By the time I finished my five miles, the moon was still dueling the sun for it's place in the sky. Coming in from the back deck,  there were no signs of life stirring inside, meaning Dad and Anna were most likely still asleep. I took a moment, trying to remember what the house looked like before we had moved in, because although it was almost three years ago, I still remember it like it was yesterday.

Two projects led my Dad and I to Townshill. Before his architecture company, Clarity Inc, got contracted to remodel the high school, it was just another insignificant dot on a map, latitudes and longitudes we may never have crossed if there wasn't a blueprint for a change my Dad couldn't resist. So the initial endeavor was the school. The second undertaking was our house. I still remember watching the new house being rebuilt from the dirt up, promising many things, but most of all: New beginnings.

I saw the plans in my father's office on Newbury St. months before: What started out as sketches drawn on drafting tables in penciled lines came to life faster than I could've imagined. One moment they were just that—plans—and before I knew it the contractors came in, the foundation was constructed, and the siding, roofing, drywall, and insulation recreated the vacant space we tore down. Little by little, our new beginnings became more than two-dimensional sketches on a piece of paper, and our white house with blue shutters was born on number 52 Forest Road. When we finally moved in that January after all  of the summer construction began, it looked like a completely different place. But nothing can erase that first day my Dad brought me here, one rainy spring day.

"This is it," he said, his voice filled with that almost childlike excitement he gets when one of his new projects was waiting in queue to be fixed. And if there's one thing to know about my Dad, it's his propensity for fixing things—sometimes that were never broken to begin with.

It was early April, so the thin air pinched at my skin as we got out of his truck. The green house looked desolate, for sure. Upon seeing it, I recalled little facts  I'd heard about it in anticipation over the past weeks: It was mere steps away from being condemned by the state. The previous owners, a married couple in their fifties, were in one of those long, messy divorces that were outwardly endless, and when the husband—a raging alcoholic-- finally moved out and the troubles concerning putting it on the market were resolved,  my Dad stepped in.

"It's definitely a fixer-upper," he cautioned as he put his new key into the lock. With a sharp flick of his wrist and small kick at the bottom of the door, the hinges relaxed, and I took my first baby steps inside.

I wasn't expecting anything less, as after living with my Dad for the majority of the time by that point, I knew all about his quirky habits. However, what I saw as I passed through the threshold was on a whole, other level. At first, because the windows had no shades, I was blinded by the violent light pouring in. As my eyes readjusted, that's when I noticed everything else.

The scent hit me first:  Filled with mildew, it traveled up my nose, forcing me to cover my mouth to repress sensations of nausea. The rooms all seemed to blur together: the broken stove and loose tiles, the holes in the walls, the piles of junk and what looked like rat feces littering the floor. I looked at my Dad, who was tip-toeing around the mess just like me, and I must have raised a questionable eyebrow at him.

"OK. Fixer-upper may not have been the perfect term to describe what's going on here." He sidestepped shard of a broken glass, kicking it out of our way with the toe of his navy blue Converse sneaker.

"So what would you call it? Unfixable? A health hazard? A hopeless waste of time?"

"Come on, Thea." he said, his voice brimming with premature excitement. I could almost see the thoughts and the plans buzzing around under his Red Sox cap.

"Look out there." I followed his finger to a window overlooking a barren—albeit—spacious backyard, leading into what looked like acres and acres of woods. "The house is going to take a lot of work. I'm not denying that. But look at that land. This neighborhood. Can't you see all of the potential?"

I've never been good at looking at the bigger picture, especially when it didn't have a concrete beginning, middle, and end. My Dad though, well he could draw the picture from scratch, fill in the lines colorfully where there were only shadows before. Mapping out a whole outline, he always projected  his visions to life on what was before just a blank, white page. I didn't doubt he could truly see what these parched walls thirsting for life had to offer, and he must've seen the flicker of uncertainty in my eyes.

Walking over to his backpack, he unzipped it and sifted through the contents before pulling out a red spiral-bound notebook. "Do we really have to do that right here?" I asked, doing a slow 180 carefully around the room.

Raising his own questionable eyebrow, he asked: "Do you have a better place in mind?"

"Anywhere that isn't reeking of rat pee is OK with me."

He let out a playful sigh, nodding for me to follow him. Walking cautiously behind him, he led me down a narrow hallway that ultimately led to a pair of French doors, bringing us into the backyard. I let out my first breath of air as I inhaled the clean Spring air. Compared to the front yard, the backyard was a relief: The grass was still overgrown and dotted with weeds, but the porch seemed secure to stand on and  the woods sang a relaxing melody in the backyard.

Dad and I sat side by side on the bottom steps of the porch, and I watched as he opened to a fresh page in his notebook. With graceful handwriting, he drew two large circles that met in the middle.

"Let's start with the pros." I watched as he wrote down the price of the house, the neighborhood it was in, the backyard—which was the size of a football field. He paused for a moment, before adding the short commute to Boston, where he and his colleague Joe's new architectural business was just launching with booming success.

Our infamous "Pros and Cons" chart was born the weekend before Halloween when I was eight years old. That was a rough year for us, as that's the year my mother left without any particular answers as to when she would be returning.

Mom was skilled at just about anything she touched. Because of said craftiness, she always made my Halloween costumes. The year I was six, I was an elephant, and she had used an old funnel from a washer machine and some gray felt to create a hand-crafted display that left my classmates' mouths gaped open from its genuine magnificence. The year she left, I planned to be Ariel from The Little Mermaid, and we'd spent hours pouring over different fabric samples before finding the most perfect  teal-sequined material at a vintage textile store in Chinatown.

She left on a Tuesday morning, taking very few of her personal belongings with her. The scraps of unfinished mermaid fins were scattered carelessly around her sewing machine. Her white Keds sat on a welcome mat next to the door.

By the time my Dad and I actually got around to shopping for a costume, all of the stores had already started putting Christmas decorations out. Sifting through the clearance aisles everywhere within a twenty mile radius, the only costume we found in my size was a Clifford the Dog  suit that ran a couple inches too short on my legs. As Halloween rolled around, I reluctantly—and with difficulty—put on my ridiculous, red dog outfit, huffing and puffing around the apartment as my Dad tried to console me with sugar-coated thoughts.

"I bet none of your classmates have this costume," he said energetically, putting a roll of film into his camera.

"Yeah, I bet." I replied. "Because it's The Worst." I tried to cover my face with my paws as he attempted to catch a candid moment, but the mood only grew more intense as he laughed at me. He put the camera down and grabbed one of his binders and a pen instead.

"Ok. We're going to do a Checks and Balances on this little predicament we have here." I followed him over to the couch where we both sat , tucking our legs beneath our knees. He drew a Venn diagram, and labeled the left side of the circle "Pros" and the right  side "Cons"; he left the middle part free for doodling.

"Let's start with the obvious objections."

"My costume's ugly." I said immediately.

He laughed and wrote it down. "What else?"

I just sat and thought hard for a bit, but the most obvious objections to my costume, I didn't know how to put into words. How could I tell him I'd wear that stupid outfit easily, trade any costume in the world in a heartbeat, just to see her sitting Indian style on the floor with her tea as she quizzed me on my spelling list? Or worse : Maybe if my imagination had called for a simpler costume to make—like a ghost or black cat—maybe she wouldn't have left in the first place.

I could feel his eyes searching mine, knowing without asking that something was wrong. And that's precisely how he looked at me that April morning in Townshill as we sat on the porch steps, charting down all the reasons that were supposed to rationalize our move from the apartment—severing all ties we had to that fifth floor apartment. But more significantly: Our old life. 

We sat for a couple of minutes with the sun lukewarmly washing over us in complete silence. I looked around, beyond the curtain of ripening trees, and noticed the neighborhood my Dad was speaking so highly through new eyes. Aside from the very house we were at, all of the nearby ones that stretched along our street and eventually led to a well manicured cul-de-sac, seemed well-maintained. Affluent even, judging by the number of three car garages, in-ground pools, and lavishly garnished lawns I counted. It was light years away from the busy part of the city where we lived: It was Suburbia to the max, like a movie-set taken straight out of any family sit-com that included a laugh track.

My Dad's excitement was palpable though, and it'd been a long time since I'd seen him that eager about, well anything. I knew—selfish reasons aside--that Clarity Inc was giving him—giving us—a great opportunity when they were contracted for the architectural redesign of the high school. So even though I found myself questioning its authenticity as the words left my mouth, I said, "I guess the neighborhood seems really nice."

"You think?" His eyes brimming with that over-enthusiasm that sometimes could be annoying, but most of times was one of the characteristics I loved most about my Dad.

"I think."

A huge grin captured his mouth contagiously, and although I was still very skeptical, I couldn't help but smile along with him. "I think you'll find that this move—"

Whatever he was saying though, got lost in translation as a gurgle of kids merged right into our backyard, laughing and talking in hushed voices.

My Dad cleared his throat loudly and their murmur of voices sharply stopped once they noticed us on the porch. A hefty boy hastily zipped up the backpack in his hands, quickly placing the straps on his shoulders. Everything about his actions reeked of guilt. There were two girls in the group: The one with strawberry blond hair nudged a brunette standing in front, whispering. She appeared to not even hear her, but just continued grilling my Dad.

"You must be our new neighbors. My stepdad mentioned he thought he saw a Sold sign, but we couldn't believe it." Her eyes narrowed as she looked around the bleak yard.

The girl was about my age, tall and lanky and there was something about her poise—confident with an unspoken air of authority—that gave me a visual of a queen bee. She was the obvious leader of the pack, and I was instantly uncomfortable, trying to sink into the background, hoping that if I was quiet enough, they just wouldn't see me. The girl kept her self-reliant gaze locked on my Dad  though, who returned her look with an expression of mild amusement.

"And who do I have the pleasure of meeting?" His voice was inviting, as if the fact that they were trespassing in our yard and giving him attitude was a nonissue. The dark-haired girl gave him one more appraising look before answering.

"Lana Stanley. And we were just taking a shortcut . I'm really sorry if it's been an inconvenience." She tossed some hair over a shoulder, and glanced back at her friends--who appeared to be waiting for her next move. "Have a marvelous day." Her voice peaked with insincerity as her friends snickered behind her, and just like that, their backs were turned and they were retreating back into the woods.

My Dad didn't speak again until the sounds of their footsteps were just muted crunches in the distance. "I met the Stanley's last week when I was here changing the locks, and their daughter was a lot more reserved. She was also, shorter, blonder, and really anxious about flying across the country to visit her Dad in California this week for April vacation."

I stood up first, crossing the deck towards the French doors, where I paused to wait for him to finish his thought. Abruptly, he got to his feet, turning on the steps to face me. "Whoever that girl was, I can tell you this: She's trouble."

Then, with a loud crack as he shifted his weight on the stairs to climb the porch, everything gave out beneath the weight of his feet. Shards of wood clapped apart, and what remained of the porch steps completely lapsed to the ground.

It was going to be a fixer-upper, indeed.