Unlike the rent controlled apartment she would leave behind, the house was large.

She would learn very soon not to forget her water glass. And on the odd occasion she would forget, she would learn it was far easier to pour another, rather than spend time looking. There were too many floors, too many rooms, to search.

She marveled at the prospect of having a bedroom separate from a living room, separate from a kitchen, separate from the dining room and the office. There were rooms enough to have guest rooms and rooms enough that some remained empty. Empty rooms. It was unbelievable, really.

Out front there was enough of a porch to fit rocking chairs or a swing, something she’d fantasized about more than once: herself on some rocking chair or porch swing, reading on warm afternoons. And it seemed to her that the back deck off the kitchen was made for the gas grill that she would most certainly buy to make teriyaki chicken and shrimp kabobs.

There was dirt. In both the front and back yards, and she imagined what she would plant in it. Ivy. Definitely ivy, she thought. Of course, she hadn’t forgotten she’d managed to kill most every plant in her rent controlled apartment, and everywhere else she’d lived over the years. Maybe this dirt would be different, she hoped.

The two cats, Guido and Pants, would easily become comfortable in this large space, she thought. Finding their little cubbies and hiding places, their window seats. They would make good use of stairs and slippery hardwood, chasing one another, losing and regaining their footing, sliding around until weary enough to sprawl across patches of sunlit floor.

She didn’t know it yet, but later, she would have her own cat, too. She’d name him Taco, and he, too, would easily adjust to the mighty quarters, make himself at home. She would love that cat like crazy.

She worried as much as she marveled. It was her nature.

But she had hope. Had she known to, she’d have hoped there would be enough water to fill all the water glasses she would lose. For now she hoped the dirt would be different and kinder. She hoped for sunny afternoons passed on the new porch swing, for lots of kabobs of all sorts and pleasant neighbors. She hoped that, like the cats, she would find her cubbies and hiding nooks when she needed them, her sunlit patches to sprawl and soak in the warmth. She hoped she would find her place there.