DC By the Book

Excerpt: There were still roles in their life where they were neither fish nor fowl, and yet they had company in each other. Judy and George lived on Newark Street, NW, in Cleveland Park, an affluent neighborhood named for Grover Cleveland's summer home. It made sense for Judy, as a D.C. realtor, to live in a D.C. house, especially one that had been built in 1886 by Cleveland's second vice president. Except for Bev, everyone at Coldpoint was apprehensive about George's address: Aren't you afraid you'll be murdered? How can you live right up against everyone in the city? Isn't the traffic horrible? What they didn't realize was that from his six-thousand-square-foot-house, George could walk to the post office, coffee and chocolate shops, Italian and Greek delis, and the Metro; sitting on the back deck, which overlooked a ravine of trees down to a little stream, he could hear the change ringing in the bell tower of the National Cathedral.