Renee sent a certified letter 2 weeks later, her attorney’s letterhead.
It stated that she had been in a long-term committed relationship with Daniel Marsh and that she had a reasonable expectation of certain considerations given representations he had made to her during their time together.
I read it three times.
Then I forwarded it to Patricia with a single sentence.
Please respond accordingly.
Patricia’s response, which I was copied on, was three paragraphs of very precise legal language that essentially communicated: there is no legal basis for any claim, and any further correspondence of this nature will be treated as harassment.
I never heard from Renee again.
I sold the house four months later.
It wasn’t a snap decision.
I had lived in that house for 7 years.
I had painted every room myself, one summer weekend at a time.
I knew which floorboard creaked near the top of the stairs and which window stuck in humid weather and where the light fell in the kitchen on Sunday mornings in a way that made everything look softer than it was.
But I also knew what had happened inside those walls.
I knew the conversations we’d had in that kitchen that had felt like intimacy but were, I now understood, performance.
I knew the bedroom where I had slept next to someone who was living a second life.
And I knew that no amount of repainting or rearranging would make me forget that.
The market was good.
