Aunt. I scowled at the four black letters. Yeah, right. Might as well say “Invitation from a total stranger.” My mom and her only sister had been close, that was true enough. They’d talked on the phone every week. Sometimes for hours. But Mom always claimed her sister was something of a recluse. She never visited. And in all those years, she’d never asked to speak to me. Not once.
I tapped ragged fingernails on the wooden desk. I didn’t need to read the letter. I’d committed it to memory in that one, quick glance. As I’ve already offered my condolences, I shall not do so here.
I grunted. Wow. What a sweetheart.
My gaze snagged on the postscript.
I also believe there are insights she might gain at her mother’s childhood home which would not be feasible for her to discover in her current circumstances.
“Insights?” I muttered. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
I stood and paced to the window. Even here, in my own space, I felt suffocated. I shoved the sash open, but the muggy June air only made it worse.
Frustrated, I slammed it back down. Wrapping a fist in the nubby curtains, I started to jerk them closed, when a blaze of blue caught my eye. Our neighbor’s massive hydrangea bush.
I flinched away from the window as the memory sliced me apart.
The annual Walton Fourth of July picnic was mandatory. Only imminent death excused attendance. That year, Mother Bea had hired a professional photographer, who’d spent the day snapping candids. Twelve, chubby and awkward, I’d spent my day ducking out of them.
As the sun waned, my grandmother had perched in her favorite wicker chair before a great wall of blue hydrangeas to begin formal portraits. When the photographer called for the grandkids, Dad towed me toward the plethora of cousins. Stifling a sigh, I’d arranged myself near the back. Mother Bea’s perfectly permed gray head swiveled, scanning her progeny. When the photographer raised his huge camera, she gestured for him to wait.
Without bothering to turn, my grandmother made the announcement. “I’d like for these to be blood kin only,” she called. “Hope, you understand, don’t you, dear?”
Stung—stunned—it took me a second to get it. After I slunk away, my grandmother ordered the obviously disconcerted photographer to proceed. Several of my cousins snickered as waves of hot embarrassment baked my face. Of course it wasn’t a secret that no Walton blood flowed in my veins. But never before had I been singled out that way.
Left out that way.
In the tangerine glow of a perfect sunset, I’d watched the mob of tanned, golden-haired kids cluster around their matriarch. Uniformly big teeth gleamed as they grinned on cue. I stood alone, a pale, dark-haired stain against a gleaming white column.
My mother’s reaction was predictably fierce, and the next day, after my lesson in Empirical Russian, she’d informed my father that she and I would attend no more family functions.
My mom despised her mother-in-law and everything she stood for. She would never have wanted me to stay.
I sank down in the desk chair. Tears blurred the screen as, hands shaking, I typed in the two-word reply.
“I’ll come.”
Chapter 3
I WOKE JUST AS THE PLANE TAXIED INTO EDINBURGH AIRPORT. Dad had been right about the sedative, though I was fairly sure Dr. Miller, a kindly, old-school pediatrician who’d treated my myriad ailments since I was six, might’ve upped the recommended dosage just a smidge.
The first, lighter round of meds had kicked in just as I boarded and strapped in. Somehow, I had stumbled to the right gate in Atlanta. Then I’d spent the next ten hours passed out, drooling, and—based on the mutters of the disgruntled passengers around me—snoring like a bear with a sinus infection.
Before I left, I’d tried to research my aunt’s home, Christopher Manor. There was little to find. Only a few faraway photos posted by hikers traveling through the famous Scottish Highlands. And a stern warning that—unlike a lot of other grand Highland estates—it was not open to the public.
“Your aunt’s right sorry she couldn’t be here to welcome you herself, lass.” Mac, Lucinda’s lanky, balding caretaker, had explained when he met me at baggage claim with a little, handwritten sign. “Urgent business, you understand.”
All this way. And she wasn’t even here?
Still drowsy and more than a little grumpy, I hadn’t said much on the long, dark drive from Edinburgh. But when we pulled up the gravel drive and parked in front of the massive, imposing mansion, I couldn’t help but gape.
Floodlights illuminated five or six stories of golden stone that glowed against the night sky. Square Norman towers stood sentinel at each corner, giving the manor a boxy look. There were no storybook turrets that I could see, but the crenelated tops of the walls and towers made it easy to imagine long-ago kilted archers defending the house against rival clans.
“The house nestles right up against the mountain,” Mac said as he saw the direction of my gaze. “She’s a right good old girl.”
I nodded, still mute with awe. I couldn’t tell how far the mansion stretched out behind. But judging by the distance to the hump of the mountain in the near distance, it had to be enormous.
Inside, the house was dark and silent. Only the soft glow of wall sconces set between grim-faced ancestors lit our way as we trudged up two flights of wide, carpeted steps. The scents of stone, lemon polish, and musty drapes cascaded over us as I followed Mac’s knobby shoulders down a narrow hallway.
Only a small bedside lamp lit the room where Mac deposited me and my bags. With a groan, he laid my suitcase on a nearby table before pointing out a thermos and covered plate. “My Moira wanted to wait up for ye,” he said. “But I told her we’d be sore late getting in. Still I swear she’ll take a broom to these old bones if ye don’t eat at least two of her famous jam sandwiches.”
At my very-polite thanks, his grin widened, making his small blue eyes disappear into a fan of wrinkles. “Aw, Lass,” he said, “You’ve had a hard row to hoe. But it’s right pleased we are to have you here. Now, you get yourself some sleep. The others will be rarin’ to meet ye come the morn.”
Still druggy and exhausted, I climbed up the three wooden steps to the bed and, fully clothed, passed clean out.
The clack of footsteps woke me the next morning. I cracked one crusty eyelid to see that pearly dawn light now puddled on the floor of my new bedroom, brightening as I watched. Groaning, I glanced at the ornate bronze clock on my bedside table.
Not even seven, yet. Who the hell is wandering around at this ungodly hour? And in heels, no less.
I pulled the quilt up to my chin and burrowed deeper into the feather mattress.
Without warning, the bedroom door flew open with such force, it smacked against the paneled wall. I shot up, heart hammering. Before I could blink, a dainty, elf-faced girl with an upturned nose and short spiky hair the startling shade of a blue Slurpee bounded into the room. In a short skirt and peasant blouse—and sporting the highest platform heels I’d ever seen—the girl scampered up the steps to the bed and settled herself beside me, wriggling like an excited puppy.
“Cheese an’ rice.” A toothy grin lit her entire, freckled face. It was infectious, and I had to force my own lips not to respond. “I thought you were going to sleep away the morn.”