If You Were Here Read Online Free PDF

surrounded by built-in bead-board shelves. “Lovely,” we all murmur. The walls are covered in wallpaper—normally my nemesis—but it’s so rich and understated that at no point do I begin to look for loose corners to tug. We move on to the family room.
    One of the rules I’ve learned from watching the home-buying shows is that you’re not supposed to base your opinion on the homeowners’ possessions; rather you’re obligated to look beyond their stuff to see the real features, like double-paned windows, or the real problems, like a water-damaged ceiling. A professionally staged living room is great, but it doesn’t matter if the furnace is on its last legs and the house is located in a floodplain.
    Of course, the home- selling shows are all about staging, because it’s a fact that well-presented houses sell faster. 26 And even though my head understands that staging is nothing more than smoke and mirrors, my heart can’t help but leap when I see their furniture. “Oh, my God,” I exclaim. “They have the Lancaster sofa set from Restoration Hardware! That’s what we have! We already know exactly what it would look like if we lived here!”
    We pass through the breakfast area (sunny! airy!) and the well-appointed galley kitchen (a warming drawer! double ovens!) and into the narrow mudroom with the spanking new front-loading washer and dryer. Mac gets a faraway look on his face, lost in a daydream about all the towels and jeans we could wash in a single load. 27
    “Shall we check out the backyard?” Liz asks.
    We put our shoes back on and step out onto a tidy stone patio that overlooks half an acre of young trees, all enclosed by a new fence. “The dogs would have so much fun out here,” Mac remarks.
    “Yeah, not really. Daisy would pee on the patio and then demand to be let back into the house, and Duckie would do nothing but stand in the farthest part of the yard and protect us from falling leaves and squirrels with his nonstop barking. Then I’d have to wade through snowbanks in my slippers to get him to stop, because he never comes when he’s called,” I reply. “No, thank you.”
    “We have plenty of room to put in a pool,” Mac says.
    “And now I’m back on board with the yard.”
    We return inside, stomping off snow and reapplying the sockcondoms. We check out the cute basement and find it more than suits our needs. The ceilings are high and the windows well positioned to eliminate glare when setting up the home theater. There’s a wee office off the main part of the basement, and the second we step inside, Mac shouts, “Mine!”
    Off the office, there’s an additional storage area where we stumble upon a litter box. Okay, this? Is the biggest selling feature of all. Even though our current house is huge, there aren’t a lot of good places for the kittens’ boxes. No matter where I place them or how often I change the clay, the open-concept layout means the stink wafts through the whole place to the point that when visitors come over, they don’t notice the crown molding or cherry floors. Rather, the first thing out of everyone’s mouth is, “How many cats do you have?” Shameful.
    After a thorough basement inspection, we move up to the second floor. The first room we see must be the owners’ little girl’s room, because it looks like Easter has thrown up on a Disney film. Everything is either pale pink or mint green. Pink-and-green gingham ribbons suspend white wooden blocks spelling out SOPHIA over the big window. The floor is covered in a floral pastel rug in shades of green and gold, and a white chair rail divides the walls in half. The bottom part of the wall is ballet-slipper pink, and the top part is covered in pink toile wallpaper. Only rather than the traditional eighteenth-century pastoral scene of oxen and farmers and straw-roofed huts, the lime green line drawings are of bunnies and frogs in repose.
    “Obviously you’d want to change this,” Liz notes.
    Obviously.
    I