Terrence and David’s zoning argument migrated naturally to the kitchen island where it absorbed two additional participants and a napkin sketch that was demonstrably incorrect about load-bearing walls.
Someone turned on jazz.
Wine was poured and poured again.
Pete’s kids commandeered the window seats in the living room and set up some elaborate game involving pillows that I did not fully understand but that seemed to be making them profoundly happy.
The house did what I had designed it to do.
It held people. It made them comfortable. It made them feel like the space had been thinking about them.
I stood at the edge of the kitchen at some point in the early evening and I looked at the room full of people and I thought: this is what I made it for. Not for the four settings I had removed. For this. For the possibility of this. For rooms that could do this to people, that could make them feel at home without requiring them to earn it.
