The soft roll of suitcase wheels over wood. I looked up and saw a woman’s coat draped over the landing rail, like someone had already settled comfortably into this place. The agent stopped talking.
The touring couple stopped moving. My mother pressed her lips together. My father looked at the sign in the yard longer than he looked at me.
That was when I reached for the top brochure. The front showed the house I built. The back was full of polished, bloodless copy.
In the lower right corner were two signature lines. One already held handwriting I knew without needing a second look. The other one was not blank.
A yellow sticky note had been stuck across the edge of that box, crooked, like someone had already marked it in advance so the next person would only have to bend down and sign directly on my name. There was a For Sale sign planted in the gravel when I came around the last bend, the kind with a glossy black arm and a little brochure box hanging beneath it like a clean, polite lie. For one stunned second, I thought it had to belong to the vacant lot next door.
