Chapter One
Fresh Start, Stale House
The real estate agent was using her patient voice, which meant I was about to hear something expensive.
“What I’m suggesting,” Carol said, with the careful enunciation of a woman who’d been asked to explain the same problem twice and was questioning her career, “is an environmental assessment. Before we list again.”
“The house doesn’t have a gas leak, Carol.”
“The first buyer said the interior was Victorian. Crown molding. Velvet drapes. A chandelier.”
“It’s a colonial from the forties. There’s no chandelier. There’s a ceiling fan that sounds like it’s chewing.”
“The second buyer described mid-century modern. Teak furniture. A sunken living room.”
“There’s no sunken living room. There’s a living room with a slight slope because the foundation settled sometime during the Eisenhower administration.”
“Then we have a problem,” Carol said, “because two separate adults walked through the same house and saw two completely different properties, and I have to put something in the file.”
I pressed my forehead against the kitchen cabinet and breathed. The cabinet felt different than it had yesterday. Smoother, maybe. Or a different wood. I didn’t look because I didn’t want to know.
“Put ‘charming and full of character,’” I said. “That covers everything.”
“Kit—”
“Schedule the assessment. Fine. But I’m not paying for it if they find nothing, and they’re going to find nothing, because the house is just old and weird and I need to sell it before I lose my mind.”
I hung up and went to refill my coffee. The Keurig produced exactly one cup of normal coffee, which I took as a personal victory given that yesterday it had turned out espresso so strong I could taste shapes, and the day before that it gave me hot chocolate, which I didn’t even have pods for.
The bathroom was on the wrong side of the hallway.
I stood in the kitchen doorway and looked left, where the bathroom had been since I’d arrived fourteen days ago, and saw a linen closet. I looked right and there it was — same door, same terrible tile I could see through the gap, same dripping faucet — just on the other side of the hall, like the house had rearranged itself while I was arguing with Carol.
I considered this for about four seconds, decided I didn’t have the bandwidth, and went back to my coffee.
That’s when the bird talked.
“The azaleas need water, sweetheart.”
