“You two never go anywhere anymore,” Jordan said.
“We’re home bodies,” said Roger.
“Always have been.”
He came home and repeated it to me twice, grinning like a boy who’d gotten away with a snowball. It was a small thing one canceled booking. But it was the first time in 16 months that the calendar on Jordan’s phone had to answer to the people who actually lived in the house.
At a/4 that afternoon, the mail carrier knocked. She needed a signature. The envelope was 9 by12 and heavy with a green certified mail sticker. The return address said Blackwater Pipeline Services Crew, Housing and Compliance, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
I didn’t know a soul at any pipeline company. I signed for it anyway. The cover letter was one-page polite and plain, the kind of letter I used to write myself.
Reowner verification furnished housing agreement dated October 5th, 2026, premises 2217, Tinker Run Road, Hollands Ferry. It explained that Blackwater had contracted to use our house for five members of a pipeline crew from December 1st, 2026 through March 31st, 2027 at $6,800 a month. The agreement had been signed on the owner’s behalf by Styles Hospitality LLC as owner’s agent.
Per their standard process, the security deposit and first month’s rent, a total of $13,600 had been released by wire on October 7th, 2 days before my birthday party. Their compliance department, the letter said, reviews every agreement against county property records, and our names appeared there as the owners.
They asked us to call and confirm. Almost in passing, it mentioned a walkthrough of the premises with the owner’s agent scheduled for Saturday, October 24th at 10:00 in the morning. Behind the letter was a copy of a single page titled Owner Authorization, dated Monday, September 28th, 2026.
At the bottom were two signatures, Patricia Mrick, Roger Mrick. I have signed my name the same way since 1983 on thousands of leases, a mortgage, a marriage license, and every one of my daughter’s report cards. I held that page under the kitchen light for a long time.
That was not my signature. And now I knew what December was. Florida wasn’t a gift. Florida was how you empty a farmhouse for a pipeline crew for 4 months and get the owners to pay for their own tickets out.
Then I read the date of the walkthrough one more time. October 24th, the spa day. Roger read it standing up. Then he read it again sitting down, which is how I knew it had reached him.
He signed my name, he said. He signed my name, too. Yes, I’m going over there, Pat. sit with me first. Let me read it the way I read things.
So, I got my reading glasses and a yellow highlighter. And I went through that agreement the way I went through leases for 40 years, looking for what isn’t there. It was copied from a template and not a good one.
The premises were described by street address alone with no mention of the barn or the six acres. There was a clause about an owner’s agent, but no management agreement attached because none existed. Where the owner’s mailing address belonged, it said Care of Styles Hospitality P.
Box 318, so that no mail about this would ever come to our house. Blackwater had checked the county records anyway and mailed a copy to the address on the deed. Somebody in that compliance office was very good at her job and the forged pee and Patricia had a big loop at the top.
Mine never has. I write it straight like a flagpole. So what do we do? Roger asked. Call the police. Call Melanie. Not yet. They’ve picked a date for us.
Roger. October 24th at 10:00. Melanie booked us a spa for that exact morning so we’d be 50 m away. And until then, until then, we say thank you. He stared at me.
We don’t warn people who didn’t warn us. I said he didn’t like it. He went out to the barn and sanded a table leg for 2 hours, and I let him.
On Saturday morning, Lynette came with a tape measure. She arrived at 9:30 on Saturday, October 17th, with a roll of packing tape and a yellow tape measure clipped to her jeans. Mel asked me to help you plan your Florida packing, she said.
Get a head start. Lynette is 67, small and quick with the forearms of a woman who has scrubbed floors for 40 years because she has. I let her in.
I wanted to see what she would do. She didn’t ask where anything was. She walked straight to the hall linen closet and put her hand on the shelf where I keep the good towels.
She went upstairs and measured our bedroom closet without asking which one was ours. And then she measured the attic door twice and wrote the numbers on her palm with a ballpoint pen. When she passed me on the landing, I caught it on her hands.
White tea. So that was the cleaning service. You seem to know this house pretty well, Lynette, I said. She stopped on the stairs and turned around. I know this house better than you do, Patricia.
Then she said something I had been waiting 12 years to hear out loud. April 30th, 2009. Holland’s Ferry Plaza. One letter with your signature and six of us were out of work.
Spotless commercial cleaning. You don’t even remember. I remembered. The recession had gutted the plaza’s budget and the owners cut the cleaning contract. I was the director, so I signed the termination notice and I signed it with my own name.
I remember, I said. Some of us clean up after people for a living. I thanked her for her time and told her we wouldn’t need help with the packing.
Then I walked her to the door and held it open until her car reached the road. On Monday morning at 9:02, I called the number on the letter. The woman who answered said her name was Ranata Gould Crew, housing and compliance manager.
She had a Pittsburgh accent and the voice of someone who reads the fine print for fun, and I liked her immediately. Mrs. Mrick, she said, I was hoping you’d call. Mr. Styles told us you winter in Florida.
He said you’d prefer we deal only with him. Mr. Styles is my son-in-law, I said. Neither my husband nor I ever signed anything for him. We have no plans to be in Florida.
There was a pause on the line. I see another pause. I’ll be honest with you, Mrs. Merrick. In 2025, we lost $22,000 to a man who rented us a house he didn’t own.
Since then, we verify every owner in person with photo ID at the walkthrough. If the owner doesn’t verify our council voids the agreement and demands the money back, then I’d like you to keep your appointment. I said, October 24th, 10:00, exactly as planned.