And then, as always when he started feeling too good, he remembered one pair of eyes that would never see this house, one pair of feet that would never walk its floors and stairs, one voice that would never be heard calling out to him through the high-ceilinged caverns of the rooms or outside in a newly landscaped yard.
He walked back to his truck. Dark was coming on. He drove to a truckstop out on I-40, paid a couple of bucks for a shower, ate a lousy meal in the restaurant, and slept in the camper on the back of his pickup truck, bedding down among his tools.
3
Motivated Seller
It took a bit of research—more than the possibility of a sale warranted—but Cindy Claybourne found herself interested in the project and so she pursued it. Why else had she chosen a field in which she could pretty much set her own hours, if not to have the freedom to spend a few of those hours doing something for its own sake, and not just for money? She had no appointments that morning. The agency's files and the property records in the Guilford County offices were open to her. And so she began to discover the history of the Bellamy house.
The recent history came first. An owner who was anxious for a quick sale of a deteriorating property—the students renting apartments there were notified that the house would not be available starting in the fall; by midsummer, all were gone. But there were no takers, not at the price asked. The owner moved to Florida. At first he phoned now and then. But the agent who first got the property moved with her husband to Atlanta; the next agent got fired for general lousiness; and the agent after that was a hotshot who lost interest in property that couldn't sell quickly.