Chapter 10 - Returning to the Roots
The keys to Grandpa Harold’s bungalow felt heavy and cold in my palm as I unlocked the front door for the first time as its legal owner. The house had stood vacant for nearly three months following his passing, preserved in a sort of amber silence.
Dust motes drifted lazily through the slanted rays of a May afternoon. The smell was instantly comforting—old cedar, dried pipe tobacco, and peppermint tea.
I set my leather backpack on the floral sofa and walked down the hallway to his old study. The desk was still covered in stacks of gardening magazines, ledger books, and a half-finished crossword puzzle left in ink. On the corner sat the small wooden humidor where he had kept his spare change and the cedar box he eventually handed to me.
I spent the next three days scrubbing the hardwood floors, opening the windows to let the spring breeze scour out the ghosts of past neglect, and setting up my laptop on his massive oak desk.
May you like
My phone remained blessedly silent. Eleanor’s number stayed blocked, and the real estate listings showed that Elmwood Terrace had finally gone under contract to a young couple moving in from out of state. Mark had packed his belongings into a rented U-Haul and vanished back toward Pittsburgh, leaving behind a trail of unpaid country club dues and shredded legal drafts.
They were ghosts of a previous life. My present was measured in the rhythmic clicking of my keyboard, the hum of the old refrigerator, and the steady, predictable mathematics of real estate revenue.
