Corinne Maddox

Corinne is the reason the house is here. She's the one who walked through it on a Saturday and couldn't stop thinking about the porch.

Before any of that, she was a nurse in a burn unit. She doesn't tell that part as a story, but it's in how she works. The people she cared for there were often frightened, often in pain, and almost always tired of being talked over. She learned to slow down, to explain things in plain words, to wait for the question someone hasn't asked yet. Twelve years later she still does all of it.

What people notice first is that she sits down. She pulls a chair around so she isn't behind anything, and she asks how you are and waits for the real answer. She is warm without being chatty. She is honest, too, in the kind way, which means that if she thinks something isn't right for you, she will say so, and she'll tell you why.

She runs the house the way she'd want to be looked after in it: clean rooms, unrushed hours, and a pot of tea that is never allowed to go cold on the porch.