ChapterOne
STELLA
“Do you want it?”
“Of course I want it.”
“Then keep it.” Pen throws up her hands like this should be obvious, her half-moon earrings jangling with the motion. For the first time, I notice they match her cosmos-themed head wrap. Of course, I’ve been too overwhelmed lately to notice much.
I huff out a sigh. “It’s not that simple.” All of the factors I’m weighing could make the roof cave in. Even without any added weight, this roof might cave in by itself. “There’s a lot to consider.”
My best friend makes a dismissive noise. I glare at her.
“What?” she demands. “You think Estelle Lafitte Mouton didn’t already consider everything this would mean for you? You have to give your Nanna more credit than that.”
Pen presses her hands together and bows over them in reverence. And now that she has invoked Nanna’s name, I can almost feel my grandmother’s presence.
But it’s been like that all morning just because I’m standing in her three-story, one-hundred-twenty-year-old home again. The one she left to me.
Me.
Stella.
Her only granddaughter.
My cousins are furious. My brother Tyler probably would be too if—
Best not to think about that. He’s not furious. He’s not a lot of things he used to be. But he’s here.
I look up at the high ceilings of the formal dining room. A water stain the color and shape of a liver confesses a once-leaky toilet upstairs. The asthmatic window unit blasts icy air that only seems to reach the middle of the room. The pine floor creaks beneath my feet.
“Maybe she intended for me to sell it,” I say to the liver stain.
“Hmph,”Pen mutters. “If she wanted it to be sold, she would have left it to your dad and your uncles.”
She has a point. Unlike my cousins, my dad and his two brothers aren’t furious. Well, they’re not happy about Nanna leaving the house to me and me alone, but they don’t look at me like I’ve fooled them all these years with pretend innocence.
They know I was around when they weren’t.
Dad, my Uncle Mike, and my Uncle Les may not like this outcome, but I don’t think it took them by surprise.
Not like me. I sure as hell didn’t see this coming.
And even though Nanna had been sick for a long time, I didn’t think I’d lose her. Not yet.
My gaze sweeps the room again. Even with all the furniture hidden beneath makeshift dust covers, the room is crowded with memories.
I haven’t set foot in here in more than a year, but the house smells so much like my grandmother it’s unfair.
“I think she knows exactly what she’s doing,” Pen says with her reliable, wise tone. When I meet her amber gaze, I don’t for a second doubt her claim to be a modern-day witch. Especially when she’s talking about my late grandmother in the present tense. It’s both spooky and comforting.
For one of those reasons, the hairs on my arms stand up. Then again, maybe that’s just from the blasting window unit. I chafe my arms and try to make progress on the decision ahead of me.
“But if I keep it—”
“We both know you’re going to keep it,” Pen says sagely.
I roll my eyes. Maybe she’s right, but I just don’t see how. “It’s not that simple,” I say again.