“Do you miss them?”
I thought about that.
“No,” I said. “I miss the possibility that one day they might become different.”
Priya nodded.
“That’s a real thing to grieve.”
It was.
Two weeks after closing, Joel came over for dinner. Priya made her mother’s lamb curry, and the apartment filled with cumin, garlic, cardamom, and heat. Joel brought dessert from a bakery because he knew better than to arrive empty-handed when Priya cooked. We sat at the small table for hours talking about work, tenants, Phoenix zoning quirks, a property manager Joel hated, and the house on Lemon Tree Road.
The house had a yard.
That was dangerous information for Priya.
“It has eastern light,” she said.
Joel looked at me slowly. “For the plants?”
“For the plants,” I confirmed.
“How many are there now?”
“Seventeen.”
Joel looked concerned in a way that seemed genuine.
Priya began listing them by name, starting from the first one she had ever bought after we moved in together. Joel listened for about six names before turning to me with the grave expression of a man witnessing a preventable crisis. I held up both hands, then seven fingers more.
Priya did not notice because she was still somewhere in the early letters.
Later that night, after Joel left and the dishes were done, I took Margaret’s green notebook from the shelf. The executor had included it with her personal items, along with a small tin of keys, a stack of old rent receipts, her reading glasses, and a faded photograph of her standing in front of the building in 1995, one hand on her hip, looking annoyed at whoever had taken the picture.
I opened the notebook to the first page.
January 1994. Unit 1. Kitchen sink leak. Replaced washer. Tenant: Harold M. Paid rent on time.
The handwriting was small, careful, steady.
I flipped forward. Roof repair. Water heater. Eviction avoided after payment plan. New tenant. Broken tile. Courtyard light replaced. Mrs. Alvarez heater. Unit 7 paint approved. Pest treatment. Balcony railing. Plumbing estimate too high; seek second quote.
Thirty years of care.
Not sentiment. Care.
Margaret had not kept the building because buildings were holy. She kept it because it was hers and because people lived there. When it became time to give it away, she gave it to the person she trusted to know the difference between preserving value and preserving guilt.
I understand that now.
A month later, Priya and I made an offer on the house on Lemon Tree Road.
It was not huge. Three bedrooms, one story, pale stucco, terra-cotta roof, old tile in the kitchen, and a backyard with enough space for chairs, shade, and whatever botanical ambitions Priya had been hiding from me. The inspection report was mostly clean. The HVAC needed attention. The guest bathroom had a leak near the base of the toilet. The backyard wall had a minor crack that looked worse than it was.
I walked the property with my clipboard because I cannot help who I am.
Priya watched me from the patio.
“Are you assessing our future?”
“Yes.”
“And?”