to fortify you.”
Stan looked blankly at the glass Moira had thrust into his hand. He took a sip and a small smile played around the corners of his thin mouth. “Ah,” he breathed.
“That’s a good boy,” Moira said. “Now you go downstairs and play with your trains until dinner is ready.”
Stan shuffled off like an obedient mental patient. I still hadn’t figured out how someone as vibrant as Moira had ended up married to the barely breathing Stanley Rice.
“I should go,” I said as I tried to stand up.
“Don’t be silly.” Moira refilled our glasses. “You’re staying for dinner.”
I looked around the room. “What dinner?”
She raised a perfectly arched brow. “You have heard of delivery, haven’t you?”
She fished a cell phone out of her kimono pocket and ordered a pizza.
With a tummy full of pepperoni pizza to help soak up the vodka, I wove my way back home under darkness, hoping that the ladies on Seagull Lane were all too busy either scrapbooking or exfoliating to see the shameful condition I was in.
At nine o’clock the next morning, I shot up from a dead sleep into a sitting position. Someone is in the house, was my first thought, followed closely by Something must have crawled inside my mouth and died last night. My third thought was spent wishing I could unscrew my head and set it aside for the day because the pounding going on inside of it was driving me crazy.
And then I heard the noises from downstairs again.
I threw back the covers on my four-poster bed, then crept to the top of the stairs.
A woman was standing at the foot of them, shaking the newel post.
“Excuse me,” I said. “What are you doing in my house?”
The woman looked up at me. “Oh, hello, there. I guess you didn’t hear the bell.”
“I guess I didn’t,” I muttered.
She held up a set of keys. “So I just let myself in. I’m Sondra Hawk. We spoke on the phone.”
I’d been right. She did know how to accessorize.
Shiny black boots, shiny black purse, shiny black belt, shiny black hair cut as severely as the black and white houndstooth check suit she was wearing. The jewelry all looked like real gold. And there was just enough of it to announce that Sondra Hawk was both successful and tasteful.
Suddenly, I was keenly aware of what I must look like. Not to mention smell like. According to my T-shirt, I’d had chocolate, and something red. Most likely something Italian because I was pretty sure it was garlic fermenting in my mouth.
Damn it. Sondra the Hawk was probably wondering how someone like Roger Campbell could have ever been married to someone like me. A thought, unwelcome as a swarm of wasps at an ice cream social, entered my mind. I wondered if they’d had sex, yet—Ms. Coordinated of 2006 and Roger “I have all my shirts custom made” Campbell. If they hadn’t, I figured they’d eventually get around to it. And on sheets with a minimum 600 thread count. I thought longingly of the yellow sprigged sheets currently on my bed wishing I were still snuggled between them even though I was pretty sure that no one had ever bothered to count their threads.
But there was no running away from the woman with the leather notebook that matched her bag. Anyway, was I woman or wimp? I decided to hold my head high, despite the map of indulgence on my T-shirt. I started down the stairs. “May I ask what you’re doing here, Ms. Hawk?”
“I’m here to inspect and get to know the property, Mrs. Campbell. We at Priority Properties pride—”
“Yes, I know. You pride yourself in getting to know a house before you list it.”
She gave me a frosty smile. “So if you don’t mind, I’ll just make myself at home and take a look around.”
“And if you don’t mind, I’ll accompany you.”
“Certainly,” she said. “Of course, some people find it too emotional an experience—”
She let her voice trail off as she shook the newel post again then jotted something down in her notebook.
“No entrance hall,” she murmured as she jotted some more.
There had once been a tiny entrance hall and an enclosed staircase. The one big change Roger and I had made in the early years was to tear down the wall so that the narrow staircase was now open to the living room. Which meant that there was really no entrance hall, but I’d always thought it was worth it because it had opened up the living room so much.
“Small, isn’t it?” Sondra commented as she moved to the center of the room and inspected the ceiling. “This should really be replastered,” she said. “And I would strongly suggest changing your window treatments.”
I’d made the simple tieback muslin curtains that hung in the front windows myself. I’d always thought them charming. Sondra’s tone had reduced them to rags. I didn’t want to know what she thought of the rest of my decorating. She was probably inwardly sneering at my blue-and-white check camelback sofa and my chintz wingback chair, the cushion worn down to fit my tush like a baseball in a glove.
“You’re lucky wide-plank floors are back in style, but this one needs refinishing—or you could just carpet over it. It would probably make the room warmer.”
The dining room didn’t fare much better than the living room, but it was the kitchen that really took a beating.
“You’d be wise to have a new floor put in and the built-in booth in the breakfast nook should be torn out to open the room up.”
She wanted me to get rid of the booth where Gordy had eaten Froot Loops and fish sticks? Where he’d helped me decorate Christmas cookies and did his homework while I cooked dinner? I was debating whether to cry or to kick her out on her tight rear end when something she said caught my attention.
“Excuse me—what was that you just said?” I asked.
“I was just saying that you’ll have to get right on this list of improvements. It’ll be a miracle if we’re ready to show by the end of October. Once we hit November, things slow down until well after the holidays.”
“You mean the house could just be sitting here, empty, all through the holidays?”
She gave me another frosty smile. “Well, we don’t like to think so. I mean, our sales staff is excellent. But, this house hasn’t got much more than location going for it. I suggest we get it on the market as soon as possible. But, even with the best of properties,” she added in a tone that made it clear that this was not one of them, “people just don’t like to relocate during the holidays.” She sighed. “Now let’s take a look at the upstairs.”
I followed her up but I hardly heard anything else she said as she inspected the larger bedroom in the front and the two smaller ones in the back and I only vaguely heard her outrage when she discovered the one small bathroom with the claw-footed tub. I was too busy forming a plan.
