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“Four years?” Kate looked toward her. “You must have known every inch of it by then.”

“I did. There wasn’t much of it to know.” Eileen smiled at the memory. “One room downstairs, a tiny kitchen and a bedroom under the roof. We didn’t have much money, and we worked all the time, but I remember being happy there. Everything we did seemed to be building toward something. Another section of orchard planted, another room of the farmhouse finished. We were tired most of the time, but we could see the life we were making.”

Wes remembered Eileen and her husband together in the orchard when he was younger. They had always seemed part of the place, as permanent as the old trees. He had been too young then to imagine that the orchard had once been something they were still trying to build.

Kate was quiet for a few steps. “I can understand that. I like houses most when you can still see how people have lived in them. Perfect rooms are beautiful in photographs, but they don’t always tell you very much.”

Eileen glanced at her. “Then you may like the cabin. Nobody has ever accused it of being perfect.”

They had moved beyond the better-kept rows by then. Brambles crowded the edge of the old track, and the trees were taller, their branches reaching across one another. Eileen slowed and pointed through the growth.

“There.”

At first Wes saw only trees.

Then a dark roofline appeared between the branches.

Penny gave a small gasp and reached for Alan’s hand. “It really is a secret house.”

The cabin emerged properly as they came closer. Weather had silvered the wooden siding, and moss covered part of the steep roof. A narrow porch ran across the front, but one corner had dropped and several boards had warped. Ivy climbed beside one of the windows.

Kate stopped before the others did. Her gaze traveled over the roof, the porch supports and the line of the walls, and Wes recognized the concentration in her face from the morning she had watched him work in the orchard.

“Don’t let Penny onto the porch yet,” she said. “That corner has dropped, and I can’t tell from here whether it’s only the support or whether it’s pulled anything else with it.”

Alan looked at his daughter. “You got all that from standing here?”

“I got enough to know she shouldn’t run up the steps. Anything more needs someone who actually deals with old structures.”

Wes went ahead, putting his weight carefully onto the first step before moving onto the porch. The timber complained beneath his boots but held. He checked the worst corner, then worked his way toward the door while the others stayed on firmer ground.

Alan passed him the brass key.

It fit, although the lock resisted before turning.

“The door will have swollen,” Eileen called. “Lift it a little when you push.”

Wes did, and the door scraped slowly across the floor.

Dust and the musty smell of old timber drifted out.

He went inside first.

The room was small but in better condition than he had expected. A stone fireplace filled much of one wall, with the remains of the kitchen tucked into the rear corner. Dust covered the old counter and floorboards. One window was cracked and another had staining beneath it, but the roof appeared to have kept out most of the weather.

Wes tested several boards before he called the others in, warning them to keep clear of the dropped corner.

Kate entered behind him and immediately began looking around. She took in the windows, fireplace, stairs and kitchen before moving farther than a few feet from the door.

His bear watched her with interest. She looks at rooms the way we look at trees.

Wes glanced at her again. His bear was right. Kate was not simply looking at what was there. She was working out what had happened to it and what might need attention next. Was this how she looked in the houses she worked on at home? He had only ever seen her as a visitor, on her parents’ porch or in his barn. Wes rested a hand on the stair post and watched her. Here, she knew what she was doing.

Eileen came inside and rested one hand on the old kitchen counter. “My husband built this after I complained that I had nowhere to prepare food. He made it far too deep, so I could barely reach the wall behind it, but I was so pleased to have the extra space that I never asked him to change it. We cooked every meal in that corner for years.”

Kate ran her gaze along the wall without touching anything. “You can still see where things were fitted. And the room is drier than I expected. That doesn’t mean it’s safe, but the fact the roof has kept most of the water out gives you something to work with.”

Janice looked around the cabin. “So you don’t think it’s beyond saving?”