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Two people in our family—the ex-husband and our dad—were the biggest reasons we’d hardly spent much time together the last ten years.
Our dad had passed about eighteen months earlier—too gruff of a man for either of us to get emotional about it—and Tansy’s ex remained back in Utah. Neither of us felt much guilt about how relieved we were to be past that kind of influence.
The more she talked to me about how peaceful it was to live on the beach, the more I wanted just a small slice of that. And I wanted time with my sister, something I hadn’t had much of the last ten years.
“It’s nice, Tans.” I dropped a kiss on the top of her head. “Thanks for putting some clean sheets on the guest bed for me.”
She snorted. “It’s good to have you here.” She hitched her purse over her shoulder, glancing at her watch as she did. “Shit, I need to go get the kids from school. Ford has soccer tonight, but tomorrow night there’s nothing going on. Want to try that Chinese place I told you about?”
I nodded, waving from the door as she pulled out of the driveway.
Once she was gone and it was just me in the house, I felt a little bit like I’d been sucked into the vortex of a tornado and spat back out—and I was trying to get my bearings. The past few days were a blur, and the tension I was carrying in my shoulders betrayed just how much.
The unease from my trip north wasn’t quite gone, even though I was trying my best to ignore the reality of what it all meant.
My phone stayed pretty quiet that day as I unpacked my clothes and found a grocery store so that I could help Tansy stock the fridge and pantry.
The movers arrived the next morning, two stone-faced drivers transferring my entire life, piece by piece, into a storage unit. It was a familiar pattern, something we’d done over and over growing up. Mydad always thinking that if we tried one more state, one more school, one more football program, we could capture something of the happiness he’d lost when my mom died.
I hated moving. Hated trying to make an empty space feel different than it was.
My home in Dallas—purchased after my ex kept our first home—was so utilitarian that Tansy had walked around with a horrified look on her face when I told her I’d lived there for two years.
Tansy’s house wasn’t like that.
There was personality exploding from every square inch.
After the movers were done, I went back to the house and paused as I reached into the fridge for smoothie ingredients. My finger pulled at the edge of one of Felicia’s sketches. Brandishing a sword and an axe, a winged goddess with flames in her eyes had her foot stamped over the body of a hapless man who bore a striking resemblance to the twins’ father.
My grin came easily.
The smile, however, didn’t last long. Because sitting next to the fridge was a thick, daunting folder full of information from the lawyer.
The lawyer who did have a name, after all.
Byron Cogswell. It didn’t even sound real, but at the thought of his bespectacled face, I couldn’t deny that it fit.
Byron was the first person I needed to call now that the scope of the house’s condition was clear. The amount left by the estate wasn’t even half of what it would need.
Figuring out how to tell Charlotte that detail was just as unclear as which direction I was supposed to go in this entire thing.
I tapped in Byron’s number and waited for him to pick up.
“Burke, I wondered if I’d hear from you this week.”
“You’ll probably wish you hadn’t, once I give you an update.”
He laughed.
I didn’t.
And when I didn’t, he stopped, clearing his throat. “What did you find out?”
“That my former roommate either had no idea what their construction budget looked like or had no intention of that money being used for that purpose.”
Neither one of us needed to say it out loud—it was the latter.
Chris and Amie hadn’t intended to die. Not anytime soon.
