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Allison was good at it, even if it was a more complicated job than anticipated. She worked hard to learn Marvin’s business and anticipate his needs for supplies while also spending every second she wasn’t working banging around in her house. It had taken a toll on her, running that hard for that long, and she was starting to feel run down and tired. But she was also extremely proud of what she was accomplishing, and I admired her for that.
That’s why it struck me so hard about the house she wanted. It didn’t seem right, someone sitting on the house without using it. I understood nostalgia and the desire to own something your family worked hard for if you were going to cherish it, but from what I understood, that wasn’t the case. Unlike in Allison’s case, where she thought the property was being taken care of and lived in, this property was clearly empty and unused.
She had shown me some of the plans she had for the bed and breakfast. They were fantastic. There was real thought in the design she wanted to go for, and she had a talent for drawing that I didn’t know about until she showed me sketches of how she wanted the rooms designed. She had gone as far as designing specific rooms of the house, based on the layouts in the public library from when it was first built.
A fair bit of it was designed before she ever saw the house, though. She admitted that to me one night over dinner. When things had gotten really bad with her ex-boyfriend, she would retreat to her dream of owning the bed and breakfast with a sketchpad and pencils. She had a whole other sketchbook, one with hundreds of pages of ideas and drawings that she was very proud of that he’d burned in the fireplace one night when they were arguing. It had devastated her.
Allison said she was a different person then. She let him control her, walk all over her, and destroy her mentally. When she left him, she promised herself she would be stronger than that from now on. I could see that promise in action.
She was an incredible woman. She could have anything she wanted. She should have anything she wanted. That included the house that had been the subject of her dreams since she saw it, and it annoyed me greatly that she couldn’t have it.
One day, when she was at Marvin’s shop and I found myself with an afternoon off, I decided to go find out a bit more about the place. Allison hadn’t told me much, but I got the impression she hadn’t asked either. They’d told her no and she’d just accepted it. Maybe I would have better luck.
“Good afternoon,” the lady at the counter of the real estate office said as I came in the door. “How can I help you today?”
I pulled out the ad that Allison had left at my place showing the abandoned house. In the pictures, it was pristine, but I had driven by, and it was clearly not in that shape anymore.
“I want to know about this property,” I said. “I’ve heard it was for sale at one point and wanted to know if there was any way to find out about purchasing it.”
“Strange,” the lady said, “no one has asked about this place in quite a while and now I’ve had two people in such a short time.” She eyed me critically, then handed the paper back. “Unfortunately, it is not for sale. It most likely will not be for sale for many years, I’m afraid.”
“Why?” I asked.
“The owner has no interest,” she said. “It has been a bit of a rollercoaster with them.”
There was a lilt in her voice like she wanted to say more but didn’t. There was some gossip there, something fun to talk about, but it was probably not something she was supposed to say. All I had to do was play into it. She would crack like an egg.
“How so?” I asked.
“Well,” she said, leaning over conspiratorially on the desk and lowering her voice, “I shouldn’t be saying any of this, but I don’t want you waiting around for this place when we have so many better property options available.
“The owner of the house is the brother of the original owner. There were four siblings, and the eldest brother inherited the house upon his parents’ death. He was supposed to provide the rest of the siblings with a place to stay, should they need it. He accomplished that, all the way up until his sickness. When he got sick, one of his brothers, who was an identical twin, moved in and took care of him. At some point, he apparently modified his will to leave the house to the brother who came to take care of him.
