Chapter 8 - Selling the Cottage Started Before Jenna Broke the Sailboat
People later assumed I listed the cottage because Jenna slapped me.
No.
I began considering the sale two months earlier.
Eli was getting older.
His school commitments increased.
Soccer tournaments.
Friends.
Homework.
Spending weekends in Malibu increasingly meant long drives and missing:
birthday parties,
activities.
One Sunday he asked:
“Do we have to come here every weekend?”
That surprised me.
“You don’t like it?”
“I do.”
“Then?”
“My friends are at home.”
Home.
He meant the smaller house I rented closer to his school.
The Malibu cottage had become:
my idea
of what father-son time should look like.
Not necessarily:
his.
I asked:
“Would you care if I sold it?”
He shrugged.
“Can we still go to the beach?”
“Yes.”
“Then okay.”
That was humbling.
I had bought a multimillion-dollar property partly to prove divorce had not reduced:
our life.
Eli needed:
me.
Not oceanfront equity.
So I called Claire Donovan.
Broker.
She recommended:
light staging,
minor repairs,
pre-market photography.
I told my parents.
Mom said:
“You cannot sell the family house.”
I answered:
“It isn’t the family house.”
Dad said:
“Don’t get technical.”
Technical.
Another dangerous word.
I told Jenna too.
She laughed.
“You’ll change your mind.”
I gave her a date to remove:
anything personal.
She did.
Mostly.
By the day of Claire’s appointment, Jenna was living full-time in her own apartment.
She had no tenancy claim.
No lease.
No belongings except:
a coat,
beach bag,
some wine.
She still had the spare key because I had not taken:
the final step.
The sailboat incident gave me the clarity to do that.
Not the legal authority.
May you like
I already had that.
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