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Readers of Mlle know this magazine is founded on the belief that a girl can do anything she sets her mind to. Our writing contests famously reward young women for expressing their original ideas. We run stories on unconventional careers in which women have found success. We write about campus life in order to encourage the pursuit of higher education. Travel features instill in our readers an open-minded and adventuresome view of the world. Fashion spreads show women how to dress with style for their important roles in society. For the past three years, it’s been my privilege to contribute to a magazine that takes women seriously, which is why I was surprised at the reaction I received when I pitched the idea for this column to our editorial board.

“You want to write about a single woman buying and renovating her own house?”

Eyebrows shot up. Confused glances were exchanged. Someone dropped her pen.

“It’s the one area of a woman’s life we don’t focus on,” I explained. “As independent and educated as our readers are, we seem to assume a house is something their husbands will provide. But why should a girl wait for Prince Charming to come along and gift her a castle? To those who claim a woman’s place is in the home, I say at least let her own the place herself!”

“It’s an interesting idea for fiction, perhaps,” one editor said. “In reality, banks don’t give mortgages to unmarried women.”

“That’s true,” I admitted. “However, a woman can buy property if she has the cash.”

“We are an aspirational publication for a sophisticated female readership,” another pointed out, “not an investment guide for girls with inheritances and trust funds.”

“A woman needn’t be rich,” I objected. “Upstate, old farmhouses can be picked up for a few thousand dollars. Why, I saved that much myself during my service in the Marine Corps Women’s Reserve.”

“I remember the essay you wrote about your participation in a fact-finding trip to Korea,” a senior member of staff said. “The mission was to assess desegregation in the military, as I recall. Winning that essay contest is what led to your guest editorship here, didn’t it?”

“It did, and my subsequent position as a staff writer, too.” I took a moment to remind them of a recent article I’d written about a business in the Empire State Building that employed women to work with punch-card computers, and the piece I did on social workers’ efforts to reform conditions at the Women’s House of Detention in Greenwich Village. “What I’m proposing now would be something new for our magazine. A first-person account of a single woman who purchases a decrepit farmhouse and chronicles her experiences fixing it up and making a go of rural life.”

“But where are you going to find the subject for your column?”

“You’re looking at her.” I sat up in my chair straight as a soldier. “Me. I’ve already bought the house, too. I stumbled on the place while I was conducting a follow-up interview for my feature about summer camps for professional women. The only question now is whether you’ll pay me to write about it.”

Reader, I’m thrilled to tell you the enlightened editors of Mlle agreed to give it a go. I’ll soon be leaving our great city of New York and decamping to the upstate village of Schuywich. The farmhouse is as rustic as they come: unimproved since being built before the Civil War, abandoned late in the Great Depression, inhabited most recently by a fecund clan of racoons. I have no idea what I’m doing. I don’t yet own a hammer, let alone a bucket of nails. A sturdy ladder is likely to be more useful to me than my degree in English literature from Bennington College. But like the polished women pictured in our pages, I, too, believe I am poised to do great things.

If you’re looking forward to the next column in my occasional series “A Woman’s Place,” please do write in to let our editors know. Every word of mine they publish will be another dime invested in the grand experiment of a girl learning to feather her own nest. You may not share my dream of self-sufficiency, but won’t it be fun to dream along with me?

Chapter 4

It’s ten o’clock the next morning when I turn onto Ridgetop Road, five miles outside the village of Schuywich, two hundred miles north of Manhattan. Maples and white pines and silver-barked birches line the road, sunlight filtering through leaves that leave patterned shadows on the potholed blacktop. With the highways eerily devoid of traffic, I’ve gotten here early. I pull over before reaching my destination, frustrating the voice in my phone that’s been telling me where to go.

The van shudders and coughs as I switch off the engine. Leaning forward, I kiss the steering wheel, grateful all over again for my husband’s impractical, sentimental heart. I never understood why David insisted on keeping the van his band used to use for gigs out of town. It’s a hideous thing, its windowless exterior spray-painted Kelly green to cover up the logo of a previous owner. I’d just filed our taxes last year and money was on my mind when I totaled up the expenses for garage space and registration and insurance and maintenance and confronted David with the receipts.

“You really ought to get rid of that van, babe. You hardly ever drive it anymore, and all you need for studio sessions is your violin. It’s such a waste.”

“You must be joking, darling.” Dramatically thickening his brogue, David started spinning stories of gigs at Gaelic festivals and recounting the band’s exploits at weddings and wakes. His eyes grew misty as he told me how, when he first arrived in the States, the van became his shelter whenever he wore out his welcome on a bandmate’s couch. “She saved my life more than once, the old girl did,” he concluded, discussion closed. “I could never let her go.”

His reasoning frustrated me then, but now I believe he was seeing into the future, because when I need a way to escape the shut-down city, the van is there for me like a stabled steed in a fairy tale. Since pulling out of the garage at dawn, I’ve been enveloped in David’s scent, a blend of sweat and tobacco smoke and beard oil and violin rosin. I kept my eyes on the road instead of the empty passenger seat so I could imagine my husband beside me as I drove over the George Washington Bridge, up the Palisades Parkway, north on the Thruway toward Albany, past the racetrack in Saratoga Springs, and along the state road that follows the twists and turns of the Battenkill.

Parked, I roll down the window. A fresh breeze clears the air in the van. It’s like losing David all over again. Adjusting the rearview mirror to confront my sad reflection, I say, “Get yourself together, Audrey.”

I wipe my eyes, blow my nose, and remind myself what I’m doing here. The readers’ comments on the article about Red Barn Books all said it was a dream come true, what they wouldn’t give, if only they could. I feel a little thrill that, unbeknownst to all those strangers, I’m the one who’s actually come to see the place in person. It’s the first good feeling I’ve had in weeks, its sweetness fleeting as cotton candy on the tongue.

I check the time; fifteen minutes left to kill. On my phone, I scroll the search results I found last night for “Red Barn Books,” “Schuywich New York,” and “Evelyn Cabot.” The handful of hits from 2016 are all nostalgic posts from longtime customers and antiquarian book dealers lamenting the shop’s closing. Farther down the list is a link to a 1992 article in the Times Union about land conservation in New York State that mentions Red Barn Books as an example of how to protect a property in perpetuity, followed by a 1985 profile from the Schuywich Gazette that extols Evelyn as a local example of female entrepreneurship. Short of subscribing to a genealogy database that promises to locate Evelyn Cabot on the 1940 census, that’s all the internet has to offer about the history of Red Barn Books.

At 10:25, I restart the engine and drive down the road until my phone announces I’ve arrived at my destination. Baffled, I crane my neck looking for a barn or a house, but all I see are trees. Then I notice a sign nailed to the trunk of a maple. A painted arrow points to a gap in a fieldstone wall. The faded lettering is barely legible: red barn books.

I turn the wheel and crunch up a gravel drive. The trees open to reveal a bright acre of lawn. The farmhouse sits in its sunlit center, charming as a tintype photograph: white clapboards, black shutters, mullioned windows, slate roof. Across the lawn, past an impressive oak, the big barn slouches as if self-conscious of overshadowing its smaller neighbor. Outbuildings are scattered around the property—woodshed, workshop, henhouse, outhouse—all painted the same barn red. Daffodils bloom next to rocky outcroppings flecked with glittering quartz. Insects swoop and shimmer in air yellow-soft with pollen. Beyond the trees at the back of the property, I glimpse blue hills layered like paper cutouts against a lavender horizon. Feeling like I’ve passed through a portal into a time gone by, I close my eyes and count to five before opening them again.

I’m not dreaming. It’s all still here.

I switch off the engine. The ensuing silence seems absolute until, one by one, sounds announce themselves. Rustling leaves. Chirping birds. Croaking frogs. The warming stones themselves seem to sigh. Getting out of the van, I follow a mossy brick path to the house, my lungs expanding with the first deep breath I’ve taken in what feels like forever.

“You must be Audrey Beacon.”

Wheeling around, I notice a muddy Subaru parked in the shadowy lee of the house. A woman steps into the sunlight wearing khaki pants and a fleece vest over a flannel shirt. Maskless outdoors, her no-nonsense middle-aged face is topped by gray hair cut short for practicality, not style.

“Yes, hi, that’s me.” I unthinkingly extend my hand before turning the gesture into a lame wave.