Nate fed twelve-gauge cable through a hole he had drilled in an oak stud, pulling it tight before hammering a steel staple flat against the grain.

His headlamp beam bounced off the bare lath where the lime plaster had crumbled away in the July heat.

“That’s three rooms on the south circuit fully wired,” he said, touching his thumb to his index finger as he counted the junction boxes along the floorboards.

I dropped my heavy iron scraper into the plastic bucket by my knees.

The fifth layer of flowered wallpaper came off in thick, damp strips, revealing dark gray horsehair plaster underneath and three columns of pencil sums written forty years ago by old Mr.

Miller, adding up bushels of clover seed and bags of farm lime.