at her, says again, “Wow. I didn't expect that. I thought you'd …”
    “What? What did you think?”
    “You want the whole scenario?”
    A couple is seated next to them—a man and a woman, serious-faced, each with an open laptop—and Tom lowers his voice. “You want me to tell you exactly how I imagined it would play out?”
    Helen nods.
    “Okay, I thought you'd start crying. You know, happy tears. And then I thought you'd ask a million questions, which I was going to be reluctant to answer. Because you've got to see this place. You've just got to see it. You might think you know how it looks, because he designed it to your specifications. But the tree house—”
    “What tree house? That wasn't my idea. I never said anything about a tree house.”
    “Well, you got one. With wide-tread stairs for climbing up into it. He said he wanted you to be eighty and still able to get up there. It's quite a tree house, not the kind of thing you usually think of when you hear the word.”
    This is beginning to be unbearable. “You know, I …” She smiles, pushes her plate forward. “I wonder if we … How long are you here for?”
    “Going home tomorrow.”
    “Where do you live?”
    “Mill Valley. Not that far from your place. I was looking forward to being neighbors with you.” His voice softens. “I only met with Dan those two times, but I really connected with him. He was a hell of a guy.”
    “Yes, he was.”
    “Hell of a guy.”
    “Yes.”
    “I'm so sorry. Again.”
    She feels herself beginning to tear up. “I'm going to need some time to think about all this. I wonder if we could talk in a few days.”
    He reaches into his pocket, pulls out a card, and slides it across the table to her. It's a handsome card, simply designed, a sepia print on a cream-colored background. She puts it in her purse. “I'll call you. I think for now, I just need to go.”
    “I understand.”
    “Do you want my salad?”
    “That's okay. But there's one more thing I need to tell you.”
    She sits back in her chair, stops trying to find the arm of her coat.
    “I'm sorry, but you'll need to start paying the bills for electricity, for—”
    “You have twenty-five thousand dollars, right?”
    “Right. You do.”
    “Can't you use that to pay expenses until I decide what to do?”
    “I guess I could handle that for you for a while.”
    “I could pay you to do it,” Helen says.
    “You don't have to. I'll take care of it for now. But you'll have to decide pretty quickly what—”
    “I know. I will. Right now, I just need a little time.”
    “Of course.”
    She gets up and starts to walk away, then turns back. “Do you have pictures with you? Any pictures of the house?”
    Tom shakes his head. “He was adamant that the first time you saw that house was when you were there. He was actually going to blindfold you a few blocks away and uncover your eyes when you were smack-dab in the middle of the kitchen. I thought it was right. Kind of romantic. You can't capture it in pictures, anyway. You just can't.”
    “What's the address?” she asks.
    “It's a post office box. It's a little road, unpaved, very few houses on it. Very private, and really beautiful.”
    And now she does start to cry. She manages a pinched “Thank you,” and rushes out to get her car and go home, she wants so much right now to be home.
    When she pulls into the driveway, she rests her head against the steering wheel. Then she comes into the house, and, without taking off her coat or her boots, heads upstairs to her bedroom. In the very back of her closet, she moves aside shoe boxes that have been