AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Chapter One
Rowan
My favorite aunt died a week after my divorce was finalized. And here I’d been foolish enough to think nothing could hurt worse than my husband cheating on me. Anger is so much easier than sadness.
Can I also say I’m so over attorneys right now?
I down the double shot of espresso sitting in front of me in one gulp. A frown crosses my lips as I hold my cell phone away from my ear for a moment. “Can you repeat that?”
“Sybil left you everything,” says Maria, my aunt’s estate attorney. “But there are a few…complications.”
I really don’t like the way she says that word. “Complications?” I get up from the bistro table at the café I’d stopped into. A buzz of nervous energy runs through my fingertips as I grab my purse.
“It would be better if we spoke in person, Rowan.” Maria’s voice sounds fuzzy coming over the line, as if she’s standing in a rainstorm.
Dropping a twenty on the table, I head for the door and out onto the street. I walk in the direction I parked my car. “You know I live in California, right? And you’re in what—Massachusetts?”
That’s the extra weird thing about all this—I hadn’t even known Aunt Sybil had a house in Massachusetts. She’d traveled a lot, had wanderlust in her bones. But she’d always lived close by in California. Or so I’d thought. Now I’m not sure about anything. What other secrets had she been keeping?
“Yes, about fifty miles outside of Boston,” Maria answers.
“And—” I stop abruptly on the sidewalk, eliciting a foul comment from a fellow pedestrian who has to swerve around me. I shake my head in disbelief at everything Maria’s telling me. “I’m sorry, but this is a lot to take in—she left me in her estate?”
“You’re the sole inheritor. But there are some stipulations.” Maria sighs. “That’s why it would be best if you came out here. Until we can get all this taken care of.” A pause. “I’m not just Sybil’s attorney—I was her friend. This was important to her, Rowan. You’re important to her.”
My chest tightens. If I was so important to Sybil, how could she lead a double life and keep it from me? Tears prick the corners of my eyes, but I take a deep breath and pull myself together. “I’ll see you soon.”
Twenty-four hours later, I pull my rental car into the tiny town of Raven’s Roost. It’s quaint, like something out of a fairy tale. Old Victorian houses. Picket fences. Flower boxes in windowsills. I roll down the window and let the warm May breeze into the car. Wood smoke and honeysuckle scent the air. I’m a long way from Los Angeles.
Following directions on the GPS, I continue through town and keep heading north. First, I travel through fields and orchards, then a thick forest rises up on each side of the road. I haven’t been around this much nature since I was a girl. The heavy vice around my heart loosens. A little.
I turn left down a gravel driveway through the woods, and the trees close in around me. My window is still down, and now I smell earth and pine. I’m going to have to snap some pictures while I’m here. My fingers itch for my camera bag. Usually, I shoot city scenes and celebrity events, but wherever I go, I have to capture it on film. I live my life through my lens.
And then, abruptly, the house looms before me, around a bend in the driveway. It’s enormous, made of dark gray stone like something out of a Jane Austen novel. One corner of the house is shaped like a tower, with a pointed pinnacle at the top, and a weathervane of a raven in flight. A wide set of steps lead up to the front door, and a covered veranda wraps around the side. Lush flowerbeds of rose, foxglove, and geranium lie out front, and the glass dome of an atrium rises behind the house.
Holy shit. Am I really inheriting this?
Maria said there were stipulations… and complications. Were the stipulations what complicated things, or is there something else? I guess I’m about to find out. Taking a deep breath, I park the car next to a black SUV and get out.
“Rowan!” Maria calls from the front steps. “I’m glad you found the place.”
I stride up and extend my hand. “It’s nice to meet you, Maria. Thank you for taking care of Sybil’s estate.”
Maria takes my hand and shakes it firmly. Her skin is warm, almost electric. She looks maybe a few years younger than Sybil, in her fifties, perhaps. Her eyes are friendly, the color of coffee, like her hair. As first impressions go, I decide I like her.
“I wish we weren’t meeting like this,” she says, a bitter smile on her face. “Sybil always talked about you. She cared for you like a daughter.”
I nod, my lips flashing a forced smile. My mother died when I was three, and my father never found anyone else. He was too heartbroken to move on. Too heartbroken to do much of anything after that, including care for me and my brother. Sybil swooped in to help out. We spent every summer with her after that, until we were grown.
Staring up at the house, it feels like a knife in the gut. How could she have kept this from me? I feel betrayed all over again, like I had a year ago after walking in on my husband of ten years cavorting with his business partner.
Maria leads us to the covered veranda on the left and takes a seat in a white chair. She gestures to the seat next to her. “I have an office in town, but meeting at the house seemed more… well, I wanted you to see the place.”
“Before we get into anything else,” I say, my chair creaking beneath me as I sit down, “I need to know—what happened to her? When I got the call that Sybil had… they didn’t give any details.” I shake my head, tears fogging my throat. “She was so young.”
“The coroner’s office is working on that now,” Maria says. “We should know something soon.”
From where we’re sitting, we have a view of a large walled garden and the forest beyond. I stare out into the expanse of green. “I’ll need to start planning the funeral,” I say. “Did she leave any details about that in her will? I’ll need help with local vendors since I’m not familiar with this area.” Details. If I focus on the details, my grief won’t overwhelm me.
“She did leave instructions. I’ll go over all that with you,” Maria says with a nod. “We also need to go over the particulars of what she left you. The house and property—Raven Manor, it’s called—for starters. And significant financial assets.”
I shake my head. “It’s so much to process. I—I never even knew she had a house here. A life here.” Tears prick at the corners of my eyes, and I pull one knee up into the chair, hugging my arms around it.
“I know,” Maria says softly. “And I’m sorry.”
“You also mentioned complications?”
Something passes through Maria’s eyes, and I can tell the other shoe is about to drop. “There’s no way to say this except to just come out with it.” She takes a deep breath, lets it back out. “Sybil—your aunt—well… she was a witch.”
