POKING AROUND ON websites for local real estate agencies, Liz discovered that a former Seven Hills classmate named Shane Williams was, by all appearances, successfully selling houses to and for Cincinnatians, among them several professional athletes; Bengals and Reds players both offered written testimonies of Shane’s aptitude. While Hyde Park didn’t seem to be the main area where Shane conducted business, he had nevertheless sold a handful of properties within a few miles of the Tudor. Liz remembered Shane fondly; he had been warm and outgoing not only in high school but also the three or four times they’d crossed paths in their twenties, when their classmates had gathered at bars the night before Thanksgiving.

However, in spite of Shane’s professional credentials and personal charm, Liz wasn’t certain she should contact him. The reason she wasn’t certain was that Shane was black and her mother was racist. As with her anti-Semitism, Mrs. Bennet’s racism was of the conversational, innuendo-laden variety. She would never be so ignorant as to announce that black people were less intelligent or moral than their white counterparts, but without compunction she’d tell Liz not to shop at the Kroger in Walnut Hills because it was “dirty,” and once at Christmas when Liz had suggested giving Mervetta a cashmere sweater, Mrs. Bennet had said, “For heaven’s sake, Lizzy, Mervetta wouldn’t appreciate cashmere.”

Liz was pretty sure a black adult had never visited her parents’ house in a social capacity. Over the years, black men had fixed the Bennets’ balking dishwasher and overburdened air-conditioning pumps, had removed their garbage and repaved their driveway; and for more than a decade, Mervetta had arrived at the Tudor every other Friday at eight A.M. to vacuum their carpets and scrub their toilets. But it was only ever black girls, Seven Hills classmates, who, in attending birthday parties and sleepovers, had been invited into the Tudor simply to enjoy themselves. And whether or not Liz contacted Shane wouldn’t change this fact; he, too, would be an employee.

Yet surely hiring the kind of white, female, middle-aged real estate agent her parents might run into at the country club was a bad idea, and likely to spread gossip about the financial situation in which the Bennets had found themselves. There was, of course, such an abundance of white, female, middle-aged real estate agents that Liz certainly could find one who didn’t belong to the country club and whom her parents didn’t know. But she liked the idea of working with someone familiar.

Was it delusional to hope that her mother’s potential discomfort about Shane’s race would be eclipsed by her far greater discomfort about needing to move? Be the change you wish to see in the world, Liz thought, and she emailed her former classmate.