Page 11 of Road Trip
Angie turned a practiced eye around the living room. “Then I won’t take up much of your time. The good news is that this neighborhood is hot, hot, hot right now. Young families with kids want this school district, and professionals who’ve been priced out of the historic district and Midtown are really starting to scoop up these mid-century ranch houses like yours.”
“And what’s the bad news?” Maeve asked, although she pretty much knew what the answer would be.
“It’s dated,” the real estate agent said as she walked through the rooms. “But you’ve got a functional floorplan and anyway, most buyers will want to gut it and start over.”
“Several houses in the neighborhood built off this same floorplan have been remodeled in the past few years, and I know at least two have added pools,” Maeve volunteered.
“Bathrooms?”
“There are two. I can show you the hall bath, but the other is in Mom’s room.”
“No need,” Angie said quickly. “Look, I’ll be super honest with you. You’re probably looking at a teardown here. The value in this house is the lot.”
“Teardown?” Maeve choked on the word.
“I guess wecouldmarket it as a fixer-upper. Who knows what could happen if we put some lipstick on this pig?”
They were back in the living room now. Angie pulled a small notebook and pen from her pocketbook and started jotting notes. “Okay, let’s talk about your prelisting checklist. Definitely you’ll need to declutter. Pack up everything personal, knickknacks, family photos, like that. We want to make all the rooms look larger, so I’d say lose most of the furniture in here.”
She ran the toe of her shoe along the surface of the carpet, which, Maeve suddenly realized, hadn’t been vacuumed since Mary Helen had fallen ill. Her face burned with embarrassment. “My mom’s been living alone for a long time, and she always hated change, and then, well, she’s been so sick, and…”
“I get it,” Angie said. She pointed at the carpet. “I’d pull this up. Hopefully there’s hardwood underneath, right?”
Maeve shrugged. “I don’t know. We’ve always had carpet throughout the house.”
“Well, if it’s just a concrete slab under here, maybe we slap down some LVP.”
“What’s that?”
Angie’s smile was patronizing. “Luxury vinyl plank. We could probably get away with just doing the living room and dining room for around three thousand.”
Maeve bit her lip. “That’s a lot of money to spend on a house that’s just going to get torn down.”
“The online listing photos are going to be key to getting buyers in here,” Angie said. “I guarantee it’ll be worth it in the long run.”
“I’ll have to see what Terri says,” Maeve said.
“Who’s that?”
“My older sister, Therese. She was a year ahead of us in school.”
Angie wrinkled her nose. “Wait. Therese Dunagin? She’s your sister? I thought she left school mid-semester.”
Maeve felt unaccustomedly called to defend the family honor. “It was a misunderstanding. Sister Bernard blew things completely out of proportion. So she finished at Savannah High and then went to drama school up north.”
“Right, of course,” Angie said. “Give your sister a call, talk it over with her, and let me know what you decide to do about the listing.”
“I’ll do that,” Maeve said, already feeling deflated. A teardown? She wasn’t sure how she felt about that. This was their childhood home. All the memories, good and bad, were tied up here at Blueberry Hill. Selling it was the practical thing to do; she knew that. In theory.
The three-month unpaid leave she’d taken during Mary Helen’s illness had eaten into her savings, and God knew her sister was always hard up for money. Selling the house was a no-brainer.
Therese probably wouldn’t care about what happened to thehouse. She’d only sporadically lived here since high school, showing up when acting jobs or money were short, and leaving suddenly, and with no notice, when something better beckoned down the road.
Now that thehospice folks had picked up the hospital bed and the rest of what Maeve thought of as “sickroom stuff” she decided to start the chore she’d been dreading the most, packing up her mother’s bedroom.
Best to rip off the Band-Aid and not allow herself to wallow in the maudlin thoughts that threatened to derail her progress.
But as soon as she opened the bedroom door, she was assailed with a jumbled-up bouquet of scents—the astringent burn of antiseptic spray that barely masked the odor of the now-removed potty chair, and beneath all that, the faintest tones of her mother’s signature cologne.
