The house emerged from the fog gradually, the way significant things sometimes do, giving you just enough time to prepare yourself and never quite enough. It sat at the end of a short path that branched off the main track, surrounded by overgrown grass and the bare framework of what had once been a kitchen garden along the southern wall. The wooden boards of the exterior had darkened with moisture and time, and several roof tiles were visibly missing or displaced over the rear section. The porch sagged at one corner where a support post had settled into the soft ground. The windows were dark and filmed with the particular opacity of glass that has not been cleaned from the inside for a long time.
It looked small. It looked old. It looked like a house that had been managing on its own for too long without someone to look after it.
It was, without question, the most valuable thing anyone had ever given them.
Mr. Carter was waiting at the gate, a man in his late fifties in a good wool overcoat that was slightly too formal for the setting, holding a manila folder with both hands in the manner of someone who has arrived early and is maintaining composure through propriety. He was a tall man who stood with the slight forward lean of someone accustomed to looking down at paperwork, and he studied Alex and Marta as they came up the path with an expression that was carefully professional and only very slightly surprised, the surprise of someone who had been told the heirs were young and had still not quite calibrated his expectations to the reality of two thin teenagers in worn coats carrying backpacks that held everything they owned.
He cleared his throat.
