My absence from work today has been noted by Christine, who’s sending increasingly threatening texts: You’d better be in the hospital. Gemma, too, who wants to know if I’m sick, and reminds me that if so, I’m already running out of sick leave, which isn’t information she’d know. Paul definitely ghostwrote that text. I’m an hour away from that place, never to return again, so I’m free to give them a middle-finger emoji and block all their numbers from my phone. I don’t know why I can’t. I type out several responses but delete them all. Leaving all their messages ignored is probably the more chaotic choice—soon I’ll be receiving “official warnings” sent to my company email that I won’t check.

Next, I do what I always do and yet always regret doing whenever I’m spinning in lonely circles.

She answers her phone after six rings. “Hey, you.”

“Hey, Mom.” I put on my cheery, everything-is-fine smile even though she can’t see me.

“You must be psychic, because I was about to call. I just listened to your voicemail.” Her tone is a touch superior. “Too bad.”

“Yeah, it’s so sad.” I realize I’m holding a box of White Diamonds perfume, and it’s a mistake. My vision blurs. I’m in the kitchen with Aunt Violet, sifting powdered sugar over fudge brownie donuts, making a terrific mess, while she assures and reassures me how well I’m doing. Maybe I’ll finally cry, and it’ll be cathartic, and I’ll be able to appreciate Falling Stars. Maybe it will all sink in.

“Well.” Mom’s cold detachment brings me back to earth. “She was old.”

I swallow. “Still sad, though.”

“So you’ve moved in already, huh? You find a job there yet?”

I’m abruptly reminded of why I don’t call Mom often. “No.”

“Oh, honey, that’s not good.”

“I only just got here. I’ll find something soon.” Hopefully. I don’t want to think about applications right now, not when my employment history qualifies me to be a housekeeper and basically nothing else. “How’ve you been?”

“It’s kind of an insult that Violet gave you the house, don’t you think?”

The left-field question catches me cold. “How so?”

“The fact that it’s trashed. Which! Hah!” Mom snorts loudly. “She thought we were trash. You and I.” She’s speaking faster; I can picture her on the terrace, half in the sun, one of her knees bouncing. “If I were you, I would have walked away. We’re not the type of people to accept pity presents. That isn’t how I raised you.”

I don’t know what to say.

“You couldn’t pay me to live in that mausoleum,” she continues haughtily. “No offense. I’m happy for you if you like it, but that could never be me. Never. And all the work she’s just dumped on your plate? Inconsiderate. What an awful old lady.”

“She wasn’t awful.”

“She nearly killed you.”

“I was fine.”

She blows cigarette smoke into the speaker. “That phone call still gives me nightmares.”

Me too, because it signified being taken away. Aunt Violet felt it was her duty to let Mom know about the minor car accident—it wasn’t her fault, the roads around here are loopier than a Slinky and neither of us saw the other car coming. The teeniest of swerves. The barest of guardrail bumps. We were okay! The other car was okay! Violet’s trusty, clunky car absorbed the impact and we were fine, if a little rattled. Some light bruising from our seat belts and a few tears, but those were close-call tears. Happy-we-were-okay tears.

Mom raced straight to the Falling Stars, used the situation to try to extort money out of Violet, and it all went to hell. Each of them said the other was unfit to parent, but Mom was the one with legal rights.

“So damned irresponsible, driving when her eyesight was getting bad. And she really thought you’d be better off in her custody! Imagine.”

I have. Vividly.

“You’d have turned out a mess.” I hear a cigarette lighter click. “So. Totally trashed, then.”

“Yeah. Can’t hold out my arms on either side of me without knocking into stuff.”

A peculiar pause. “What kind of stuff?”

I get that bad-faith awareness, the one that grips me every time we talk and makes my stomach churn—the one I forget about after we hang up because my brain is in perpetual repair mode and wants desperately to believe the best of people. “Vines, I mean. Just a bunch of vines. They’ve destroyed the windows and floors.”

“Oh?”

I can see her wheels turning. She’s considering driving out here. “The mold is wall to wall. And there’re about a thousand rats.”

“Eww. God.” I envision the face my rat-phobic mother is making and can’t help a slight smile. “You’re the only one named in the will, then?”

My smile slides off.

“Ahh . . .” The part of my cognizance that registers Wesley and screams OH MY GOD IT’S JACK can’t stop cataloging his movements, and my gaze tracks irresistibly to where his army-green Wellington boots are chafing a path through the yard. Back and forth he goes, house to dumpster, to house to dumpster, pitching armfuls of maybe, maybe-not junk. Not even discriminating. Could be throwing away antique buttons worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, but what does he care? “Mainly,” I reply at length. I’m not getting into the two-inheritors mess—she’ll suggest I take him to court, which Violet wouldn’t have wanted.

“I’m assuming I didn’t get anything, huh?” She tries to mask her hope with flippancy, but we grew up together. I can read Julie better than anyone.

“No. Sorry.”