I didn’t have any tea. The kitchen was gutted. No stove. No kettle.
I just held it.
I sat on the porch of the house on Willow Creek Lane.
Holding an empty blue mug.
Watching the sun go down over Camelback Mountain.
And for the first time in two years, I didn’t want to be anywhere else.
I spent four months restoring it.
Not gutting it. Restoring it.
I hired a man named Tomás Herrera. Sixty-four. A finish carpenter. He’d restored craftsman houses in Arcadia for forty years. He knew every one of them. He knew who built this one. A man named Oliver Pratt. In 1928. A railroad engineer.
Tomás put back the original oak floors. He found them under the carpet. He refinished them by hand.
He rebuilt the kitchen cabinets. In white. To match the originals.
He fixed the porch ceiling fan. So it didn’t wobble.
