“I’m sorry that you’re learning of her death this way. I wanted to find you. To tell you everything and bring you home, but I made a promise, and I’ve done everything in my power to keep it.”
A promise? What kind of promise would keep a grandmother from seeking out her granddaughter?
“As far as your father goes, your mother never told me his name. I have no idea who he was.”
Wow. I couldn’t decide if I was disappointed or elated. He could still be alive. He could still be out there, but if no records of him existed, there was no way I could find him.
I hit pause again and studied her. My grandmother. She had Prussian blue eyes like mine. That was the only resemblance I could find as my hair was as dark as the walls around me and grace lived in a land far, far away.
My stomach growled again. I needed food and rest and time to process everything. I closed my laptop and went in search of Roane. To my surprise, Ink followed me, keeping a safe distance away from my feet. I knew he was smart.
After calling out for Roane and searching for him throughout Percival’s exquisite entirety, I decided to order enough pizza for him in case he showed up again. And how could I not order it from The Flying Saucer Pizza Company? With a name like that, it had to be good. When the doorbell rang, I thought it was said pizza. It was not. It was Mrs. Richter’s assistant.
“Hi,” I said when I opened the door. His pallor told me he was scared of Percival as well. I didn’t get it. Percy had been so nice to me. Welcoming.
Without uttering a word, the stout man with chubby cheeks extended his arm to hand me the package, clearly worried Percy was going to bite.
“Thanks.” I took thick envelope, and asked, “So, I have three days to back out of all of this, right? I mean, if I change my mind? Isn’t that, like, a law?”
He took a wary step back and I could see a bead of sweat forming on his upper lip. “Three days?”
“Yeah. You know. Isn’t there a lemon law or something?”
Another step. “You want to give it back after three days?”
“Okay,” I said, walking onto the porch and closing the door behind me. “What gives? What’s going on? I mean, it’s just a house. A gorgeous, elegant house that needs a little TLC, but a house nonetheless.”
The man backed onto the first step. “Nothing. There’s nothing wrong with it.”
“Then what? Why is everyone so freaked out about Percival?”
He took another step down. “Freaked out? Wh—what makes you say that?”
I gave him my best deadpan. “Seriously?”
Almost stumbling on the next step, he righted himself, then said, “It’s just, well, you’re not from here. Things have happened in this house. Strange dinner parties happening at all hours of the night. Séances. Mass murders.”
“Yeah, we have those in Arizona, too. They’re called urban legends.”
A nervous chuckled bubbled out of him. “Right. Urban legend. Well, good luck.”
He turned and speed walked away. It would have been funny if I hadn’t been so concerned. Strange dinner parties happening at all hours of the night? No way could I stay here now. Not with the threat of strange dinner parties happening at all hours of the night.
Speaking of which, the UberEats girl arrived with the pizza. I tipped her with my last five, wondering if I should’ve used that money more wisely. I could not believe it. I was going to have to borrow a couple hundred bucks from my dads just to get home unless I made a sale on Etsy lickety-split. I made custom journals in my spare time, time being a commodity I seemed to have a lot of lately. Those journals made me a solid twelve bucks a month. Can’t shake a stick at that.
After a nasty divorce in which no one besides my ex’s mother came out ahead, I’d been wallowing in misery at home, trying to devise a plan of action so I wouldn’t starve to death, when I got the call from Mrs. Richter.
And here I stood. Pockets empty. Pizza in hand. Cat around ankles. I’d never owned a cat in my life, but if an ink-covered journeyman came with him, I could learn to love the scruffy little guy.
Since that journeyman was nowhere to be found and Ink was trying to summon a demon with all of the meowing he was doing, obviously wanting the pizza more than I did, I took it upstairs and we ate on the bed. I could only hope Ruthie wouldn’t curse me from the grave for getting crumbs on her deep gray comforter.
While eating, I took out my fine-tooth comb and scoured the paperwork, looking for any indication that accepting this house would break me financially. Then I remembered, one had to actually have finances for them to be broken.
I was no lawyer—though I did represent myself in traffic court once, #neveragain—but the paperwork looked legit. Of course, so did the marriage license Lionel Corte presented me with in the second grade before he proposed. If I’d known it was fake and we weren’t really married, I wouldn’t have put him in a sleeper hold. So, in a way, his aversion to marriage was his own fault.
Like Mrs. Richter said, there didn’t seem to be any liens or outstanding taxes, but still, a house like this took lots of dead presidents to maintain. Even more if I was going to consider restoring it.
My phone rang with a video call. I answered it on my laptop and waited for my two dads to appear on screen.
“Hey, Dad. Hey, Papi.” To keep them straight, I’d given them different terms of endearment when I was a kid. I didn’t even realize until later that I’d mixed them up. Dad was of Latino descent, his skin a rich copper, the angles of his face sharply defined, while Papi was pure Viking.
“You were supposed to call us the minute you arrived, cariña,” Dad said.
“I’m sorry. This has been such a strange day.”
They glanced at each other, their handsome faces lined with concern.
My dads had been together for almost fifty years and had been married since Arizona legalized same-sex marriages in 2014. They were more rugged than most straight men. They also had more women hit on them than most straight men, especially men of their age. They were like those silver-fox models in sunglasses ads.
Dad, the older of the two, had silver hair and a cropped, well-groomed beard to match.
Papi, who was almost ten years Dad’s junior, was still fighting tooth and nail to keep his dark blond locks dark blond. Sadly, he’d been losing the battle for years now. We’d tried to convince him the gray looked good. We had yet to succeed.
They’d adopted me when I was three, so it wasn’t like I didn’t have good role models. It wasn’t like I didn’t know the difference between a good man and a jerk. Yet I married the definition of a conniving snake. He’d fooled me completely.
He hadn’t fooled them, though.
“What do you think of the house?” Papi asked. They seemed nervous. Jumpy.
“I think I can’t keep it. It’s so beautiful. You guys would love it. I just can’t afford it.”
“Wait, what about—” He stopped when Dad elbowed him. With a stiff nod, he cleared his throat, and said, “Just sleep on it, hon. We can help.”
“What’s going on?”
“What do you mean?”
It didn’t matter. I was tired of worrying. “I can’t keep coming to you guys every time I need something.”