“That’s because you didn’t know her.”

Wesley isn’t fazed by my crossed arms or formidable scowl. He chucks a cardboard box full of books with their covers missing and ignores me.

“Those can be recycled.”

“I’m paying extra for the trash company to sort through it for recyclable materials. Part of the premium service package.”

That sounds made-up. And possibly sarcastic. He’s saying whatever he thinks will get me to stop talking to him.

It’s a relief that I don’t have to feel bad anymore about intruding here, living in his cabin. He’s been waiting around for my aunt to die so he could do whatever he wanted with her home.

I busy myself quality-checking holiday lawn ornaments. That’s what I’m doing officially, anyway. Unofficially, I’m side-eyeing the muscles in Wesley’s arms that cord and shift when he lifts heavy boxes, hunter-green shirt straining across his broad shoulders and back. His skin is tanned and freckled from an occupation that puts him center-stage in the sunlight, so when sweat crops up along his forehead and the bridge of his nose, he shimmers like gold dust. Whenever I’m warm and sweaty, my hair both frizzes out of its ponytail and plasters to my face, which goes as red as a stop sign. When I blush or get overheated, I don’t get two cute splashes of pink on my cheeks. My face incites alarm. I blame the fact that I was born a redhead, which is my go-to piece of trivia whenever anyone mentions the strawberry highlights in my light brown hair.

I wonder idly if Wesley was born with dark blond hair, or if he’s one of those blonds who had snow-white hair as a child. The idea of him having ever been a child is ridiculous. He looks like he was born with a five o’clock shadow and some sharp words for the nurses. I bet he refused to wear onesies because he found them demeaning.

I resent my intimate familiarity with what he looks like, which is at rotten odds with the coarseness beneath his surface. I know every inch of that face, thanks to my dumb, deluded self not running Jack’s pictures through a Google reverse image search.

Physically, I speak fluent Wesley Koehler. Spiritually, he’s a mysterious unknown. An enigma. That kind of face should come loaded with a cocky grin and eyes that twinkle with teasing humor. In the game of Who Wore It Better?, Jack wins, and he doesn’t even exist.

Wesley threads his fingers through his hair, rumpling the every-which-way waves, darting a peculiar look in my direction, then away again. I watch him a while longer while trying to be discreet about it, but now his attention stays firmly fixed on his task. No good morning, no how did you sleep, no curiosity about me as a person and where I came from, no small talk between roommates. No bless you when I sneeze. It’s next-level rudeness.

It’s a feeling too familiar to be mistaken. I’m unwanted in my home.

“Zero points for originality, universe,” I mutter. “You’ve given me that story line loads of times and I’m still here.” The Maybell Parrishes of the world are a gullible, often down-on-our-luck breed with determination that exceeds our talent, but at the end of the world, we’ll be the last ones staggering through that field of zombies. Grumbling, shaking our fists at the sky, too bullheaded to know when to quit, with soft, stupid hearts that won’t be jaded. Being delusional is our downfall but it’s also our saving grace: we’re deluded enough that we don’t see why tomorrow shouldn’t be better, even if the last thousand days in a row have been bad.

Our being equal inheritors of my aunt’s estate is going to be a circus, I can already tell. But if one of us is going to give up, I know it won’t be me.

Chapter 5

A FEW HOURS HAVE PASSED since I first began cock-blocking Wesley’s mission to run afoul of Great-Aunt Violet’s dying wishes, and I’m forming a hunch around how he justifies this behavior.

He and Violet were close, I’m guessing, being the only two people all the way out here, cohabitating in the very close quarters of the groundskeeper’s cabin. When you live with somebody long enough, you pick up kernels of information about each other that lead to anticipating what the other person might say or do, how they might react in any situation. You learn their habits, you establish rituals. You grow comfortable. This spawns an easy rapport.

I didn’t have an easy rapport with Violet, or at least I haven’t had one in a long time. Our relationship was a chasm, basically. I sent a holiday card every year, because holiday cards were easy. Thinking of you! Short and sweet, with the thinnest slices of personal information. Apartment-hunting again. Saw a sweater with jingle bells on it and thought of you. We sure are having a rainy month. She replied with checks for twenty dollars and a few odds and ends: a bookmark with kittens on it; a newspaper feature on My May Belle, the historical Knoxville riverboat I was named after.

For birthdays and Christmases and Thanksgivings, I couldn’t bring myself to pick up the phone. Too much time had passed, which led to awkwardness and putting it off even longer—and you see where I’m going with this.

What would I say? What if she didn’t care about me anymore? Didn’t remember me? Didn’t want to hear from me? The possibility I might be accused of being a negligent niece—or worse, that she’d confess what a disappointment I’d turned out to be . . . my guilt grew steadily, but I couldn’t face it, so I locked it in a drawer. Now I’ll never get the chance to make things right with Violet.

Wesley doesn’t carry any such guilt. Maybe he feels the inheritance was owed to him, after taking care of Violet. He must’ve had his hands full as a caretaker, because he certainly wasn’t doing any groundskeeping. The landscape looks like a child’s drawing of a tornado.

Maybe neither of us deserves the estate. But this is where I can make it up to Aunt Violet. I can honor her list. I owe her that much, at the very least.

It goes like this:

Wesley carries a crapload of stuff out of the house, and I make him put it in the Inspection Station (it’s the spot near a shrub that’s shaped kind of like a flamingo). I sort out anything salvageable into Keep and Donate piles. A sticker book I saved from the hoard has found new use designating what to do with it all.