Chapter 2
Six weeks later
Thora was journaling at the Woodhill Diner where she and Mack had spent countless summer afternoons eating french fries and
drinking root beer. On this crisp autumn morning, she had a broccoli cheese omelet and lots of coffee, refilled by the waitress
after practically every sip.
The city, and the problems she’d created there, were far away. As soon as the divorce was finalized, Thora hightailed it for
Woodhill to impose on Mack’s hospitality for a spell. She lived in one of two houses the Williamson family built in upstate
New York’s Adirondack Mountains over a century earlier, along with her wife, Jade, and their two dogs, Lottie and Dottie.
Everything they owned was secondhand, rescue dogs included. Mack managed a gas station, cheekily named AdironGas, while Jade
taught high school music.
Delighted that the inheritance from Bryony was generous enough to be life-changing for Thora’s nearest and dearest, she looked forward to giving them enough money to realize whatever dreams they whispered to each other in the quiet moments before sleep.
Mack had long hoped to turn Woodhill House, as they called this ancestral home, into a queer-friendly inn.
First, someone would have to finish the renovations their grandfather had started years ago and died before finishing.
Though the house had seven bedrooms, five were torn down to the studs. Thora could easily fund that work now.
One thing at a time. She was still trying to work through the tangle of feelings from her divorce and Bryony’s death. Hence
the journaling. At the moment, she was listing every reason she and Cody weren’t compatible in case doubts ever crept in,
at Amethyst’s advice. Most recently, she had written thinks reading fiction is a waste of time. She had been wasting time, all right, but not by reading fiction.
She was paying her bill when her phone rang. Her mother, who almost never called, was on the line. Thora answered the phone
as she left the diner, figuring she could talk on the walk back to Mack’s.
Her mother knew she had gotten divorced and was staying with Mack while she figured out what came next. She also knew Bryony
had left her daughter some amount of money, but Thora obscured the exact number sitting between them, a tinderbox she knew
better than to light.
Thora came by her love of gossip honestly.
Her family members were so bad at communicating that she relied on gossip to know anything at all.
Gossip, like any tool, could be wielded for good or evil.
In her family, you never knew who might behave selfishly given some inside info.
She imagined being suddenly approached by distant older cousins she barely knew about sketchy “business opportunities.” For the time being, the money was a secret.
Obviously, Mack was an exception to this.
“Hi, Mom,” she answered.
“How are things in Woodhill?”
“Same as always, you know.”
“How are Mack and Jade?”
Her tone conveyed no genuine curiosity. She was trying to get through this song and dance in a hurry, so Thora gave her a
quick answer.
“Everything is good. It’s great to spend time with them.”
Formalities exchanged, she forged ahead. “Well, I’m calling because I need you to go up to Juniper and pick up a few things.”
Juniper was shorthand for Camp Juniper, the family’s great camp on Moonrise Mountain, about ten miles outside of Woodhill.
It, along with Woodhill House, had been built in the heyday of Adirondack camps, in the early 20th century. The Williamsons
built one lake house closer to town and one retreat in the mountains, which might seem excessive even to those who loved excess
but wasn’t uncommon.
That was back when her family still had money and connections, before everything was frittered and squandered and squabbled
over. People often talk about the persistence of generational wealth, but the Williamsons were a cautionary tale proving wealth
can run out.
Thora’s great-grandfather, like herself, had a degree from the elite and exclusive Townsend College, which he celebrated with a grand tour of Europe.
But he thought himself too important to get a paying job and spent far beyond the dividends his family’s wealth yielded.
Her grandfather joined the military to give himself the structure he wasn’t getting at home, and came back with a raging case of PTSD.
Her father barely managed to graduate high school, also enlisted, and was promptly dishonorably discharged for reasons he would never, ever talk about.
Now he scraped by fixing cars in the shithole town outside Springfield, Massachusetts, where Thora grew up, often waxing rhapsodic
about how his grandfather had gone to school with children of presidents and seen the pyramids, as if any of that meant anything.
Somehow, Juniper stayed within the family as they tumbled down the social ladder. Thora’s father owned a small fraction of
it, along with his siblings and cousins.
“What do you want from Juniper?”
“Mack has a pickup truck, right?”
“Her wife does,” Thora said, suspicion building in her voice.
“Perfect. Well, there’s the desk that’s in the Wood Room, the carpet from the Blue Room, and maybe the two of you will have
to find a big guy or something for that copper bathtub.”
The copper bathtub was certainly one of the iconic fixtures at Juniper, and it was through sheer luck that it hadn’t yet been
replaced with something newer and uglier. Her mother had never expressed fondness for any of Juniper’s furnishings. Her father,
in the family tradition, saw the camp as the shrine to the Williamsons’ greatness. He wouldn’t want to disturb its contents
unless something was wrong. Copper was notoriously valuable. Were they having money troubles?
“Why these things now? Are you planning to sell them?”
“Oh, no, your father wants them for the house.”
Getting practical information from her mother was pulling teeth, always.
“Why now? And who said you could take them? Isn’t the bathtub only technically like one-twelfth Dad’s?”
“All that stuff is up for grabs. Didn’t Mack tell you? Juniper was so behind on property taxes that the county put a lien on it. Now it’s going to go to auction. We have to act fast. Luckily you and Mack are much closer than anyone else.”
Thora needed to back the whole story up. Probably a few generations if she was ever going to deeply understand. “How did the
property fall behind on taxes?”
“Uncle George stopped paying them.”
Uncle George, her grandfather’s brother, lived at Juniper in the summers. Mack and Thora spent all their summers during high
school—and college, in Thora’s case—at Juniper. Uncle George had also died three years ago.
“Why was Uncle George paying all the taxes?”
“Oh, he wasn’t paying all of them. He used to hound your father for his share, but he stopped as he got older. A load of crap
if you ask me. We were certainly not getting our money’s worth out of those taxes.”
Thora wanted to tell her that that wasn’t the point. That presumably the kids going to school in Woodhill could use that tax
money for teachers and librarians. But her mother didn’t have any kids in that school system, so what did she care?
Trying to do the math in her head, Thora asked, “No one has paid taxes in how long? Five years? More?”
“I don’t know and it doesn’t matter. Your father loves that copper bathtub, and besides, Teddy Roosevelt once took a bath
in it. It’s historically significant.”
Everyone still talked about the time the Roosevelts showed up at Juniper, as if they were there for it. Apparently, Alice
Roosevelt’s pet snake Emily Spinach scared Thora’s great-great-aunt to tears. Snakes in the house would have Thora in tears,
too. She appreciated these old stories far less than the ones she and Mack could tell about their own time at Juniper.
That “historically significant” copper bathtub wasn’t going anywhere. If the stuff in the house was going to be divided up among family, Thora was not going to let it happen in secret.
“What if I arrange a Zoom meeting with all the, uh, taxpayers? I could do a walk-through of the house and people could discuss
all the belongings.” She hesitated to call them family because she knew parts of the camp’s ownership had been inherited through
marriage and went to spouses and children she didn’t know.
“That sounds like a great idea.”
“Oh, good.”
“Are you kidding me? Wake up! If these people couldn’t manage to pay the taxes on the property, they don’t deserve the furnishings.”
“And you do?”
“Yes, because you can get there first.”
What were the most likely outcomes? Either the antiques would fall into the hands of strangers with no knowledge of their
significance and provenance, or they would rot in the woods. She had to begrudgingly go along with her mom’s plan. “Let me
go up there and assess the situation.”
“Get photos for me at the very least.”
Thora quickened her pace to get back to Mack’s house, as if some member of her family were actually on her tail, trying to
race her to Juniper and strip it down to a pile of old timber.
Mack was home, thankfully, as she was working the night shift at AdironGas.
“We need to get over to Juniper and see what’s going on there. Apparently, it’s going to auction, and now my mother is asking
me to take the valuables, including the copper bathtub. Did you know the property had fallen behind on taxes?”
“Of course not. That would require my father to talk to your father, which would take an act of divine interruption.”
Mack could be counted on for her uniquely creative version of the English language. Despite how close Thora was with her cousin,
their fathers were always at each other like reactive dogs meeting on a trail. Those two couldn’t find anything to agree on:
water is wet, grass is green level stuff. They deluded themselves into thinking they enjoyed each other’s company annually
when Thora and Mack were little. Family reunions at Juniper were scheduled, but visits were often cut short when someone pissed
someone else off.