Excerpt

From Kimberly and the Rogue House:

Kimberly didn't have to look to know her house had grown again.

Even though from where she sat in the kitchen, everything seemed normal.

The brown stone floor gleamed in the late April morning sun sneaking in through low windows tucked between handmade wooden upper cabinets a little too tall to be useful and matching bottom cabinets with no shelves inside at all.

The hazards of a first build years ago, when she was too young to know how to control the design and too excited to have a house of her very own to wait long enough to learn more.

She'd fix problems like that someday, if the house ever outgrew its own youthful enthusiasm.

The shiny black refrigerator and wall oven to her left were recent additions, bought from an ordinary department store with warranties and instructions and everything. Sometimes it was a relief to know things would simply work, even if the amount of money required made her stomach clench and her head swim.

Same with the matching black dishwasher installed to her right, wrangled into a nearly chest-high cabinet that had gotten a little out of control from what she'd requested.

Sometimes the nuance between not wanting something on the floor and having a dishwasher as high as a wall oven got lost in translation. But in this case, since she was a six-footer herself, everything worked out just fine.

The space for extra storage drawers below and to the side of the oddly placed dishwasher was a perfect example of how to adapt to surprises.

Same as the name she'd finally chosen for her house after what seemed like a lifetime of searching. It was supposedly bad luck to wait, but she was convinced taking her time to get to know her house made so much more sense.

She'd stumbled across a well-thumbed and dogeared baby naming book yesterday, during her last browse through her favorite used bookstore. The book seemed to fall open to the Ks, and Kalon jumped out at her.

Not only a lovely coordination with her own name, but the meanings nearly had her in tears.

Beauty more than skin deep, and heart or spirit.

Perfection.

Now she just had to get used to using it.

Kimberly shifted in her wooden chair, moving her hip and knee away from the rock wall behind her. Quite lovely to look at, even if the rocks piled up to create the wall were huge, and often had enough room between them (filled with concrete) that it would have made a fine climbing wall. If only it had been taller than four feet or so, that is.

Or if the climber was especially tiny.

Another advantage of her organic house was her kitchen table had literally been made to fit against the wall. The wood planks made a long and narrow surface, with the front smooth and the back perfectly fitted to the bulges and spaces of the stone.

She sipped her coffee, thankful as she was every day that the house—Kalon—had managed to find such a great-tasting water source to tap into. No filtration needed, and at least for the fifteen years she and Kalon had been together, the water had never run out.

Sure, a few of their original arrangements were a bit impractical. She might even say inconvenient, but only once she was well away from home.

It wouldn't do for Kalon to get the feeling she was unhappy with something it had done.

The unsupervised attempts it had made to try to correct things on its own had not gone well, to say the least.

The kitchen could certainly have done with more counterspace, and a lot more storage space. Things had changed fast over the years out in the world of pre-planned and traditionally built homes.

What seemed like acres of pristine countertops and enough drawers to hold a cafeteria's worth of silverware, cutlery, dishes, and food was expected these days.

Kimberly had long since lost count of how many of her friends had gone through traumatic and mind-blowingly expensive kitchen renovations.

That was all well and good when all it took was a practically unlimited budget and the patience of three different kinds of saints to get through the process. After all, it wasn't like their living rooms or bedrooms would be furious over the changes, or get their feelings hurt to the point that structural integrity became a real worry.