What She Inherits Read online

  WHAT SHE INHERITS

  Diane V. Mulligan

  WHAT SHE INHERITS. Copyright 2016 by Diane Mulligan. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any matter whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information contact Diane Mulligan, [email protected].

  FIRST EDITION

  Designed by Diane Mulligan

  ISBN 9781370463497

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  For Laura and Tommy, the best siblings in the world

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Part One

  Part Two

  Part Three

  Part Four

  Part Five

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  St. Katherine’s College, New Hampshire

  In her bag, Angela’s phone buzzed and buzzed, but she didn’t hear it. She had her headphones on, plugged into her computer, turned up loud. Florence and the Machine made ideal music to work to. Her project was due by the end of class at noon, and she hadn’t gotten the effect quite right. The shadows were very realistic and added perfect depth, but the texture was impossible. She could have given herself a simpler task, it was true, but what would be the fun in that? Still, it was 11:35, her eyes were blurry from staring at the computer screen, and she was starting to suspect her recent changes were taking her further from the outcome she sought, not closer. She leaned in close to the computer screen, zoomed in on a corner of the image to isolate a small sliver, and tried again, applying a filter. Better. She thought. Or worse? Hard to say.

  A tap on her shoulder and she jumped. Pushing her headphones down she glanced up at her favorite professor, the one she hoped would become her academic advisor when she finally filed the paperwork to declare her major next week. Professor Morgan was tough. She never hesitated to remind students how hard a career in the arts really was, and was therefore always unflinchingly honest in her assessment of students’ work.

  “Only a few more minutes. Can I see how it’s shaping up?”

  Angela rubbed her strained eyes and zoomed back out to put the full picture on the screen. The digital canvas showed a white-on-white design with slightly varied textures and tints and careful shadows so that it looked like an image made of layered cut paper, depicting a wintry landscape with sledding children and peeping woodland creatures. It was folksy but also modern and intricate. Angela had been working on it nonstop for two weeks.

  “Okay,” Professor Morgan said, squinting and cupping her chin with her hand. “Now tell me what you dislike about it.”

  Angela sighed. What was wrong with it? The tints still needed to be tweaked for the ideal balance. She needed there to be enough contrast but not too much. Also the texture. The texture was driving her nuts. Too smooth and it looked digital, which of course it was, but the whole point was to look real. Too textured it looked too clunky and rustic. She wasn’t after kitsch. She said, “It’s still not perfect.”

  Professor Morgan laughed. “Hand it in and live to fight another day, kid.”

  “But—”

  “Angela, it’s done. Seriously. It’s done and it’s fantastic.”

  A few other students glanced up from their own computers at this rare and unqualified praise. They shot Angela annoyed or encouraging looks and then went back to their own work.

  Unsatisfied but exhausted, Angela submitted the project and grabbed her bag. She didn’t open it to see the four missed calls from an unknown number on her phone screen. Instead, she strolled out of the library annex where the design lab was and into the perfect September day, her head tilted toward the sun, letting the breeze wash the tension from her shoulders. Her short, honey-brown hair was greasy with neglect from an all-nighter in the lab, and she ran a hand through it, not caring if it stood on end. On a day so lovely, how could she care what she looked like?

  Blue sky, leaves turning yellow and crimson around the stately red-brick college buildings, sun glinting off the leaded glass windows, the midday air warm, but the breeze carrying the crisp scent of fall. Students lounged on the green near the dorms, taking full advantage of the golden day. Already nights in this New Hampshire town were cold. Soon the true colors of the place—the gray and white of ice and snow—would show themselves.

  Molly, one of Angela’s roommates, had claimed a patch of grass under a massive maple tree whose leaves were bright flame. With her porcelain skin, Molly always chose shade. She called to Angela, who made her way through a game of ultimate Frisbee, past the stoners and their impromptu drum circle, to the blanket where Molly sat with a novel and a pile of snacks. Angela tossed her bag on the edge of the blanket without a thought for her phone, which was buzzing again, unbeknownst to her, another call from the unknown number. Why would she check her phone? It wasn’t even noon on a Thursday. Maybe there was a text from Molly saying she’d be on the green, but Angela had already found her, had needed no messages to locate her. Nicole, their other roommate, would soon be done in the chem lab, and she would find them, too. It was no secret that on a postcard-perfect fall day, that if you wanted to find anyone, try the green first.

  “Project all done?” Molly asked as Angela flopped onto the blanket.

  Angela offered a murmur of assent as she stretched her legs in front of her and folded forward so that her head rested on her knees, her hands clasped around the soles of her feet.

  “Show off,” Molly said.

  Angela was showing off, and she didn’t mind at all. A day so ideal seemed to beg everyone to show off, to do their best, to meet the day in its perfection. She sat up and rocked backwards, drawing her legs up over her head and turning a backwards somersault to return to a sitting position, one of those tricks from her childhood gymnastics that was automatic, like riding a bicycle. Molly chucked a cellophane wrapped sandwich at her and rolled her eyes.

  “It’s the weekend,” Angela said, tearing the wrapping from the sandwich.

  As juniors, both women understood the importance of selecting one’s classes so that the weekend began at lunch on Thursday. Nicole, lab rat that she was, considered them wasteful squanderers of opportunity for discounting every single class that met Thursday afternoon or Friday, but they had learned to ignore her ages ago.

  “Want to go to Millers Falls after lunch? Get in one last swim for the season?” Angela asked. Between the weather and the relief of having handed in her project, however imperfect, she was giddy. She needed an outlet for her energy, and Millers Falls was perfect. The clear, cold pool at the bottom of a small but peaceful waterfall within walking distance of campus had never sounded more inviting, even if it was likely to be teeming with other students.

  “Glad to see you’re feeling better today,” Molly said, picking at her own sandwich.

  “Do we need to get into that now?” Angela asked. The last thing she wanted to do was ruin her good mood by thinking about the fight she’d had with her mother the evening before.

  “What if she follows through, though? Have you even thought of that?”

  Of course Angela had thought of her mother’s threat to stop payment on her tuition. She had gone back to the computer lab after dinner last night to throw herself into her work because otherwise she’d make herself sick with worry. Her mother did not bluff.

  “Look, Nicole and I really think you should suck it up and do what she wants.”

  Of course Molly and Nicole had discussed her situation without her, and of course they
were siding with her mother. Angela suspected she should be bothered by the fact that her best friends, on more than one occasion, had had these little powwows to discuss her problems, but that wasn’t the part that irritated her. The real issue was that they insisted on trying to talk her out of making her own decisions, like she was a little kid and they were the grownups who knew best. They meant well, and she loved them, but she wondered if they realized how condescending they were sometimes. They acted like she was some country bumpkin from the deep South just because she was from South Carolina, but she was from the resort area of St. Nabor Island—not exactly a backwater or broke-down farm region—and was the daughter of parents from Massachusetts. She spoke with hardly a hint of a Southern accent, just the occasional, convenient y’all, and her most Southern traits were a fondness for grits and hush puppies. New Englanders, she’d learned since living here, had something of a superiority complex.

  “I already did what she wanted by coming here in the first place,” Angela said. She stuffed the rest of her sandwich—most of it; she’d hardly eaten a bite—into the cellophane and got up to throw it away. She had no appetite now. Her stomach was working itself back into an intricate knot.

  “Do you want something else to eat? You must be starving,” Molly said.

  Angela clenched her jaw. It was so Molly, playing mommy again, telling silly little Angela to eat her food.

  “It’s not like you can’t double major,” Molly said when Angela didn’t respond. “Go ahead with studio art, but then do something practical, too.”

  “Wait, remind me again, how is your medieval studies major practical? What jobs does it qualify you for?”

  Molly’s pale face colored, but her Admissions Tour Guide training kicked in, and she answered calmly, ever the good, patient mommy, with her practiced response: “A liberal arts degree prepares students for a wide range of jobs. It teaches us how to think and—”

  “Thank you. I read the brochure three years ago,” Angela said.

  Angela was considering leaving, going off to Millers Falls on her own, when Nicole arrived. Nicole didn’t have to try to look like a fashion model, with her tumble of thick, glossy curls, her full lips, and startling, bright blue eyes. If Angela and Molly felt plain by comparison, though, Nicole’s nerdiness made up for it. She was an unapologetic geek.

  “It’s a beautiful day. Why so glum?” Nicole said, grabbing a bag of chips from Molly’s assortment of snacks.

  “Can y’all just not?” Angela said, reaching across the blanket and grabbing her bag. She would bury her face in her phone and ignore Nicole and Molly until they got the hint, and maybe then they could all have a nice afternoon. But when she pulled the phone from her bag, she saw that she had six missed calls and two voice messages, all from an unknown number with a South Carolina area code. If it was a telemarketer, it was a persistent one.

  Walking away from Nicole and Molly, she pressed play and listened to the first message.

  “Angela, this is Mrs. Porter. Please call me back, honey.” Then she slowly listed her phone number, as if she didn’t know that Angela’s cell phone would store it in missed calls. Mrs. Porter lived next door to her mother on St. Nabor Island, South Carolina. Although they’d lived next to each other for years, they hardly knew each other except to say hello in passing. There was no logical reason for Mrs. Porter to call her. How did Mrs. Porter even have Angela’s phone number?

  She pressed play on the second message. “Angela, honey, it’s Mrs. Porter again. It’s very important that you call me back, dear. It’s about your mother.”

  Seriously? Angela thought. Her mother had discussed her with Mrs. Porter? Angela hadn’t imagined that her mother was particularly bothered by her empty nest, but if she was striking up friendship with Mrs. Porter, who had to be about ninety years old, maybe Angela had underestimated how much her mother missed her. She walked back to the blanket and dropped her phone back on top of her bag.

  “Everything okay?” Nicole asked.

  “Who’s ready to go swimming?” Angela asked.

  Chapter 2

  Devil’s Back Island, Maine

  As the bells on the door of the Beach Plum Café jangled at Rosetta’s entrance, her poodle Bentley at her heels, Casey shoved the piece of paper she’d been studying into the back pocket of her jeans as if she feared it would grow wings and fly into her great-aunt’s hands. For two weeks, she’d been avoiding Rosetta, but the evasion couldn’t go on forever, not on an island as small as Devil’s Back. She braced herself to face Rosetta’s uncanny ability to read her mind.

  Rosetta tried and failed to flatten her fly-away cloud of white hair as she came in from the breezy afternoon. From the rosy glow on her cheeks, Casey guessed she had just finished her afternoon walk.

  “Where is everybody?” Rosetta asked, coming around behind the counter to help herself to coffee.

  “Is this the slowest September in memory?” Casey asked.

  “Ayup,” Rosetta said in an affected Maine drawl. Though she’d lived on Devil’s Back since the 1980s, by Maine standards she was not “from Maine.” Thirty years of residency didn’t change the fact that she was a Masshole, born and raised, as far as true Mainers were concerned. She owned the island’s only hotel, the Wild Rose Inn, and almost never left the island anymore, but compared to third and fourth generation islanders, she’d always be a newcomer.

  Rosetta stooped to examine the bakery case and then helped herself to a shortbread cookie, which she took back around the counter to a table.

  “Sit with me,” she said. It wasn’t a request.

  Casey sighed but did as she was told. She folded her arms on the table, positioning herself so that her tattoo, which covered her entire left arm, was mostly hidden. She knew Rosetta hated it. Even after all this time, Rosetta’s eyes would still drift to the tattoo as if pulled by the magnetic force of the intricate design.

  “How long did you think you could avoid me?”

  Casey shrugged.

  “All right then spill it. What’s going on?”

  Casey pursed her lips and considered how she might answer. She loved Rosetta, and she literally owed everything she had and was to Rosetta, but sometimes the woman was a pest. Casey was thirty-seven years old. Old enough to keep secrets if she wanted to. But when Rosetta insisted on treating her like a child, it was easy to fall into childish submission. Still, she wasn’t ready to talk to Rosetta about what was on her mind. She wasn’t sure she ever would be. She twirled a lock of her bright red hair around her finger and studied it, cross-eyed and silent. She made a mental note to order more hair dye and let Rosetta’s question go unanswered.

  “Is it about that boy you’ve been seeing?” Rosetta asked. “Because if that’s what it is, you should know better. You’ll get no judgment from me, even if you are making a damn fool of yourself.”

  This was a perfect excuse, presented to her on a platter. She didn’t particularly wish to discuss her sex life with Rosetta, didn’t care for her no-judgment judgments, but it was better than the truth.

  “It’s stupid, I know,” said Casey.

  “You got that right,” Rosetta said. “For heaven’s sake, he’s half your age.”

  “Not half. He’s twenty-three.”

  Rosetta gave a little snort and reached down to give Bentley the end of her cookie.

  “We’re not exactly serious,” Casey said.

  “Aren’t you a little old for this screwing around?”

  Maybe, Casey thought, but what the hell? She wasn’t hurting anyone.

  “One day you’re going to wake up and realize that you’re ready to settle down and have a family, and then you’ll find out your eggs have turned to dust in there, and how will you feel then?”

  This again. If her current life wasn’t “settled,” no life ever would be, but she had no intention of getting married or having kids. She was fine on her own, here in her safe, cozy bubble away from all the madness of the world.

  “Don’t
you roll your eyes at me. You’ll see.”

  This was Rosetta’s own regret, Casey knew. It hadn’t been Rosetta’s choice to be childless. She and her husband Phil had tried, but it never happened for them. But things had turned out okay for Rosetta. She had been more of a mother to Casey than Maureen, her actual mother and Rosetta’s niece, had ever been. Now Rosetta had Casey to care for her. She of all people should understand that you don’t need to have children to have family.

  “He’s great in bed, though,” Casey said, flashing Rosetta a wicked grin.

  “You’ll be the death of me.”

  Then, thankfully Rosetta changed the topic of conversation to the plans for Halloween Haunting Fest, a scheme she’d concocted a few years ago to push tourist season to the end of October. She had begun advertising the island as “America's Most Haunted Island.” On whose authority she made this claim Casey did not know, but she did know that exploiting death stories under the guise of ghost stories was wrong. Did two weeks’ worth of travelers truly bring in enough income to justify reveling in morbid tales of loss? Casey doubted it. She hated all the ghost hunting shows that had become so popular on TV, and she hated the tourists who went off on ghost adventures after watching those shows.

  Rosetta pulled a glossy brochure from the pocket of her jacket announcing the 5th Annual Halloween Haunting Fest on Devil’s Back Island and slid it across the table to Casey.

  “These are in every rest area on I-95 from the New Hampshire border to Bar Harbor and still I have vacancies at the inn,” she said. “I’m trying online ads to try to target new visitors.”

  Casey picked up the brochure, which sported a sepia-toned picture of a woman in old-fashioned dress walking on the beach between the massive horn-shaped rocks that formed the geological feature for which the island was named. The woman’s dress billowed and some of her hair escaped her Puritan cap. She was looking back over her shoulder at the camera. She was also made to appear somewhat transparent.