Page 52 of Too Old for This

My house is cleaner than it has been in years. The floors are scrubbed, including the baseboards; every room upstairs has been vacuumed; and the bathrooms smell like pine and ammonia.

Delia Crane arrives first thing in the morning. According to the internet, she is one of the top real estate agents in town and has sold three houses on Bluebell Lane.

Between Burke and the incident with the finger, I’ve hit my breaking point. No more procrastinating. I need to sell this house and move into a retirement community. I’ve been making too many mistakes, missing too many things, and they’re the kind that could land me in prison or in a cemetery.

“Mrs.Jones,” she says, clasping my hand between both of hers. “It is such a pleasure to meet you. I’ve admired your house for a long time.”

Delia is a bit overwhelming in person. She is tall and thin, as sleek as the expensive car she drives. Her dress is a black shift accessorized with wide gold bracelets, dangly earrings, and a crocodile bag with a chain-link strap. Both her nails and her shoes are pointy.

She walks into the foyer and looks around. “This is incredible.”

“Thank you. I really haven’t done much.”

“It’s a bit like a time capsule, isn’t it?”

When I bought the house, I didn’t need anything this big or impressive.

But I was flush with cash from the city of Spokane and did it anyway.

Major renovations were never an option, but calling it a time capsule is going a bit far.

“Let me give you the tour. We can start right here, in the formal sitting room.”

“I haven’t seen one of these in a while.” She walks around, not commenting on the furniture or the décor. “Do you know which walls are load-bearing?”

“I’m afraid not.”

She nods, taking a moment to stare at the flocked wallpaper. I had to stop Archie from picking at it when we first moved in.

Next, the family room. As soon as Delia sees the fireplace, she asks if the house has central heating.

“Just the fireplace down here,” I say. “The bedrooms upstairs have electric wall heaters.”

Another nod. Not a happy one.

She has a big reaction to the kitchen. The house was built around 1910, but the kitchen was redone forty years later. “This is amazing. I can imagine Mrs.Cleaver in here.”

“Mrs.Cleaver?”

“From Leave It to Beaver .”

“Why don’t I show you the upstairs?”

The house has four bedrooms. One of them was Archie’s until he went to college, then on and off between semesters all the way through law school.

The room has changed a lot. The toys disappeared first. Then the posters and the bedspread with spaceships on it.

Only a few things are left from his childhood.

The blue walls have been the same color since we moved in.

I painted them myself. A few of the slats on the closet doors are loose, the ones at eye level for a child.

Archie used to hide there to trick me, and I would walk around saying, “Where’s Archie?

Where did he go?” He pulled on those slats to get a better view.

The room has half a dozen other small things I could point out and tell the stories of how they happened, but Delia isn’t interested in those. She walks around the room, glances out the window, and is done. We move on.

The house has two and a half bathrooms, all updated at the same time as the kitchen. One has pink tile, another has green, and the one downstairs has turquoise.

Delia shakes her head and smiles at all of them. “So amazing.”

My bedroom is the largest, the only one that’s lived in.

The furniture is from the ’80s but meant to look older.

I wanted it to match the age of the house and ended up with a bedroom set in dark wood with carved edges, a four-poster bed, and a heavy, oppressive feel.

But the comforter is pink and green, and very cheery.

When Delia sees it, her only comment is about the size of the room and the closet. “A little small, but that’s to be expected in a house this old.”

She takes a long look at the main hallway, along with the view down to the foyer. The chandelier is not fancy and needs cleaning. She doesn’t mention that.

As we head back downstairs, Delia asks about the roof.

“It was replaced right before I bought it,” I say. “That was in 1985.”

“Any updates to the electrical?”

“No.”

“Plumbing?”

“No.” We reach the bottom of the stairs, and she follows me over to the far side of the house. “Last but not least, this is the garage.”

My old sedan is parked on one side. The other has a wall full of shelves, along with my second refrigerator and the freezer.

Delia looks it over. A strand of her auburn hair falls forward, and she pushes it back with one of those fingernails. If I had to guess, she is about forty-five years old. A well-preserved forty-five.

“This is quite a house,” she says.

“Maybe it is a time capsule. Though I never thought of it that way.” I shrug as we walk out of the garage. “It’s just home to me.”

“Please don’t take offense. I’m trying to see the house through a buyer’s eyes.”

Which is all well and good, but she should have kept her mouth shut. I had planned to offer her something to drink, but now I don’t feel like it.

“So how much do you think I could get for it?” I ask. “Exactly as it is, without changing anything?”

“Most buyers will factor in some significant renovations, possibly new wiring and roof, and they always want updated kitchens and bathrooms, so I want to look at some comps.”

“Ballpark.”

The price she quotes is much lower than I expected. Lower than I hoped . “Thanks so much for coming by. I’ll think about it.”

“If you’d like, I can talk to a few people who specialize in major renovations like this and see what they think.”

“I’ll let you know.”

Delia leaves me with her card and a sympathetic smile. She walks back out to her fancy car, taking with her my dreams of living in a fancy place like Oak Manor.