Greg and I met at a friend’s barbecue when I was twenty-six. He made me laugh so hard I spilled lemonade on my shoes. We got married two years later. Six months after the wedding, we bought a little brick house on Holloway Court in Maple Ridge. Three bedrooms. One and a half baths. A backyard with a crooked swing set the old owners left behind.
We stood in the empty living room the day we got the keys and made one promise.
Someday, we’d own every brick of it.
The down payment was mine. Eighteen thousand dollars I’d saved since pharmacy school, in a jar and then a bank account and then a CD. Greg’s name went on the deed next to mine anyway. Of course it did. We were married. That’s what you do.
We had Owen. Then Lily. We painted the nursery twice because I hated the first yellow. We built a life in that house. A good one.
