CHAPTER ONE HOUSE HUNTING
CHAPTER
ONE
House Hunting
Cora stood alone outside the Mangrove Bay real-estate office calming her jittery nerves.
Roscoe had refused to come. He wouldn’t even pretend to think about coming, so when Cora called ahead to make the appointment, she’d lied and said Roscoe’s war injuries made it difficult for him to get around, and that she’d come first without her husband and then bring him by later if she saw anything she liked.
‘Well, that all sounds fine,’ the woman had said. ‘What time on Saturday would you like to come by, ma’am?’
It was the ma’am that kept her standing on the sidewalk, hesitating.
She needed a real-estate agency like this one to get access to a house in a loan-approved neighborhood, but Cora knew she wasn’t what the woman was expecting, and it was bound to be unpleasant when she found out.
Just how unpleasant Cora didn’t know, but her heart raced with the thought of it.
She took a deep breath, shook out her hands that were clenching into nervous balls, straightened her back, tipped up her chin and marched inside.
The receptionist watched her as she opened the door and strode up to the desk, tracking her progress across the floor like she was eyeing a snake.
‘I’m Cora Crane. I have an appointment this morning.’
‘But you’re … well, goodness … I see. Listen, the thing is, I didn’t realize. I mean if I had known, I wouldn’t have … What I mean is, I don’t think we can help you.’
‘Don’t you sell houses?’ Cora asked, with false innocence, her heart beating a mile a minute, both hands clutching her purse, squeezing it tight.
‘Well, we do, but they tend to be in certain areas.’
‘Then I’ll have a look at those.’
The young woman swallowed. ‘Let me get my …’ She turned her head and called to the closed door behind her, ‘Reg. Can you come out here, please?’
A portly middle-aged man came out of a back room wearing a double-breasted blue suit, his brown hair combed back like Bing Crosby’s. When he saw Cora, his face fell, and he stopped ten feet away, like she might be contagious.
‘Is there a problem here?’ He used a chastising tone, as if Cora had been called to the principal’s office.
‘No problem at all,’ Cora said, sweet but firm. ‘I’d like to buy a house.’
He raised his eyebrows and stared at her as if she’d just spoken Japanese. Then he looked around the room, as if the right response might be written on the wall behind her.
‘We … uh … we don’t … uh … have anything in your price range.’ He gave a little shrug.
‘Well, now, that’s interesting,’ Cora said, ‘since you don’t know what my price range is.’
‘Well, I … I just mean we don’t really have much to show at the moment.’
‘What about those two right there?’ Cora said, pointing to two house listings on the receptionist’s desk, with a photo and the asking price along the bottom.
‘Well, these are … uh … they’re actually under offer, I’m afraid. So they’re just being taken off the market.’ He gathered up the papers and handed them to the secretary with a nod to get rid of them. She clutched them to her chest and disappeared into the back room.
Cora felt her face flush hot and her scalp prickle. ‘What about a property over on the Levittown development? I hear they have quite a few new houses.’
Benny’s development had grown into a whole cookie-cutter neighborhood of thousands of homes, with new houses ready every week.
‘The Levittown development?’ He scratched his head.
For a minute Cora thought he was about to deny that he’d ever heard of it, but instead he rummaged through a shelf and produced a brochure.
He turned to a description of the development, three pages in, and handed it to her to read.
This restricted residential suburb is within easy reach of the warm waters of the Gulf and the shops of downtown.
Cora smoothed her face to blank, like she didn’t know what ‘restricted’ was code for. ‘Sounds very nice.’
He reddened. ‘Come on now, don’t be difficult. You know I can’t sell you a house there.’
Cora pulled herself as tall as she could and lifted her chin. ‘If I have the money, I should be able to buy wherever I like.’ She looked him dead in the eyes, challenging him to say different.
‘There’s a race covenant,’ he said, pointing to the brochure in her hand. ‘My hands are tied.’
Her jaw clenched so tight it made her teeth ache.
‘And as for whatever else we’ve got listed,’ he shrugged, ‘if it were up to me, I’d sell you one of these houses.’ His head tipped toward the file cabinets behind them. ‘But, look, if people found out I’d tried to sell to you, I’d be ruined. It’s that simple. There’s just nothing I can do.’