Gemini

The house had one oddity, the real estate agent told us, but she was sure it wouldn't be a problem: the gas meter for the house next door was located in the basement of the Pink Palace. This, we learned, was an artifact of the houses' former lives/life. The Pink Palace and its neighbor were once brothers and before that, they were one.

Victor Hugo Ehrhardt, who came to town to found the paint company in 1885, built the first house on the double lot at the intersection, just across from the paint factory. Vic raised four children there before he turned the company and the property over to two of them (Cap and Jack, for Hugo had died in early adulthood and Lila had moved to Florida with her banker-husband) in 1916. The materials from the 1885 house were used in the two that now stand side by side, this one apparently for Jack, who "liked things ship-shape" and his wife Frances, who was known as an excellent hostess.

I imagined what Jack and Frances would have said about me and K and our clan and our plans. But our more immediate concern, it would seem, would be neighbors who had heard that city people had made an offer on the house.