“We haven’t spoken in five years,” Eustace said quietly.
Cordelia sighed, her guilt and shame multiplying like weeds in cow shit. “I know.”
She tried to focus on what her sister was telling her. Eustace wasn’t exaggerating. They really had thought themselves a genetic island of three for half their childhood. Once the existence of their living relatives came out, it seemed preposterous that she’d never considered them before. But Maggie had been so resolutely mum on the subject, it had never occurred to Cordelia to ask until her sister’s project. Even then, their mother had precious little to say about the shadowy aunt and uncle living in Connecticut, no matter how they plied her for information. And it was clear from her crisp tone and shifting eyes that she’d buried her feelings along with the details of their extended family. Whoever they were, Maggie had little use for them and even less regard. And considering their already reduced station, that didn’t paint a pretty picture of where they’d come from.
“Okay, Aunt Augusta is gone. Do we need to arrange a burial?” It was the least they could do for their last known living relative, but Cordelia wasn’t exactly flush after John’s stunts. She was teetering on destitution. She worried her sister would detect the tightness in her voice.
“Not exactly,” Eustace said.
She dropped her purse on the entry table beside the irises and slipped off her muddy slingbacks, leaving them on the Italian tile floor, padding down the long hall to the master bedroom into which Molly had disappeared. “Eustace, please. Don’t be cryptic. Just tell me what you need.”
After a moment, her sister said, “There was a will.”
Cordelia stopped just shy of the bedroom and spun around to lean against the wall. For a split second, hope dared to bloom in her heart, until she remembered the sour expression their mother wore whenever they mentioned their Connecticut family. Overthe countless occasions they’d needed money growing up, she’d made it abundantly clear they wouldn’t find it there.
She watched as the movers carried her pearl chesterfield sofa out the front doors, hailing a silent good-bye. The furniture would be listed online to pay her mounting hotel bill.
“What’d they leave us? The family collection of salt and pepper shakers?” She knew it was wrong to mock the dead, but under the circumstances, she couldn’t keep the sarcasm from her voice.
“They left us the house,” Eustace told her. “Augusta’s attorney contacted me as the eldest.”
“The ancestral seat, huh?” Cordelia wanted to take it seriously, but judging by how quickly her mother had fled Connecticut when she came of age, she doubted it was a palatial estate Maggie Bone had left in her wake. Still, property had a nifty way of appreciating, and Connecticut was expensive. Even a backwater hut would buy her some time, maybe allow her to reinstate the loan on the house until she could secure a buyer or get the worst of the payday lenders off her back. Perhaps their estranged family would turn out to be a godsend after all. A tiny sliver of light streamed down on her in the darkened hallway.
“More or less,” Eustace said.
Molly tapped her boss’s shoulder like a bird pecking at seed. Cordelia put up a finger to hold her off a moment longer. “I’ll get a contact for someone in one of the Connecticut offices and have them pull us some comps. We can decide on the list price together if you want, but we can have it on the market in a matter of days if we stick to anas-issale—”
“No.” Eustace sighed.
“What do you meanno?” It was a word Cordelia had never gotten used to hearing, even from her older sister. Which was another reason she excelled in real estate and struggled in personal relationships.
“I mean, we can’t do it that way,” Eustace said calmly.
Cordelia rubbed at her throbbing temples, trying to swallow her desperation. “Says who?”
“Aunt Augusta, apparently.”
Her headache was mushrooming, and a faint but sickening smell was just beginning to pierce her awareness. She pinched the bridge of her nose. “I don’t understand.”
“It’s all in the will,” Eustace told her. “In order to receive our inheritance, we have to go there. Also, to bury Aunt Augusta in the family plot or whatever.”
“Go where? Connecticut?” Cordelia was aware her voice had become shrill in that way John had so often complained about. Impromptu out-of-state vacations were not exactly factored into her budget or her schedule. She tried counting to six as she breathed in through her nose.
“To Bone Hill,” Eustace replied, beginning to sound a touch exasperated.
“Where or what isBone Hill?” Cordelia asked, feeling pressed between Molly’s heightening panic at her back and her sister’s maddening nonsense at her front.
“The house. The crypt. All of it,” Eustace answered.
Cordelia blinked. It wasn’t very common for houses to have names unless they were of a certain caliber. But that couldn’t be. “You mean, there’s a cemeteryonthe property?”
“Apparently,” Eustace told her.
The stream of light widened.
“Eustace,” Cordelia whispered into the phone. “How big is this place?”
Molly, unable to contain herself any longer, grabbed Cordelia’s arm and spun her around, tugging her through the bedroom door.
