Henry will need his own space eventually, and I could use a proper workroom for the sewing. I've been doing it at this table, and the light is wrong in the afternoon." I'll help, he said. "I know you will," she said. "I'm telling you the design first. I want to show you what I'm thinking before anyone picks up a tool." She had drawn it on paper, rough, not architectural, but clear.
The west wall as shared wall, the addition extending 15 ft out, a second window on the south face, a separate exterior door. She spread it on the table between their plates and walked him through it. He looked at it with the attention he gave to things that mattered, which was a full and unhurried attention, and asked two questions, both structural, both ones she had already been thinking about. "The foundation on that side," he said, pointing. "The ground slopes away.
You'll need to go deeper than the main cabin. Stone pier foundation," he paused. "I know a mason, Albi. He works summers in this part of the territory. He's the best in the San Juans and he will tell you that himself within 3 minutes of meeting you.
She almost smiled. We can start the excavation in May. She said, "Give the ground time to dry out." "May?" He agreed. He folded the drawing along its lines and handed it back, and their hands were close on the table, and neither of them moved immediately. He looked at the drawing and then at her.
"I want to say something," he said. She waited. I spent 7 years after Beth died building the ranch bigger, he said. More land, more cattle, more men. I thought if I made the operation large enough, it would start to mean something again.
He looked at the table. It didn't. You can't fill a space that shape with more of something else. It just gets bigger and emptier at the same time. Yes, she said.
I came over here the first time because you were a new neighbor and I wanted to know what I was dealing with. He said, "That's the honest version. I had no intention of anything beyond that." He looked at her directly. And then I watched you build that cabin and I thought, "That is a person who knows what things are for, who doesn't build something bigger than she needs or faster than she can do it right." He paused. I'd forgotten that things were supposed to be done right.