Chapter 7
I woke gradually, drifting into consciousness like rising to the surface of a warm pool.
It was only my second morning waking in Abaddon Cottage.
Blood loss and the shock of the first night had kept me in a state of anxious readiness.
My body had been coiled, poised to fight or flee.
Now that my anxiety had reduced from a constant rolling boil to a simmer, other feelings bubbled to the surface.
The adrenaline rush of fright morphed into a different kind of arousal.
Sunlight wasn’t yet peeking in through the window, but the dawn was making itself known by a kaleidoscope of colors reflected on the walls. I stayed in almost-dreams, not quite ready to face the day.
The sheets I’d found on the bed were old and scratchy, but the texture played against my skin, making me feel everywhere it touched my body. Awareness oozed slowly from my head down my torso into my fingers and toes. I curled them, feeling the mattress underneath shift as I stretched out.
I drifted my fingers idly across my thighs.
When was the last time I got off? Before I left home, obviously. With that girl Melissa? No. We were drunk, and when she left, I was too tired.
I rubbed my legs together. Desire was starting to build, and I inched my hands closer to my groin as I breathed in—old house and old, starchy sheets. The scent didn’t exactly inspire.
Michigan, right. Abaddon Cottage.
Shit, Annabelle.
Was she here, in the walls somehow? She could have been watching me. But I was so stupidly horny. Maybe—
Nope.
I threw back the sheets. Time to start the day.
***
My phone vibrated so hard it almost fell off the table. I grabbed it but kept it face down while eating the delicious omelet Annabelle placed in front of me.
“Someone is surely blowing up your telephone,” Annabelle said, curling her hands around her steaming mug of English breakfast tea.
The mug had an outline of the state of Michigan and the phrase “Mitten smitten” on it.
She couldn’t drink it but she held it close to her face and inhaled the scent, seeming to glean satisfaction from the hot beverage anyway.
I narrowed my eyes. “How do you know the phrase ‘blowing up’ someone’s phone?”
Annabelle set down her tea and gave me the coyest look I had ever seen on another person, living or dead. “I may be an old ghost but I do watch television, dear.”
“That thing works?” The tiny set in the sitting room was built into a cabinet and looked like the last time it had been switched on was when Nixon resigned.
Annabelle smiled. “It does! Agatha and I became quite devoted to a program called Passions . We watched it every afternoon for eight years.”
“My apologies.” I ate the last piece of egg, scraping the plate with my fork to make sure I got all of it. “You’re a regular urban dictionary.”
Her eyebrows drew together at the unfamiliar phrase, and I felt a little bad for teasing but not so bad as to stop. Meanwhile, my phone buzzed again, this time in the short bursts that indicated a furious text message tirade. I sighed and turned it over.
In addition to a series of furious messages from my boss, I had several from Seymour Anderson, the real estate guy who advertised around the island.
He also sent me four separate emails. I rolled my eyes and sent him a reply with basic info about the house and a few times I’d be available for a meeting.
Then it was time to deal with Babs.
I sighed and marked the texts as read without actually reading them.
Then I logged into my work account on my phone for the first time since I left New York.
Six different people had sent me meeting invites despite my explicit instructions not to and my out-of-office automatic reply.
I didn’t technically have time off since I was a contractor, not an employee.
But in eight years, Babs hadn’t found anyone else who a) could work with her and b) was willing to write rebranding copy for corporations that were guilty of crimes or had gotten away with them.
“Dammit, Babs, I told you I’m not working while I’m out here,” I muttered.
Then I gave in and requested a quote for a cable install on the house.
Even if I only used it for a few weeks, it would be better than a spotty phone hotspot.
And the new owners would be grateful, whoever they might be.
The house was a money pit sitting on valuable real estate, so it probably wouldn’t be too long before Seymour found me a buyer.
Then I could fly back to Babs, the band, and normal life.
And Annabelle would have someone new to haunt. For some reason, the thought made my stomach churn.
“Babs is your ...” Annabelle interrupted my thoughts, her eyebrows raised and her expression carefully neutral.
Was she jealous? Or did she have another reason for interrogating me about my life?
“Boss. Babs is my boss.” I took a sip of coffee and studied Annabelle’s face closely. “She’s also my ex. We were disastrous in a relationship, but we’re great as colleagues. Who knew.”
“Oh, I see.” Annabelle seemed to sigh in relief.
“Is that a ... problem?” I asked cautiously. “That I date other women?”
“No!” Annabelle put her hands up and shook her head. She was clearly flustered, having gone invisible from the waist down. A shame, since her thighs were always nice to see. “In fact, it’s ...”
She didn’t finish her thought, instead pensively looking out the kitchen window. Birds had gathered on the railing, and she smiled wistfully at them. “It’s—”
The doorbell rang with a squawk that didn’t sound like the correct sound for a doorbell.
“Hold that thought,” I said.
As I walked through the hallway, the doorbell rang again but fizzled out by the end of the buzz. The person on the other side of the door tried it a few more times, but the only sound that escaped was a pathetic clink. Oh good, another thing to fix.
Opening the door, I said, “Yes?” in an unwelcoming tone.
“Are you Gibson Cartwright? Formerly known as Veronica Cartwright?” The young woman at the door adjusted her glasses.
They were thick-rimmed and black, but not in a fashionable way.
The rest of her dress looked practical for traipsing to Mordor but not for spending the summer on an island.
Her long, bushy skirt fell just above her ankles, exposing sensible brown laced boots.
“Yes?” I repeated.
“Good.” The woman nodded. She was young but she looked like she might bite if you told her so. “My name is Yasmin,” she said, sticking out her hand.
I shook it lightly, unsure why I felt the need to be polite to her. “Okay ...”
“I’m Agatha Cartwright’s grand-niece. This cottage rightfully belongs to me.”
The woman leveled an impressive scowl at me that I returned with interest. She was carrying a briefcase under one arm and a trunk that looked like it contained at least a month’s worth of clothes in the other.
She set it down on the doorstep with a loud thunk.
“I have papers from the family lawyer in my briefcase. Shall we review them?”
“Well, fuck,” I said.
***
Annabelle went off to wherever she went when she was invisible without me having to ask.
Yasmin looked around the cottage with the look of an appraiser. She wore a serious expression. It looked like it might pain her to smile, and it made me fear I would have to relinquish my self-proclaimed title of biggest bitch in town.
I ushered Yasmin to the kitchen table. She opened her briefcase, then retrieved her birth certificate, Social Security card, family photos, and a handwritten letter from her mother.
It was notarized. I dug out the paperwork I had from my lawyer.
Then I plugged my external hard drive into my laptop and scrolled through pictures of my mom that I hadn’t looked at in over a decade.
There was no mistaking the resemblance between the two of us and the pictures of our mothers.
Her mother was younger than mine by five years.
But when she showed me a recent picture of her, smiling at the beach with long, dark hair and tan skin, my stomach did a flip.
Mom had died before she could reach that age, but instinct told me she would’ve looked just like Yasmin’s mother, Helena.
Together, we created a timeline. My mother and her sister, Yasmin’s mother, were sent to stay with Agatha at Abaddon after their mother, Martha, died.
Martha and Agatha were sisters with only a year of age between them.
Yasmin had a photo of her mother as a girl in 1970s clothes standing in the backyard, along with one that showed Agatha working in the garden.
I looked out the kitchen window at the backyard and held up the photo.
It looked much better under Agatha’s care.
My mother hadn’t stayed with Agatha for long, and soon after, stopped contacting her own sister.
Yasmin’s mother moved to California and, from the letters and photos Yasmin showed me, stayed closely in touch with Agatha even as she moved and had children of her own.
I didn’t even try to unclench my jaw as we worked.
“See?” Yasmin said, getting up to stretch. “Agatha clearly made a mistake when she willed the house to you.”
“Hmmm.” I thought the same thing when I was notified of the inheritance. I thought the same thing when I arrived. Now I wasn’t sure what to think.
The shadows on the garden outside the window grew as we exchanged papers across the table, talking sparingly.
We tried to look at Yasmin’s legal paperwork, but after an hour of staring at documents, she started yawning.
Then I started yawning. We agreed to postpone discussing the legalese until tomorrow.
Only when I showed her to the second-floor bedroom with the rose wallpaper and cautioned her about using the wall socket did her hard veneer start to crack.
She put her trunk down on the bed and stared out the window at the garden below.