Except the property sits on top of the one thing my family cannot allow to surface, and June Holden knew that, and she spent decades using that knowledge as a shield, and now the shield has passed to a woman who has no idea she's holding it.
The drive into town takes minutes. My house is on the south ridge, below the family compound but above everything else, which is the architectural equivalent of my position in the Aldrich hierarchy: close enough to be trusted, low enough to be expendable. I take the switchback road that drops through stands of aspen and blue spruce, past the trailhead for the old mining road, past the locked gate that marks the boundary of the Aldrich mineral claims, claims that haven't produced silver in living memory but that the family maintains with a diligence that has nothing to do with mining and everything to do with what else those tunnels contain.
Wicked Falls at nine in the morning is a postcard. Tourists in expensive hiking gear window-shop on Main Street. The coffee shop on the corner has a line out the door, and the barista waves at me through the window because everyone in this town waves at Aldriches, the same way everyone in a cathedral crosses themselves when they pass the altar. Reflex, not affection. The gesture you make toward power so that power doesn't notice you haven't made it.
I park on the gravel shoulder in front of the Holden property early. Not exactly on time, because arriving exactly on time suggests you had to manage your schedule to be there. Not late, because that would tell Greer Holden I don't respect her time, and I need her to feel respected. Respected people are easier to negotiate with. They give you the benefit of the doubt longer.
The house looks like what it is: a building that was loved deeply by a woman who couldn't afford to maintain it. The porch sags, the paint peels, the garden has gone to wildflower chaos in a way that June probably considered a philosophical statement about the relationship between beauty and control.
June Holden turned neglect into an aesthetic and stubbornness into a personal brand, and the fact that I admired her for it irritated me then and irritates me now, because admiring the opposition is a crack in the architecture, and I don't tolerate cracks. She was the only person in this town who told my uncle no, and she did it with a smile that said she knew exactly what it cost and considered the price worth paying just to watch him leave empty-handed.
At ten, I get out of the car and straighten my jacket. Charcoal, no tie, because a tie in Wicked Falls reads as Denver and Denver reads as outsider and the last thing I need is for Greer Holden to see me as anything other than local. I walk up the path through the feral junipers.
She opens the door before I knock.
The first thing I register is her mouth. Full lower lip, the top one thinner, sharper, pressed together in a line that says she's already decided how this meeting ends. The second thing I register is that she looks like June, the same dark hair, the same sharp jaw, the same way of holding her head slightly tilted, as if she's evaluating whether you're worth the full weight of her attention. She's taller than her mother was, thinner, with circles under her eyes that speak to something more systemic than a few bad nights. Her eyes are lighter than June's, and they land on me with a directness that feels less like eye contact and more like a rangefinder.
I want to look at her longer than I should. The thought arrives clean and unwelcome, like a blade slipped between ribs.
"Mr. Aldrich," she says. The name sits in her mouth like something she's deciding whether or not to spit it out.
"Ms. Holden. Thank you for making time."
"My mother just died and I'm alone in her house. Time is the one thing I have a surplus of."
Sharp. Good. Dull people are easier to manage, but they bore me, and I have the distinct, inconvenient sense that Greer Holden is not going to bore me.
She steps back to let me in, and the house swallows me the way it always has, with the low ceilings, the dark wood, the smell of lavender and old paper and the particular mustiness of a structure that's been holding its breath for a very long time. June's house has always felt more like an organism than a building, something alive and watchful, and the sensation is stronger now that June is gone, as if the house is trying to compensate for her absence by doubling down on its own presence.
Greer leads me to the dining room. The long table, the antler chandelier, the six chairs that have never held six people in my memory. She sits at the head and gestures for me to take a seat along the side, which is a power move so elegant I have to stop myself from telling her so. The head of the table, in her mother's house, with the Aldrich attorney placed below and to the right. June would have been proud. My uncle would have recognized the play immediately and respected her for it, right before he dismantled her.
I'm not my uncle. I find myself wanting to see what she does next.
"Coffee?" she offers. "I found some in the back of the pantry. It's three years old, but it's Kona, so the ghost of it is probably still better than whatever they're pouring at the place on Main Street."
"I'm fine, thank you."
She wraps her hands around her own mug, plain white, and watches me open my briefcase and arrange documents on the table. Her gaze tracks every piece of paper, every folder, every movement of my hands. She is cataloging me. Taking inventory. Deciding what I am and how much of a problem I represent. My hands are steady, my movements unhurried. I've been watched by more dangerous people than Greer Holden. The difference is that none of them made me aware of being watched the way she does, aware of my own hands, my own fingers on paper, the space between us across the scarred wood.
Smart. Her mother was smart too, in a different way. June's intelligence was patient, long-game, strategic. Greer's has a sharper edge to it, something more immediate and confrontational, and it makes me want to press against it the way you press a thumb against a blade to test how much it can take before it draws blood.
"Your mother's will is straightforward," I begin, keeping my voice in the register I use for estate consultations, warm enough to suggest empathy, cool enough to suggest competence. "You're the sole beneficiary. The house and the land are yours, free and clear. There's a savings account with approximately forty-seven thousand dollars after burial expenses and outstanding accounts were settled, a small investment portfolio, and the contents of the house itself. No debts."
"Forty-seven thousand." Greer says the number like she's tasting it. "She lived alone in the mountains for thirty years and saved forty-seven thousand dollars."
"Your mother was frugal."
"My mother was broke. There's a difference." She takes a sip of what must be truly terrible three-year-old coffee and doesn't flinch. "What about the land? What's it appraised at?"
This is the hinge point. The moment I've prepared for, the figure I've been authorized to present, the number my unclespent two hours calibrating: high enough to be taken seriously, low enough to leave room for negotiation, precise enough to suggest that the Aldrich family has done its homework and knows exactly what the land is worth.
"The most recent county assessment values the property at two point two million," I tell her. "However, the Aldrich Family Trust would like to make a private purchase offer of four million."
The number lands in the room like a stone dropped into still water. I watch the ripples cross her face: surprise first, then calculation, then something harder and more interesting. Suspicion.
"Almost double the assessed value," she says.
"The location is desirable. The parcel borders the National Forest boundary. The family has an interest in preserving the corridor between their existing holdings and federal land."
