A Deal Is a Deal

Rob and I fell in love with our house at first sight.

We knew we couldn’t afford it, but we took to dropping by during the months it languished on the market, chatting up the owner, an elderly Austrian man, in the hopes that maybe he would see that we were meant to have it, despite our limited financial resources.

And on one such visit he told us about Charlie.

She was a pretty girl, he said, despite her advancing age. Many nights she didn’t have the means to feed her family and so she would tap on the back door. He didn’t mind. He had grown used to seeing her silhouette in the moonlight. He had grown to depend on her dependence.

“I worry,” he said. “I worry that whoever buys this house won’t look out for Charlie like I do, that they won’t care about her. She’s old now. She needs me.”

We will, we promised him. We will look after Charlie.

And he nodded. A deal is a deal.

“It’s time you made an offer,” he said.

And so we made an offer to buy the house. And it was way too low, but he accepted it to our great surprise. We were home owners.

And only a few days after we moved in Charlie tapped on our back door, just like we knew she would.