“Yeah. Can’t hold out my arms on either side of me without knocking into stuff.”
A peculiar pause. “What kind of stuff?”
I get that bad-faith awareness, the one that grips me every time we talk and makes my stomach churn—the one I forget about after we hang up because my brain is in perpetual repair mode and wants desperately to believe the best of people. “Vines, I mean. Just a bunch of vines. They’ve destroyed the windows and floors.”
“Oh?”
I can see her wheels turning. She’s considering driving out here. “The mold is wall to wall. And there’re about a thousand rats.”
“Eww. God.” I envision the face my rat-phobic mother is making and can’t help a slight smile. “You’re the only one named in the will, then?”
My smile slides off.
“Ahh...” The part of my cognizance that registers Wesley and screamsOH MY GOD IT’S JACKcan’t stop cataloging his movements, and my gaze tracks irresistibly to where his army-green Wellington boots are chafing a path through the yard. Back and forth he goes, house to dumpster, to house to dumpster, pitching armfuls of maybe, maybe-not junk. Not even discriminating. Could be throwing away antique buttons worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, but what does he care? “Mainly,” I reply at length. I’m not getting into the two-inheritors mess—she’ll suggest I take him to court, which Violet wouldn’t have wanted.
“I’m assuming I didn’t get anything, huh?” She tries to mask her hope with flippancy, but we grew up together. I can read Julie better than anyone.
“No. Sorry.”
“Sorry? Ha! Don’t be sorry forme. Bless your heart.” Her voicepicks up speed, antsier. “It was always a dump, anyway. If Violet had leftmethe house, there’s no way I’d want anything to do with it. No thanks.”
There’s so much I want to say in reply to this. If it was such a dump, then why’d she leave me there for a summer? Also, it was definitely not a dump. I know I didn’t invent how beautiful and clean it once was.Also, I haven’t forgotten that Mom begged to live there, too, back when I was ten and she dropped me off. Violet wouldn’t let her inside the house because Mom had tended to fill her pockets whenever she visited as a preteen.
“No offense, but the city’s better,” Mom’s saying. “There’s nothing out there in... what is the name of that dingy town? Youneedto come live here. I can help you find an apartment! We’ll go apartment-hunting and shop till we drop, on Alessandro’s Mastercard, of course.” She rolls the R inAlessandro.
“Maybe I’ll visit.”
The ten seconds of dead air that follow are confirmation that this call is like every other call, in which she gushes about how much she wants to see me but stops short of solidifying real plans.
“I gotta go,” she whispers. “Alessandro’s home.”
There’s yelling in the background, and she ends the call without hearinggoodbye.
I’ve never met Alessandro in person. She usually doesn’t answer my calls if he’s home becausehedoesn’t like kids, even adult ones. It’s why she hid the fact that she had a daughter from him for months—I’m a relic of her old life, which she’s worked so hard to shed, and even though she does love me, she has been, from the start, bent on outgrowing her maternal role as quickly as possible.
It isn’t that we never had any good times, it’s that the good times, in retrospect, are kind of sad. Adolescent Maybell held tightto trivial, evanescent mother-daughter moments that made her feel warm, giving their memories a loving glow when anyone else would’ve found them depressing. It’s rough when you have a nature that begs you to avoid heartache at all costs but also makes you wear your heart on your sleeve.
The jangling of drawers bursting apart in the dumpster jolts me to attention, and I fixate on Wesley. Sharing a house with a stranger who doesn’t like me is a punch to the stomach: either I cooperate with him or I end up homeless. Again. At least I’m not embarrassing myself fawning all over him, since the Jack debacle left a bad taste in my mouth that, whether Wesley deserves it or not, extends to anyone resembling Jack. I don’t look at him and hear angels plucking harp strings. I don’t feel a hot surge of anything like love—I look at him and want to sock him in the throat. It’s a nice surprise, personal-growth-wise.
“How are we going to live together?” I call out.
Wesley jerks. “What?”
“How does this work?” I take another stab at Authoritative Maybell and put my hands on my hips. “I get the first floor, you get the second?”
I’m not being serious, or at least I don’t think I am, but he shrugs. “Sure.”
“Who gets the third floor?” It’s more of an attic, and largely unfinished, but still valuable real estate to stake a claim for.
Another shrug. “The ghosts?”
And off he goes again. I can’t pin him to one place for the life of me. Fine! This is fine. I can get the ball rolling on my new life without him—it’s not like I need his opinion or help. I’ve never had very much of anything, but I have resilience, and I havethis.I have memories of Falling Stars being beautiful. I can make it beautiful again.
It occurs to me that I forgot to tell Wesley thank you for letting me stay with him in the cabin. Or maybe I have every right to stay with him, since I own half of everything.That’s an entitled attitude to have, I warn myself.
As I open my mouth to express my gratitude, he says, unprompted: “The house has always been gray.”
My mouth closes. Purses. I fade from his notice once more, no more interesting than a piece of furniture waiting to be sorted intokeep,donate, orthrow away.
