Promise at the Threshold

When Mae Whitaker inherits a sagging porch and a stack of bad paperwork, she plans to fix the house and sell the headache. Then she finds a ring hidden on a bright nail and a ledger in the pantry wall—along with Eli Grady, the house's quiet, decent ghost who once promised to keep its door. Touching the ring gives Mae and Eli three precious minutes of warmth and weight—enough to prove he's real, and enough to make letting go impossible. As a predatory developer revives a decades-old boundary lie, Mae rallies a choir director with pearls sharp as case law, a dry-witted attorney, an exacting surveyor, and a town that pays rent in pies. Height marks under old wallpaper, a river that remembers, and a confession from the family that cheated the line all become evidence in a fight where ground must teach paper how to behave. Between inspections, depositions, and storms that test the porch, Mae and Eli learn the difference between rescuing and keeping. Their ritual—"carry"—turns from miracle to habit, from hunger to promise. If they win, the house stands. If they lose, they will still have told the truth together. Tender, wry, and full of ordinary holiness, Promise at the Threshold is a contemporary romance with a haunting: a love story about work that holds, neighbors who show up, and the small, stubborn verbs—measure, brace, bake, sing—that make a life. And if it rains? They'll dance.