All Jacked Up

The house and property were sold. The weekend the deal was sealed, both our Realtor and the Coach happened to be in New York, her for a much-deserved vacation, him for the opening of a Big Movie in which he had a role as himself. (It was actually a movie with an actress that I love and it was a movie that I loved, in spite of his part in it.)

Time passes. The house just sits there, all fixed up yet empty.

Then one day in November, I'm driving by and I see that the house has been jacked up, literally:

I tell Sissy, and we make plans to explore more thoroughly.

When we arrive, she frets a bit about the possibility that the Coach or the Wife will drive by and see us. I say, "So what? If they do, we'll just say we were interested in what's going on, act as privileged as they do." So down the road we go. Here's some of what we saw:

It was shocking, to say the least.

Sure enough, as we're tramping around in the red clay taking photographs, down the road comes a car. It pulls into the driveway and the passenger rolls down the window. We walk out to greet them and immediately realize the Wife is driving. We assume the passenger is either her mother or the Coach's.

I step up to say hi and remind her who I am (I call myself Ash, I say, but you know me as Laurie). The Wife has met both of us on more than one occasion. She acknowledges me, but for some reason, not Sissy. And when Sissy says something about wanting to take photographs, that we have relatives that would be interested in seeing them (meaning our cousins who all spent a lot of time at The Farm when our, and their, grandparents lived there), she does not respond with an, "Of course! That makes perfect sense." She basically ignores what Sissy says and turns to me, complaining about how hard it's all been, dealing with the house, and says it's such a shame that Sissy spent all that money and time to fix it up. The conversation is weird, but because I think she's weird in general I don't think too much of it. Until, as she and her passenger drive away, Sissy turns to me and says, "She had no idea who I am." Dumbstruck, I realize she's right.