The Listing That Stayed

I didn't have a good answer for that.

The house itself was fine. That was the problem, in a way. It was a cape, white, black shutters, good bones as we used to say — which is the real estate equivalent of describing a blind date as having a great personality. The lot was two and a half acres, mostly level, with a tree line on the north end that would have been genuinely beautiful if you weren't already thinking about other things. The seller had replaced the roof in '91. The well tested clean. The price was, by any reasonable standard, fair.

And yet.

In a town of twelve hundred people, and yet carries a lot of weight.

I won't tell you what everyone knew, partly because I'm not sure everyone knew the same thing, and partly because Vermont has a particular way of handling certain histories — which is to say, not handling them at all, but rather letting them settle like sediment until they become part of the geology. You don't discuss sediment. It's just there. It's been there. It will be there after you're gone.

What I will tell you is that every showing followed the same general pattern. People would arrive, usually from a bit of a distance — Montpelier, Burlington, once a couple from Middlebury who'd been looking for eighteen months and were starting to get philosophical about it. They'd walk the property with the particular optimism of people who have not yet made an offer on anything and therefore still believe real estate is a rational process. They'd nod at the roof. They'd approve of the lot. They'd stand in the kitchen and look out the window at the tree line.

And then, at some point in every single showing, they'd go quiet in a way that had nothing to do with contemplation.

"It's very peaceful," one woman said, which was technically true.

"Does it always feel this — " a man started, and then decided not to finish that sentence, which I respected.

The schoolteacher from Barre simply left without explanation, which I also respected, and which was, honestly, the most Vermont response possible.

The couple from Middlebury made an offer. I was surprised. They came back for a second look, walked through more slowly this time, and the husband stood in the back bedroom for a very long time. Then they withdrew the offer. We had a brief phone call. He said it wasn't the right fit. His wife could be heard in the background saying nothing at all, which told me everything.

It sold in the spring of 1994.

The buyer was from New Hampshire — Manchester, I believe — and he came alone, moved efficiently through the rooms, asked reasonable questions about the heating system and the septic, and signed the paperwork with the straightforward confidence of a man who had not grown up in a small town and therefore had no idea what he didn't know.

I have thought about that a lot over the years. Whether it was better or worse for him, not knowing. Whether the house noticed the difference.

Last I heard he lived there twenty years before retiring to Florida. No complaints on record. Sold it himself, eventually, to a young couple from Burlington who put in a new bathroom and started an Instagram account about rural life. They seem happy.

The house is just a house now. The sediment has had thirty years to settle.

Still. Some Tuesday mornings, driving Clement Road out of old habit, I slow down a little when I pass it. Not for any particular reason.

Just to see if it looks back.

Harris Vexley spent thirty years as a licensed real estate broker in Vermont. He is now retired, which mainly means he drives around more and talks to fewer people about it.