Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Mara
Things were too simple and too complicated all at once.
It took me a couple of days to reply to Ari, and then another couple before I worked up the courage to call the lawyer.
Once I finally did, everything tumbled forward faster than I could organize my feelings about any of it.
I wrapped up my project, packed our life into two worn suitcases, and flew back . . . home?
All of it handled—and paid for—by the lawyer, who said it was coming out of my aunt’s estate. He also delivered the news I’d been avoiding hearing out loud: Aunt Lina was gone. An aneurysm, he said. Sudden. Unexpected. She’d been in good health.
The point is, I’m on my way home.
Though I hesitate to call it that. After so many years drifting from country to country, city to city, home feels like a borrowed word—something I once had but misplaced somewhere between grief and survival.
Seattle greets us with a stretch of gray sky, low and moody in a way that feels pointed. Not Hello, welcome back. More like You again? I thought you’d sworn off of us. The familiarity pinches something in my chest—not pain exactly, but a recognition I’m not ready for.
Mila presses her forehead against the airplane window as we descend, smudging the glass with her nose. “Mom,” she says, deeply serious, “this city looks depressed.”
“It’s atmospheric,” I correct her, because good parents reframe negativity. I read that in some family magazine during a fourteen-hour flight from London to Sydney—worst flight of my life. “Very moody. Like a broody poet who journals on docks.”
She blinks. “You mean like you?”
“I don’t journal on docks.”
“You journal everywhere.” Mila rolls her eyes—tiny, exaggerated, and absolutely inherited from me. “Of course, you don’t write poetry. You just compose endless lists to oppress me.”
“How old are you, child?” I cock an eyebrow. “Some days you sound older than my mother.” I press a kiss to the top of her head before she can react.
“Grandma says I’m an old soul.”
Exactly why I did not pay for my mother to visit us last Christmas.
She plants ideas in Mila’s mind like she’s sowing seeds in fertile soil, and it takes me months to undo the damage.
My family has a flair for dramatics I’d prefer Mila never inherits.
She’s different. Kinder. Brighter in a way that feels borrowed from someone she never got to grow up with. I stop that thought before it hurts.
The point is that I want her childhood to feel peaceful, uncomplicated. She’s already lost enough.
The plane touches down. Everyone else jumps up like they’re escaping, rushing the aisle as if they’ll vanish if they don’t get there first. Mila and I linger—me, dropping things left and right like my hands forgot their job.
Her, sighing at me with the long-suffering patience of someone who clearly believes she’s the only responsible adult in this family.
She adjusts her backpack straps before zipping it with theatrical disappointment while I wrestle with a jacket sleeve that refuses to cooperate. This is why some days I’m not sure who should be filling out the guardian paperwork.
“This is a terrible time for us to be homeless,” she mutters while slipping her backpack on.
“We’re not homeless,” I insist, cheerful and confident and absolutely lying. “We’re just . . . in transition.”
I haven’t told Mila that I’m currently between projects.
Okay—jobless.
There, I admitted it in my head. My agent is “working on it,” which is agent-speak for Please don’t panic yet, Mara.
She asked me to put together a portfolio because a gallery might be interested in my work.
“It’s a nice way to stay in the country while we find you something,” she said.
Sell a few pieces, live off that instead of out of a suitcase for once.
Adorable. Truly.
As if I have the luxury of floating around waiting for inspiration to strike when I have a child who depends entirely on my ability to buy groceries and pretend adulthood isn’t a performance I barely rehearsed for.
I can’t just stand still because someone thinks I take good pictures.
I need income. Stability. A way to pay for whatever hotel or rental we get at our next stop.
Most importantly, I’ve never let my child go without a roof, a plan, or at least the illusion that I know what I’m doing.
Mila’s stare could peel paint off walls. “Mom. We live out of suitcases.”
“It’s called being global citizens,” I counter as we shuffle forward in the aisle. “Some families own houses. We own stories.”
She snorts. Loudly. “We own frequent-flier miles.”
“We do. And one day we’ll use them for an extraordinary adventure.”
She tilts her head, assessing me like I’m a questionable piece of fruit at the grocery store. “Our life is an adventure. Grandma says we should settle down so I can do what normal children do.”
I try not to groan, but internally I am screaming into a pillow.
What the fuck, Mother?
“And when did she say that?” I ask, bracing myself.
“Every time she visits. Usually right after, ‘Let’s put Mila to bed,’ and right before her lecture on how you make questionable choices that affect my growth.” Mila even adjusts her posture to imitate my mother’s when she says things in that tone—an uncanny, mildly horrifying impression.
Exactly why my child needs distance from that woman.
We leave the plane, push through the airport, and follow the current of passengers until we step out beneath the arrivals sign. Baggage claim hums around us—metal wheels clattering, travelers calling out to one another, suitcases slapping onto the conveyor belt.
And then I spot him.
A man in a dark suit stands just beyond the gate holding a sign with my name, MARA CAVANAGH, printed in bold, professional letters. He looks polished, composed, and entirely too confident for someone about to deal with the hot mess that is me.
He steps forward with a polite nod. “Ms. Cavanagh? I’m Daniel. Mr. Hanley’s assistant. The firm sent me to bring you to your aunt’s residence.”
“Oh.” I blink, pretending I expected this. I did not. “Right. Of course. Thank you.”
He helps us gather our luggage. Even grabs Mila’s backpack, my camera bag, the suitcase that keeps trying to topple over like it’s protesting my life choices—and leads us through sliding doors into Seattle’s crisp spring air.
Waiting at the curb is a sleek black town car, a vehicle so polished it looks like it should be chauffeuring spies instead of exhausted mothers hauling along inquisitive children.
Mila’s eyebrows shoot up so high they nearly leave her face. “Oooh. Fancy.”
“Temporarily fancy,” I correct, lifting a finger to emphasize temporary, because God forbid my child thinks I’ve suddenly become a person who can afford things with wheels this polished. “We’re just here to keep Aunt Lina’s belongings from becoming state property. Then we’ll leave. It’ll be quick.”
Mila climbs into the backseat beside me, buckling her seatbelt with a weary sigh—one so dramatic it could earn her a standing ovation.
“You always say it’ll be quick,” she announces, settling in with the confidence of someone preparing to present evidence. “Then three months pass, and we’re still there.”
“That’s so not true.”
She turns her head slowly, giving me a look fit for an investigative journalist. “Portugal.”
“That was only two months.” I tsk like I’ve won something. “Check the math, young lady.”
Her expression suggests someone needs to check something, and it’s not her math. This girl is about to sass me because that’s the default setting she inherited from me.
“Fine. Barcelona?”
“That was different,” I argue. “We had—like—three requests. We couldn’t just leave.”
She folds her arms like a miniature executive preparing to fire me. “It’s always different.”
I stop arguing—not because she’s right (she is), but because the driver might call Child Services if this conversation continues. I do not have the bandwidth to explain our particular brand of functional. We are functional . . . mostly.
I tug at a loose thread on my sweater, pretending that’s what needs my attention.
As we drive into downtown, the buildings rise around us in tall sheets of glass and steel. I’d pictured her in a cluttered bungalow or a bohemian loft smelling like incense and questionable decisions. Maybe I’m wrong. People change. Money changes people faster.
What I definitely didn’t picture was a high-rise with a valet and a doorman wearing white gloves.
“Mom,” Mila whispers, “are you sure we’re not accidentally rich?”
“We’re absolutely not,” I whisper back. “This wasn’t her. She married into this. I just need to understand why we’re involved in . . . whatever this is.”
The sad part? I don’t even know how to finish that sentence.
My mother could have used financial help—if there had been any to give. Why didn’t Lina reach out? Maybe the lawyer knows. All he told me was that I had to be here, that we’d talk in her residence about next steps, and that I would need to make decisions about her estate.
Decisions.
Plural.
My least favorite word.
Decisions imply responsibility. And permanence. And the possibility of being tragically wrong. I can barely decide between cereal and toast for breakfast without consulting the universe, and now I’m supposed to determine the fate of someone’s estate?
This is what I like to call sweet irony at its finest.
That’s basically why I’m here.
That . . . and because Mila lit up when I mentioned coming to Seattle. She says she misses it. I’m not entirely sure what she remembers—she’d barely turned four when we left. But kids hold onto strange pieces of their past, little fragments we never expect.
The lobby is a cathedral of marble and glass, a polished monument to money I can’t comprehend. Everything gleams. Everything feels staged, curated, designed for a life not meant for people like me, who lose things, spill things, and generally don’t match marble.