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with pieces that caught her eye when she went to flea markets,

antique stores, and auctions. She’d hardly ordered anything

online, since she couldn’t get a feel for something without

being able to run her fingertips over it first.

The construction crews who were restoring the exterior of

the house always stopped at five. She made sure they were

able to get home for dinner. They were all local people and

most of them had families.

Without the banging of hammers and the buzzing of saws,

the sharp whine of drills and other tools that Adalynn didn’t

know how to use, it was quiet in the yard and beyond. She was

well out of town, more than a ten-minute drive, and the house

was on so much land that her nearest neighbor was one hell of

a walk away.

The website owner, Ginny Commers, was a local woman in

her nineties. She’d known all about the history of the house

and was happy to sit down to have a cup of tea and a chat

whenever Adalynn dropped by.

Adalynn opened up her laptop and slid her finger to the

power button. She waited a few minutes, tapping her fingertips

on the scarred wood surface. She got up when she got tired of

waiting. She was agitated for some reason. Probably because

she’d been editing video all day so she’d have something to

post in the morning. She was exhausted from looking at

computer screens. Her muscles felt cramped from lack of

activity. She had a headache and her stomach burned,

reminding her that she’d barely eaten anything all day.

When she was working, she often got so into it that she

forgot to take breaks. The hours had bled away, almost without

her noticing. She was pulled away from the editing room