The Far End of Happy by Kathryn Craft Page B

over.
    “What is it?” Ronnie said.
    “A list of reporters wanting an interview. Two requests for Janet, and a whole lot more for you.”
    “Like who?”
    “The Morning Call in Allentown, the Reading Eagle , the Potts Forge Times , Channel 69, Maura Riley from Action News , and it goes on. Maybe a half dozen more television news reporters.”
    Corporal McNichol handed Ronnie the paper. “You’re free to do what you want, but I worry about the effect that more choppers and vehicles might have on Jeff.”
    There was a time when Ronnie thought her name would be on such a list. She’d planned to be a journalist, not an interview subject. They’d likely ask, “How do you feel?” In answer, the blank space in her morning journal came to mind. She only knew that extricating herself from Jeff had suddenly become a more complex and wretched story than she could comprehend. And despite a safe physical remove, she was still trapped within it.
    It was hard to believe any of them belonged here. How had this happened, when slipping into Jeff’s life had been so sweet and easy?
    • • •
    The first morning she awoke at the farm, a few months after she and Jeff had started dating, Ronnie was thinking it was a good thing she’d entered under the cover of darkness or the loud clash between the green sheets, purple blanket, and vivid yellow-and-blue-flowered wallpaper peeling beside her would not have allowed rest. She picked up her clothes from the unfinished floor planks, tiptoed past the kerosene heater in the hallway, and headed for the bathroom.
    Protected by the bliss of physical intimacy, she breezed over the orange shag carpeting pieced together on the bathroom floor and got in the shower. Once cold water slapped her awake—it took a few moments of fiddling to realize the hot and cold taps were reversed—she couldn’t help but notice the walls’ plastic gray tiles and mildewed paint.
    When she left the bathroom, Jeff was dressed. “So, this is your house,” she said. “Guess I was a little too distracted to see it last night.”
    He wrapped his arms around her and kissed her passionately. “And I aim to distract you again.” He gave her an impish grin. “Come on. I need to show you something.”
    After crossing the rough subfloor of an empty room, he led her up a charming staircase with pine treads worn from centuries of use. Up ahead, however, she expected bats and squirrels. Before he reached the top, he pointed to the floorboards, now level with their eyes. “When my mother gave me the keys so I could take a look at the place, for some odd reason this floor was completely covered with tar. Even so, I was able to see what you see right now.”
    Ronnie ran her finger over the exposed edges. “Some of these boards must be eighteen, twenty inches wide.”
    “I’d never seen flooring like this before. Not outside of preserved historic homes anyway. It made me curious about this house’s potential. So I bought it and got to work.” He took her hand. “This was the result.”
    He led her the rest of the way up the stairs and into a handsomely renovated, painted, and completely empty attic.
    “Wow.” Ronnie took in the fresh sheetrock on the peaked ceiling, the exposed beams. “Why don’t you use this as your bedroom?”
    “I finished this for Fay, but she still couldn’t see the potential in the house.” Again, that impish smile. “I thought she could hang upside down from the beams.”
    The room offered an impressive endorsement of Jeff’s handiwork. Into the low vertical walls on one side, he’d inserted and painted plywood cupboards and cubbies; on the other side, he’d built in the drawers and shelves of a bedroom suite. He had even crafted a clever hinged hamper and a closet that fit beneath the eaves.
    “So why was there tar on the floor?”
    “I keep wondering that myself. The place had stood empty for a while. Maybe because there was only plastic over the window holes when I bought