The house on Willow Street looked like grief with windows.
It was a narrow three-story Victorian squeezed between two better-kept properties, its paint peeled down to wood, its porch sagging on one side like a tired shoulder. Ivy had crawled up the brick foundation. Half the shutters hung crooked. The front yard was more weeds than grass.
The attorney, Simon Grady, met him on the porch with a leather folder and the careful expression of a man who charged by the hour.
“She owned it outright,” Grady said. “Taxes paid through the year. No mortgage. There’s some deferred maintenance, obviously.”
“Deferred maintenance,” Ethan repeated, looking at a gutter dangling like a broken arm.
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