Chapter Two
Hazel
I definitely wasn’t in Ohio anymore.
I stood in the middle of my new living room with my hands planted on my hips and slowly turned in a circle.
Boxes. So many fucking boxes.
Boxes stacked against the wall. Boxes piled beside the front door. Boxes in front of the fireplace I hadn’t even known the house had until yesterday. Boxes labeled KITCHEN, BATHROOM, BEDROOM, and one particularly unhelpful box labeled SHIT I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH.
That one had been packed somewhere around midnight three days ago when I’d officially stopped giving a shit about organization.
I had no idea how one woman had accumulated this much stuff. I was said woman.
My apartment back in Ohio had been small. One bedroom, one bathroom, a kitchen barely big enough for two people to stand in without bumping asses, and a living room where I could sit on the couch and almost reach the television with my foot.
Now I had a three-bedroom house.
An actual house. Mine. I still wasn’t quite sure how the hell that had happened.
“Thanks, Aunt Diane,” I muttered.
The empty room didn’t answer. Which was fitting, since Aunt Diane hadn’t exactly been chatty while she was alive either.
Mostly because I’d never met her. Not once. I’d known she existed, technically, but that was about the extent of it.
Diane had been my mother’s older sister. My mother hadn’t talked about her much, and when I’d asked questions as a kid, I’d gotten vague answers that usually ended with some version of families are complicated.
Apparently, complicated meant the two sisters had gone decades without speaking.
My mother had died years ago, and Aunt Diane had remained nothing more than a name I’d heard a handful of times.
Then, three months ago, I’d gotten a phone call from a lawyer in Wisconsin.
Diane was dead and she’d left me her house.
I’d actually laughed right into the phone. Not because it was funny, but because what the hell else was I supposed to do when a lawyer called and told me a woman I’d never met had died and decided I should own her house?
I’d assumed it was a scam.
I’d almost hung up, but the poor man had spent twenty minutes convincing me that, yes, Diane had existed, yes, she really had owned a house outside Marshfield, Wisconsin, and yes, for reasons neither of us understood, she’d named me in her will.
There hadn’t been a fortune waiting for me.
No secret millions. No priceless jewelry. No dramatic letter explaining why she’d disappeared from our lives.
Just the house.
I walked over to the front window and looked outside.
Trees. A whole lot of trees.
That was going to take some getting used to.
My apartment in Ohio had overlooked another apartment building and a parking lot where two people had been fighting over the same parking space for the better part of three years.
Here? Nothing. No traffic or people walking down the sidewalk.
Mostly because there wasn’t a sidewalk. The road stretched in both directions with thick trees and open land surrounding it.
There was one house next door. That was it.
I’d driven farther down the road yesterday out of curiosity and discovered it eventually dead-ended a couple miles away to a gated driveway and some big buildings. Whatever was down there wasn’t any of my business. At least, I hoped it wasn’t.
I wasn’t looking to make anything my business, and that was part of the appeal.
Ohio hadn’t been terrible. I hadn’t fled in the middle of the night with some horrible secret chasing me across state lines.
Nothing dramatic had happened. That was almost the problem.
Nothing happened. Ever.
I’d waitressed at the same restaurant for six years, lived in the same apartment for four, bought groceries at the same store, filled my car at the same gas station, worked with the same people, and saw the same customers every day.
Went home to watch TV, went to bed, got up, and did it all over again.
There hadn’t been anything keeping me in Ohio.
No boyfriend, no kids, and no family. I had friends, but none close enough that moving over six hundred miles away felt like I was ripping out a piece of myself.
When the lawyer told me the house was completely paid off, something inside me had clicked.
Why the hell not? That had been it. That was the grand decision-making process that had brought me to Wisconsin.
Why the hell not?
I wasn’t sure if that made me brave or stupid. Probably a little of both.
I looked around the living room again. The house definitely needed work. A lot of work.
The hardwood floors were scratched but solid.
The walls were painted a shade of beige that could only be described as depression with a hint of yellow.
The windows were old. The kitchen cabinets had probably been installed sometime around the invention of sliced bread, and one of the upstairs bedroom doors refused to close unless I lifted it slightly while pulling.
But the roof didn’t leak. The furnace worked. The plumbing worked.
And the most beautiful words I’d ever heard: No mortgage.
I’d take ugly cabinets. Hell, I’d hug the ugly cabinets.
I had three bedrooms, one and a half bathrooms, a decent kitchen, a big living room, a basement that I was currently pretending didn’t exist because basements creeped me the hell out, and a backyard that was probably bigger than the entire apartment complex I’d left behind.
It was mine.
For the first time in my thirty-four years, I owned something bigger than my car.
Granted, I was also unemployed. That little detail was going to become important sooner rather than later.
I had some savings, though not enough to sit around for six months discovering myself while I painted walls and learned how to garden.
Enough to get settled. Enough to breathe for a few weeks. After that, I needed a paycheck.
The house might’ve been paid for, but apparently the electric company didn’t give a shit about dead aunts and unexpected inheritances. Neither did the grocery store. Or the gas station. Or the insurance company.
I had bills. They were considerably smaller now that rent wasn’t one of them, but they still existed.
Once I got through the worst of the boxes, I’d head into Marshfield and start looking.
A restaurant.
A bar.
A diner.
I wasn’t picky.
I’d spent most of my adult life waitressing or bartending.
I was good at it. I could carry four plates at once, remember twelve drink orders without writing them down, smile through a fifty-cent tip, and tell a drunk man to get his hand off my ass without dropping the tray balanced on my other palm.
Marketable skills.
I was going to be fine.
I took a deep breath. “Okay, Hazel.” Standing around staring at boxes wasn’t going to unpack them. I pointed at the nearest one. “You.” It didn’t move. “Good talk.”
I grabbed the box cutter from the windowsill and attacked the tape.
LIVING ROOM.
Finally. Something useful.
I pulled the flaps apart and immediately found a pair of boots. I frowned. “Why are you in here?”
I pulled them out and tossed them toward the stairs.
Next came two picture frames, a candle, three books, an extension cord, and the throw blanket that had lived on the back of my old couch.
Apparently, my labeling system had fallen apart well before the SHIT I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH box.
I set the frames on the mantel. One was a picture of my mom and me.
I was probably nineteen in it, and we’d been laughing at something when whoever had taken the picture snapped it.
Neither of us was looking at the camera.
I ran my thumb across the edge of the frame.
“Well, Mom,” I murmured, “I’m living in your sister’s house. ”
That was weird to say out loud.
I wondered what she’d think. I’d wondered that a lot since the lawyer called.
Why hadn’t they spoken? What had happened? And why had Diane left the house to me?
Maybe somewhere in the boxes of things left in the house, I would find some answers. There were a few photo albums. Some papers. A small wooden box I’d found in the back of a closet. Nothing I’d looked through yet.
I set the picture down and grabbed the candle. “You’re easier.”
The candle went on the mantel beside the frame.
I had just started digging through the box again when someone knocked on the front door.
I froze. Nobody knew me. Literally, I’d been in Wisconsin less than forty-eight hours.
The lawyer wasn’t coming. I hadn’t ordered anything.
Another knock sounded.
I looked toward the door. “Well, this is how horror movies start.” I put the extension cord down and walked across the living room.
There was a storm door outside the regular door, which at least gave me something between myself and whoever was standing there.
I unlocked the door and pulled it open.
Then blinked.
A woman stood on the other side of the glass.
She wasn’t what I’d expected, though I wasn’t sure what I’d expected.
Mid-fifties, maybe, and she had thick blond hair that fell a little past her shoulders with streaks of pink running through the ends. Not subtle pink, either. Hot pink.
She wore ripped jeans, black ankle boots, a fitted black T-shirt with I’M NOT BOSSY, I’M AGGRESSIVELY HELPFUL written across the front, and enough silver bracelets stacked around one wrist that I could see them through the glass.
Large sunglasses rested on top of her head and her lips were painted bright red. She was holding a bottle of wine in one hand and a casserole dish in the other.
I liked her immediately.
She smiled at me through the glass and I opened the storm door. “Please tell me you’re not here to sell me something.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “I brought wine.”
I looked at the bottle. “You can come in.”
She laughed. “I knew I was going to like you.”
“I have standards. They’re just incredibly low right now.”
“Those are the best kind.” She shifted the casserole dish in her arms and held out her hand.
“I’m Pink.”
I looked at her hand. Then her face. “Pink?”
“That’s what they call me.”
I shook her hand. “Hazel.”
“I know.”
I pulled my hand back. “That’s mildly terrifying.”
Pink laughed again. “Your aunt told me about you.”
That stopped me. “You knew Diane?”
“Of course.” She tipped her head toward the neighboring house. “I’ve lived next door for almost twenty years.”
I looked toward the house and then back at her. “You’re my neighbor.”
“Unless somebody moved my house overnight.”
“I suppose stranger things have happened.”
“Not around here.”
There was something about the way she said it that made me laugh.
Pink held up the wine. “I wasn’t sure if you drank red or white, so I brought red because that’s what I like.”
“That’s incredibly selfish.”
“I know.”
“And I respect it.”
Her grin widened. “Oh, we’re going to get along just fine.”
I stepped back against the doorframe. “What’s in the dish?”
“Lasagna.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope.”
“Do you have any idea what I’ve eaten today?” I asked.
“No.”
“Half a granola bar and three handfuls of Goldfish crackers.”
Pink’s face twisted. “Jesus Christ.”
“I just moved in,” I explained.
“That’s not an excuse.”
“I don’t own groceries.”
“You own a refrigerator.”
“Technically,” I agreed.
“Then you should put food in it.”
“I’ve been here two days.”
“Two days is plenty of time to buy food.”
“Are you always this judgmental?”
“Only when I’m awake.”
I laughed. God, I liked her. I’d assumed the first few weeks would involve a lot of talking to myself while I figured out where the hell everything was.
Instead, my neighbor had appeared on my doorstep with wine and lasagna. Wisconsin might not be so bad.
Pink leaned slightly to the side and looked past me. “Holy boxes.”
“Yeah.”
“Did you rob a moving truck?”
“That would explain a lot.”
“You’re doing this by yourself?”
I held up my hands and wiggled my fingers. “I’ve got two hands.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
I shrugged. “Pretty much.”
Pink’s expression changed slightly. “Well, you’ve got me next door.”
That was surprisingly reassuring. “Good to know.”
“And if you need anything, you come over. Don’t worry about bothering me.”
“Careful. I might actually take you up on that.”
“Good.”
“Even if it’s two in the morning?”
Pink didn’t hesitate. “Especially if it’s two in the morning. Anything happening at two in the morning is either really good or really fucking bad, and I want to know about both.”
A laugh burst out of me. “Okay. You’re definitely my kind of person.”
“I’ve been trying to tell you that.”
“You’ve been here five minutes.”
“And look how much progress we’ve made.”
I stepped back and pulled the storm door wider. “Come in.”
Pink lifted the wine. “Thought you’d never ask.”
I laughed and waved her inside.