The intake form listed the property as occupied, single resident, thirty-one years. Porel did long-term occupied properties the same way she did any other: room by room, working outward from the center.
The kitchen held almost nothing. The residue of meals, of morning coffee, of one argument sometime in the second decade that had diffused across the room over several years until it was barely detectable. She noted this: light accumulation, no concentrations, single pass sufficient.
The living room was quiet. A gathering space, used for company, which meant the accumulation was shallow, the particular thinness of rooms that hold other people's presence rather than the resident's own. The second bedroom held the residue of two or three nights of grief, closely held. The master bedroom held nothing Porel could identify as the result of thirty-one years of habitation. She walked through it twice.
She came back to the kitchen.
The woman, Yolen, sixty-three, moving to be closer to her daughter, was standing at the window with a cup of tea. She had been hospitable in a contained way: offered tea, said help yourself to the kitchen, then stepped back and let Porel work.
"I'd like to do one more pass," Porel said.
"Of course."
She went through the house again. This time she wasn't looking for accumulation. She was looking for the shape of its absence. Thirty-one years of living, and the residue should have been dense in the bedroom, legible in the kitchen, present in any room where someone spent significant time. The absence had a shape. It was consistent. It was everywhere.
She was nearly to the front door when she stopped.
The threshold. Just inside the front door, at the point of first entry. Something very small, very old. Approximately thirty-one years. A single accumulation point, the size of a contained moment, carried in and set down at the entrance and never moved.
Whatever it was, it had arrived when she did. Nothing since.
Porel stood at the threshold for a moment, then continued out the front door and back to the kitchen.
She wrote in her folder. Under SUMMARY: Single accumulation point. Front door threshold. Age: approximately 31 years. No secondary accumulation. House is clear for transfer.
She placed the folder on the kitchen table.
Yolen picked it up and read it. She read it twice.
She looked up. "What does this mean?"
"It means the house is ready," Porel said.
Yolen nodded. She put the folder down. She turned back to the window.
Porel let herself out the front door.