There’s always you know He pointed at the cornfields No way Trina said grimacing Then she rushed to her favorite part of the letter The Harlan M Roy family is giving you one year to restore the house to marketable condition No mat ter how many times she read that line she couldn’t believe it One whole year was almost like having a real home And now she couldn’t wait to get there Please hurry Poppo Hurry Any faster and I might miss the turn Please Trina insisted knowing her dad was often too calm about important things How about you read and I drive he said Trina scrunched up her face at him and turned back to the letter Mechanical systems are functional but not up to code A credit account has been established at Hank’s Tool and Lumber on Main Street for all your supplies The key to the front door will be under the mat At your service Mr Gerald Shegstad Trina sighed Six bedrooms and four fireplaces Biggest house we’ve ever fixed up her dad said But what’s a Queen Anne The fancy kind With gingerbread and wraparound porches Gingerbread Trina asked You know all that frilly trim they used to put around the eaves of the roof Her dad drew curlicues in the air as he spoke It’ll probably look like a wedding cake Trina imagined the house as big and as fancy as a pal ace and herself as the princess with a grand bedroom and servants But what’s marketable condition 22
So it can be sold It’s been in the same family for over a hundred years but nobody’s lived there for a really long time Some great-great-nephew in New York inher ited it and he’s decided he’d rather have the money than the house Trina looked out her window watching row after row after row of corn corn corn thinking about what her dad had said That’s sad If I had a house that had been in my family for a hundred years I’d keep it forever wouldn’t you Her dad shook his head People always want what they don’t have If they have big they want small If they have the country they want the city If they stay too long in one place they want to get moving And if they’re always moving sometimes they want to stay put Trina added looking forward to calling New Royal Iowa home At least for a year anyway Her dad reached over and tugged on the bill of her baseball cap Until they catch the traveling bug all over again like you and me Trina didn’t actually have the traveling bug Her dad did And her mother had it worst of all Her mother was exactly the restless person her dad was talking about He always said she was trying to find herself Luckily her post cards which came from all over the world had no problem finding Trina wherever she was The last one had come from Tanzania in East Africa Sounds just like Mom she said I guess her dad said 333
Trina was used to the silence that followed any mention of her mother She figured her dad missed her so much he couldn’t talk about her But the more postcards she got the more curious about her mother Trina became She hadn’t seen her mother in nearly eight years and she had no idea what her mother looked like now or how she dressed and wore her hair And if she liked sports Someday her mother would have to run out of places to visit and then she’d come home As the truck crested a hill Trina could see a big red barn in the shallow valley below There’s a red barn she said With silos She leaned forward in her seat One two three And when they reached the bottom of the hill there was the dirt road They took a left-hand turn and bounced off the main road onto nothing more than a rutted dirt path that cut through a field of cornstalks taller than the truck They were almost there now Trina could feel it With an urge to jump out of the truck and run the rest of the way she rolled down her window and stuck her head into the steamy August air watching for any sign of a house at the end of the tunnel of dirt road and corn The truck bounced over a large bump with a loud ca thunk and Trina bounced with the truck The old cargo trailer heaved behind them sounding like it was ready to snap off Ca-thunk The truck jolted again I guess that’s the double bump her dad said Trina checked the trailer in the rearview mirror glad to see it was still attached 44
Look Trina cried Up there I see the bridge The truck shuddered over the wooden bridge and headed straight for a wall of corn That was the creek Turn right Poppo Turn right Her dad placed one big calm hand over the other and turned the wheel What else would we do but turn right All of a sudden Trina had a funny feeling the house was waiting for them and they were running late She kept her eyes glued to the windshield as the truck rolled on and on through the cornfield Her dad’s cell phone rang just once before it went silent He glanced at its blank screen So much for cell service way out here At that moment the cornfields gave way to a meadow of tall yellow flowers and then a big gray house with gables and chimneys emerged as if it were growing straight out of the ground Her dad put his foot on the brake and let the truck inch its way to a tall black wrought iron gate Trina could feel her mouth hanging open as she stared through the bars of the gate at the enormous house The house was not what she had expected It didn’t need to be fixed up It needed to be torn down Boards cov ered all the windows and the few shutters that remained dangled from their hinges Pillars that would have held up a porch roof if the porch had still been there lay in the weeds like fallen trees Trina blinked and blinked hoping she would open her eyes to the palace she had imagined But with each blink the house just looked worse There wasn’t a fleck of paint on the wind-beaten siding or a crumb of gingerbread 55
