I spent the next few days exploring the old place and spending as much time with Bitte, as possible. I was going to fall in love with her.
When you are a child you don’t pay as much attention to your surroundings as you do as an adult. As a child, I never thought about ‘feeling at home’ but now I realized that I felt very much at home. Almost as though it was made for me.
Most everything was wood and finished with exquisite hand carving. There were paintings in the entry way and along the stairs and large leather couches and furniture throughout the house. And a wonderful library with my old books on entomology and some I didn’t even know were there.
The house and estate seemed smaller than it did when I was a kid but I guess things are always that way when you grow up.
There was an old woodchopper with a salt and pepper beard he kept patting, “Got ta keep the snits out o’ it”. And a couple other men who handled the stable, barn and did most of the heavy work out in the yard. There was a horse, an old trap and a truck. The horse seemed to have a lot of free time.
In the house, Bitte was queen with two women helping her keep it the way she wanted it.
In the mornings when I came down the stairs, the bright sun was always streaming in through an open rear door lighting the front of the house.
At night, Bitte set a fire in the fire place.
Fortunately, her mother didn’t come back.
At the end of that first week, Bitte drove us both to town in the truck, so I could deposit a letter of credit at the bank and she could do some shopping for the house.
On the way to town, I worked up the courage and asked Bitte about her boy friend.
Her mouth opened slightly. She paused, and she said that she did have a boyfriend once but god took him. And then she smiled. “And sent you in his place.”, with what I took as the sound of triumph in her voice.
I hardly knew this girl, but hearing those words and seeing her smile at me became the happiest moment in my life.