What She Inherits Read online

  “I can’t believe you got Barb to pose for this,” Casey said, shaking her head.

  “Don’t start with me. What I came to talk about was catering. I want to have refreshments up at the meeting house for before and after the ghost tours.”

  “Do I have to?” Casey asked, her voice dipped dangerously close to a childish whine.

  “It’s good extra business for you. It makes sense.”

  “Does it make sense to abandon my integrity for a few bucks?” Casey would greet the ghost hunters with as much cheer as she could muster when they came to the café, but she did not want to get involved in the farce of a festival itself.

  “This isn’t about integrity, it’s about entertainment.”

  Yes, entertaining fiction, Casey thought, because the ghost stories that featured prominently in Rosetta’s ghost tours were invented. They were based on historical figures and historical events so that if some sleuth wanted proof, they could at least find evidence to corroborate the normal (as opposed to the paranormal) side of the story, but as for the ghosts themselves, those were made up. Even if Rosetta was serving up real ghosts, though, Casey would not have been on board. The dead should be left undisturbed.

  “Do I have a choice?” Casey asked.

  “Are you asking me to play the boss card?” Rosetta replied.

  Casey shrugged.

  “Fine. As your boss, I’m insisting.”

  After Rosetta left, Casey flipped the sign on the café door to closed—there was no sense in staying open when there were no customers—and went upstairs to her little apartment, where she took the well-worn piece of paper out of her pocket and read it again. When the letter first arrived, the sight of her mother’s perfect Palmer script made her shoulders tense. She was past that now. Now it made her head ache, but she couldn’t stop reading it over and over anyway. She knew she should burn it and be done with it. She was on her third read when she heard the back door open. Hastily she tucked it into her pocket, just as Jason announced himself. Exactly what she needed. A little distraction.

  Chapter 3

  St. Katherine’s College, New Hampshire

  Later, when the girls returned to the dorm with wet hair and smelling of pond water, they found a note on the door of their room from the RA asking Angela to see her as soon as she got back.

  “Oh my God,” Molly said. “You don’t think your mom has already contacted the school?”

  Angela rolled her eyes. It was probably nothing. There were dozens of reasons for the RA to want to see her. Maybe the fire inspector had been in and saw the candle (with a pristine, never-been-burned wick, for the record) on her dresser. Or maybe she wanted to borrow Angela’s notes from the history class they were taking together. Or maybe, given her ass-length, unstylish hair, she wanted to ask Angela where she got her fantastic, funky haircut. It could be anything.

  “Do you want me to come with you?” Nicole asked.

  “It’ll be fine,” Angela said, leaving her at the door.

  The RA, whose name Angela could not remember—something like Emily or Jennifer, a name shared by a dozen women in their dorm alone—was sitting in her room with the door open. She leapt up when Angela knocked.

  “Come in, come in,” she said, moving her books around to make room for Angela to sit at the foot of her narrow dorm bed.

  “What’s up?” Angela asked suspiciously. She crossed her arms and sat on the very edge of the bed.

  “Hang on,” the RA said. She picked up her landline phone and punched in four digits to call another number on campus. This, Angela realized, was not a good sign. “Madeline? Yes, she just got here.”

  For a moment, Angela felt both relieved and confused. Whoever Madeline was, she wasn’t anyone terribly official if an RA was calling her by her first name. Then the RA held the phone out for Angela.

  “Angela? This is Madeline Fontaine, Director of Residential Life.”

  Angela’s heartbeat sped up. Jesus. Her mother had acted fast. The Director of Residential Life was calling to tell her how much time she had to pack her bags, meanwhile she hadn’t even filed the paperwork to officially declare a major.

  “I’m afraid I have some bad news, and there’s really no good way for me to say this,” Madeline Fontaine went on.

  Angela sat very still, as if she could stop time and prevent this woman from continuing to speak if she just didn’t move.

  “It’s about your mother. We had a call this afternoon. Your neighbor, I think, a—” Angela heard her shuffling papers, “—Mrs. Porter, said she tried repeatedly to reach you.”

  She wished this woman would come out and say what she needed to say.

  “I got her messages,” Angela said tersely.

  “You did? Oh. Okay.” Madeline sounded much relieved, but then she said, “Um, but you didn’t call her back? You didn’t speak to her?”

  “No. I’ve been busy.”

  “Angela, I’m really sorry to have to tell you this, but we’ve had calls from the St. Nabor Island police and your neighbor, and it seems they didn’t know how else to reach you, so I’m afraid I have to give you some bad news. Your mother had a stroke this morning.”

  Angela felt like she’d had the wind knocked out of her. Last night she and her mother had the worst fight they’d ever had, and then her mother had a stroke?

  “Is she okay?” Angela asked.

  “I’m so sorry,” Madeline Fontaine said. “She passed away. When the paramedics arrived, she was already gone.”

  Angela set the phone down on the RA’s bed and got up and walked as if in a trance back toward her room. The RA caught up with her halfway down the hall and put a hand on her shoulder.

  “Can I do anything for you? Is there any way I can help?” she asked.

  Angela shrugged off her hand.

  “We can help you make arrangements to get home,” the RA said. “Madeline said she can come right over if you want.”

  Angela ignored her and continued down the hall. She didn’t need the RA’s pity or the Director of Res Life’s mothering. She had friends. The RA walked beside her, though, reciting empty expressions of comfort—how it would all be all right, and how her mother was in a better place now.

  Molly and Nicole were sitting in their room with the door open. Angela stepped inside and shut the door on the RA’s face, and then she leaned back against it and slumped down to the floor. She tried to swallow the sob that had been working its way into her throat, but she couldn’t. She gasped and began to cry.

  “What happened?” Molly said, crossing the room and kneeling in front of her.

  “She’s dead,” Angela managed to say.

  “What?”

  “My mother. She died.”

  Molly leaned forward and pulled Angela into an embrace and let her cry until she ran out of tears for the moment. Then she helped Angela up and over to her bed, where Angela curled into a ball.

  Nicole climbed into Angela’s bed and spooned her, and Angela began to weep all over again. Eventually, she cried herself to sleep. Nicole woke her up a few hours later to see if she wanted any dinner. She didn’t. Molly, meanwhile, had been busy making arrangements. She’d taken Angela’s phone and called Mrs. Porter to learn more about what had happened, and she’d arranged for the three of them to fly to Savannah the next morning. Apparently, Madeline Fontaine had visited shortly after Angela fell asleep, and she was going to contact Angela’s professors and let them know about the situation. Angela felt numb as Molly explained all of this. Her professors were the least of her concerns.

  What she kept thinking was that she needed to call her mother. That’s what she did when something big happened and she needed help. She called her mother. Now she could never call her mother again.

  “Don’t worry, we’ll take care of you. We’ll take care of everything,” Molly had assured her, and Angela had started crying, hysterically, all over again. There was an endless supply of tears, it seemed, and absolutely no words to describe what she was
going through.

  That night Angela didn’t sleep. Gradually the reality was setting in. Her mother was dead. Her beautiful, hard-working, devoted mother. Her pushy, stubborn, stuck-up mother. Her vain, meticulous, short-tempered mother was dead.

  Already Angela missed her the way a sailor misses the sea. Her mother was the ocean that buoyed her up, the current that carried her through her life, and the white-capped waves that threatened to drag her under. Without her mother, she was alone on dry land, and the land seemed to move under her feet because she’d been so long at sea. Like a mariner in the desert who understands that she’ll never feel the salt spray on her face again, never look out over vast stretches of glistening blue water beneath a clear blue sky again, never walk the deck triumphantly the morning after a gale again, she felt that she suddenly had no idea who she was. Without her mother to guide her, to oppose her, to see her always to safe harbor, how could she survive?

  Only recently had their relationship become oppositional. For most of her life, her mother had been her best friend and biggest cheerleader. Yes, she had been stern, had held Angela to near-impossible standards, had been slow to praise and quick to criticize—but Angela knew that everything she did, she did out of love. This Angela never questioned.

  Her mother’s mission in life was to keep Angela safe and provide her with only the best, and from that mission she did not stray. When she insisted upon early curfews or refused to let Angela go out with kids she deemed too wild, Angela didn’t argue. Her parents lost a son before she was born, and she understood that her mother lived with the fear that something terrible might happen to her.

  Ryan had been seventeen when he died in an avoidable car accident. Dumb teenagers, driving too fast at night on a road slick with black ice, too cool for seat belts. Angela was born the year after he died. Her mother called her a late-in-life miracle baby sent to draw her parents from their grief. Her mother was forty-four when she born, her father fifty-six.

  Had she saved her parents from their grief? she wondered. Perhaps for a time, when she was too young to have a mind of her own. Once she started getting ideas, well... she wasn’t Ryan. Her mother wanted a replacement for her golden boy who never could do wrong (except that one time, that one time when he didn’t fasten his seatbelt, when he let that irresponsible friend drive), and what she got was a willful girl who resisted most things her mother wanted her to do. Actually, a lot of people, her father among them, teased that the reason Angela and her mother always fought was that they were too alike, and Angela suspected that this was true, but she denied it every time anyway. And though they butted heads over all sorts of things from Angela’s choices of clothing to her desire to study art, her mother was her best friend. She could fight with her mother, because she knew they’d always forgive each other. She suspected that she had done more to ease her mother’s grief than she had her father’s.

  Angela wondered if anyone had told her father that his wife had died, and if they had, did he understand? He’d been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s ten years earlier, and had lived for the past five years in a nursing home. When he’d been diagnosed, the doctors had said that most patients live only eight years after diagnosis. But then again, he’d been relatively young and fit at the time. Still, what kind of miserable God would take away her mother, who was only 64 and who had always appeared to be the picture of health, while letting her father’s body plod on despite the fact that his mind was locked tight against the world?

  In the morning, when Molly and Nicole woke, Molly directed them all in a flurry of activity. They were to fly out of the airport in Manchester that afternoon. Angela let Molly tell her what to do, thankful in this instance for Molly’s maternal instinct. She was so fully in a daze that it hardly registered to her that Molly and Nicole were both spending money they probably couldn’t afford to spend, and missing classes they probably couldn’t afford to miss, to stay by her side through her mother’s funeral. This only dawned on her as their plane touched down in Savannah. She was so lucky to have such good friends. Her eyes filled with tears again, and Molly mistook this for another wave of grief, but really they were tears of gratitude. Angela let Molly wrap her arms around her and hold her as the plane taxied to the gate.

  Grace Crowley, Angela’s mother’s business partner, met them at the Savannah airport and drove them the forty-five minutes or so to the island. When Angela was a little girl, there wasn’t much in Palmetto Landing across the bridge from the island. Then there had been a brand-new outlet mall and a few golf courses, but now the highway was lined with developments of condos and cookie-cutter houses, the sales of which had made her mother a wealthy woman. As they crossed the bridge, Grace rolled down the windows and salt air filled the car. It was a beautiful September day. Blue sky, warm, not too humid, perfect for beach-combing.

  Just as development in Palmetto Landing had exploded in the late 90s and early 2000s, so had development on the island. So much newness everywhere. Even though Angela had seen it happen, it still startled her when she crossed the island and saw all the new plazas and housing developments. She thought of the island as it had been when she was a kid, businesses tucked away behind trees, even fast-food signs small and low, not lit up, so that strangers were always having to circle back around, having missed the turns they were seeking. There were still strict rules about landscaping and building styles, but with so many new things appearing, the island no longer felt like an exclusive retreat from the world. Now it was another overrun beach and golf destination.

  Still, it was home with all its familiar comforts, and Angela felt the reflexive relaxation she always felt as they passed her favorite old haunts, and then she felt an overwhelming sorrow as they made their way to the far side of the island, to Ocean Pines, where her mother’s house was. How long would this be home? Not long, she supposed. She couldn’t afford to live here, that much was certain.

  Ocean Pines Plantation, on the Southern tip of the island, home to the Jackson Golf Links with its iconic final hole near the Jackson Lighthouse, was one of several gated communities on the island, and if one stayed away from the small, commercial village of Jackson and the touristy Meadows River Marina, it was quiet and peaceful. They passed the gatehouse and made their way along the tree-lined road. Houses designed to blend into the natural beauty of the place were nestled away from the road in cocoons of pristine landscaping.

  “You grew up here?” Molly asked, awe in her voice, as they drove. Molly was from Lowell, Massachusetts and had never been outside of New England before, let alone to a resort island like this.

  “We moved here when I was eight. We lived across the bridge in Palmetto Landing before that, but this is where my mom planned to retire, so this is where she bought her dream house,” Angela said. And now she’ll never get to live that dream, Angela thought, squeezing her eyes shut against tears.

  The house was near the Meadows River Marina, but not so near that her mother would be annoyed by tourists and their traffic. It was a modern two-story with a two-car garage and a big porch. It was not oceanfront—her mother had been successful, but not quite that successful—but it was only three rows back, and the path to the beach ran alongside the yard between their property and the neighbor’s. The landscaping provided screening for the yard and there was a hot tub out on the deck.

  Angela wondered if she could manage to hold onto the house as a rental property. Maybe it could pay for itself for now with rental income. Surely keeping such a place in the family was a good idea. She’d ask Grace later, she told herself, feeling guilty for thinking in terms of property when she was about to enter the house where her mother had died.

  Grace cut the engine and Angela led everyone inside. It smelled like her mother’s perfume and the laundry detergent she used and the scented candles she burned. It smelled like home. Angela had to sit down to keep from falling down. She wasn’t ready to face the empty house. She would never be ready. But here she was, and what choice did she have?
/>   Chapter 4

  Devil’s Back Island, Maine

  Rationally, Rosetta knew that there was no way Casey could know what she was up to. Her great-niece could give Emily Dickinson a run for her money in a recluse contest. She almost never left the island, and though she was friendly with year-rounders, she wasn’t friends with any of them. She resolutely refused to use the Internet, still placing her orders for supplies for the café over the phone. And yet, as Rosetta’s plans were beginning to take shape, Casey suddenly began avoiding her. When Rosetta had gone to the café that day, she’d been fully prepared for an unpleasant confrontation, but it seemed Casey was still in the dark. As she trudged back along the gravel path to the inn, she thanked God for small mercies.

  Rosetta had kept her dealings as quiet as humanly possible. No one on the island knew. Even if anyone guessed that she was in bad shape financially, no one would leap to the conclusion that she was selling the inn. The inn was her entire life. But she was selling. If, that was, she could find a buyer, which until a couple of weeks ago had looked hopeless.

  She couldn’t keep bleeding money to keep the inn (and the tavern, and the café, and the art gallery) afloat. Traffic to the island was down. Despite her best marketing and branding efforts—she was a one-woman tourism bureau and chamber of commerce—fewer people had visited each of the past three years. Once upon a time none of that would have mattered. Once upon a time she could have continued to indulge herself here, let the inn and other businesses linger on as vanity projects into perpetuity. Once upon a time when Phil was alive, doing his magic trick of making money out of money.

  The worst part of the whole thing was knowing how thoroughly she’d let Phil down. If he was looking down on her from heaven, he was undoubtedly tearing out his hair at her bad investments. In one stupid, greedy, short-sighted move, she had wiped out the fortune he’d carefully and steadily built throughout their marriage. If only she’d listened to his advice, but he was dead, and the voices of the dead are so easily drowned out by the seductive promises of the living.