“Can I have my ID back?” Emma asked. She tried to keep her voice level, but it hitched. Not this. Not again. Surely it had been long enough.
The cashier jerked, then shoved the ID back in Emma’s hand. She finished ringing up the rest of the food without making eye contact. As soon as the groceries were bagged, Emma snatched them and strode quickly for the exit, ignoring Nathan’s hand reaching to help with the load. She didn’t slow down until they’d reached the car and she’d shoved the food into the back seat. She stopped then, hand on top of the sunbaked roof, a breeze making the frizz at the edges of her vision dance.
She drew in a deep breath and only then realized that Nathan was asking if she was okay.
“Fine.” Gravel crunched under her feet. The scent of gasoline from the nearby pumps made her gut churn.
“She knew who you were,” he noted neutrally.
“Seemed like it,” she said.
“Is that going to happen a lot?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she snapped.
He held up his hands in mock surrender. “Whoa, okay. I’m just asking,” he said. “I want to know what we’re in for here.”
“Let’s just get to the house,” she said.
He seemed for a moment like he was going to object. But then he nodded and got into the driver’s seat. She slid bonelessly into the passenger side.
The house lay on the eastern edge of Arden Hills proper. Here the streets were narrower, with a tendency to loop and wind around blind curves. At the turn leading up to the river, Emma made a warning sound to get Nathan to slow, and he cast her an annoyed look—then slammed on the brakes as the road twisted sharply, leading up to a narrow wooden bridge with steep slopes to either side. A broken guardrail showed where someone else had made the same mistake. Rattled, Nathan crossed the bridge at a crawl.
“Thanks for the warning,” he muttered. She pressed her lips together, let it go.
In contrast to the farmhouses and scrubby pastures they’d driven by earlier, there was a manicured uniformity to everything on this side of the river. The cars were new; the houses loomed behind gates and ruthlessly trimmed hedges. Nathan wore a small frown, and Emma realized she hadn’t prepared him for this.
The turn to the drive was easy to miss, concealed among the trees. “Here,” she said softly, and Nathan braked, pulled in. He stopped in front of the cast-iron gates with their gaudy calligraphic P emblazoned on each.
Beyond was a long drive leading up to a circular driveway, an empty fountain in the center, and rolling lawns to either side, with sparse woods beyond the house. Hedges lined the lawns and their walkways. On one side of the drive stood a carriage house, its white sides and open wooden shutters exactly matching the house that stood in front of them. The house itself was a towering Colonial, a solid block of white two stories high—three, if you included the attic—with columns standing straight and proud out front. The door was black, and from this distance it looked like an absence, a void. Except for the gleam of the brass knocker at its center.
Emma’s breath caught in her throat. Home, she thought, and wished it didn’t feel true.
“That is the house?” Nathan said, gaping.
“Not what you were expecting?” Emma asked, unfairly, because she hadn’t told him, had she? She’d pretended she was surrendering the truth, but it wasn’t even close, and this was only the beginning of it.
“I thought…”
He had thought that this house would be like the others they passed. The cute little farmhouses and past-their-prime Colonials that dotted the landscape between the heart of Arden and here, at its outer reaches.
“Your parents were wealthy,” he said, neither statement nor question. There was a tiny gap between the last two words, like he wasn’t entirely sure which was the more polite thing to say. Like rich could somehow be a bad thing, rude to mention. Which she supposed it was, once you actually qualified. It was weird how often people got offended when you pointed out they had money.
“We were, yes,” she said. “I mean…” And she gestured at the house. All the proof that was necessary.
“Okay.” He wiped his lower face with his palm. “Okay.”
“I’ll get the gate open,” she said.
“Right.” He nodded reflexively, calculations running behind his eyes. She didn’t know what the house was worth these days. Not that it mattered, if Daphne and Juliette didn’t agree to sell.
She’d sent them each a message, telling them that she and Nathan would be staying at the house for a while. She’d left it at that, for now. Daphne hadn’t responded at all. Juliette had sent one word—ok. She had no idea what they’d think about selling the house. She had no idea what they thought about anything.
She walked up to the cast-iron gates. There was a thick chain wrapped around them, secured with a heavy padlock. She tugged the gate uselessly anyway, making the chain rattle.
“Don’t you have a key?” Nathan called. He’d gotten out of the car but stood behind the open door, like he needed it as a shield. She understood the impulse. She looked past him. The trees kept them mostly out of sight, but she could see the house across the street, and the curtain twitching aside in one window there.
“Nope,” she said ruefully. “I’ve got the house key, but that’s it.”
“Seriously, Emma?” Nathan said. The spot between her shoulders tensed up. “Who does have one, then? Someone’s getting in there to take care of it.” He gestured behind her at the well-manicured lawns.
“We pay for a service. And there’s someone who comes out to check around every few months. I’m sure we can get the key from him,” she said quickly, soothingly. “We’ll deal with the gate tomorrow. Just leave the car here and we can go around. It’ll be fine.”
“The whole thing isn’t fenced off?”
“Just the front here, for cars,” she assured him chirpily. She popped open the trunk, hauling out the bag that held her essentials.
“I’ve got that,” he said, moving to intercept.
“I’m not an invalid,” she protested, even though her limbs felt like rubber after the drive and all she wanted to do was curl up in a bed—any bed—and sleep for a week.
“Don’t be so stubborn,” he chided her, reaching to take the bag from her. This time she let him, standing back uselessly as he grabbed his own suitcase as well.
With Emma carrying some of the lighter groceries, they tromped off to the right of the gates. The imposing height of the cast iron gave way to a chest-high wall farther along, and then even that fell away, leaving only the rows of trees that provided privacy from the road. They trudged toward the house, Nathan dragging his rolling suitcase across the grass with limited success.
“Is that an actual carriage house?” Nathan asked, looking askance at the extra building.
“It is. Not that it’s seen an actual carriage for a century,” Emma said. “The hitching post is original, too.” She nodded toward the feature in question, metal trending toward rust.
“What about the house?” Nathan asked.
Her breath was coming fast, her heart galloping. She told herself it was just the exertion. That sickly-sweet trickle at the back of her throat, the lurching in her stomach, was just the inaptly named morning sickness. The way her vision narrowed as those steps grew closer …
“Hey.” Nathan’s fingertips bumped her shoulder. She jumped, twisting away from him, and his lips parted in surprise.
Crazy, you look crazy, she thought, imagined her hair gone to frizz and wild from the drive, her eyes wide, pupils panic-blown. She shut her eyes, drew a steadying breath through her nose. “The house. The house is—it was built in the 1980s. The original house burned down.”
“You okay?” Nathan asked quietly.