“Not well.” She turned back toward me. “And how about you, Jackie? I’m hoping you stayed in bed and didn’t make any more middle-of-the-night trips to the swimming pool.”

My father looked from her to me. “Middle-of-the-night trips?”

“I couldn’t sleep last night so I went down to the pool.”

“She was taking measurements,” Diane said, peering at me over the top of her steaming mug.

“I just started thinking about how Lexie had divided the pool into a grid—you’ve seen the numbers in crayon out there. She had pages and pages of notes showing the depth of each coordinate—”

“She was checking to see if your grandmother’s promises of it being bottomless might be true. Clever girl! And what did you and she discover?” he asked, suddenly looking very excited.

“Well, it’s definitely not bottomless—obviously. It’s between 6.8 and 7.4 meters deep everywhere I measured.”

He looked disappointed.

“But Lexie’s notes tell a different story—”

“Oh?” my father said, excited all over again.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Diane interrupted. “Lexie once tried to convince us there were bees living in her walls and listening to her. How about the time we found her mapping all the sewer grates because she believed the lizard people were using the drainage tunnels?”

“But I just think—”

“It’s been a while since you talked with Lex or had to deal with her,” Diane said to me, eyes suddenly piercing. “You need to keep in mind—”

“I know what I need to keep in mind,” I shot back at her. “I realize the fact that I shut Lexie out this past year doesn’t give me any right to suggest what might have been going on with her, but—”

“I’m sorry.” Aunt Diane looked at me. “It was a shitty thing to say, Jax. I’m tired, hungover, and just wrecked by all this, but that’s not an excuse. Let’s back up.” She took a deep breath. “All I was trying to say is that your sister was obviously not well in the last weeks of her life. Putting stock in anything she said, did, or wrote is, frankly, a fool’s errand.”

We were all quiet, none of us making eye contact.

“There are home fries and bacon,” my father said to Diane at last. He pushed back his chair and stood up. “What kind of eggs do you like?”

“Just coffee’s fine for me now,” she said. “Sit down and finish eating, Ted, before your food gets cold.” My father did as he was told. Diane’s phone rang, and she picked up and had a short, terse conversation that involved the word “ineptitude” numerous times.

“I’m afraid I’ve got to go into the office for a while,” Diane announced once she’d hung up. “There’s a meltdown with a closing that’s supposed to happen. I need to iron things out. I was hoping we could do the trip out to the lake with the ashes—”

“Tomorrow’s fine with me,” I said.

“Fine by me, too,” my father said. “I have a ticket back home on Sunday. If I’m gone any longer, Duncan gets cranky and starts shitting all over the house. Vanessa won’t put up with it and will leave him out on the curb.”

Duncan was my father’s ancient, one-eyed orange cat. To be honest, I was a little surprised he was still alive.

“Vanessa?” Diane repeated.

“Dad’s girlfriend,” I said.

“Female companion,” he corrected.

“What about you, Jackie? How long before you have to go back to Tacoma?”

“My flight back is on Sunday, too.”

Diane set down her coffee cup. “This may not be the time to discuss it, but you do realize the house and everything in it is yours now, right? Did Lexie discuss her will with you?”

I shook my head, feeling like it was someone else’s body I was moving. “I didn’t even know she had a will.”

“She did. And she left everything to you. The house, whatever’s left of Mother’s savings, even the car. You certainly don’t have to make any decisions right away.”

I remembered how badly I’d wanted these things when they’d read Gram’s will. How deeply wounded and furious I’d been when I didn’t get a single piece of any of them. And now… all I wanted was to have my sister back.

“I work with an excellent property manager who can maintain everything while you decide. We could arrange to rent it if you’d like the extra income. We can put all of your sister’s things into storage until you’re ready to go through them.”

“Do you want the house?” I asked. “Gram was your mother. You grew up here. Maybe it should go to you?”

“I most certainly do not want the house. And my mother knew it. This house and I, and that damn pool—we’re done with each other, and have been for many years now.” She paused, looked away. “There’s also the trust.”

Our grandmother had set up the fund once it became clear that Lexie might never be able to support herself. I didn’t know the details but was always relieved to know that it wouldn’t be on me and my crappy human services salary to help my sister financially.

“At any rate,” Diane went on, “the trust was set up to be passed on to Lexie’s children, should she have them. If not, it was to go to you.”

“Oh,” I said, dumbfounded.

“Michael Knox, the attorney who oversaw it all, will be in touch soon.”

“The trust payouts are quarterly; it’s a decent chunk of change,” my father added. There it was again—the pang of guilt and regret that he knew facts about her life I was clueless about.

“I’m going to run back to my place, get cleaned up, and get to the office,” Diane said. “I’ll grab us some takeout and wine for dinner and stop by later.”

“Perfect,” I told her.

“Sounds good,” my father said.

“In the meantime,” Diane said, throwing us warning glances, “maybe you two should get out of the house for a while today. And stay the hell away from that pool.”

* * *

The stairs leading up to the attic were narrow and dark, and when I reached the top, I smelled dust, mothballs, and things long abandoned.