Page 2 of Wildwood

I take a sip of my tea, though my voice still comes out strained as I say, “Uncle Ezra had two sisters. I thought he was still close with Vera’s family. Why would he leave it to me?” I’m just the grandniece, granddaughter of his estranged sister, who he hadn’t seen in over twenty-five years.

“Vera herself passed away about five years ago. Her son, Christopher, moved his family abroad many years ago. Switzerland, I believe?”

So that’s what happened to them. I suddenly realize how little effort I put in as an adult in tracking my family down.

Mr. Warnick continues, “I suppose he wanted to leave it to someone who might actually live in it.” At this he clears his throat. “In fact, I should clarify, that is actually a stipulation of the inheritance.”

I involuntarily laugh. As if today could have any more moments of whiplash. “I have to live there?” My mind is struggling to keep up with the conversation.

“Yes. The exact stipulation is that you need to live there at least a year. I suppose he’s hoping you’ll fall in love with it and wish to stay. After a year’s time, you take official ownership, and you can do with it what you want. Until then, both the property and Ezra’s financial assets will remain in a trust. I realize this is a big consideration, but, as you probably know, this house has been in the family for about two hundred fifty years. It’s not unreasonable he wanted to keep it in the family.”

The front door opens and Topher walks in. He gives me a quick wave, and a curious look, and I realize my face has scrunched up in disbelief. I shift in my seat so I’m facing the wall, though I’m acutely aware of Topher listening in, as he slips off his shoes and heads to the kitchen to prepare dinner.

“Has there already been a funeral?” I ask, trying to buy myself a moment to process things. And to sound like a decent human being.

“There was a very small service right after the death. He’s now buried in the cemetery across the street. If you come up to see the house, I can show you the cemetery and you can pay your respects then.”

“Okay. I can probably make something work. It’s just a lot to take in. Can I give you a call back tomorrow?”

Mr. Warnick assures me it’s fine, with a practiced sense of empathy and calm. I wonder if he looks in real life the way I’ve conjured him in my mind, neatly cropped graying hair, crisp collared shirts, good-natured smile.

“Goodbye, Elinor. It’s been a pleasure talking with you, and I look forward to meeting you in person.”

“Yes. Have a good night.” I end the call and stare at my phone in silence, completely unsure of how I’ll articulate the news and my feelings on it to Topher. The timing seems bizarre, and for a moment, I genuinely wonder if I’ve just hallucinated the conversation. Because it’s absurd. The rational part of my brain tells me it’s absurd, our lives are in Cambridge, and the only reason I’m even entertaining the thought is because I’m momentarily delusional after losing my job. But there is a small, scared part of me that wants to believe this is fate. That Wildwood is where we are meant to raise our baby. And it’s not just the pregnancy that has me in a state of worry. So many days, as I had taken the T back to our condo, I looked out at the sea of evening commuters, mainly my age, absorbed in their phones, their laptops, their papers. I’ve wondered how many of them feel like I do. When I was younger, the world felt imperfect but predictable and I moved through it with a general sense of safety. Now that notion feels quaint. And spoiled. Now the edges of my vision feel blurred, and I can’t shake the feeling of existential dread, cultivated by years of absorbing increasingly dire news. Climate change, gun violence, pandemics. It affects a person.

But then I think of Uncle Ezra and my grandmother and realize I could never accept the house. Because while my grandmother, my parents, and I used to visit there all the time, one day we left and never came back.

That place is cursed, my grandmother had said on the drive home, fuming from the passenger seat, as my father navigated the winding roads, the dark pines whipping past us. My mother and I sat in the back, hands knit together. Then she said it again, more defiantly, in case anyone didn’t believe her. There are things you don’t know. But believe me, Wildwood is cursed.

Chapter 2

“This is insane,” says Topher when I walk him through the facts of the call. He’s sitting at the island, rubbing his scalp with both hands. “I mean, I knew you had an uncle in Vermont, but it seemed like you guys had nothing to do with him.”

“We didn’t. He and my grandmother had a huge falling-out. We used to spend every summer there, and then suddenly, we just stopped. I must have been around eight or something. I never knew what it was about. My mother wouldn’t tell me either.” My breath catches in my chest. Even saying the word mother still causes visceral pain in my body. She died two years ago. Two years and four months, to be precise. She slipped on black ice in the driveway, falling backward and hitting her head in just the wrong way. She died instantly, but it doesn’t dull the pain I feel when I imagine her lying on the frigid February asphalt. Alone. My father wasn’t there to help because we had lost him a few years earlier to a sudden heart attack. Both parents just gone, seemingly in an instant. There and then not.

The loss of them both had left me gutted and adrift. Topher has been slowly stitching me back together, but I sometimes feel like one small tug will unravel it all.

“Think your grandmother was jealous Wildwood was left to Ezra and not her?” He stands, walks over to the fridge, and takes out a beer. He cracks it and takes a long sip, staring out the window over the sink.

“I don’t know. Possibly.” So many things about my mother’s side of the family feel like a black box to me. I had been close to my cousins, Tom and Anna, Uncle Christopher’s kids who I guess are technically my second cousins, and had wonderful memories playing with them during family gatherings. But then we stopped going to Wildwood. I think for a while I just accepted it the way little kids do. But I remember when I was a little older, I used to nag my mother incessantly about why we no longer saw our relatives.

Sometimes families grow apart, my mother would say, sighing and her eyes avoiding mine.

It had left a huge, empty gap in my life. I’m an only child, as was my mother. So Uncle Ezra and Aunt Vera’s family had made up a significant portion of my family. Cousins standing in for siblings. My grandmother simply refused to talk about them at all, waving her hand and tutting angrily if Uncle Ezra’s name was mentioned, before leaving the room.

“And it just seems strange that he’s leaving it to you and not your cousins. When’s the last time you saw them?” Topher takes out a box of spaghetti and dumps the entire contents into a pot of boiling water.

“God, it must have been over twenty years ago. I think we saw them once or twice after the big falling-out, but it’s been forever. It’s sad. I have such good memories of playing with them at Wildwood.”

It has been so long, yet since hanging up with Mr. Warnick, I’ve been able to conjure if not memories, at least images or snapshots from time at Wildwood. I can picture a labyrinth of rooms unfolding, moving through them over creaking floorboards and past roaring fireplaces. I can hear the laughter of my cousins as we play hide-and-seek, crawling through closets that rarely saw the light of day, plumes of dust and the scent of mothballs tickling our noses, threatening to give away our hiding spot. The house could not have been more different from the ranch house I’d grown up in, in suburban New Jersey. But mostly what I remember is the woods. Our own hundred-acre forest. We’d build lean-tos, pretend we were deer, hunt for lady’s slippers. Old foundations became castles, moss-covered boulders became mountains. I know I’m probably just looking back on my youth with rose-colored glasses, but the Wildwood of my memory was paradise. It certainly wasn’t cursed.

“What do you think the house is worth?” Topher looks like he almost doesn’t want to ask the question.

“I don’t know,” I admit truthfully. “Again, it’s been ages. From what I remember, the house was huge but really old. I have no idea if it’s been updated. But I feel like it was on a massive piece of land. I remember my mom called it ‘the hundred-acre wood’ like from Winnie-the-Pooh, though it was actually on about two hundred acres.”

Topher whips his head toward me. “Two hundred acres?”

“Yeah, I mean it’s an old property in Vermont. It wouldn’t be that uncommon.”