We married five years after that. The years between were ordinary in the way that good years tend to be ordinary: establishing ourselves professionally, navigating the small conflicts and large pleasures of two people who chose each other and are continuously choosing each other, building the specific shared life that is different from the sum of its parts.
The house was the first large thing we owned together. We had rented for three years and then decided, in the way of people who have been together long enough to project a future, to own. The purchase process was complicated in the way of all real property transactions and satisfying in the specific way of something you have worked for arriving.
We moved in on a Thursday in May. The first night we ate takeout on the floor because the furniture was still in the truck, and we shared a container of fried rice in the living room and Daniel said: this is ours. I said: yes. It was the simplest version of what it was.
Patricia had visited the house twice before she moved in. Once at Christmas the first year, with a family group, and once in the summer a year later, just Patricia and the two of us for a long weekend. Both visits had been fine. Patricia was a guest at both visits in the full sense of the word: she used the guest room, she brought wine and flowers, she helped in the kitchen when asked and cleared dishes without being asked, and she left at the agreed time.