Still, something inside Eileen wouldn’t allow her to open it.
Instead, she focused on something Mr. Knutsen had said: That’s for him to say. This guy couldn’t know much if he didn’t know John Sullivan had been dead for fourteen years. For all that time, he’d said nothing to Eileen from beyond the grave. Why would he start today?
Silence passed, eventually turning obscene. Mr. Knutsen caught on. He slid the folder away from Eileen and opened it himself. He unhooked something from a paper clip—a photograph—and held it out to her.
Eileen took the photo. It seemed a bitch too far not to.
She was looking at a man in his midtwenties standing in front of a wire fence. She knew who this was. Soft jaw. Ruddy cheeks. Strawberry-blond hair. Close-set eyes, colored cornflower blue. Traits Eileen had not inherited but recognized easily enough from other photographs of her father.
“So?” She flapped the photo at Mr. Knutsen.
“So, that’s Patrick Enright.”
Eileen stopped flapping. She held the photo close and looked. Really looked. Traits similar to John Sullivan’s, but it wasn’t him. There were differences. The turn of his nose. The hunch of his shoulders. The gauntness.
A long-nailed claw dug into Eileen’s gut. It was familiar, though she hadn’t felt it in a while—the pain of not knowing a dad who’d died young. There were vague memories of him left in her head: arms swinging her high in the kitchen, bangs that drooped over his eyes. Still, she didn’t know him well enough. Not enough to distinguish him from a stranger.
A real daughter would’ve noticed the difference.
Eileen needed a drink.
“It’s an older photo, of course,” said Mr. Knutsen. “Hadn’t taken anything recent before his death last week. Cirrhosis of the liver, complications thereof. Nasty way to go, I hear. Now, Ms. Sullivan, do you know much about your father’s upbringing? Where he lived before he moved to Emmet?”
You couldn’t imagine the things I know, thought Eileen.
What she said was, “Some other shit town. Why does that matter?”
“It’s really not my place to tell you that.”
Eileen gave Mr. Knutsen a long, hard look. What was this dude playing at? She’d come here for answers, and all she was getting were hems and haws and hedging. It was time to play hardball.
“Right!” she said, slapping her knees. “Thanks, Bill. This has been super enlightening.”
She headed for the door, still holding the photo.
“He gave you a house.”
Eileen stopped. Slowly, she turned around.
Finally they were getting somewhere.
“Beg your pardon,” said Mr. Knutsen. “I’ve been skirting around the point. My job is to tell you about the inheritance, not its history.”
“A … house?” The question dropped from Eileen’s mouth like crusted glue.
“A third of the proceeds from its sale, to be precise. That’s your portion of the estate. Your sisters will inherit the remaining thirds.”
“Uh-uuuh.” Eileen had stopped feeling things right. Her face was numb, or maybe not there. She really needed a drink.
“Please, Ms. Sullivan, take a seat. We have a lot to discuss.”
Eileen obeyed Mr. Knutsen’s order, just this once.
FIVE Claire
It was mailing day, and Claire wished she were anywhere but here, at the post office, three days before Christmas.
“Delusional,” she muttered—to herself, and to the nine customers on her Etsy shop who had placed orders after the Christmas cutoff date. It didn’t matter how clearly Claire had laid out the shipping guidelines; shoppers would disregard them, holding on to false hope that their last-minute gifts would reach them in time.
Some people had no regard for scheduling, let alone logic.
That didn’t mean Claire wouldn’t take their money, though.
As she stood in line, a dozen people away from the mailing counter, Claire copied and pasted a message into the Etsy app, tapping out the previous customer’s name and replacing it with the next:
Hey Rebecca,
One last reminder that this gift will arrive AFTER Christmas, as indicated by my Holiday Shipping Guidelines. I hope you or your recipient enjoy this one-of-a-kind, handmade piece. Thank you for your business!
xo Claire @ Silver Lining Boutique
She hit the send button and moved on to the next:
Hey Madison,
Lance,
Zoe,
Finally, she reached number nine. The ninth last-minute, frazzle-brained customer who’d bought an online boutique gift less than a week before Christmas. Based on experience, Claire expected six of the people to not respond, two to send back a chipper I understand, thanks!, and one Unenlightened Settler to write that she was affronted, and what terrible customer service, and she had no idea.
Before Claire had started watching Harper Everly, she would have straight-up called that last person a bitch. But Harper had taught her that “bitch” was a Settler’s word—a cheap stand-in for how you actually felt about another woman, and certainly not helpful in the grand scheme of things. “Bitch,” said Harper Everly, was decidedly antifeminist.
So Claire called bitchy customers Unenlightened Settlers instead, and she used intelligent words to describe their actions: entitled, oblivious, ignorant. Maybe those weren’t as satisfying to say, but they were true, and ultimately, those customers rarely requested a refund. It simply wasn’t worth the effort at Claire’s price point. They could write their nasty messages, but Claire was the one who ended up with their money. The joke was on them.
That’s how it worked, Harper had taught her. “Settlers shout loudest. Excellers live loudest. It’s a long game, and Excellers win out.”
That had been true of Claire’s business, a dainty jewelry shop she’d set up at fourteen using only her phone and cheap supplies from Michael’s. Since that time she’d made good money—more than she could ever make at a minimum wage job like Eileen’s or Mom’s. Thousands of dollars and counting, which she was saving up for college. Thus far, she’d been a success.
All that success … to what end?
What was the point of a modestly successful Etsy shop if its profits had nowhere to go? Of succeeding as a budding entrepreneur if, in the end, you failed at the one thing that mattered most?
Ahead at the counter a woman with two screaming toddlers was screaming herself, telling a beleaguered worker how a post-Christmas delivery was “unacceptable.”
An Unenlightened Settler, indeed.
Claire’s eyes drifted from the drama to the limp, green tinsel garlands draped on the walls. Overhead, a near-dead fluorescent flickered. Behind Claire a man hacked a phlegmy cough. If hell was real, then it was a post office on December twenty-second.
Normally, Claire didn’t spend much time here. She had a system: pack and weigh mailers at home, print labels from the family computer, and ship packages weekly, on mailing day—a simple drop-off with no waiting, no hassle. Yesterday, though, on printing day, she’d discovered the printer was out of black ink.
Claire had her suspicions. She was sure Murphy was to blame. Excellers didn’t blame, though; they rose above. So here she was, rising above in the ninth circle of hell.