And please don’t tell Mr. Styles we’ve spoken. Why? because he’s going to tell you a story on my porch. I’d like you to hear it.” I could hear her pen tapping while she thought.
“I’ve got five men who need beds on December 1st,” she said.
“I’m coming either way. I won’t call him.”
“Thank you.”
And Mrs. Merrick, our counsel, will have that notice ready. She emailed me the full agreement that afternoon, all 11 pages. Jordan had signed the last page twice. Once as himself and once in a looping hand as me.
On Tuesday, Herb came over with a plate of zucchini bread and a memory. Herb set the bread on the counter and didn’t sit down. Pat, I’ve been chewing on something since that business with the Ohio plates.
He said, “Last summer you two were at that lake with the grandkids. There was an ambulance at your house.” My hands stopped on the coffee pot. Saturday night around 8.
Herb said it was the 16th of August, the last day of the county fair. I saw the lights from my porch and thought Roger had fallen off a ladder. Next morning, the house was quiet, so I figured it was a false alarm.
He looked embarrassed. I should have called you. I didn’t want to be the nosy neighbor. You are the nosy neighbor, Herb, I said. Thank God for you. After he left, I opened the listing and scrolled back to August 2025.
The oneline review I’d read in the motel bathroom was still there. Just above it was a longer one I had skimmed past from a different family that same month. Beautiful old house.
Our seven-year-old slipped on the basement stairs and broke her wrist. Hosts were kind and refunded a night. The basement stairs are steep, painted gray, with one handrail on the left.
Roger has been meaning to put a second rail on the right for about 11 years. A 7-year-old girl had broken her wrist in my house, and an ambulance had come up my lane. My insurance would never have paid a dime of what followed, and the people who knew all that had let me go on thanking them for Cape May.
I heard Jordan’s voice again, cheerful on that speaker phone. Relax, Roger. Nobody got hurt. I sat at the kitchen table until my coffee went cold. That was the day I stopped being hurt and started being thorough.
On Wednesday, October 21st, I climbed the stairs to Lou’s office above the hardware store with my folder under my arm. Lou read the Blackwater agreement with his glasses pushed up on his head, which means he’s angry. He’s the only lawyer I know who gets quieter when he’s angry.
And that’s exactly why I trusted him for 19 years. Forged signatures on an owner authorization, he said. Money taken on the strength of it. That’s not a family squabble, Pat.
That’s a crime. I know what it is. So, what do you want? I had my list ready. I always do. First, a demand letter to Jordan and Melanie Styles and to Styles Hospitality LLC.
repay the $11,940 they collected from renting our house plus the $742 in extra utilities. We’d paid a total of $12,682 within 30 days or we sue for trespass and unjust enrichment. Second, written trespass notices for Jordan and for Lynette.
Neither of them was to set foot on our property again without our written permission. Third, a report to Hearthay as the owners with a copy of our deed and our IDs asking them to take the listing down. Fourth, a police report for the forgery filed after the walkthrough.
You want to do this at the house? Lou said it wasn’t a question. It’s where he sold it. Want me to set you up with a recorder? No. I didn’t have to think about it.
I’m not recording my daughter, Lou. There will be witnesses. I’ll just be there. He printed the notices while I waited and signed them with the fountain pen he’s had since 1994.
On Thursday, Jordan came to check our smoke detectors. He showed up at 4 on Thursday, October 22nd, with a stepladder and a 9V battery in his shirt pocket. Before your trip, he said, “Can’t have you coming home to a chirping detector?”
I let him in. Roger stayed out in the barn because I asked him to and because I didn’t entirely trust his hands anywhere near Jordan’s collar. Jordan did check the smoke detectors.
He also took pictures of every room on his phone quickly the way you do when you think the other person isn’t paying attention. Then he measured the living room wall from the window to the corner. Thinking of a sectional for you guys, he said for Christmas.
We’ll be in Florida for Christmas, I said, or so I’m told. He laughed a little too loud. At the door, he stopped. Hey, Pat, while you’re gone, I should have the barn key for the snowblower.
Somebody has to clear the lane. No thank you. It’s just for emergencies. No thank you, Jordan. He pulled out his phone and called Melanie right there on the porch on speaker like a clerk calling in a supervisor.
Mom, Melanie said, just give him the key. Who’s going to plow while you’re gone? Herb’s nephew, I said. He’s plowed that lane for 20 years. We have a contract.
Jordan hung up on his wife. Then he leaned in close and low so I’d know it was just for me. Mel says it’s going to be ours anyway. Pat, I’m just keeping it up.
I looked at him for a long moment. I didn’t blink and I didn’t answer. He went down the porch steps with his step ladder and his 9V battery and his very clear idea of who I was.
He thought I had one house. That was the first thing he had wrong. Here’s what nobody in my family knew. In November of 2009, the same recession that cost Lynette’s crew their contract put half the duplexes in Holland’s Ferry into foreclosure.
Roger and I bought one on Larch Street at a sheriff’s sale for $61,000. It had a cavedin porch and a raccoon living in the pantry. Roger rebuilt that kitchen on weekends with two of his former shop students.
I wrote the lease, collected the rent, and did the books at our kitchen table after work. Then we bought another one and another. 17 years later, Larch Street Holdings LLC, which is Roger and me, and nobody else owns seven rental units in Holland’s Ferry.