Page 4 of Gracie Harris Is Under Construction

Canopy is a classic mountain retreat that swells every summer with visitors and families dropping their kids off at sleepaway camps. The locals blend with seasonal visitors and backpackers alike, creating an atmosphere that’s vibrant, jovial, and intensely charming. It instantly feels like home.

That’s how Ben and I discovered Canopy several years ago—dropping Ava off at her first one-week introductory camp session after she finished first grade.

I was a camp kid, but Ben was not, and he was too nervous to leave the area, so we booked a house a few blocks from downtown.

By the third day, we had both fallen in love and decided that we would buy a house for the family there as soon as we could afford it.

It took some time, but we made that dream a reality.

We saw the house on Wilson Street for the first time on a rainy February afternoon last year. It was the first of three houses we toured with James that day and the one that turned into the obvious choice.

Ben wanted a house close to downtown. He wanted to be able to walk a few blocks and grab coffee, lunch, or a new book.

Ever the social butterfly, he felt it was crucial to have easy access to other living, breathing people he could strike up conversations with.

I was much more interested in the idea of multiple acres of privacy a little farther away from town.

Something that would offer complete quiet and relaxation in the mountain air—something different from what we already had at home.

Like so much else in our married life, the house on Wilson was full of willing compromise. Ben wanted to go for a modern, new home on a lot nearby (that they had torn down a perfectly adorable ranch house to build). I wanted the secluded old farmhouse with tons of character five miles east.

Wilson Street was the best of both worlds. A gorgeous Craftsman built in the 1930s that miraculously had only had three owners in all that time. Ben got his location; I got my character.

Cedar shingles covered the top story of the house, offset by freshly painted white brick on the first floor.

A porch swing hung off to the side of a gracious, sturdy concrete porch.

I sat on the swing, closed my eyes, and smelled the rain in the air.

Heaven. The crisp, clean exterior tricked us into thinking the inside would be similarly polished. Not so.

When we walked through the front door, I was caught between two simultaneous and contradictory thoughts: this house has been so loved; this house is so gross.

A ratty green carpet greeted us in an empty living room.

The sun and time had faded the parts of the carpet not covered by furniture, leaving the impression of a ready-made floor plan.

I remember thinking the layout made a lot of sense for the space as I stared at where the sofa should have been.

There were holes in the wall where paintings and photos had once hung, a cable sticking out over the fireplace where a TV had blared the weather report each morning.

Everything in the home was so worn, but you could feel life in it.

As I peered around the corner into the dining room, James told us he had spent some time here as a kid.

His childhood best friend’s aunt lived in the house for forty years and would invite them over after school.

“She would feed us and then insist we go into the backyard and leave her alone while she read a book.”

I stared at a long, dark wooden buffet in the dining room. It was the sole piece of furniture and, as such, conspicuous. James caught me staring.

“Bess, my friend’s aunt, gave all her furniture away to family and friends before she moved into her new facility—except for this.

She insisted that it stay. Her uncle and cousins had lived in the house before and they inherited the buffet from the original owner. It’s the one thing that’s stayed put.”

While Ben inspected the obvious water damage and tested whether the windows would open and close properly, I ran my hand along the buffet.

It was mostly smooth, broken only by the occasional water ring in the wood.

That piece of furniture had witnessed so many moments in the room. I felt happiness there.

In the moment, I was pulled back to a decade prior when we were looking for a house in Chapel Hill.

It was a few years after the Great Recession and there was an overwhelming amount of housing stock to consider.

We toured house after house, and I developed a belief that you could quickly assess a home’s energy after a few minutes in the space.

We walked into one old house close to downtown, and Ben’s eyes immediately bugged out.

“This house has bad energy,” I said dramatically as my own eyes widened. “I do not think we should spend time here.” A Google search later in the day told us that some grisly things had occurred there in the 1980s. From that moment on, Ben trusted me when I gave my energy assessment.

That’s why I caught him looking at me as I meandered into the only first-floor bedroom, a smile on my face. “Good energy” is all I said. I felt it from the moment I walked through the door. He did, too, although he would never admit to feeling energy. Somehow, Mr. Feelings drew the line at vibes.

A door frame in this room had been used to track the heights of some number of children. The most recent one I could find was dated summer ’98. I saw “James ’95” and wondered if it was possible that we were walking through the house with a once-boy who measured himself against this wall.

“Bess—what was she like?” I called to the other room.

James appeared. “The best. She never had kids but loved kids. I was lucky to be one of the many she gave her attention to. As a parent now, I realize how good she was at knowing when friends in her life were overwhelmed and needed to offload their children. She was everyone’s aunt.”

He spoke about her in the past tense in a way that told me she wasn’t still here but that she wasn’t really gone, either. James had spent the last ten minutes walking around the house, caught in his own memories, and suddenly remembered why we were there.

“If it makes you feel better, I can tell you that under every nasty carpet is hardwood floor, even upstairs. And the foundation is solid.”

Ben and I wandered for another half hour, finally meeting in the upstairs hallway.

“I love so much about this house, but there’s a lot of work to do,” I said, twirling my hair, a habit that Ava and I share when we are deep in thought. “The price is amazing, but I’m not sure we can take on these repairs.”

“I can do it,” Ben responded without a moment of hesitation, catching my eye and seeing a dubious expression cross my face. “Well, I can figure out most of it and we can pay someone to do the rest. Plus, the kitchen renovation is fairly recent, and that would be the hardest thing to do on our own.”

Ben didn’t know how to do anything the house needed, but he had a famous ability among our friends to learn new skills from watching a single YouTube tutorial. So, though he’d never so much as repainted a bedroom, I had no reason to doubt he could pull this renovation off.

One thing that Ben and I had in common was that no one would describe us as impetuous, especially with big decisions. We agonized over when to have kids, when he should go back to get his MBA, and when to buy our first home. But this felt right. It felt happy. And safe. Like it belonged to us.

“Mr. Harris, I think we should buy the house.”

“Mrs. Harris, I think we should, too.”

—

I remember forty-five days later. After we closed on the house, Ben’s parents came to stay with the kids for a long weekend so that we could drive to Canopy and do lots of planning.

We measured every inch and discussed options and projects until we couldn’t keep them straight anymore.

Ben made six trips to the hardware store on Main Street to get tools he didn’t really need but thought were essential to have in the house.

Our first night there, a Friday, was spent on an inflatable mattress in the living room.

We were due to pick up some basic furniture the next day, but for that one night, it was like being twentysomething again in one of our first apartments in Chicago.

His long legs dangled off the end while I curled up tightly against him.

We laughed all night, trying to lie perfectly still, but inevitably one of us would readjust and displace the other.

By the time we left on Sunday after breakfast at our new favorite spot, we had cataloged every repair needed, categorized them based on difficulty, and prioritized the list. We had a plan, a checklist. We would work remotely from Canopy all summer while the kids were at camp.

Ben would spend every free minute repairing the house, and I would spend my time slowly decorating it.

Making it ours. It might take a summer or two (or three), but that was fine. We had time.

The drive back home was perfect. We took the scenic route and kept the windows down until we hit the interstate.

When we could hear each other again, we talked about everything we had done and built together.

We had our vacation house in the mountains—a place to spend summers and make memories. Everything was so right.

Except, it wasn’t, really. Ten days after we got home, Ben was dead.