With Gran’s decreased mobility and recent tortious windfall that had mostly afforded her an apartment in a lakeside retirement community, Camille had become even more of a stranger. Lainey’s lifelong constants had always been Gran and that cabin.
“Gran, I’ve been paying property taxes on that house.”
The older woman wrinkled her nose. “I don’t know why on earth you’ve been doing that.”
“We’ve been living there for over twenty years! I have my heights marked on the back of a door frame. Whose house am I living in, Gran?”
“Ours!” Gran announced. “In many ways…”
“But in a legal way…” Mark pushed the title document across his desk. “Gilbert Hodges, or rather, his nephew, who recently inherited the cabin resort on Norwood Lake, the “Shore Thing.” And in the land survey, he discovered that your house is also one of his properties.”
Lainey was familiar enough with the Shore Thing to know that calling the collection of dilapidated shacks a “resort” was pushing it.
“There’s no way my house belongs to the Shore Thing.” Half of the log cabins owned by the recently deceased Gil Hodgeswere underwater, and the other half were occupied by tanks housing his illegal turtles. Gil had been a harmless weirdo, but there was no world in which she was turning over her home to anyone, let alone someone sharing her former neighbor’s genetics (may he rest in peace, obviously). “This has to be some mistake.”
“Gilbert was always too wrapped up in his amphibians to notice we were there,” Gran offered, as though that explained away years of apparent illegal occupation. Lainey felt the blood drain from her face and pool into her toes.
She’d always thought the process of losing everything would be more of a tumultuous roller coaster of misfortunes than the swift kick in the shins of a real estate assessment.
“But Vincent said he’d always wanted me to live there,” Gran added.
At that, every head in the room jutted to attention with wide, wild eyes.
“Vincent…who, Elaine?” Bree said, seemingly baffled.
“Groff, of course.” Gran nodded, and Lainey could feel the wheels in her brain turning slowly.
Bree’s voice went up with each syllable. “Are you saying that one of the most famous architects in the world…”
“The world” was an exaggeration, but between her family’s elite resort and a recent Netflix true-crime documentary on an architectural cult led by a Mary Kay saleswoman who referred to herself as Lady Goddess and believed she was receiving direct transmissions from Vincent Groff’s ghost, he was definitely one of the most famous architects in America. He was the father of the modern environmental architecture movement of the twentieth century and a longtime resident of Timber Creek until he died sometime in the eighties.
“…wanted you to live in your house? Are you saying Vincent Groff designed your house?” Bree’s voice was insistent.
“We dated briefly in my early twenties.” Gran waved her hand as though her courtship with a man who MIT offered multiple courses on had simply never floated to the top of her mind at any point in Lainey’s lifetime. “Apparently, I had inspired the design. I don’t know. Vincent was always so chatty after, it was hard to retain it all. He never managed to finish it, but when I came back to Timber Creek, I paid Vincent a visit before he died and he said, ‘Elaine, Forest’s Bridge was made for you.’ ”
“Forest’s Bridge?” Mark interjected, just as Bree screeched, “It’s real!?”
Forest’s Bridge was a major draw for Timber Creek tourism. Partly because it was Vincent Groff’s most famous and final residential build before his death. But mostly, because it didn’t actually exist. It was an architectural urban legend. A structural Bigfoot. True believers trudged through the woods each year in search of the final work of a manArchitectural Digestonce declared “The Greatest American Architect.” Some thought it was hidden behind forest and overgrowth. Others believed it burned down in a fire. Lainey had always been in whichever camp didn’t care either way. Until now, apparently.
“Half of architecture internet doesn’t think Forest’s Bridge exists!” Bree screeched. “The other half thinks it was a tax evasion scheme.”
“Well, it was,” Gran explained. “But it also exists. And we’ve been living in it for decades.”
“Have you lived there for more than twenty years? Exclusively?”
Gran nodded at Mark’s question. The gesture propelled hiswheely chair over to the corner of his desk, where a laptop sat between a coffee mug and an overstuffed in-out tray. Without explanation, he started typing furiously.
“Gran, you didn’t…” Lainey wasn’t sure how to respectfully accuse a woman in her early eighties of trading sex for real estate with a lawyer present, so she attempted to do so telepathically. Perhaps some sort of meaningful exchange of services would help their case.
“Goodness, no!” Gran responded. “He was nearly dead by that point. But in his prime, he was one of my most treasured lovers. He had…vision. In the bedroom, I mean.”
“I don’t need to hear any more about the bedroom,” Lainey protested.
Gran didn’t have boyfriends; she had “lovers.” She maintained men lacked the “imagination” required to date longer than a few months.
Mark stopped typing. “Whitney!” He whipped his neck around excitedly, which elicited a pained wince and required a small adjustment to his brace. “Whitney, can you bring Dawn in here? She’s going to love this.”
“What’s happening?” Lainey felt sick again.
