A Stranger's House [Paperback]

For a long time, Claire and Tom Templeton have wished in vain for a child. What they have instead is a house, a charming old Cape that is their consolation. In the gray chill of a Massachusetts autumn, the Templetons and two local handymen, loners and eccentrics, work to rebuild the ramshackle home. As the house takes on a new life, Claire begins to understand its tangled history -- and to reconcile her own past and renew her hope for the future.Bret Lottis the author of five highly acclaimed novels,The Man Who Owned Vermont, A Stranger's House, Jewel, Reed's Beach,andThe Hunt Club,as well as two collections of widely anthologized short stories,A Dream of Old LeavesandHow to Get Home,and a memoir,Fathers, Sons, and Brothers.He lives with his wife and two sons near Charleston, South Carolina, and teaches at the College of Charleston and Vermont College.Chapter One, from Part One: September
Remote, I said. I was at the window, the glass dirty with rain-spattered dust. Just outside the window the forest began, thick with pine and birch and oak and maple. The first trees began not five feet away.
The realtor, behind me, said, Remote is what you and your husband asked for. She giggled, and I pictured her: gold sport coat, brown polyester skirt, black pumps. Her hands would be folded together in front of her, head cocked to one side, a smile across her face that would show as many teeth as possible. I pictured her in the empty room, the room, house, entire barn and parcel empty, she had told us, for fifteen years.
Still I didn't turn to her, but only looked out the window, the trees heavy with shadow now, the sun already down behind them.
But not too remote, she went on. Not too. Twenty-five minutes from Northampton. That's not that bad, considering what you'll be getting: this lovely place with twelve acres and that beautiful barn out there. It's just what the doctor ordered. She laughed again. I heard