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CHAPTERFIVE
“The house is in a lot worse shape than I thought.” Liz stood in the avocado and gold kitchen of her childhood home, talking on the phone to her sister, Shelly.
She hadn’t been inside the house in over ten years. Now it was clear her father had struggled in the years after her mother’s death. When her father had become ill, her brother was the one to close up the house. He’d never mentioned the items piled on the counters, the clutter in every room, and the layers of dust. Her mother, who had died years before, would be appalled at the condition.
Sudden guilt washed over her. Should she have come back to help her father in those years after her mother’s death? She’d returned to visit a few times but never for long, always opting to meet her father somewhere for a quick lunch. When he’d gone into assisted living at Tall Pines, she’d visited once a year but never returned to the house.
“Does it still have that orange and brown shag carpet that Mom wanted to get rid of years ago?” Shelly asked.
“Yep.” The carpet, which was once fluffy and colorful, was now matted and dull. “Looks like Dad hasn’t vacuumed it since she died.”
“Well, the house has been empty for almost six years. It’s sure to be showing some signs of age and neglect.”
“Yeah, there is lots of dust… and spiders.” Liz shuddered as one ran across the wall to a web in the corner.
“I just wish Dad had a chance to go back home after the stroke. That was all he really wanted.” Shelly sounded teary-eyed.
Liz sighed. She’d argued with Shelly and her brother, Peter, about keeping the house. They never gave up hope that their father would come home.
“Thanks for doing all of this with the house,” Shelly was saying. “I’m so busy at work I can’t break away right now.”
Just because Liz had taken early retirement, her siblings thought she had nothing better to do while they were still too busy with their jobs. They were partly right. She didn’t have much else to do and nowhere else to go, not that they knew about that.
Maybe she was being too hard on them. After all, she had volunteered, and they did have jobs. They’d both come for the funeral, of course, and offered to help, but Liz had brushed them off. It was her own fault.
“It’s okay. I don’t mind,” Liz said.
“You sure?”
“Yep.”
“How is the yard?” Shelly asked. “We were paying someone to tend to it. I hope they did a good job.”
Liz stepped over a pile of boxes on her way to the big picture window in the living room. Someone—either Peter or her father—had closed the drapes the last time they’d been here, and now it was dark as a cave.
She pulled the thick drapes back. Sun streamed in, highlighting the particles of dust released from the drapes like a snow globe.
The gorgeous maple tree they’d climbed as kids was still in the front yard. She almost smiled as she remembered how pretty it was with its bright-red leaves later in the fall. But then raking the leaves…
“It looks fine.” The grass was a little yellow but freshly mowed, and the shrubs were neatly trimmed. The yard could use some of the flowers that her mother used to plant to add some color, but that would be for the new owners to worry about.
“Is it really bad? The fees at Tall Pines took most of Dad’s money, but I suppose we could scrape some together for repairs,” Shelly said.
Liz hoped the “we” didn’t include her. She had nothing to scrape together. But Shelly didn’t need to know that. “I think it just needs a good cleaning.”
She wandered into the bathroom, which had pink tile and a matching toilet from the 1960s. Her mother had pestered her father to upgrade it in the ‘80s, but they’d never gotten around to it. “It is a bit outdated, though.”
“Maybe we could spruce it up?”
“We?”
Shelly paused. “I could see if I can get time off, but we have a big event coming up and…”
“No, don’t worry. I’ll see what I can do. I’ll check with some realtors and see what they think. Maybe people want houses with vintage charm.”
She wandered back to the kitchen and saw a woman standing at the fence and craning her neck toward the house. She looked to be a hundred if she was a day. When Liz and her siblings were kids, the O’Donnells had lived in that house, but that couldn’t possibly be Mrs. O’Donnell, could it?
As she watched, the woman crossed her arms over her chest, made a beeline down the length of the fence, and then proceeded into her yard and toward the front door.
