Paying three hundred thousand dollars of debt before being ordered out of the house
They swung the heavy wood around the door frame with a slow, practiced tilt.
The room seemed to expand as soon as the table cleared the threshold, the square of faded floorboards where it had stood for ten years showing the true age of the wood underneath.
I stood by the window, holding my leather-bound portfolio against my ribs.
Brenda, the real estate agent who had handled the listing on Elmwood Avenue, walked in from the kitchen with a clipboard tucked under her arm.
“The buyers are doing their final walk-through at four,” Brenda said, tapping the silver clip of her board.
“The house is clean,” I said.
“They asked about the garden shed in the back,” she said. “The husband wanted to know if the key on the kitchen hook matches the padlock.”
“It does,” I said. “I checked it yesterday morning.”
Brenda looked around the empty dining room, her eyes lingering on the pale rectangles on the wallpaper where the family portraits had hung.
“It is a beautiful house, Clare,” she said. “You did a wonderful job keeping it up through everything.”
