“What did you think?” Jan demanded.

“What Dom said, but I want the kids to see it. And here comes the gaming machine.” He could see by the look on Bradley’s face, the gaming machine hadn’t taken top score.

“I need to earn more quarters.”

“We’ll get to that. We’re going to go see this house right now.”

“But we’re going to have pizza. Nana said.”

“We’ll come back and have pizza, but the man who owns the house is waiting on us.”

“I could starve.”

Before Raylan could speak, Dom picked up a handful of pepperoni, a handful of cheese, filled a little takeaway bowl. “This’ll hold you. When you get back, I’ll make you a special pizza.”

A boy of specifics, Bradley eyed him. “What kind of special?”

“I’m getting a princess one.”

“Can I have a Batman one?”

“Go with your father, be a good boy, and Batman it will be.”

“Cool! Thanks, Popi. Can we go right now so we can get back?”

“Yeah, we’re going.”

“Don’t worry about that.” Jan brushed him aside as Raylan started to deal with the crayons.

“We did all the work,” Mariah told him when he hauled her up. “So I got a coloring book and Bradley got quarters. Popi said we’re good workers.”

“Glad to hear it.”

He got them out to the car, into the car seats.

“Where’s Jasper?” Bradley devoured pepperoni like candy.

“He’s at Nana’s. He’s already seen the house.”

“Are we going to live there?” Mariah wanted to know.

“We have to look at it.”

“I like living at Nana’s house.”

Try it sleeping on a pullout, he thought, and showering in a closet. “It’s close to Nana’s.”

“How close?”

He met his son’s suspicious eyes in the rearview. “You’ll see. There’s Nana’s house,” he said as they passed it. He made the left turn off Main, drove on, drove by Mrs. Pinsky’s freshly cut lawn, made the right turn on Mountain Laurel Lane.

Then the left into the driveway.

“This close.”

“It doesn’t look anything like our old house.”

Bradley’s words hit straight to the heart, especially as Raylan had thought exactly the same.

“No, it doesn’t.”

No lovely and faded brick, but horizontal siding freshly painted a smoky gray with the contrast of dark blue shutters and sharp white trim.

A quiet street—which mattered—and a short, green front yard leading to the wide sidewalk. Sidewalks mattered.

He’d watched enough HGTV to know the foundation bushes, the tree Mark had identified as a showy pink dogwood added curb appeal.

The front door had long side lights, and the convenient side door—the one facing the neighbor he’d met—opened into a mudroom/laundry room.

That would matter.

It checked all the boxes, he thought as he unloaded the kids. He knew that. Just as he knew from his own rehabbing experience, the quality of the work inside and out got high marks.

But.

It didn’t look anything like their home in Brooklyn.

As he studied it with his kids beside him, the neighbor hailed him.

She came out, crossed over, her little boy marching behind her. “I have the keys. Mark said they’d nearly finished, so he sent the crew to another job. He just needed to get them going, pick something up, and he’d be back. But he didn’t want you to have to wait if you got here ahead of him.”

“Thanks. This is Ms. Kirk.”

Bradley’s eyes widened. “Like Captain James Tiberius?”

“Exactly like that. I always figured I could be his great-times-about-four-grandmother.”

Eyes widened even more. “Really?”

“I like to think so. This is Phineas.” She patted her belly. “This is yet-to-be-determined. If you decide to live here, we’ll be your neighbors.”

“Can I touch the baby?”

Teesha looked down at Mariah. “This one? Sure.”

Very gently, Mariah laid a hand on the baby bump. “My teacher had a baby in her, too. It was big. She said it was going to come out in the summertime.”

“This one has to get bigger before he comes out in November.”

Phineas, more interested in his own kind, offered Bradley a look at his plastic dinosaur. “This is a T. rex. They’d have eaten people except they got extinct before people. They ate other dinosaurs though. He’s my favorite.”

“That’s cool. I like velociraptors because they hunt in packs.”

“I got them, too! They probably evolved from birds. You wanna see?”

“Maybe sometime, but we’ve got to look at the house.”

“They bang and saw in there. I’ve got a hammer and a saw, too.”

“He will never shut up,” Teesha warned them, and reached down for her son’s hand. “Say see you later, Phin.”

“Okay, see you later.”

“Mark said just to leave the keys inside on the kitchen island if he misses you,” she called as she walked back to her house. “He’s got another set.”

“Thanks. Well, gang, let’s go inside.”

“I like the lady with the baby in her belly. She has pretty hair.”

“Yeah, she does.” He opted to go in the front, like a guest, as that’s what they were at this point.

The floors gleamed, he couldn’t deny it, and the gleam carried straight through from the front to the back, to the kitchen, to the wide patio doors that led to a very nice backyard.

“It looks really big,” Bradley decided.

“Well, it’s open and it’s empty.”

“It has a fireplace. We had a fireplace.” Mariah walked over to it. “So Santa knows where to come in.”

But not brick. Tiled in a subtle white-on-white pattern. Gas, not wood-burning. A sleek mantel, not a chunky one.

“It echoes!” Bradley shouted his own name to amuse himself.

But no memories in those echoes.

His son raced back, and Mariah followed. Not for the kitchen—white cabinets, stainless appliances, a stone-gray countertop, a deep farm sink—but for the view out those wide doors.

“Man, the backyard’s big! Jasper would like that.”

“No swings?” The shock reverberated in Mariah’s voice. “How come?”

“Nobody lives here yet, dummy.” Bradley poked her. “Dad will get us swings and stuff.”

“You’re the dummy.” She poked him back. “What’s this room?”

She ran back to double-glass-paned doors off what would be the dining area. “Is it our playroom?”

“There’s a bonus room—like a playroom area—upstairs.”

Behind the doors would be, he had to admit, the perfect home office. Good light, a view of the yard, room for everything he needed.

“I wanna see. Can we go up?”

“We’re here to see. Bedrooms are up there, too.”

He hung back a minute as the kids raced back to clatter up the stairs.