Look at me.

We are leaving together.

You and me.

Always together, from now on.”

“But why?” she asked, bewildered.

“You own this big house now.”

“Because owning a lot of fancy rooms,” I said, “doesn’t make a place the right home for us.” My father had built a small three-bedroom cottage near his old guava orchards, twenty minutes outside of town — an open front porch, wide sunlit windows, good neighbors close by.

It was not a historic estate.