I looked down at my hands.
He wasn’t wrong.
“You’d come up on weekends,” he added. “We’d tear it apart. Rebuild it. Ski all winter. Drink shitty beer. Remember how to be human again.”
I exhaled slowly.
“And if I say no?”
He shrugged. “Then I buy it alone. But I think you need this more than I do.”
We drove up that Saturday.
Three hours north. Leaves on fire along the highway. The kind of crisp air that makes your lungs feel clean.
The house was worse than he’d described.
Sagging porch. Moss on the shingles. Windows cloudy with age.
But when I stepped out of the truck and looked past it?—
The land opened up.
Rolling trails. Tall pines. A frozen pond already forming skin along the edges. Silence so deep it rang.
Tony watched me carefully.
“Well?” he asked.
I didn’t answer.
I walked up to the porch, knelt, ran my hand along a rotting beam.
This… this I understood.
Wood.
Nails.
Tools.
Problems that could be fixed if you were willing to work.
No mixed signals.
No apologies.
No emotional landmines.
Just honest damage and honest labor.
For the first time in months, my chest felt… lighter.
“This is a disaster,” I said.
Tony grinned. “That’s a yes.”
I stood, took a slow breath of pine and cold air.
