A little dusty, sure, but with the kind of warmth you couldn’t stage. The inspection was brief and uneventful. The inspector, a bored-looking man in his fifties, shrugged as he checked items off his clipboard. “Structurally fine,” he said. “You’ll want to update the water heater eventually. And the basement’s humid, but that’s old houses for you.”
Nothing alarming. Nothing expensive. Nothing that would have changed their decision. They bought the house, celebrated with cheap champagne in paper cups, and fell asleep on an air mattress in the living room, staring at the ornate ceiling medallion and imagining the future. For the first week, it all felt right. Then the house began revealing itself.