Page 67 of Wayward

“I also do creamer-and-sugar sets,” she explained as I took a seat at the table.

“I had no idea you could cook.”

“Oh, only breakfast. My governess insisted that all her charges learn to boil water, fry an egg, and be able to make a proper cup of English tea. It was very important.”

“Is English tea different from American tea?”

“Oh my, yes,” she assured me. “For starters, the water must be utterly scalding.”

“Okay.” I grinned at her. “Why don’t you sit down.”

“I will. I just need to pour the coffee Gale made. Such a lovely man. I think the idea of the two of you dating is charming.”

“What?” When had she heard that? “Did he say something to you?”

“Oh, darling, I’m neither stupid nor unobservant. I can draw my own conclusions.”

“And you think us dating is a good idea?”

“I think it’s simply grand.”

Of course she did.

“Also, we should call the deli after breakfast and tell them what we want for lunch, don’t you think that’s a wonderful idea?”

“Certainly.”

She smiled. “I love how agreeable you are.”

I scoffed. “No one has ever called me agreeable in my life.”

The way she looked at me, as though confused, made me smile.

“I find that terribly hard to believe,” she told me.

The building inspector showed up at noon. Hector Guerra was horrified at the state of the underground pools and agreed with me that drained and filled was the only way to be certain of the house’s foundation. He marked the bearing walls for me, again agreed that the attic needed to be completely removed and that the entire house needed to be treated for mold.

“You know, it would be cheaper to bulldoze the entire home to the ground.”

But money wasn’t the issue. “I know, but if we make your changes, the house will be up to code?”

He nodded. “The bones are good.”

Which was a relief to hear.

He put me in touch with a biohazard cleanup team, and before anyone else could look at the house, that needed to be done. He would be back once that was completed and look at the house a second time to make sure he hadn’t missed anything. I appreciated his thoroughness, as I was the same way myself.

After touring the house with Pansy Tucker from Dream Clean, we sat downstairs in the kitchen, which was enormous, with a butler’s pantry, a wine room, and four ovens. I could only imagine what used to be cooked in the house and for how many.

Pansy said, “Other than the attic, the basement pools, and two other rooms, this house is not nearly as bad as others I’ve been to.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Hoarder homes, with the trash, are far harder to clean and take much longer.”

She explained that while the black mold would need to be treated, it was confined to a very small space of the house, there was none at all in the basement, and once the attic was cleared and everything up there incinerated, we needed to have everything, including the level itself, removed.

“That’s what I figured.”