At An Open House, I Found My Own Home Marked Coming Soon – But I Had Never Listed It
PART 2
I left the open house without signing the guest sheet.
At home, I walked through every room as if I had returned after a stranger stayed there. Nothing looked disturbed. The framed photograph of Ben at twenty-one was still crooked on the upstairs landing. The good scissors were still in the kitchen drawer. The small ceramic bowl by the door still held one spare key and three coins.
I opened the email Dana had sent after her valuation visit.
Subject: MAPLE COURT — ROUGH RANGE, NOT A LISTING
The subject line had felt almost funny when it arrived.
Inside, Dana wrote that the comparable sales suggested a likely range if I chose to list in the next six months. She had attached a market analysis and a note saying, “No action needed. This is just information for your retirement folder.”
I forwarded the message back to her with one sentence.
Please send me every document, image, card, email, or appointment created from this valuation.
She replied twelve minutes later.
Of course. I’m pulling it together. Again, I’m sorry. Trina should never have put that card out.
At 2:17, my doorbell rang.
A man in his early sixties stood on the step holding a phone and looking almost as uncomfortable as I felt.
“Ms. Blake?”
“Yes?”
“I’m sorry to bother you. I’m Howard Levin. Dana gave me your name.”
My stomach tightened.
“For what?”
He looked past me at the foyer, then seemed to realize that was the wrong thing to do.
“I toured this place last Sunday.”
I did not move.
He rushed on. “Dana said you were away and preferred to keep things discreet. I told my wife I wanted to see the exterior again before we talked numbers. I didn’t realize you hadn’t—”
“Stop.”
He did.
“You were inside my house?”
His face changed.
“Yes.”
“Last Sunday?”
“Yes.”
Last Sunday I had been in Baltimore visiting my college roommate.
The spare key in the ceramic bowl suddenly felt like the least important key in the house.
I heard Dana’s voice from the morning.
Nowhere public.
Howard swallowed.
“I think I have been put in the middle of something I don’t understand.”
“So have I.”
For one second we stood on opposite sides of my doorway, both of us realizing that the problem was no longer a badly printed card.
Someone had already crossed the threshold.
