who’d relocated to Whidbey a hundred years ago.
“How about this one?” asked Emma. Without waiting for an answer, she pulled off the road and parked on the gravel shoulder in the shade of a huge cedar. The driveway was marked with a realtor’s tent sign and a bouquet of balloons imprinted with Open House.
Automatically Grace checked her watch. By habit she was a schedule person, but on this sunny Saturday afternoon they were in no hurry.
Visiting open houses was a hobby she’d fallen into years ago. Emma and Katie shared her fascination. There was a sort of vicarious pleasure in stepping into someone else’s world. It was a guilty thrill. Walking through other people’s homes made Grace feel as though she was visiting a foreign country with customs and habits she barely understood. She loved to study the gardens with perennials, displays of family photographs showing generations growing up in the same place. She was intrigued by the permanence of their way of life, and she studied it like an anthropologist researching a different culture.
She wondered what it would be like to live in a place where you could plant a garden and still be around to see how it turned out.
This was definitely a girl thing. Steve and Brian couldn’t stand open houses. But for Grace and her daughters, the fantasy began as soon as they stepped onto the driveway of crushed rock and shells.
The house was a disappointment, an ugly stepsister to the Victorian masterpiece down the road. Despite an impressive arbor of old roses, the garden was an uninspired mix of perennials, rhododendrons and low, leafy shrubs. Worse, someone had tried to give the place a nautical flavor by heaping driftwood in a self-conscious arrangement, creating a rope fence. A wooden seagull was perched atop the post next to the front gate. Over the door arched a driftwood sign: Welcome Aboard.
The girls walked in through the open front door, heading for a hall table laden with bakery cookies, a coffee urn, a pitcher of lemonade and some real estate flyers.
Grace hesitated before she entered the house. Unbidden, a quiet stirring occurred deep inside her. It was just a strange day, she thought, beginning with the shock of meeting her real self in the dressing-room mirror.
She could feel the fresh sea breeze rippling across the yard and stirring the tops of the trees. Murmurs of conversation drifted through the house as little knots of people inspected the unnaturally clean rooms. Her awareness of everything heightened, and for some reason, she held her breath the way she used to in church each Sunday morning, just before genuflecting.
In the blink of an eye, the peculiar moment passed. She stepped over the threshold into a stranger’s house. The spongy gray carpet beneath her feet had seen better days, and the walls were an oppressive putty color. Sometime in the distant past, a smoker used to live here. Bowls of potpourri barely masked a cindery hotel room odor. But still, the plain-Jane house cast an odd and mesmerizing spell on her.
Grace smiled and greeted the listing agent, accepting an information sheet on the house. She was a looky-loo and never pretended to be otherwise. An experienced agent could see that a mile off.
Grace strolled through an outdated kitchen with harvest-gold appliances, oversize vegetables on the wallpaper, phony redbrick linoleum on the floor and Formica countertops with the classic boomerang pattern, faded in places from scrubbing. The study wasthe only modern segment of the house that she could see. It contained a well-designed workstation and a state-of-the-art Mac computer surrounded by scanners, printers and devices Grace couldn’t identify. Clearly, this was the domain of a computer whiz.
One set of lookers was in the corner snickering over a collage made of seashells, which framed a chalkboard. Ignoring them, Grace passed through to the front room, and there, finally, she understood the magic of this place. The living room was
“How about this one?” asked Emma. Without waiting for an answer, she pulled off the road and parked on the gravel shoulder in the shade of a huge cedar. The driveway was marked with a realtor’s tent sign and a bouquet of balloons imprinted with Open House.
Automatically Grace checked her watch. By habit she was a schedule person, but on this sunny Saturday afternoon they were in no hurry.
Visiting open houses was a hobby she’d fallen into years ago. Emma and Katie shared her fascination. There was a sort of vicarious pleasure in stepping into someone else’s world. It was a guilty thrill. Walking through other people’s homes made Grace feel as though she was visiting a foreign country with customs and habits she barely understood. She loved to study the gardens with perennials, displays of family photographs showing generations growing up in the same place. She was intrigued by the permanence of their way of life, and she studied it like an anthropologist researching a different culture.
She wondered what it would be like to live in a place where you could plant a garden and still be around to see how it turned out.
This was definitely a girl thing. Steve and Brian couldn’t stand open houses. But for Grace and her daughters, the fantasy began as soon as they stepped onto the driveway of crushed rock and shells.
The house was a disappointment, an ugly stepsister to the Victorian masterpiece down the road. Despite an impressive arbor of old roses, the garden was an uninspired mix of perennials, rhododendrons and low, leafy shrubs. Worse, someone had tried to give the place a nautical flavor by heaping driftwood in a self-conscious arrangement, creating a rope fence. A wooden seagull was perched atop the post next to the front gate. Over the door arched a driftwood sign: Welcome Aboard.
The girls walked in through the open front door, heading for a hall table laden with bakery cookies, a coffee urn, a pitcher of lemonade and some real estate flyers.
Grace hesitated before she entered the house. Unbidden, a quiet stirring occurred deep inside her. It was just a strange day, she thought, beginning with the shock of meeting her real self in the dressing-room mirror.
She could feel the fresh sea breeze rippling across the yard and stirring the tops of the trees. Murmurs of conversation drifted through the house as little knots of people inspected the unnaturally clean rooms. Her awareness of everything heightened, and for some reason, she held her breath the way she used to in church each Sunday morning, just before genuflecting.
In the blink of an eye, the peculiar moment passed. She stepped over the threshold into a stranger’s house. The spongy gray carpet beneath her feet had seen better days, and the walls were an oppressive putty color. Sometime in the distant past, a smoker used to live here. Bowls of potpourri barely masked a cindery hotel room odor. But still, the plain-Jane house cast an odd and mesmerizing spell on her.
Grace smiled and greeted the listing agent, accepting an information sheet on the house. She was a looky-loo and never pretended to be otherwise. An experienced agent could see that a mile off.
Grace strolled through an outdated kitchen with harvest-gold appliances, oversize vegetables on the wallpaper, phony redbrick linoleum on the floor and Formica countertops with the classic boomerang pattern, faded in places from scrubbing. The study wasthe only modern segment of the house that she could see. It contained a well-designed workstation and a state-of-the-art Mac computer surrounded by scanners, printers and devices Grace couldn’t identify. Clearly, this was the domain of a computer whiz.
One set of lookers was in the corner snickering over a collage made of seashells, which framed a chalkboard. Ignoring them, Grace passed through to the front room, and there, finally, she understood the magic of this place. The living room was
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