the top, a musty, dusty odor greeted them. Julia stepped into the open space. “We could make two bedrooms and baths up here, I think. Or perhaps a family suite.”
He regarded the crowded space with interest. “A lot of stuff up here.”
“I warned you. Valery poked around in some of it. Old trunks of clothes, discarded furniture, tools, anything and everything. It appears everyone who ever lived here left things behind.”
“What are you going to do with it?”
“Considering we’ve had no immediate plans to rehab the space, I hadn’t really thought about doing anything, but you’re right. To transform this into guest rooms, we’ll have to get rid of everything.”
“Or store it somewhere else.”
“Maybe I could have a sale.”
He hitched one shoulder. “Maybe.”
“First, we’ll have to sort through, I guess.”
“I can do that for you.” He gestured toward a battered vanity. “How old is this place?”
“Pre–Civil War, though I doubt any of the furniture is that old.”
She shoved a box out of the way to make a path to the dormers. A spider darted across her foot. She let out a squeak and jumped back.
A shiny boot, its relative newness out of sync with the rest of the man, obliterated the hairy creature.
Julia gave an embarrassed laugh. “I hate spiders. A neighbor boy used to torment me with them.” She didn’t know why she’d felt compelled to add that last bit.
“Probably plenty of them in here.”
“A joyous thought,” she said wryly. “And another reason I have avoided the carriage house.”
The corners of his mouth quivered like the stirring of a single leaf by a breath of air. His eyes lit and, every bit as quickly, dimmed.
Had he smiled once today? Did he ever? What weight could a man possibly carry that he rarely smiled? Even she had found her smile again.
“Mind if I look around?”
“Go ahead. That’s why we came, but if it’s all the same to you, I’ll stay right here.”
“Spiderwebs everywhere.” As if to prove the point, he waved his hand into a thick web strung between a stack of boxes and the wall and wiped the cottony mess down the sides of his jeans.
“Exactly.” She remained beside a stack of boxes piled on top of a bureau in need of repair. The bulky piece of mahogany had been here when she’d first arrived and, like so many other things, had simply been too much to deal with at the time.
The wooden floor creaked beneath Eli’s weight as he approached the windows. Thick, dusty cobwebs crisscrossed panes so dirty the sun barely penetrated the glass with a hazy, translucent light.
“Can they be saved?” she asked.
“The spiderwebs? Or the windows?”
A joke. The man had made a joke. Julia smiled. “Saving the planet does not include spiders.”
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