Scrabble marathons, Chunky Monkey ice cream, and reruns of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air were what they did in the evenings when Gretchen’s dad was away for more than a few weeks and her mother’s best friend, Janine, came to stay at their place. This time he was away for a few months building a hospital in Guatemala.
On the eighth ring Janine looked pointedly at Gretchen and raised her eyebrows—like she should get up and answer the damn phone.
“Not it,” Gretchen said, putting a finger on her nose.
Janine sighed and walked over to the kitchen while Gretchen flopped back on the couch and watched Will Smith talking to Geoffrey the butler. She didn’t like the laugh track, she didn’t know if she really liked the show at all, but Janine did, and it had become a kind of welcome, if not so interesting, routine.
She texted Simon while Janine was on the phone. Fresh Prince night!
Two seconds later he texted back: Chunky Monkey??
Yes.
Can I come over??
Yes.
Since he lived in the building he could achieve this by a simple elevator ride. “Simon’s coming over,” she yelled to Janine—who put her hand up and scowled. Janine pointed to the big ridiculous house phone and mouthed the word “Wait.”
Wait, sorry. No, Gretchen texted Simon, who replied with a brief u suck see u tmrw :P
Gretchen expected it would be a sales call and Janine would hang up right away, but instead she was silent, listening intently, and then there was a series of “Mmmhms” and then “WHO?” and then “Yes. Wow; no, of course I’ve heard of you. Of course, I totally understand. Oh really? That’s . . . mmmhm . . . Well, I’ll ask her.”
Then she held the phone out to Gretchen. “It’s your aunt,” she said.
“Who?”
“You’re inheriting a house.” She shrugged, then mouthed the words “I don’t freaking know” and handed Gretchen the phone.
“Hello?” Gretchen said skeptically.
“Hello, sweets. This is your great aunt, Esther.” When she heard the low, melodic voice so full of authority, her heart skipped a beat. It sounded so much like her own mother it made her eyes immediately fill with tears. The woman even used her mother’s nickname for her.
“You don’t know who I am, do you?” her aunt asked. “Did your mother ever tell you about me?”
“Yes,” Gretchen said, though she was pretty sure that wasn’t true. She struggled to remember anything at all about an aunt Esther. “My mother said you . . . ah . . . I remember . . . You were a . . . She wrote you letters.” She groaned inside at how lame that sounded. She racked her brain. Was Aunt Esther an artist of some kind? Was it Aunt Esther who sent that box of Julia Margaret Cameron photographs years ago? Those rare Victorian photographs that her mother had hung in the gallery alongside contemporary work? Suddenly Gretchen was wondering why this was the first she was hearing from Aunt Esther. If she was close to her mother, why didn’t she get in touch when she’d disappeared?
“I’m leaving the Axton mansion,” her aunt explained bluntly. There was a strange buzzing sound, more like insects than a bad connection, that seemed to be coming from somewhere on the other line. “I don’t want to, but I have to and I need help. Janine can tell you my proposal, but it would require your coming here to Mayville. And soon.”
“Oh,” Gretchen said. “Uh . . .”
She turned and glanced at Janine, who was eating ice cream out of the carton with a spoon and looking glassy-eyed at the TV. She thought of Simon, and their plans for the summer, which mostly involved going to all-ages shows down in the Village and talking to boys. Her father wouldn’t even be within cell-phone range for the next three months. The city was hot as hell and the country would be cool and breezy. And she could finally see the mansion she’d only imagined. And what was this about a inheriting a house?
“You’re next in line,” Esther said. And Gretchen wondered, embarrassed, if she’d asked the house question out loud.
“What?”
“There’s only you,” Esther said. “After me—there’s only you. I can’t do this by myself, sweets.”
Gretchen had always wanted to see the mansion. See where her mother had started out.
“Um . . . okay!” she blurted out, surprising herself. “Great. That sounds great.”
The abruptness of her own decision startled Gretchen and seemed to startle the old woman as well.
“Really?” Aunt Esther asked, sounding relieved. “Oh! Wonderful! Thank you, thank you. I have a darkroom here, of course, but I suppose you’re all digital now, huh? Well, bring your camera anyway.”
“I don’t go anywhere without it,” Gretchen said, wondering how this woman even knew she was a photographer or would be interested in a darkroom. The idea of living in the country in an old mansion and taking pictures, being able to develop them herself, was growing on her by the second. It sounded very posh. She could tell kids at Gramercy Arts, where she and Simon went to school, that she was going on an artist’s residency this summer. She could take photographs all day, wander dewy fields of flowers, find a swimming hole . . . Maybe her aunt had a cook or a butler. It was a mansion, after all.
“I’ll send a car for you tomorrow,” Esther had said.