Story code: ST-000505
Part 2: The Walkthrough
Elias pulled his hand from his pocket, leaving the locket resting safely against his thigh, and opened the heavy front door. A man in a tailored charcoal suit stood on the porch, flanked by a second man in steel-toed boots holding a heavy clipboard.
“Elias? I’m Vance,” the man in the suit said, extending a smooth, uncalloused hand. “We spoke on the phone. This is Barrett, my general contractor. Ready for the walkthrough?”
Elias stepped aside, ignoring the offered hand. Vance didn’t wait for a welcome. He strode onto the foyer’s tile, his polished shoes clicking loudly in the hollow space. He paused, his eyes sweeping over the sterile walls, the bare entryway table, and the stock poster of the Eiffel Tower Elias had hastily hung an hour earlier.
“Smells like a hospital,” Vance muttered, waving a hand in front of his nose to ward off the heavy, synthetic scent of lemon cleaner. “And looks like one, too.”
Elias closed the door, his jaw tightening. He said nothing.
Vance walked into the living room, Barrett right behind him. The contractor immediately began tapping the drywall with the blunt end of his heavy pen, listening to the hollow thuds. Vance stopped in the center of the room, standing directly in front of the clearance-aisle canvas of the golden-haired family on the sailboat-the one Elias had used to cover his son’s graduation portrait.
Vance snorted. “No offense, Elias, but this decor is completely devoid of personality. The appraiser this morning mentioned the place lacked charm, but I didn’t realize he meant it looked like a dentist’s waiting room. Buyers want a story. They want to imagine a life here. This?” He gestured vaguely at the smiling sailboat family. “This is sad. It’s empty.”
Elias felt a hot spike of indignation flare in his chest, but he forced his hands to remain loosely at his sides. The insult burned, yet beneath the anger, a strange, desperate relief washed over him. Vance was sneering at a lie. He was judging a plastic replica of a family, not Elias’s actual son. The psychological shield was working.
“I prefer to keep things simple,” Elias lied, his voice gravelly and quiet.
“Well, it drops the curb appeal of the interior, if there is such a thing,” Vance said, jotting a note on his phone. “Makes the property feel cold. Harder for me to flip if I have to completely stage it from scratch just to wash out the cheap motel vibe. I’ll have to factor staging costs into my offer.”
Elias squeezed his eyes shut for a fraction of a second. The morning appraiser had already gutted the home’s value, reducing forty years of love and shelter to a meager figure on a clipboard. Now, Vance was using Elias’s protective camouflage as an excuse to drive the price down even further. Every dollar lost was another compromise Elias couldn’t afford, another month he wouldn’t be able to chip away at the mountain of debt Martha’s illness had left behind. But he couldn’t explain that. He couldn’t rip down the sailboat and show them the truth of what this house meant.
“The bones are good,” Elias managed to say, repeating the only real estate phrase he knew.
“We’ll see,” Barrett grunted. The contractor walked over to the doorframe leading into the kitchen. He ran a thick, dirt-stained thumb over the damp, bare wood where Elias had rigorously scrubbed away his children’s height marks. “Paint’s stripped raw right here. Wood’s soaking wet. You got a leak in the ceiling?”
“No,” Elias said quickly, his pulse picking up. “I was just… cleaning it.”
Barrett eyed him suspiciously, then jotted something down on his clipboard. “Looks like active water damage to me. Put down a grand for doorframe repairs, Vance.”
“Noted,” Vance said, not looking up from his phone.
They moved into the dining room. Vance stopped dead, staring up at the aggressive red and gray abstract painting hanging over the china cabinet. Elias had hung it specifically to hide the faded, ghostly rectangle of paint left by the massive family reunion canvas.
“God, that’s hideous,” Vance laughed. “Seriously, Elias, did you buy this place furnished from a discount outlet?”
Elias’s fingers dug through his pocket, finding the brass locket. He pressed his thumb into the tarnished metal, using the sharp edge to ground himself. He swallowed his pride, tasting bitter bile at the back of his throat. “Something like that.”
“Well, let’s look at the electrical,” Vance said, turning his back on the painting. “Appraiser said it was original to the house. If it is, I’m knocking another five grand off the top. Where’s the breaker box?”
Elias froze. The air in his lungs suddenly turned to lead. “It’s in the utility room. But the door is stuck. It’s… it’s not accessible today.”
Vance stopped typing. He looked up, his expression hardening into a cold, flat stare. “Not accessible?”
“I’m moving things,” Elias stammered, taking a step into the hallway to physically block the path to the closed utility room door. “Boxes are stacked against it. Heavy boxes. You can check it on the final walkthrough.”
“There isn’t going to be a final walkthrough if I don’t see the panel today,” Vance said, taking a step closer. The slick, professional veneer vanished, replaced by an aggressive edge. “I’m offering a cash buyout on a distressed property, Elias. I don’t buy blind. If I can’t see the wiring, I walk. Right now.”
Elias’s chest tightened, the deep pressure returning to push against his ribs. Behind that thin wooden door was the massive family reunion canvas, wrapped in industrial paper, shoved alongside every moving box containing his wife’s photos, his daughter’s milestones, and his grandson’s drawings. He had crammed them all in there, throwing a loose canvas drop cloth over the fragile mountain of his actual existence. If they went in, they would see the frantic, sloppy pile. They would tear away the paper to see what he was hiding. They would see his real life, exposed and discarded like garbage.
“Move the boxes,” Barrett said, already stepping past Vance and reaching out for the brass doorknob.
“Don’t touch that,” Elias warned, his voice shaking with a terrifying, hollow authority.
Barrett paused, glancing back at his boss. Vance just crossed his arms, his eyes locked on Elias.
“Open the door, Elias,” Vance said softly, “or I keep my money, and the bank takes the house by the end of the month anyway.”
Barrett’s heavy hand clamped down on the doorknob, the metal clicking loudly in the suffocating silence as he began to turn it.