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They drove to Hope the next day, before the meeting changed its mind. Hank Withers and Ruby Hopper met them at the parsonage.

“It’s a beautiful house,” Hank Withers said, opening the door to let them in. “I should probably be more modest since I designed it, but the truth is the truth. I was at the top of my game with this one.”

Hickory beams spanned the living room and kitchen. A stone fireplace dominated one wall.

“Cut those beams from trees right here on the property,” he said. “And those stones for the fireplace came out of the creek on the east side of the property. Hauled ’em up here myself. Of course, I was younger then.”

A large screened-in porch sat off the kitchen.

“I worried the porch would make the kitchen dark, so I raised the kitchen ceiling and put in that row of windows above the roof of the porch. Gives you all kind of natural light in the kitchen,” Hank said.

Sam and Barbara were too stunned to speak.

“When we asked Hank to design it, we told him we wanted it to reflect Quaker simplicity,” Ruby Hopper said. “So he tried to keep it practical and use local materials as much as possible.”

“The countertops are Bedford limestone,” Hank said. “I come in every year and seal them. Just takes a few hours. The floors are hickory. Again, from trees we removed when we built the meetinghouse and parsonage.”

“It’s amazing,” Barbara said. “I’ve never seen such a lovely home.”

“The paint colors are fine,” Sam said. “We wouldn’t change a thing.”

They walked into the master bedroom.

“This carpet looks perfectly good,” Barbara said. “You don’t need to replace it.”

“If you change your mind, you let us know,” Ruby said. “We want you to be happy.”

They returned to the kitchen.

“If you have your own appliances and prefer to use them, we can put these in storage,” Ruby said.

“We’d just as soon not have to move ours up here, so if you don’t mind, we’ll use these,” Barbara said. “They look brand-new.”

“A little over a year old,” Hank said.

The Gardners’ stove had two broken burners, the oven burnt everything, and the freezer built up a three-inch coating of frost every couple of months, which Sam had to chop out with a hatchet.

Sam and Barbara began measuring the rooms, to see what of their furniture could fit where. With the boys gone, there was no need to move all their belongings, so they had been planning a garage sale. Normally, Sam didn’t care for people snooping through their things, but he could endure it this one time if it meant less stuff he would have to pack, haul a hundred miles, and unpack.

He stretched a tape measure across the living room, scribbled a figure in his notebook, then stuck his head in the fireplace and looked up the chimney.

“Does the fireplace work?” he asked Hank.

“Like a charm,” Hank said. “We have a chimney sweep come every fall to clean and inspect it. As for the firewood, we try to stay on top of the fallen trees on the meetinghouse property. We’ll cut it up and stack it for you. That’s the limb committee’s job.”

“We’ll give you a list of local contractors you can phone if anything in the parsonage needs to be fixed,” Ruby Hopper added. “Plumber, electrician, painter, roofer, whatever help you might need. You just call them yourself, since you know your schedule. If you have any questions, you can ask Wanda Fink. She’s the clerk of the parsonage committee. She couldn’t be here today.”

Ruby handed them several keys to the parsonage. “You can begin moving in whenever it’s convenient for you.”

“I have a chandelier that came from my grandmother’s house,” Barbara said. “We have it over our kitchen table. Could we put it in the kitchen here?”

“You just bring it right along. I’ll make sure it gets hung,” Hank said.

Ruby Hopper walked to the door. “We’ll leave you alone to finish looking things over,” she said. “Just lock up when you leave.”

They shook hands good-bye, then Sam and Barbara walked from room to room, planning and admiring, then exited the house, securing the door behind them.