The second spring came before we were ready for it.
We had saved more money than I once thought possible, but every dollar had a purpose.
We needed enough to buy a property.
We needed enough to make repairs.
And we needed to keep something in reserve in case the car broke down or one of us missed work.
A house could not simply be purchased.
We had to be able to live in it afterward.
That was what Nate kept reminding me.
Then, one evening, he came home with news about an auction.
The county was selling the old Miller property because the taxes had gone unpaid.
I knew the place by sight.
Most people in the area did.
The house sat beyond a bend in a rural road, set back from the pavement behind an overgrown yard.
I had passed it on the way to work more times than I could count.
Nobody had lived there in six years.
The porch had begun to sag.
Weeds covered much of the yard, and the grass grew high enough to hide parts of the old walkway.
The windows looked dark even on sunny days.
It was the kind of property people mentioned when they talked about places that had been forgotten.
Nate spread the auction notice across our kitchen table.
"Look at this."
I wiped my hands and leaned over the paper.
The address was printed near the top.
Below it were the details of the sale.
The county was offering the property to recover unpaid taxes.
There was no promise that the house would be ready to live in.
No promise that the wiring worked.
No promise that the plumbing was usable.
Just a piece of land and an old house being sold as it stood.
"How much do they want?" I asked.
"The bidding starts low. We won't know the final price until the auction."
I read the notice again.
"Could we afford it?"
"Maybe."
Nate did not say more than that.
He knew better than to promise something before he had inspected it.
The next afternoon, he drove out to the Miller property.
I went with him.
We parked near the road and got out.
The yard was worse up close.
Tall weeds brushed against my jeans as we made our way toward the house.
A few old boards lay near the side of the porch.
The steps looked uneven.
The paint had peeled away in long strips, leaving bare wood exposed beneath it.
I stood at the bottom of the steps.
"It needs everything."
"Not everything," Nate said.
He walked slowly around the outside of the house.
I followed him, careful to avoid the broken branches scattered across the ground.
He checked the foundation.
He looked at the roofline.
He studied the porch supports and the places where the siding had begun to separate.
He did not rush.
That was one of the things I trusted about him.
He could look at a problem without pretending it was smaller than it was.
At the back of the house, he stopped and examined a section of the wall.
"What do you think?" I asked.
"The porch will need work. Some of the windows, too."
"And inside?"
"We'll have to see."
He walked around the remaining side and returned to the front.
I looked at the house again.
It seemed tired.
Not ruined, exactly.
Just neglected.
The yard needed clearing.
The porch needed rebuilding.
The paint needed replacing.
But the building itself still stood straight enough that I could imagine it becoming a home.
Nate looked at the roof one last time.
"The main structure is sound," he said.
I studied his face.
He was not smiling.
He was measuring the work in his head.
"What about the wiring?"
"We'll inspect it if we get the place."
"The plumbing?"
"Same answer."
I laughed a little, although I was nervous.
"You make it sound easy."
"It won't be easy."
He looked at the front steps.
"But it might be possible."
That word stayed with me.
Possible.
We walked back to the car.
On the drive home, Nate explained what he thought we could do ourselves.
He could handle much of the repair work.
I could help with cleaning, painting, and stripping old wallpaper.
We would need to be careful about the costs.
Some work would require professionals.
We could not assume every problem would be cheap to fix.
I listened and pictured our savings disappearing.
Then I pictured the two of us standing on that porch after it had been repaired.
I wanted it.
That frightened me.
Wanting something made it easier to imagine losing it.
For the next several days, we studied the auction notice.
We checked our savings.
We wrote down the maximum amount we could afford.
Then we wrote it down again.
Forty-two thousand dollars was our limit.
Not a dollar more.
We had not reached that number by accident.
Every extra shift, every repair job, every cheap meal had brought us closer.
We could not risk all of it on the excitement of a public auction.
Nate was firm about that.
"If the bidding goes past our limit, we walk away."
I nodded.
I knew he was right.
Knowing it did not make the idea of walking away easier.
We had spent two years trying to save enough money to buy something of our own.
We were not looking for a perfect house.
We were looking for a chance.
The Miller property was the first place that seemed even remotely possible.
I started thinking about the rooms.
Would there be enough space for a proper table?
Could we open the windows without worrying about the frames?
Would the floors hold up if we repaired them?
I tried not to get carried away.
But I found myself looking at paint samples in the hardware store.
I stood in front of shelves of brushes and rollers, comparing prices.
I imagined stripping the walls and finding something worth keeping underneath.
Then I reminded myself that we had not even won the auction.
The night before the sale, I barely slept.
Nate slept beside me, exhausted from a long day of work.
I listened to the house settle around us.
The bathroom faucet dripped.
A car passed outside.
Somewhere in the neighborhood, a dog barked twice and went quiet.
I thought about Judy's card.
I thought about the checks Kim, Jeff, and Stacy had received.
I wondered how different our lives might have been if Nate's parents had given us the same help.
We could have bought a home sooner.
We could have avoided some of the long nights and aching feet.
We could have kept the fishing boat.
But those thoughts did not lead anywhere useful.
The money had not been offered.
We had no right to plan our lives around money that had never been ours.
I turned toward Nate.
He was asleep on his side, one hand tucked beneath his pillow.
I reached over and rested my fingers against his shoulder.
Whatever happened at the auction, we would face it together.
The following morning, I went to work early and finished what I needed to do before taking time off.
Nate handled the last of his regular responsibilities.
We did not tell his parents where we were going.
We did not tell Kim or Jeff.
We did not tell Stacy.
It was not a secret because we were ashamed of the property.
It was a secret because we wanted to know whether we could do this before we invited anyone else's opinion into it.
We had spent enough time feeling that our choices were being measured against other people's.
This one would belong to us.
On the morning of the auction, I dressed in comfortable clothes and put our paperwork into a folder.
Nate checked that we had the necessary payment arrangements.
I checked the folder twice.
Then I checked it a third time.
He noticed.
"Everything is there," he said.
"I know."
"You're nervous."
"Very."
He took my hand.
"We're not going to spend more than we can afford."
I nodded.
Then we got into the car and drove toward the courthouse.
The closer we came, the more real the decision felt.
We were no longer discussing a possibility at our kitchen table.
We were going to stand in front of strangers and put a price on the future we wanted.
And if somebody else wanted that house more than we did, we would have to drive home without it.
I looked out the window as the courthouse came into view.
For once, I did not think about the bluebird card.
I thought about the house.
And I hoped we would have a chance to make it ours.
Click here to continue reading: PART 4: We Had Set a Limit of Forty-Two Thousand Dollars, but One More Bid Could Have Sent Us Home With Nothing
Three Envelopes Held Twenty Thousand Dollars Each, While the Card Beneath My Plate Told Me Everything About My Place in the Family
Part 3 of 13
