“Excuse me?”

I turn wearily, knowing in my gut that I’m seconds away from being asked to fish a wedding ring out of a bathroom drain. It happens once a month.

It’s a woman in a pink tweed coat. She eyes my name tag and her face lights up. “Well, hello there!”

I offer her the most customer service-y smile I can muster. Please, please don’t tell me someone’s done something unspeakable in the elevator again. The restroom is right there across from it, for crying out loud. I’ll quit. I’ll legitimately quit, right now. “Hi. Can I get you anything?”

“Actually, I’m here to give you something,” she replies, stepping forward. A thick folder is tucked under her arm. “I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but your great-aunt Violet is dead.”

Chapter 2

CONTACTING VIOLET’S RELATIVES HASN’T been easy. So many of you aren’t on speaking terms with each other!” The woman chuckles uncomfortably. “I tried a number listed as Julie Parrish’s, but it’s out of service.”

“Yeah, she has a new . . .” My throat is suddenly dry. I don’t know why I feel like I might break down—I haven’t seen my great-aunt Violet since I was ten. I swallow. “A new number. I’ll pass the news along.”

Not that Mom will care that Violet’s dead. She was mad at Violet while she was alive, and she’ll stay mad at her now that she’s dead.

“Maybe we should sit down,” she suggests.

I lead the way to a table situated outside a Tim Hortons on the first floor. The seats are riddled with puddles of pool water. No one ever pays attention to the sign on the water park’s exit to towel off before leaving.

The woman is probably in her late fifties, Afro-Latina, with silver threads in her curly black hair, which is pulled tight into a bun. “My name’s Ruth Campos. I was your aunt’s home health aide for four years, and she gave me power of attorney ten months ago. Right now I’m here as the executor of her estate.”

Ruth Campos. I’ve heard that name before. I’m pretty sure she got into it with my mother over the phone one time, not too long ago, when Mom tried to pass herself off as the person who had Violet’s power of attorney in hopes of getting a little bit of money. It didn’t go so well.

Ruth lays out the details both kindly and matter-of-factly: Violet passed away in her sleep on Sunday morning. She was ninety years old. She remained sharp as a tack until the very end, and while her mobility had declined, she’d gotten highly invested in local outreach concerning the preservation of forests. Per her wishes, there was no service, no public fuss. Her cremated remains have been scattered all over her land, to be with her husband Victor’s ashes. He died right after I turned eleven. I heard about it but wasn’t allowed to attend the funeral.

The whites of her eyes are a bit pink, mascara smudging as she blinks rapidly. “I’m gonna miss that lady.”

“I can’t believe she’s gone.” I can’t imagine her not being in that big house anymore, watering her pretty garden, humming as she dusts the spindlework around her living room doorway. All this time, even though I’ve certainly been a blurry speck in her past, she’s been a bright, stabilizing presence in the back of my mind, and my emotions are being crushed under that rock as it rolls away.

I haven’t seen her in twenty years. My summer at Falling Stars, Violet Hannobar’s late-1800s estate resting on two hundred and ninety-four acres of land an hour southwest of here, is my happiest memory. For a little girl who was passed from relative to relative and then cast out when Julie Parrish burned bridges, Violet’s friendly pink house was nearly as big as a castle and pure fairy tale. I never wanted to leave.

And according to Ruth, now it’s all mine.

She shows me a few papers from the envelope, but my mind is reeling and I can’t make sense of any of it. The splash of a water slide and shrieking children press in around my ears; a kazoo blasts from the loudspeaker whenever kids fire the water cannons in Rocky Top Tree House and my concentration fractures, life as I knew it this morning and life as it’s going to be slamming into each other like oncoming trains.

My gaze wanders over the lobby that’s functioned as my second home from the time I turned eighteen and joined Mom as a housekeeper. We weren’t the kind of family who could afford vacations, so being employed at a water park hotel was the next best thing. I remember walking beneath the giant statue of a bear strumming a banjo in the parking lot, which you can see from Dollywood, and feeling very adult.

Like being on vacation every day, my mother said. Living the dream. Now she’s in Atlanta, living a new dream. I’ve been stuck here, not remotely feeling like every day is a vacation.

“She said she was going to leave me everything,” I murmured, “but that was forever ago. I was a kid.”

“She loved you.”

“She didn’t love anybody else better than me, in the twenty years since we saw each other?”

“Those twenty years didn’t stop you from being her niece.” Ruth lays her hand over mine. “She understood why you didn’t return. Time away can make coming back awkward. And your mother held a fierce grudge.” She draws back, straightening the contents of the envelope. “You were the only apple on the family tree she liked, if you don’t mind my saying. Who better to inherit the estate?”

I’m struggling to process this information, but it won’t sink in. If this means what I think it means, I can leave my living situation: a tiny apartment I’m being crowded out of now that my roommate’s boyfriend moved in and his friends are always sleeping over. I don’t know what I’ll do for a job, but with a house already paid for, it isn’t such a big risk to leave Pigeon Forge.

I can leave Around the Mountain Resort & Spa. I can leave Gemma.

“I can move in now?” I ask suddenly. I nearly pounce on her, I lean forward so fast. “Like, today?”