21. Stella #2
Kirk doesn't say anything for the first ten minutes.
He walks through the rooms the way he walks through the snow, slow and deliberate, putting his weight down carefully and lifting it, running his hand along walls, crouching to look at the floors, standing in doorways and looking up at ceilings.
He opens the door to the covered porch and steps out looking at the treeline.
He stays like that for nearly two minutes.
Deborah makes a small, uncertain noise beside me. "He's very thorough."
"Yes," I say. "He is."
When Kirk comes back inside he goes directly to the barn conversion and I follow him through the connecting passage, leaving Deborah in the kitchen with her folder of spec sheets.
The barn is cold and full of grey light from the high windows and the timber frame is exactly as good as the photos suggested.
The floor is poured concrete, unfinished but solid.
The rafters run the length of the space in a clean, honest line and there's a loft structure along one side wall that somebody started and abandoned.
Kirk stands in the centre of the space and looks up.
I stand beside him and look up too, at the rafters, at the light, at the enormous potential of all that empty height and the timber bones that have been holding their ground for a hundred years.
"String lights up there," I say, quietly, not breaking the atmosphere.
"Along the rafters. Tables arranged so there's a clear line of sight to a platform at the far end.
You could seat eighty, maybe a hundred if the weather holds and people spill onto the covered area outside.
" I can see it completely. I can see it the way I used to see corporate events, except those always felt like assembling a machine and this feels like making something alive.
"Wildflower arrangements. Local suppliers.
The kind of events where people actually talk to each other. "
Kirk looks at the loft structure along the wall. "Office," he says.
"Sorry?"
"Finish the loft. Give you an office up there. You'd be able to see the whole space."
I look at the loft. I look at him.
"You could build that," I say.
He gives me a look that very clearly communicates that this is not a question worth asking.
"The drainage needs work," he says. "And the north wall wants repointing. None of it's structural." He pauses. "The house is solid. The porch needs one new board. The woodstove's a Jotul, they last indefinitely."
"Is that a yes?"
He looks at me. The grey barn light does something to his face, strips it back to the essentials, and what I see there is completely unguarded in a way that I know is rare and that I will never take for granted.
"It's a yes," he says.
One year later.
I am running.
Not metaphorically. Literally running, in low heels that I have decided on three separate occasions to swap for flats and have not, because the florist's van is parked across the courtyard entrance and Benji from the catering team has positioned the dessert table approximately four feet to the left of where I specifically marked on the floor plan, and the ribbon order arrived in ivory when I ordered cream, which are completely different colours and anyone who tells you otherwise has never planned a wedding.
"Stella." My assistant, a twenty-two-year-old called Rosa who moved to Harlow from Portland six months ago and is the most organised human being I have ever encountered, appears at my elbow holding a clipboard.
My clipboard. She learned very quickly that I function better when someone else is holding the clipboard and delivering the information verbally.
"Florist says the ceremony arch needs two more people to carry it through.
Benji says the table is in the right place.
I have the site diagram that says otherwise. "
"Show Benji the site diagram."
"I did show Benji the site diagram."
"Show him again. Physically put it in his hands.
" I stop walking and turn to look at the barn.
At the rafters strung with warm light, the round tables in their positions, the wildflowers in their mason jar arrangements running the length of every surface.
Through the high windows the late afternoon light falls in long columns across the concrete floor and the whole space glows with the particular warmth of a room that is ready and waiting to be filled with people.
My office is up in the loft, overlooking all of it. Kirk built the stairs over three weekends in October, working in the cold with his flannel sleeves rolled to the elbow, and he did not complain once.
Rosa is talking in my ear about the ribbon situation and I am half-listening and wholly staring at the barn, at the thing we built, and the feeling is so big I can't quite locate all of it at once.
"Stella." Rosa's voice changes register. "Your person is here."
I turn.
Kirk is standing in the barn doorway. He has changed out of his work clothes and into the dark shirt I bought him two months ago that he wore once and then put away and has apparently retrieved for the occasion.
He has Barnaby on a lead because Barnaby has been the unofficial mascot of Harlow Mountain Events since we opened and has an open invitation to every function we host, a fact that has been a genuine selling point for three separate clients.
The dog strains forward when he sees me and Kirk holds the lead with one hand and doesn't move, just stands there in the doorway with the warm light from the barn falling out around him.
He looks at the space. He looks at the lights in the rafters. He looks at me.
He nods.