24 Edinburgh Road, Middletown, NY 10941

You will remember the first night. Boxes in the hall, nothing on the walls yet, dinner eaten standing at the island because the table is not up. You keep walking the rooms. You turn on lights in rooms you have no reason to be in, just to see them lit. And somewhere in the middle of all that, it hits you that this is yours. Every expensive decision in this house was already made before you got here. The roof. The windows. The kitchen. The heat. What is left for you is where the couch faces, what goes on the walls, and which chair becomes yours. The first real morning is the one that gets you. Light comes through the picture window and runs the whole length of the floor, and the living room rises the full height of the roof, the ceiling climbing to a peak above you, so the room feels brighter and bigger than you were expecting. Alongside the staircase a floor to ceiling fluted wall runs the full height in deep espresso wood, dark against everything else, so your eye goes there every...