The Open House
I was heading on a business trip when my flight was canceled. I came home early and opened the door to a stranger wearing my robe. She smiled and said, “You’re the realtor, right?”
The lie came out of me with surprising ease. Maybe it was the shock, or maybe it was the way she said it—so confidently, like the mistake was already agreed upon by the universe and my job was simply not to disrupt it.
“Yes,” I said. “That’s me.”
She beamed, stepped aside, and gestured me in like I belonged there more than she did.
The door shut behind me with a soft, definitive click.
For half a second, I stood frozen in my own entryway, taking in details my brain insisted were wrong. The pale blue walls I’d painted last summer. The crooked mirror I never got around to fixing. My shoes—my shoes—lined neatly on the rack, but shifted, like someone else had touched them and tried to put them back where they thought they belonged.
The stranger—mid-thirties maybe, dark hair loosely pinned, damp like she’d just showered—walked barefoot across my hardwood floors.
“Sorry,” she said, laughing lightly. “I know it’s a bit informal, but the listing said ‘lived-in charm,’ so I figured I’d really experience the space.”
My robe hung awkwardly on her frame, cinched too tight at the waist. I noticed, with a distant, inappropriate thought, that she smelled like my soap.
She turned, waiting, head tilted.
I could tell her. You’re in my house. You’re wearing my clothes. I don’t know who you are.
Instead, I asked, “How long have you been here?”
She frowned, as if doing mental math. “Maybe twenty minutes? I let myself in with the code.”
The code.
I swallowed. The lockbox. The one my ex insisted on keeping active “just in case.”
Of course.
Her smile returned, warmer now. “Thank you! You’re very… chill. Not what I expected from a realtor.”
“I get that a lot.”
Which was also a lie.
She wandered toward the living room, running her fingers along the shelves. My shelves. Pausing at framed photos I hadn’t bothered to take down.
“Is that you?” she asked, lifting one.
“Yeah.”
“You look happier there.”
“It was a good year.”
She nodded like she understood something important. Then she placed the frame back—but not quite where it had been.
Something in me tightened.
“Would you like a tour?” I asked.
Her eyes lit up. “Yes. Absolutely.”
I showed her the apartment the way you show a lie—carefully, selectively. I pointed out the windows, the natural light, the built-in storage. I avoided the loose floorboard in the hall, the bathroom door that stuck if you didn’t lift it just right.
She noticed anyway.
“You didn’t mention the sound,” she said, pausing near the window.
“What sound?”
She smiled faintly. “Exactly.”
A siren wailed in the distance. Pipes knocked. Somewhere, a neighbor laughed too loudly.
“It feels… real,” she said. “You know? Not staged.”
I didn’t answer.
When we reached the bedroom, she hesitated at the doorway.
“This is where I draw the line,” she said lightly. “Feels too personal.”
I almost laughed.
“Totally understandable,” I said. “Though buyers usually want to see—”
“I’m not a buyer,” she interrupted.
I blinked.
She turned to face me fully now, expression different. Sharper. Like a mask slipping.
“I’m a renter,” she said. “At least, I was supposed to be.”
The air shifted.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
She folded her arms, robe sleeves slipping back. “I signed a lease for this place. Two weeks ago.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Is it?”
She stepped past me into the bedroom. Sat on the edge of my bed like she’d earned it.
“Because I have emails. A contract. A deposit receipt.”
My heart started pounding.
“Who did you sign with?” I asked.
She said my ex’s name.
I felt dizzy.
“He doesn’t own this place anymore,” I said.
She frowned. “That’s not what he told me.”
Of course it wasn’t.
I sat down across from her, the mattress dipping between us.
“I need you to listen carefully,” I said. “This is my apartment. I didn’t list it. I didn’t authorize any lease.”
Her confidence wavered. Just a little.
“Then why do you have a lockbox?” she asked.
I had no good answer.
She stood suddenly. “I think you should leave.”
The irony hit hard enough to almost make me laugh again.
“I can show you proof,” I said quickly. “Utilities. ID. Mail.”
She hesitated. Then nodded.
I handed her a stack of unopened envelopes from the kitchen counter. She flipped through them, her expression changing with each one.
“Oh,” she said softly.
We stood there, two strangers stranded in the same mistake.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I thought—”
“I know.”
Silence stretched.
“So,” she said finally, “what now?”
I thought of my canceled flight. My carefully planned absence. The way fate had nudged me back into this moment.
“We call the police,” I said.
Her shoulders stiffened. “I’d rather not.”
“Why?”
She hesitated. “Because I gave notice on my old place. I moved my things out this morning.”
I looked around. “Where are your things?”
She smiled weakly. “In a storage unit. For now.”
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