The man who answered didn't sound like a shark. He sounded like a guy named Marcus who liked baseball. Two hours later, Marcus was standing on Elias’s cracked driveway. He didn't cringe at the peeling paint or the dry rot. He walked through the rooms, noting the original crown molding and the stained glass above the landing.
The sign was a jarring, neon-yellow rectangle stapled to a telephone pole, its black block letters screaming against the backdrop of Riverside’s dusty palms: we buy houses riverside
He lived in a Victorian on the edge of the Wood Streets neighborhood—a house that had been in the Thorne family since 1924. It was a "grand old dame" that had long ago lost her luster. The wrap-around porch sagged like a tired eyelid, and the citrus trees in the backyard, once the pride of the county, were gnarled skeletons clawing at the smoggy Inland Empire sky. The man who answered didn't sound like a shark
Elias Thorne stared at it from the driver’s seat of his rusted pickup. To most, it was eyesore clutter. To Elias, it looked like an exit ramp. He didn't cringe at the peeling paint or the dry rot
