She never spoke of her own mama without cursing. My sister Jemma used to ask about our grandmother all the time, because Jemma’s the youngest and is softer than a dandelion puff andDaddy’s folks died young, but Mama would always pin her lips like an angry horse and shake her head.
“That woman is dead to me,” she’d say.
“Whatever Grandma did, I never want to do it,” our middle sister, Cait, said back when we were little. “Mama’s scary when she’s angry.”
And she was. Even nature knew it. The sky always seemed to darken and thunder when Mama got mad, and it would rain when she cried. It was an unspoken rule among my siblings that we would avoid upsetting Mama on special days because nobody wanted their birthday party or graduation ruined by foul weather. I know it sounds crazy saying so, but we really believed it when we were little. Then we all grew up, and Mama and Daddy died, and now we never know what the weather will be like.
So it’s not that simple. I promised Mama that I would never go back to Arcadia Falls, but…
Do promises count, when one person up and dies? Does it really matter if Grandma Kirkwood is dead now, too? Surely Mama’s grudge died with the both of them, and as the eldest, I feel like this is one of those responsibilities that I need to shoulder. I’m desperate, and my sisters…
Well, let’s just say I’m the smart, dependable one who does the difficult things no one else wants to. It’s eldest daughter syndrome, big-time. Cait is the sharp, sarcastic one whose mind goes a mile a minute; she won’t get tested for ADHD, but coffee actually calms her down. Jemma is the sweet, romantic, loyal one for whom setting foot in Arcadia Falls would be tantamount to lying to Mama’s grave. If one of us has to go back and sort through the detritus of our estranged grandmother’s life, it has to be me.
I am intimately familiar with my own money issues, and Iknow my sisters—who live half an hour away in Birmingham—aren’t doing any better. Cait lost her nest egg in a bad investment last year, and Jemma tries to live a posh lifestyle on an entry-level salary. They may not be included in the will, but whatever Grandma Kirkwood left me, I won’t be stingy. We all need it.
I look down at my desk, dominated by the paper blotter Mr. Buckley insists I use to keep his calendar because he thinks cellphones are a fad. Mr. Buckley doesn’t—didn’t—pay me what I’m worth, but I check the job boards every week and I’ve never seen anything better within a reasonable driving distance. My life here for the past four years has been dependable but monotonous, boring, and uninspiring. The days all run together. Nothing new or interesting ever happens. There’s never enough money. I don’t have anything to look forward to. There’s no dating scene, outside of Billy. The best things in my life are my sisters, the library books I bring home every week, and Doris.
I’ve never given much thought to Arcadia Falls before, not as a real place. It was more some imaginary nightmare land, dark and forbidding, like the ogre-filled forest in a fairy tale that all good children knew to avoid. I do a search on my phone and find a cheerful website with an idyllic downtown square filled with cute restaurants, a general store, a place for kids to pretend like they’re panning for gold. There are no obvious ogres, although there is an old-fashioned town hall where you can take a photo in a crusty jail cell to post on social media.
It’s…surprising.
What’s so terrible about this place? I wonder. What did Arcadia Falls do to Mama that made her run away and never look back? When Jemma asked one day, Daddy said he’d never been there and had never met Grandma Kirkwood; he told us he’d learned very quickly never to ask his beloved wife about anythingthat happened before they met in college unless he wanted to ruin a good car wash.
I can see how my life in Cumberville would play out. I know that it will go on like this for the rest of my days, unchanging. The same breakups and makeups with the cute boy I’ve been dating since puberty. The same girls from high school at the Piggly Wiggly trying to get me to sell diet shakes with their MLMs. The same dead-end jobs with no raises or room for promotion—if I can even find one. The same worry each time I slide my bank card, unsure if I can keep up my folks’ place and still have enough money to eat. The same “doing the best I can and it’s never enough” feeling.
After work, I open my library book, desperate for an escape, and something falls out. A Georgia lottery ticket. When I scratch off all the little piles of money, I realize that I’ve won five hundred dollars.
I’ve never won anything before in my life besides a spelling bee.
The only thing is…I need to go to Georgia to claim that money.
It feels like a sign from the universe.
I have to go to Arcadia Falls.
2.
The decision made,I get down to business. I rent my folks’ house out to Leah and Tommy Billings so they can have their baby somewhere besides Tommy’s mom’s moldy basement. I convince Mr. Buckley to let me legally adopt Doris, as she hates him with a fiery passion and once bit a chunk out of his job-stealing niece’s arm at Easter brunch. He seems relieved and immediately draws up a contract, promising to continue to reimburse me for her care using the trust his mother left in her name. I pack up my things and Doris’s cage, tie everything down in my old Ford Explorer, and hit the road, praying that I won’t run into a certain towheaded tow-truck driver or his conniving cop brother on my way out of town.
The road trip is easy and fast, thanks to an engrossing audiobook. Doris loves the car—Mr. Buckley’s mother was very eccentric and took her everywhere—so she’s happy enough on her perch in the back seat. On the other side of Atlanta traffic, we stop so I can gas up cheap, get my five hundred dollars, and sendmy sisters a selfie with a giant water tower that saysCumming, and then we’re driving up into the mountains.
The moment I see theWelcome to Arcadia Fallssign, it’s like something lights up inside me. I’ve spent all my life in that cramped little house in the boonies outside Birmingham, but apparently my body recognizes the fresh mountain air that once lived in Mama’s blood. Maybe it’s the elevation, maybe it’s the collected oxygen of all these trees, maybe it’s two Diet Cokes and a large bag of Skittles, but it feels like I’m breathing more deeply than I have in my entire life.
Colonel Gooch’s law office sits on the outskirts of downtown proper, a quaint white house with green shutters surrounded by blue hydrangea bushes in full bloom and a massive fig tree that smells like boozy rot and sounds like happy bees. As I stand outside and stretch, the front door opens and a round little man with an eye patch, a shock of white hair, a mustache, and a dapper three-piece plaid suit steps onto the porch looking like the dandy piratical twin brother of the KFC mascot.
“Mr. Gooch?” I ask, hurrying to catch him before he can leave.
He looks up, startled, but his blue eye is dancing.
“Why, you must be Miss Kirkwood,” he says. “I’m sorry. I mean—Wolfe. The spitting image of your grandmother in her day. Well, our day. She was just two years ahead of me in school. Pretty as a picture. And please, call me Colonel.”
“Okay, Colonel.” I reach out to shake his hand, one sturdy pump, like we’re making a deal. “Were you in the armed forces?”
His visible eyebrow draws down like this is a sore and constant subject. “No. My mother, God rest her soul, had delusions of grandeur. I got off light. My brothers are named King and Duke.” He shakes his head and takes a cleansing breath. “I was just headed into town for lunch, if you’d care to join me?”
“Don’t we need to…sign the papers?” I’m not hungry, but I am financially desperate. I still don’t know if I’ve—we’ve—inherited an outhouse or a mansion, and the suspense is killing me. Every time I asked on the phone, he’d said, “You just have to see it.”
He flutters a hand in the air. “A formality. We’ll eat, and I’ll show you the property, and then we can get down to brass tacks. I don’t operate well on an empty stomach, do you?”
