That surprised people.
Bernard offered, Angela offered, and a cousin of Celia’s I had never met offered a house in Charlottesville with a horse in it, and I said no to all of them, because Eli had a library on Wednesday and four songs in a particular order, and I had learned, the hard way, that a bigger life is not the same as a better one.
I bought the townhouse instead.
Not with the trust.
Celia’s money was Eli’s and I did not touch it, and I never will, and that is the whole point of a trustee.
I bought it with a mortgage, in my own name, from Cedar Row Residential, LLC, whose sole member, in March, under advice of counsel, under the eye of a judge who had said the landlord was on notice, sold it to me at the county’s assessed value, which was eleven percent less than what he had been charging me in rent for five years would have paid for.
