Chapter 5
The blood rushed out of Lily’s head, and she felt faint. When she looked over at her sister, she could see that Violet wasn’t faring much better than she was.
“I can see that this is as much a shock to the two of you as it was to me,” Camellia Johanson said, moving toward them and indicating the rocking chairs on the porch. “Why don’t you both sit down before you keel over?”
Lily and Violet looked at each other in confusion, then obediently followed the self-assured woman to the porch and sank gratefully into two of the rockers lining the front of the porch.
“I-I don’t understand,” Violet stammered, staring at Camellia, then at the lawyer as if he were somehow responsible for this mess.
The woman gave the two sisters a gentle smile, one filled with sympathy and understanding. “No, I don’t suppose you do. I still haven’t quite wrapped my head around it, either,” Camellia admitted, pulling her coat closer and sinking down into one of the chairs herself.
Lily just stared from Camellia back to Violet and back to Camellia. Both Camellia and Violet sported a shorter, chin-length haircut that was becoming to their gray hair. Lily would have bet what little life savings she had that Camellia had once had the same dark-brown hair she’d always envied Violet for. And if she hadn’t known better, she could have mistaken the intense brown eyes gazing curiously at both of them for Violet’s eyes.
Lily looked at the lawyer. “I’m guessing this is what all the secrecy was about? Well, now that you have us all together, maybe you can tell us the whole story, Mr. LaRoche.”
Camellia threw an admonishing look at the lawyer. “Honestly, Matt, you aren’t seriously making my two sisters still call you Mr. LaRoche, are you? I mean, we’re practically all family now, aren’t we?”
Lily and Violet perched forward in their chairs, looking expectantly at the lawyer. Did they have a brother as well as a sister?
“We’re not family, Camellia, and I’m simply trying to stay professional,” grumbled, and then turned his attention back to Violet and Lily. “I’ll do my best to explain what I can for now, but there are still certain details to this inheritance that I’m afraid I’ll only be able to divulge in phases. Like I said, your father had a flair for the dramatic.”
Camellia huffed her own annoyance. “Oh, come on, Matt. Skip the drama. Dad is dead, and he’s left us all in shock. Just spill what you know so we can all process this and move on with life.”
Matt looked at Camellia with a superior look that made Lily suspect he quite enjoyed having the upper hand on her. “Your father had his reasons for requesting that I reveal things in a certain way, and as his lawyer, it’s my duty to do his bidding, dead or alive.”
Violet let out a huff that sounded very much like Camellia’s and said, “Look, it’s been a long day for my sister and me, and your announcement has come as quite a shock to us, so could the two of you please stop bickering back and forth and tell us exactly what’s going on here?” She looked directly at Camellia. “Like, who are you exactly?”
Lily jumped in, hoping to soften Violet’s harsh words. It would do no good to alienate their new sister just yet. “I think what Violet means to say is, how is it that you say you’re our sister? Did our father actually adopt you? It just seems very strange that he never mentioned you to us, even once. How did you meet him?”
Camellia snorted. “I met him in much the same way I imagine the two of you did—bare-butt naked and screaming in a hospital room right after my mother pushed me out of my cozy nest in her womb.”
Camellia paused for a second, letting her words sink in, and then said, “I’m not adopted, and as I’ve already asked Matt to verify, neither are the two of you. Dad is quite clearly Dad to all of us.”
Lily fought down the sick feeling in her stomach. She wanted to scream out a denial to this clone of Violet and tell her that she was wrong--that her father would never have had a child with anyone other than their mother. But at the same time, the familiar--yet unfamiliar--eyes that looked back at her told her that Camellia was telling the truth.
Violet had grown just as pale as Lily. “So, you’re telling us that he had an affair, and you are the product of that?”
Camellia shook her head vehemently. “No. Dad and Mama were married for almost fifty years. I am the product of their marriage, and they loved each other deeply. Mama was devastated when he died.” Camellia paused, and Lily noticed her eyes tearing up. “The grief of losing him is why she gave up in the end. I don’t think she could deal with the thought of living without him.”
“I’m sorry for your loss,” said Lily, watching Camellia sympathetically. “But you must be mistaken. Dad was married to our mother, and I’m sure that if she hadn’t died so young, they would still be married.”
Matt cleared his throat uncomfortably and said, “I assure you that my client, George McCann, and Mary Ann McCann were very much married. In fact, Mary Ann was actually the original heir to this magnificent house.”
Lily’s head was spinning, and she felt like she’d just walked through the looking glass beside Alice. Looking around at the serene and beautiful surroundings, she half expected a rabbit holding a pocket watch to jump out at them and wave.
Violet sat next to her, just rocking and silently shaking her head back and forth, refusing to focus on the people sitting around her.
“I’m sorry I chose to break it to you this way,” Camellia finally said. “It was such a shock to me to find out about the two of you. I suppose the petty side of me wanted you two to share in the shock and confusion I felt. I realize I should have given you more of a warning before you came out here.”
“You’re the one who arranged this meeting, then? It was your decision that we needed to come here to discover our inheritance?” Violet sounded bitter.
Camellia shook her head. “No, that wasn’t my decision. That was stipulated in the will. I wasn’t allowed to tell you about our shared inheritance until we were all at the house together, or I risked losing my share in it.” She looked down at her lap. “But I suppose the will didn’t specifically say I couldn’t tell you about me and Mama before you got here.”
Violet took a deep breath and looked at Matt. “So, what else does this will say? If Mary Ann, Camellia’s mother, inherited the house after my dad died, how and why do we fit in at all?”
“Well, Mary Ann didn’t exactly inherit the house outright. She was only given the right to maintain it and stay here until her death. Upon such, as per George McCann’s wishes, the house was put into a trust for the three of you. You three will need to meet certain stipulations to actually take possession of it. If all three of you can’t agree to follow the stipulations, then the house will be turned over to a charity that your father chose before his death.”
Matt finished speaking and looked at Camellia. “I apologize that I couldn’t tell you all of this at the time of your father’s death. I know you expected to take possession of the house after your mother passed.”
Camellia nodded. “Yes, that’s right, I did, Matt. We spent many vacations here, including every Christmas I can remember. Dad always promised me he would see to it that it stayed in the family, so, of course, I thought it would be mine when Mama died.”
She turned to Violet and to Lily. “I was planning to spend Christmas here with my daughter and husband, like I always have. You can imagine what a shock it was for me when Matt told me I didn’t own the house.”
Lily looked at her sister. She knew Violet was thinking the same thing she was, but they needed to talk to each other privately before she said anything.
“We haven’t actually had a chance to look around inside yet. Would you mind if my sister and I go in and take a minute to speak in private?” she asked.
“Yes, this is a lot to process,” Violet agreed. “Lily’s right. I could really use a minute by ourselves.”
Camellia didn’t look at all pleased, but she nodded her consent. “Matt will open the door for you. I’ll just wait out here on the porch until you’re ready.”
For the first few minutes they were inside, Lily and Violet just wandered through the large house, looking in awe at the comfortable and tastefully decorated rooms.
“It’s huge, and this is nothing like the way Mom would have decorated it,” Violet said. “Clearly, Dad’s mistress had much more refined taste than our boho mother did.”
“Matt said that Mary Ann and Dad were married, so she wasn’t just his mistress,” Lily reminded her.
“Poppycock. That’s not possible. Dad was married to Mom. They celebrated their anniversary religiously. No matter how much Dad had to travel or how many times he was out of town, that was one date he never missed.”
As she spoke, Violet was looking at a collage of pictures on the wall. “Looks like Camellia wasn’t lying when she said they spent a lot of time here. Look at all the family photos hanging on the wall.”
Lily came over to gaze at a selection of pictures showing a young, dark-haired girl with a dark-haired woman, and sometimes their father, staring at the camera with happy smiles on their faces. Most of the pictures seemed to have been taken in this house.
“She looks like you. Did you notice that?” Lily said, turning to her sister.
“Who? Camellia?” Violet furrowed her brow. “I don’t know. Maybe a little.”
She looked back at the pictures. “Well, that’s clearly Dad in the pictures, so if he is her father, I guess it stands to reason we’re all going to have a few similarities.”
The two of you are clones, Lily thought, amused.
“We obviously still need to get a lot of answers from Camellia Johanson and her snake of a lawyer, Matthew Fox, but it does look like she was telling us the truth about spending a lot of time here,” said Lily.
Violet sighed. “Yes, it does. And it must have been as big a shock for her to find out that the house wasn’t going to be hers as it was for us to find out that we’d inherited a house we knew nothing about.”
Lily looked at her sister. “That’s why I wanted to talk to you privately. To see if we’re on the same page.”
Violet nodded. “Yeah, I kind of figured that.”
She let out a resigned sigh and shrugged. “Well, easy come, easy go. We may as well go back outside and break the news to our newly found sister.”
The women walked outside to see Camellia leaning against the porch railing and looking out into the woods just beyond the house. When she heard them come outside, she turned around.
“Well? What do you think of the house?” she pressed.
“It’s beautiful. I assume your mother decorated it? She had great taste,” said Lily.
Camellia looked at Matt, then smiled, half amused and half sad. “No, Mama had awful taste, actually. You should have seen the mismatched garage sale furniture I grew up with. I swear that the day she died, she still had the old yellow linoleum on her kitchen floor that I learned to walk on.”
Violet and Lily looked at each other, confused.
“But the house? It’s gorgeous,” Violet said.
Camellia nodded. “Yes, it is. Her best friend picked out all the furnishings and decorated for Dad and Mama. When we weren’t here, we rented it out to a few other families. Clare, mother’s friend, knew that if she left the decorating to Mama, no one would ever want to stay here.”
Matt nodded in agreement. “Admittedly, our fathers were way ahead of their time. They had the Airbnb concept down years before it became popular.”
Violet looked at Matt with newfound curiosity. “Your father and our father were friends?”
“Clare was Matt’s mother. Mama and Clare had been friends since grade school, so obviously, when they each got married, their husbands spent a great deal of time together as well,” Camellia said.
Lily was shaking her head in confusion. “Wow, there are more and more turns to this story.” She turned her attention back to Matt. “I will expect you to answer all of our questions before we leave here, Matt, but first, my sister and I have something to say about the house.”
Camellia narrowed her eyes. “You want to know how much the house is worth, right? Well, to me, it’s priceless, but I suppose you’ll want it appraised. I’ll buy you out, of course, but it may take me a while.”
“No, that’s not what we wanted to say, Camellia. It’s clear that you spent a great deal of your childhood here, and although we have a hundred questions that need answers, my sister and I do agree on one thing,” Violet said.
“We just found out about this house,” Lily continued. “Of course, the idea of owning a house in Lake Tahoe was exciting when we heard about it, but even if it was owned by our father, we don’t think we have a right to it. We’re willing to forfeit our rights and let you have it outright, Camellia.”
Camellia’s eyes were wide, and she looked at the two of them. “You would do that for me?”
Before either Violet or Lily could answer, Matt cleared his throat. “I’m afraid that won’t be possible, ladies. Your father must have anticipated something like this as a possibility. The will clearly stipulates this is an all-or-nothing deal. If even one of you forfeits the inheritance, you will all lose it.”