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“It’s a lovely house,” the real estate agent said as he examined the mullioned windows across the front of the living room. “And this is a very desirable location. In this market, you’ll probably sell for well above asking.” He turned and studied the room, his expression sharp. “The rooms are a bit cluttered, though. We should do something about that before we bring the photographer in.”
Petra took a breath. Jake, standing beside her, set his hand on the small of her back, a subtle show of support that had become a habit.
“I was under the impression that you’d work with the estate sale company directly to determine what pieces of furniture you wanted to hold back from the sale to use for staging.”
“Right, right. Sorry.” He swiped through his tablet, found something, read it. “Apologies. I didn’t realize that ... never mind. Yes, I can definitely do that. Do I have the contact inf—I do, right here.” He looked up from his tablet and gave Petra a guilty smile. “Sorry. My broker handed this listing to me just this morning. This was your parents’ house, right? Your father? Did he pass?”
“Fuck, ” Jake snapped. “Do your fucking job, asshole. Don’t come in here like some fuckwad off the street.”
Petra set her hand on his arm to settle him down. To the agent, she said, “Jeff, I don’t mind that somebody new is taking over this listing. But my father killed himself in the basement. Not even six weeks ago. It would help me a lot if you knew the details I’ve already given to your boss. I don’t like to repeat those details.”
Jeff had gone pale at the words ‘killed himself in the basement’; he hadn’t gotten that far in learning the details. “That’s something we’ll have to disclose.”
“It’s something I already disclosed. I filled out all that paperwork already.”
This time, Jake was not dissuaded by the pressure of her hand. He stalked toward Jeff. Dressed in his kutte and boots, with his inked hands and arms, and his very angry face, he must have been a scary sight indeed, because Jeff, a few inches taller and on the heavy side, backed all the way to the windows as Jake advanced on him.
“You are either going to do your job and stop fucking it up, or you’re going to get the fuck out of here. And if I have to make that choice for you, you’re leaving bloody and landing on your ass. You hear me?”
“I hear. Sorry.” He dashed a look past Jake to Petra. “Really, I’m very sorry.”
“Thank you for the apology. I accept it.” When Jake didn’t back off, she added, “Jake, it’s okay.”
He leaned in closer to Jeff, and Petra would have sworn he’d growled, before he backed off the agent and returned to her.
Jeff took a few seconds to pull himself together. Then he smiled and said, “Okay. Well. It sounds like things are more advanced in terms of the paperwork and details than I’d realized. If you’ve already filled out the disclosure forms, that’s a major step. I’ve got the keys and all, so if you don’t mind, I can go through the rest of the house on my own, make some notes about pieces I think we should stage with, and any changes I think—
“No changes,” Petra cut in. “As long as this house is mine, it’s going to be as it was. My parents took very good care of it, so there won’t be any repairs needed. Cosmetic changes, I won’t do. The people who buy it can make changes when it’s theirs.”
Petra knew she should care about getting a quick sale and top dollar and all that, but she simply did not. She’d been doing fine financially while her father was alive, and she didn’t want the windfall she was going to get because he no longer was. Maximizing that windfall was not, to put it mildly, a priority.
Jeff didn’t argue the point. Jake had cured him of the need to argue, and she loved her guy all the more for that.
The agent simply nodded. “That’s fine, then. The décor is quite conservative, anyway. The furniture is a bit ... old fashioned, but it suits the house. I can definitely make it work. And we have a warehouse of staging pieces we can use to fill out the built-ins and such.”
For all Jeff’s concern about clutter and old-fashioned décor, Petra’s family home no longer looked like her family home anymore. Not to her. She’d donated all her parents’ clothes and all the books she hadn’t kept for herself. Mr. Vermeyer had helped her go through the files in her father’s office and decide what could be shredded, and what was needed to get the estate through the arduous probate process. She’d taken all the family photos and her father’s journals, and a few other bits and pieces she wanted for herself or thought a friend might like. Several pieces of art now hung on the walls at Gertrude’s, and all his LPs were displayed there, with the books she’d kept, in the cases Jake had built for her. Those would not be sold.
She’d given Jake her father’s few guns—two hunting rifles, a Ruger revolver, and a Luger pistol her grandfather had taken from a Nazi soldier—and the Tag Heuer Carrera watch that had been her father’s everyday piece.
Virtually all of the furniture was still in place, exactly as it had been the day her father had gone to the basement for the last time. Much of the art was still on the walls. Many of the knickknacks remained. And still, to Petra, the house was empty. The spirits of the people who’d lived here had moved on. Now it was just a building. Lifeless.
“Yeah,” she said and slipped her arm across Jake’s back, tucking herself under his arm. “Let’s talk, get everything squared away, and then we’ll go and leave you to work.”
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~oOo~
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“You okay?” Jake askedas they buckled into his truck. The weather had been cold, windy, rainy, and generally gross for the past several days.
“I will be when we get away from here.”
He started the engine. “You still want to stop for a coffee, or do you want to go home?”
As she stared at the brick wall of the building that had once been her home, had once held a lifetime of memories—most of them happy, but some of them bone-crushingly sad—the wordhomeseemed to chime in her head like a church bell.
She turned and looked at Jake. How long had they been together? A bit more than two months. More than a month of it had been in this grey time of her grief, and he’d been with her all that time. Mere weeks after they’d first gotten together, her life had been turned upside down and shaken hard, and he’d stood with her through every bump and flail.
