“So busy!” She sounded happy about it. “Listen, I know your dad reached out to you about Luke’s birthday next month, but he said he hasn’t been able to get ahold of you and we need to sort the food and other details. Figured I’d give it a shot!”
She sounded so happy and cheerful, and I felt a flush of guilt that I couldn’t also be happy and cheerful talking about Luke’s birthday.
“Yeah, sorry about that.” I didn’t know where to start or even how much to tell her about my sabbatical in Blackwell Hollow. I’d only told my mom, and she was so busy we hadn’t even touched base since I’d arrived in Blackwell Hollow.
Busy. Everyone was so so busy.
Too busy to call or text. Too busy to have a real conversation, to even bepresent.
And I should know because I was busy in the city too: too busy to call Aunt Evelyn, to visit her when she’d been alive.
“That’s okay!” Miranda said. “Anyway, we’re planning a big bash for Luke’s tenth birthday, and of course we want you to be there!”
Every sentence was punctuated by excitement. Did she ever get tired? I was already exhausted.
“Um, that sounds… fun. When is the party?” I knew Luke’s birthday was in June (Evan’s was in November), but my dad’s hurried voice mails hadn’t included the date of the party.
“Saturday June 14th,” she said. “Nothing too crazy, just a party here at the house with a bounce house for the kids. You have to come! You’re Luke’ssister!”
Was I? I mean, I knew I was related to Luke by blood, but I’d never really felt like we were related. Maybe it was because of the age difference. Maybe it was because while I was expected to attend an endless stream of birthday parties and award ceremonies for the boys, my dad’s replacement family — and my dad — didn’t seem interested in being part of my life at all.
There were nobig bashesfor my birthday, and there never had been, not even when I’d been a kid, probably because my dad had married Miranda less than two years after the divorce. Luke and Evan had come along shortly after that, and then my dad had seemed to forget all about the fact that he had another kid who also had birthdays and award ceremonies.
He usually sent me a text for my birthday. Miranda usually didn’t mention it at all.
I’d been forgotten, discarded, and even though I was an adult, it still stung.
“So can I mark you down as a yes?” Miranda asked, pulling me from the past.
“Uh… I’ll have to get back to you. I’m out of town right now and I don’t know when I’ll be back.”
“Okay then! Keep me posted! The boys would love to see you!”
I doubted that. They hardly knew me, and on the rare occasions when we were in the same room they treated me with the kind of scorn reserved for an aged aunt, my attempts at conversation an annoying interruption from the games theyplayed on their iPads or their texts with friends (Evan was only eight years old — who was he even texting?).
“Will do,” I said. “Thanks for calling.”
“Talk soon!”
The call disconnected and I slipped my phone back into my pocket. No doubt I was one of many people on Miranda’s hit list. She’d be working the phones all day, coaxing at least fifty people into attending the big bash, which would be held in the picture-perfect home my dad had purchased for his new family.
I felt more than a little deflated, the way I always did after talking to my dad or Miranda, but then I looked around and realized something: thanks to Aunt Evelyn, I had a picture-perfect home too. It wouldn’t be mine for long, and the dead body in the gazebo was definitely a downside, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t enjoy the place while I was here.
Plus there was Beck and Noah — and Dane, I guess, who was nice to look at, even if he was kind of a jerk.
I got to my feet with a sigh and continued down the gravel path, wondering what on earth Harold Pembroke had been doing here the day he’d died. I had no idea, but it was a relief to turn my attention away from my complicated feelings about family in favor of the mystery about Harold Pembroke’s dead body.
I passed briefly through what looked like a mini-orchard, complete with a statue of who I assumed was Johnny Appleseed (an elfin boy carrying a sack full of apples), plus a cherub holding a birdbath.
And then, just past the orchard, the hair stood up on my arms.
I was transported back to the cemetery and the feeling that I was being watched, and I turned suddenly, half expecting someone to be standing in the trees watching me.
The apple trees were twisted, bent at strange angles, but there was no one there.
Not that I could see anyway.
My heart pounded in my chest as I hurried along the path, and I breathed a sigh of relief when the back of the house came into view. I’d wound my way through the property left to right, the gravel walking path leading me home, to the terrace off the kitchen.