“I seem to be destined to do so. But one thing I will not do, Susannah, is sleep in the room in which I died.”
My room. The best room in the house, with a huge bay window (complete with a window seat that my stepfather, Andy, had lovingly built for me) that on clear days had a view stretching straight down to Carmel Bay, with an attached full bath in which Jesse had once bandaged my feet. It was the first time he’d ever admitted he’d hoped to become a doctor, but his father needed him too much on the ranch ever to have allowed it.
Now all of Jesse’s dreams were coming true.
Maybe mine were, too.
That’s what I came to tell you, I couldn’t help remembering Lucia had said when I’d assured her everything was going to be okay.
“Maybe we should wait until we see what the realty company did to the room while they were staging it to sell,” I said noncommittally. “I highly doubt they kept the forget-me-not wallpaper, or those frilly curtains my mom picked out. Maybe they turned it into a craft center, like Debbie’s.”
Jesse dangled the keys to my car in front of me. “Let’s go find out. Don’t forget your other package.”
I glanced at the next-day-air package. “Is that my surprise?”
He rolled his eyes behind the sunglasses. “No.”
We swapped cars. It was good to be back in the Land Rover, though it turned out the drive to the Carmel Hills from Casa di Walters was not short, especially on the last sunny Saturday before Thanksgiving. Traffic was terrible, and though there were no stoplights, I had plenty of stops of other kinds—mainly tourist related—to examine the next-day-air package Jesse had left on my passenger seat.
I didn’t recognize the name of the sender—a woman in Arizona—but I tore it open anyway.
I was shocked when I saw what was inside:
My boots. The black leather platform boots I’d lost in the online auction the other day. My perfect non-compliant deceased person butt-kicking boots.
How was that even possible? I’d been timed out of the auction when Lucia had ransacked my office. I hadn’t been able to submit my final bid, let alone type in my name or payment information. Maximillian28 had slipped in and stolen them out from under me.
There was a note tucked into the box, but I wasn’t able to grab and read it (since I was trying to be a good driver) until I pulled up in front of my house—our house.
As soon as I did, I snatched up the note. It was computer generated, like a gift card from a store. The seller had sent the boots to me on behalf of the buyer. The buyer was Maximillian28, of Carmel Valley, California, which made no sense to me at all until I read the note.
Susannah,
Saw these and thought of you. They look just like the ones you lost. I hope they are.
Te amo.
Jesse
Jesse? Jesse was Maximillian28?
It was only then that I remembered the day I’d dragged him around the mall in Monterey, fruitlessly searching for these exact boots after my original pair had been destroyed, and how they’d been sold out everywhere in my size. He’d gamely tagged along, only occasionally pointing out that there were dozens of other black leather platform boots on the shelves. He’d never once rolled his eyes as I’d described how poorly designed and not right those other boots were. He’d paid attention, and turned out to be Maximillian28 (named for the Ackerman dog and Jesse’s age—if one counted only the years during which his physical body had been alive).
Of course. He’d do anything to make me happy . . . anything within his power, which, not having inherited millions from his family—because they’d all died out over a century ago—was buy me the impossible-to-get boots I wanted.
And save my life, over and over.
I was still laughing—or something—when Jesse pulled up behind me in front of 99 Pine Crest Road.
“Oh,” he said when he leaned in to see why I was still in the car. “You opened it. Are they the right ones?”
“Exactly right,” I said.
“Are you crying?” He looked astonished.
“No. Allergies. God, I love you.”
“You have a strange way of showing it sometimes.” He opened my car door for me. “Come on, let’s go see this place. I can’t say it looks very promising from the outside. They’ve ruined your mother’s landscaping.”
It was true. The steep, sloping yard that led up to the rambling Victorian house was still dotted with the flowers my mom had planted there, but they’d been crushed beneath the careless boots of the construction workers I’d seen outside the house the day before.
That wasn’t the only change to the place. The trunk of the pine tree I remembered so well—because it grew beside the porch roof I used to leap from when escaping my room, or various murderous spooks—was now growing dangerously close to the foundation.
“Slater wasted no time putting the other houses on the block back on the market, I see.” Jesse pointed. There were two men in coveralls hammering signs into the front yards of our former neighbors. Now, instead of warning that the houses were slated for demolition, the signs said:
FOR SALE
SLATER PROPERTIES
CARMEL HILLS EXCLUSIVE