It’s gorgeous. The cottage is a single-story home tucked between cypress trees, lavender bushes, and grass that looks as fluffy as a baby lamb. You wouldn’t notice the quaint house if you weren’t paying attention. It seemed like an afterthought in comparison to the whimsical landscaping. I wouldn’t be shocked if fairies flew out and started tending to the land.
My mom ambles up the gravel path that leads to the house.
“The real estate agent is busy hosting an open house today, so she left us the keys,” she says.
“Why does it need a real estate agent?” I ask, realizing how out of my depth I am being given an entire house at the age of twenty-two.
“Well.” She sticks the key into the rounded door and wiggles it back and forth. “You’re about to have a lot of options, and since I know you don’t want to stay here, I figured we should have a real estate agent help you with all of them.” Her voice sounds brittle, like she doesn’t enjoy saying it.
All of my options.
A few months ago, I wouldn’t have been able to conjure up a single reason why I’d want to stay in Seabrook, California. I hadn’t been expecting to come home at all, and now I was entering my dream home, the property in my name.
My breath hitches as I walk inside. The ceilings are sloped and low. The wooden floors creak, and the floor plan hints at the age of the home, having a random two-step staircase down into the living room, which is merely a hop away from the kitchen.
“Watch your step. This is called a sunken living room. My grandparents had something like this,” my mom says as she walks ahead of me.
The space is so small it feels like you’re standing in the kitchen and the living room at the same time. Just enough space for some books, a desk to write my romance novels, and the husband and kids I hoped to have but could never fully picture.
My mom watches me take it in, face blank.
“I want to ask you what you think, but I don’t at the same time,” she says in a small voice, walking toward the bedroom without meeting my eyes.
“What do you mean? It’s… perfect.” At her silence I continue, “Right?”
She points at something behind me. “Look.”
I follow her finger to see the bedroom. But what she’s referencing must be the sliding glass doors leading into a garden. No, not just a garden. A lavender farm.
“Is that—” I rush over, slide the glass door open, and pad outside. “Oh my gosh,” I say, breathless. “Are you kidding me?”
Fluffy lavender heads float wistfully in the wind, huddled together like they’d die if they were pulled apart. There’s a rough path through the center of the yard made up of random stones and the occasional red brick. It’s barely visible through the forest of flowers growing discordantly on both sides.
“Lottie had a green thumb,” my mom says, coming up behind me. I can hear the smile in her voice. “She wasn’t the one maintaining this one, but she is the one who had the vision for the whole thing.”
“Why didn’t she ever show me this?” I ask.
“She bought it long before we ever moved in with her. Had been renting it out to family friends for years. And then in more recent years, she hired someone to manage it and started doing short-term rentals, so.” She shrugs. “She just… never got around to it, I guess.”
And now she never will.
It’s the closest we’ve gotten to acknowledging Lottie’s absence.
“But hey!” She reverts to the fake peppy voice I’ve learned to shrink away from. “She was clearly still thinking about you since she gave it to you.”
I nod. Lips pressing into a thin line.
“Yeah,” I say.
“But no pressure, sweetie. I know how much you wanted to go to New York, and this will still be yours even if you don’t decide to live in it,” she says with a forced lightness.
She’s trying to act like there’s no pressure to go one way or another, but her tone is off. Her body language is icy. Sometimes I wish there was pressure from her to stay. At least it would be a pure, unhidden desire. Expressed because it was true. Not a placation to prevent me from feeling guilty when I already do. Because this thing she does, skirting around topics, hiding emotions, putting on a fake happy voice when she’s clearly not feeling happy, makes me feel unsettled. Sometimes I just want to shake her shoulders and scream, “TELL ME HOW YOU REALLY FEEL, MOM!”
“Mom,” I start. “This whole like, ‘I know how excited you are to go to New York’ thing, you do realize why I want to go there, right?”
“Oh, yes, yes, yes, sweetie, I know! I know,” she says the words so fast, already waving her hands and shaking her head like she wants the conversation to stop. She turns around and enters the bedroom.
“No, stop for a second,” I say, voice stern.
