He knocks three times.
My heart lurches into my throat, which is suddenly drier than the Sahara.
In all the time I’ve lived here, I’ve never had any unexpected visitors save for the occasional neighborhood kids selling cookies and magazine subscriptions or the handful of neighbors who dropped off a casserole or two after Donovan passed.
“Hello?” a man’s voice calls through the door. “I know you’re home. Your car’s in the driveway . . . and I can hear you moving around in there.”
I peek around the pillar once more, trying to get a better look, though the way the sunlight shines in on the east side of the house paints him as nothing but a tall, dark mystery man.
“Annie?” he calls. My blood turns to ice. It’s not my name, but it’s close enough. “Annielynn?”
Again, close enough.
He knocks a second time.
“I’m not leaving until you come out,” he says. “And I’ve got nowhere else to be right now, so . . . I can play this game all day.”
I freeze like a doe on a midnight highway.
“I’m Lachlan,” he says.
My killer has a name—and I like it.
But that’s not the point.
“Lachlan Byrne,” he adds, pressing his face closer to the glass, though due to its opacity I can’t make out his features clearly. “Donovan’s brother.”
Apparently my killer is also a liar. Donovan never had a brother. His mother passed when he was eleven, and his father died a few years before we met. If he’d had any siblings, he would’ve told me. That’s the sort of thing you tell someone you’ve just pledged to spend the rest of your life with.
Then again, he failed to tell me he’d pocketed my life savings.
Tiptoeing to the dining room, I peek out the window that overlooks the driveway—where an olive green F-150 is parked behind my car. I clamp a hand over my mouth, drawing on a mental image of the guy from yesterday . . . the rugged version of Donovan with the copper eyes and messy auburn hair.
“Hello?” He knocks again, his tone demanding this time.
Scraping my skepticism off the floor, I clear my throat, remind myself I’m surrounded by hammers, crowbars, sanders, and saws, and answer the damn door.
“The name’s Anneliese, not—” I say before I lose my voice entirely. Yesterday I saw him from several yards away, and his resemblance nearly knocked the air from my lungs. But now, standing mere feet from this man, it’s like looking into the eyes of Donovan himself. I attempt to speak once more. Nothing but air makes it past my lips.
Lachlan peers past my shoulder, into my messy house, before settling his heavy gaze back onto me.
“Anneliese,” he says in a cool, collected manner before leaning against the doorway with the conviction of a man who owns the place. “Let me guess . . . my brother told you I was dead?”
“No,” I finally manage to say. “He never told me you existed . . .”
His full lips—Donovan’s full lips—inch into a smirk.
“Of course,” he says, as if the revelation amuses him.
I don’t want to believe him. I don’t want to believe that Donovan once paged through an entire scrapbook filled with shot after shot of his parents with just one child and intentionally neglected to mention there was ever a second.
But given everything that’s come to light since his passing, it wouldn’t be completely out of the question.
“I didn’t see you at the funeral,” I say. I didn’t speak to many people that day, but I’d have noticed if someone looking nearly identical to Donovan were standing graveside.
“I was out of the country.” He doesn’t elaborate.
“I’ve never seen a single picture of you in any of the photo albums.”
A painful expression colors his handsome face, but it’s gone in an instant.
I cross my arms and square my shoulders. “I’m sorry, but why are you here? What do you want?”
“This house,” he says.
Squinting, I attempt to process his words. “What about the house?”
“You asked what I wanted. I told you,” he says without a hitch. “This house.”
I’m going to be sick.
“Unless you can produce a valid will naming you as Donovan’s beneficiary, I’m legally entitled to his estate,” he says. “Lucky for you, I’m not after any money. I just want the house.”
There is no money.
There is only the house.
The house is the money.
Before we moved here, Donovan suggested we combine our savings into a renovation fund. Excited and woefully in love, I cashed out my savings and wrote a cashier’s check to our new bank, which Donovan claimed he deposited into a joint account he’d set up online. Over the months that followed, we wasted no time ordering cabinets, hiring electricians, and sourcing tools, materials, and subcontractors.
We were burning through it quickly, given the size and scope of this renovation, but now the bank won’t let me touch the funds. They won’t even give me a balance on the account.
I met with an attorney several months back—a free-consultation type of thing. She said legally, I had no claim to the house since we weren’t married, but I could file a claim against the house to try to recoup some of the money I’d invested into it. All I needed to do was find a close relative to legally inherit Donovan’s estate so they could serve as the administrator. I reached out to one of his distant cousins on social media a couple of times but never heard anything.
The trickiest part, I was told, would be to prove that I’m the one who funded the majority of the account while also proving that Donovan intentionally lied to me about placing my name on the account. On top of that, I’d have to prove that my funds were directly used to purchase materials for the house. She didn’t sound overly optimistic, nor did she sound thrilled about taking on the case. On five separate instances, she reiterated how expensive this could get.
But I just may be looking at a silver lining—one I never knew existed.
“Can I buy it off of you?” I ask. I don’t know any sane banker who would let someone mortgage this house in this condition—nor do I know any sane banker who would approve me given the fluctuating nature of my income—but I put it out there anyway. If I could buy this thing from him somehow, then I could continue the renos, flip it, and walk away with a little extra padding in my pockets.
Lachlan laughs. “Sorry, but no.”
I bite my lower lip to keep it from trembling. This is the universe kicking me when I’m down, but I’ll be damned if I fall apart in front of this asshole. If I’m forced to walk away now, I’ll never recoup any of this. Everything I’ve poured into this house will have been for nothing.
“Do you have papers?” I ask. “Something official?”
“I’m working on it.”
“By working on it, you mean you’ve hired a lawyer and started the probate process?”
He studies me, sizing me up perhaps. Donovan may have played me for a fool, but I’m sure as hell not letting his brother do the same.
“I just got to town yesterday, but it’s on my list,” he says.
“And you realize probate court can take up to a year . . .”