“I don’t think so,” Kelly tapped her phone screen. “That lawyer is legit, at least according to the English Bar Association. And look, this page says that the castle is currently held in trust for the Moore family, with four tenants living on site. Moore is your birth mother’s last name!”
“It’s a pretty common name. It doesn’t mean?—”
“You own a castle, Maeve,” Kelly squealed. “Acastle.”
Several members of the congregation spun around, tutting at Kelly under their breaths.
I grabbed Kelly’s arm and dragged her back from the edge of the crowd. We sat on a bench between two large family mausoleums, and I handed the letter over to Kelly while I scrolled through the Briarwood website on her phone, my chest fluttering with something like excitement crossed with nausea.
“What’s this?” I jabbed my finger at the small logo in the corner of the screen, declaring the castle an “English Heritage” site.
“Duh. Weren’t you paying attention? This isn’t some roadside curiosity like the Winchester Mystery House. Briarwood House is a legit castle in England.”
“England?”
“Yeah, you know, land of Queens and crumpets. That’s genuine Bridgerton shit right there, and it’s allyours.”
“My mother lived in a castle. Now I own a castle.” Nope, saying it out loud didn’t make it any less crazy. “But… what do I even do with a castle?”
“You live there, Your Majesty.” Kelly punched me in the arm. “Which is convenient, since you’ve recently become homeless. Geez, and I thought you were the smart one.”
“I can’t live there! It’s in England! How would I go to college and—” I remembered with a start that I wouldn’t be going to college now.
Unless I somehow managed to sell this castle, which I may or may not even own. I don’t know how much medieval real estate fetches these days, but I’m guessing it would be enough to pay for my tuition.
“Now she’s getting it.” Kelly squeezed my arm. “You’ve got nothing tying you here. You could go over, sign the papers, sell your castle, and live off the proceeds for probably the rest of your life.”
“Inflation and taxes would take a chunk,” I said. My hand trembled as I read the letter again.If my birth-mother used tolive at Briarwood, then if I sold the castle, I’d be losing the one link to her that I’ve had in the last twenty-one years.I’d never had anything of hers, not even a photograph. Just my name and a story Mom told me about the nuns in the orphanage crossing themselves furtively whenever the name Aline Moore was brought up, as if they thought she was a witch or something ridiculous like that.
To see where she lived, to touch the things that she touched, to maybe find a diary or her letters or photographs…
“I don’t know if I should sell it,” I said. “It belonged to my birth-mother. She wanted me to have it. But the money could pay for college?—”
“Do what the letter says. Go and visit it. Walk the ancient halls. Jump on the tiny medieval beds. Drink mead and wear corsets that squish your boobs. Who knows, maybe you will find a way to make some money off it without selling it. The website says they run tours. And doesn’t it come with a bunch of land? Maybe you have sheep or truffles or something. You could live in your castle and go to a school over there, like Oxley?—”
“Oxford,” I corrected her, my mind whirring. I’d never evenconsidereda foreign university. I knew the Crawfords would never have had the money to help me with that, even if I could get a scholarship, and international student fees wereinsane. But Kelly was right. With my own castle, maybe I didn’t have to worry about that. I could do whatever I wanted…
The problem was, the only thing I wanted was the one thing I couldn’t have: for the Crawfords to be alive again.
The idea of leaving Arizona made the nervous butterflies in my stomach crash into each other. Apart from the summer I spent at space camp in Alabama, I’d never even been out of the state. Going back to England… to a house – sorry,castle– that belonged to a mother I’d never met…
Kelly patted my shoulder. “Don’t look so horrified; you don’t have to decide right now. Just think about it. You’re always Miss Play-It-Safe, but I don’t want you to miss out on this just because you’re scared of a change.”
“I’m not scared…” I stared down at a map on the tenth page of the deed. It showed the location of the castle in a county called Loamshire, nestled between two towns called Crookshollow and Argleton. The map was old – not printed off Google but clearly a photocopy of hand-drawn cartography. I admired the intricate border and strange notations dotting the landscape. England looked like an entirely different world.
“You’re totally scared. You never do anything exciting or rebellious. Remember when Bobby Kennedy gave us that joint and you made me throw it in the trash and the Hunters’ dog ate it?”
I blushed at the memory of having to confess to Mr. and Mrs. Hunter that their dog was stoned. We would’ve got into far less trouble if we’d just smoked the damn thing. I shot back. “I had premarital sex. That was pretty rebellious.”
The sex was with Andrew, this sort-of geeky boy from my community college physics class who was obsessed with science fiction books. We were the two youngest members of the local astronomy club, which meant Andrew and I spent several warm Arizona nights tracking lunar phenomenon from the middle of deserted fields. One thing led to another and we spend most of last year making Jesus blush until he moved away for grad school.
The sex itself was underwhelming – the best thing about it had been the thrill of knowing I was breaking the Crawford’s cardinal rule, and the fact that Kelly was spitting with jealousy that she hadn’t done it first.
Yeah, the teenage rebellion was strong in me.
“So mediocre sex with a physics nerd is the most wild and crazy thing you’re ever going to do in your entire life?” Kelly snorted. “Excuse me while I yawn.”
I jabbed her in the arm, but her words stung. Kelly was right. I didn’t exactly take a lot of risks. I was saving all my risk-taking for the space program. But maybe that was the wrong attitude. Leaving the country to go live in a castle so soon after my parents’ deaths seemed like the stupidest idea in the world, but then, so did doinganythingexcept crawling into bed and sleeping until it felt okay again, which it never would.
