1
Inheritance
All the stories were gone.
Without the stories, I had a house full of other people’s memories and no one to decode them.
Wind ruffled my disheveled hair as I stared up at the gingerbread molding on the house the lawyer proclaimed would be mine. The grand Victorian home stood large and stately, built during the era when people took more time and concern with craftsmanship. But this place couldn’t be mine. The house was built for people like Ida, and I was still a stranger.
I hesitated on the sidewalk, the balmy spring day out of sorts with the heavy clouds hanging over my heart. I fiddled with the keys. I had to stay here. Like Ida had asked. Like I had promised.
Still, I couldn’t move any closer. Stifled by the realization that, if I went in and found the house empty, it would mean Ida’s death and funeral weren’t a bad dream I could pretend didn’t really happen.
Stupid. Ida was gone, and she wasn’t coming back.
After thirty-five years, I’d found the grandmother I would have loved to grow up with, had life been kinder. A woman full of stories, love, and life. A woman I’d been able to open my heart to even in the short time I’d known her.
But Ida’s funeral two days before meant the stories that had first lured me to this tiny southern town had all been buried. The will gave me the keys to her house but not the truths I needed. I shoved the thought down and marched up the brick stairs and onto the wide wraparound porch. The key turned easily, and the door swung open.
One step over the threshold. Deep breath. Close the door. Ida had said a person could really only do one thing at a time—and that if I looked at each of my days as one step to take after another, I would find that things weren’t as overwhelming as I feared.
How many steps would it take to get through this pain? For now, the entryway would have to do.
Even through the closed front door, sunlight permeated the tempered glass as though light could never fully be shunned here. The rays cast their cheerful amber glow across a foyer Ida had kept filled with fresh flowers on every available surface. The vases now brimmed with wilted roses dropping crumbled petals onto the dusty surfaces of neglected antique tables.
The unfairness fell on me like the blanket of sunlight, only this sensation smothered rather than illuminated. Like something dark and ugly and not at all what Ida said I should feel after she went to Jesus. The cancer took her before we had the opportunity to love one another, and now my one chance to know where I came from—and my identity—was buried in a tiny plot of earth not strong enough to hold the effervescent soul that was Ida Sue Macintyre. All that remained was the shattered remembrance of a beautiful life that God had given me too late and stolen from me too soon.
I took a deep breath. If I couldn’t move forward, I should at least go back outside and get my stuff from the car. But I remained frozen. Paralyzed by the anxiety clawing in my veins and insisting this was the one final loss I knew I wouldn’t be able to bear. Yet, death came anyway, despite the desperate prayers I’d wielded against it.
Ida had told me not to worry, that He would give us lots of time in heaven for her to teach me the secrets of the older generations, like how to sew and garden and can vegetables. She believed God made time for things like a grandmother and granddaughter stitching a quilt by hand or plucking ripe tomatoes from the vine.
Maybe He did. How would I know? I’d be lucky if I even made it up there to find out. Things hadn’t exactly gone my way in life, and I’d made enough terrible choices to find myself in the ditch more than a time or two.
A hollow ache numbed the anxiety as I ran my fingers across an old pedal sewing machine I’d inherited but didn’t know anything about. How many times had Ida’s fingers caressed this same wood? An old typewriter graced the top, ancient and clunky. Ida had brought the contraption down from the attic during my first visit. The one right after she’d found me and a few weeks before she died. She’d said the machine had a special purpose, and then she’d given me nothing more than a sly wink.
I tapped my fingers on the ancient keys, the click echoing in the wide, sunlight-washed foyer.
A knock pounded at the door, startling me from melancholy thoughts and forcing me to shake off tears.
Keep it down. Hold it together.
I swung open the door. A man stood there, arms at his sides and a smile stretching across a clean-shaven face. Little lines crinkled at the corners of his eyes. He looked somewhat familiar. Maybe from the funeral? He waited patiently, as though his manners required he speak only after first being spoken to. I wasn’t in the mood for people to come by and offer their condolences.
And this guy hadn’t even brought food. Must not be a Baptist. He ran a hand over his dark hair, cut short on the sides and curling a bit at the top. Eyes warm and inviting roamed my face as if they knew me.
“Yes?” I eyed him warily. Seemed he wouldn’t state his business unless asked.
“I’m Ryan.” He grinned. “Remember?”
I shook my head. I’d met a lot of people at the funeral home. Didn’t remember much about any of them. Under different circumstances, maybe this man with his inviting smile and easygoing manner might have snagged my attention, but my heart bore too many cracks to flutter at the sight of a handsome face.
His grin didn’t falter. “That’s okay.” He extended his hand. “Ryan Watson.”
I remained frozen, a testament of rudeness I didn’t necessarily mean and inhospitality that maybe I did.
He dropped his hand, not seeming as offended as he should. “It’s good to see you again, Casey. I know this must be hard for you.”
Casey? No one called me that but Ida.
“Cassandra.”
He nodded but continued as if he hadn’t heard. “Ida wanted me to give you this.” He lifted a manila envelope.
“What is it?”
He shrugged, wide shoulders lifting underneath a red plaid button-up. Ida would probably say I should ask him to step inside, but since I didn’t feel like I belonged in Ida’s house, it didn’t seem right to bring in another trespasser.
“Since I’m not in the habit of opening someone else’s mail”—did he just wink at me?—“I guess you’ll have to find out.”
He looked far too chipper to have been close to Ida, so the entire thing felt out of sorts. I took the envelope anyway. “Thanks.”
Ryan shoved his hands in his jeans pockets. “Sure. Let me know when you’re ready.”
“Ready? For what?”
He smiled again, showing straight teeth that were the kind of white you got from good hygiene and not from bleach. “You’ll see.”
Without another word he spun and bounded down the front steps and jogged across the lawn and to the house next door. A neighbor?
I closed the door and sank to the floor, pressing my back against the oak. Ida left me something? Something she didn’t leave with the lawyer? Why give it to the guy next door?
My hand trembled as I slid my finger under the glue and pulled the flap free. Inside, a single sheet of paper contained a letter with thick ink and a blocky font. I glanced at the typewriter. Had Ida typed the letter just before she died?
It took a moment for my vision to clear enough to read the blocky print.