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certainly. Probably one with a marble surround, since it was a room where company would wait. She couldn’t see it from where she was taking her survey, but it must be on the far wall.
    To her left, she noted a formal dining room. It was offset by an opening that held a pair of pocket doors, or so she hoped. It had one pocket door, at least—half extended, partially blocking the thoroughfare. The door had a wood frame, with glass panels and brass inlay details. If the other door was present and intact, and if she could extract them both, along with their rails and wheels, then Dad could probably ask …
    Â â€¦ but no, she was doing it again, assigning price tags before it was time. It felt sacrilegious somehow, almost like auctioning off human organs before the donor has passed. Chuck had once accused her of being morbid when she told him that. He said you couldn’t compare a house to a living, breathing person—it wasn’t the same thing. In her sentiment, that was the sacrilege, right there.
    Standing there in the Withrow house, she felt a deep sorrow anyway. It was an acute thing, a sense of grieving that the great old structure surely warranted. And maybe it was only a silly, blasphemous notion, but the mansion was such a lost thing. A sad thing, a tragic thing that deserved a better fate than the one it had coming.
    An angry thing.
    A chill ran from the back of her neck to her knees.
    Angry?
    Dahlia spent a lot of time angry these days, but the houses themselves were never anything but mournful. Had she called the word to mind, or had she heard it? Now she heard nothing, only that weird, white silence of a place that’s been so long closed up and unloved.
    Unloved.
    The word echoed between her ears, another odd intrusion. She shook her head, but it rang very faintly, a tinnitus-pitched hum that might mean a migraine was coming, or might only mean that her allergies were flaring up. She chose to believe it was the dust, because she didn’t have time for a headache. She carried medicine in her satchel for those unexpected just-in-case times of outrageous pain or congestion; but she’d left her bag in the truck.
    It’d come back to her soon enough, along with the cooler in the back, stuffed with water, Gatorade, and Monster Energy drinks. Great for refreshment and popping pills alike.
    In the meantime, there was plenty of house to see, and nothing she could do about the cotton-candy stuffiness that crept in through her nostrils and clouded her head.
    She let go of the staircase rail, swayed, found her feet, and strolled over to the dining room, hoping for pretty built-in cabinetry. Pretty built-in cabinetry could distract her from a ringing in her ears and the uncanny sense that she had heard a voice say things like “angry” and “unloved,” because that was ridiculous. In all the years she’d been talking to houses, the houses had never talked back.
    Except her own house, maybe—the one she’d lost to Andy being a vindictive dick, taking it away just because he knew she loved it. When that house had spoken, it’d said warm things, hopeful things that made her feel like all her decisions had been good ones, and that she was home—right where she was meant to be.
    But that meant that houses must be wrong sometimes, because look how that had turned out.
    Even though she’d done all the work herself, on her own time, at her own expense … and even though she’d saved up the whole down payment and gotten the mortgage herself, rather than going back to school for two more years and having something to show for those student loans …
    It didn’t matter. According to the state, Andy had as much right to the house as she did.
    Or that’s what his lawyer told her. Everybody already knows that lawyers lie—it’s part of the job. So maybe it wasn’t true, but she couldn’t afford to fight it. It was either