I screamed, and that brought a furious round of barking and scrabbling as the the dogs raced inside to see what the noise was about. They were followed by a tall, dark-haired man with friendly eyes and a worried expression on his face who found me still standing face to face with a very large marsupial.
“Hey, Addie,” Cormac said, looking me up and down as if he might be able to figure out why I’d walked into my sister’s house and screamed. The dogs were leaping around me now, and I felt like I’d activated a circus. “Settle down, Luke. Bobo, quit it.” Both dogs quit jumping and exchanged a look, as if agreeing that they would resume immediately if the moment seemed to call for it again. They sauntered back outside. “You okay?” Cormac asked me.
My heart was racing and it took me a second to answer. Maybe exploring the haunted house had put my nerves a little on edge. “I hadn’t expected the six-foot kangaroo in the corner is all.” Or for Paige’s dog to be named after my ex.
“That’s Frederick. He’s friendly.”
“Sure.” I gave the huge thing another once-over, wondering if Cormac was the cause of Paige’s deteriorating decorating skills or if there was something about enormous taxidermy I just couldn’t appreciate. Was this something Joanna Gaines was into now? I needed to watch more television.
“Hey you!” Paige called as I stepped out to the patio.
“Hey,” I returned, my eyes falling on the two little girls in fairy dresses twirling on the lawn with what looked like electric sparklers. Wands, I realized. They had wands. In the gloaming light with the dusky night settling around us, the girls really did look like little fairies, and their sweet laughter floated on the breeze and made tears prick at my eyes for some reason. “Hey,” I said again quietly as Paige stood to hug me.
“You okay?” She held me out by my upper arms, frowning at me. “What’s going on? Wait, wine first.”
“I’m on it,” Cormac said, turning back around and heading into the house.
“Everything okay, Ads? Do I need to get rid of the man so we can talk?”
We sank into chairs side by side. “No, he can stay. I do need to talk though. It’s not exactly girl stuff. It’s more, just . . . “
Paige angled her chair toward me, but at the same moment, the little girls seemed to realize they had company, and the tiny one came scooting over, fairy wings fluttering behind her as she approached. She dropped a still-pudgy hand on Paige’s knee as she regarded me through huge blue eyes. “Maddie, this is my sister, Addison.”
“I have a sister,” the little girl told me, her voice earnest and strong.
“Is that her?” I asked, pointing at the older girl, leaping across the lawn.
“Yes. Taylor.”
“You are both very pretty fairies,” I told the little girl, my heart squeezing painfully as she smiled with pride.
Cormac reappeared with three glasses of wine, and as he handed me one he said, “Do you need your sister alone for a bit? I can take the girls in for a bath.”
I shook my head. “No, actually. I could use as many rational adult opinions on this as I can get.”
His eyebrows rose, but he sat and pulled a chair closer.
I told them about my very strange day, beginning with the part Paige already knew about Mrs. Easter’s fall in the street last week.
“I can’t believe she’s gone,” Paige said, and I knew her doctor brain was working through what she might have missed, trying to figure out if there was something she could have done.
“The lawyer assured us it was natural,” I told her. “In her sleep. Totally peaceful.”
Paige nodded, her eyes sad.
“So a house, huh?” Cormac said, his head angled to one side. “That’s crazy. And the money too.”
“And you can’t just, like, sell the house and take the money?” Paige asked.
“It’s all tied up together. And everything is built around Michael Tucker and I each spending six months living at the property.”
“Ew,” Paige said. “That place is so creepy. And so are the Tuckers.”
“It is all creepy,” I agreed. “Especially the house. Cool too though. I mean, it’s one of the oldest houses in town, right? The design of the place, though—it’s so pretty. It could be amazing if we could really get it solid again. I’d kill to have free rein to choose all the finishes. And there’s so much history there. Up in the attic there were all these ancient trunks and a bookshelf with shoeboxes and papers stacked up. Kind of a mess, really, but I bet there’s some interesting stuff in there.”
“Right,” Cormac said, sounding thoughtful. “But I guess what I’m wondering, is what was Mrs. Easter’s purpose in throwing you and Michael Tucker together like this? She knew about the feud. Why you?”
“I’m not totally sure,” I answered. “But she said something that day when we said goodbye, about it being time to end the feud. Her mother was a Tanner and her father was a Tucker—did you know that?”
Paige shook her head. “How did that even happen? It must’ve been like Romeo and Juliet!”
“It’s kind of romantic,” Cormac said, gazing fondly at my sister. By now, the little girls had come and climbed onto the arms of his Adirondack chair, and they were both watching me with open interest.
“Everyone dies in that story,” Taylor, Cormac’s older daughter said. “It’s not romantic.”
“That is an excellent point,” I said, agreeing with the sage words of a child. “And nothing good can come from Tuckers and Tanners hanging out together.”
“Except maybe Mrs. Easter was right,” Paige said. “I mean, better you than me—I’ve been poisoned by proximity to Mom’s constant concern that a Tucker is going to redecorate The Tin again, or steal Verda’s moose.”
“What do you mean, better me than you?” I asked.
“The feud is ridiculous. No one even knows why we hate Tuckers, just that we do. I mean, this isn’t eighteen hundred. Let’s end it already. You should totally do this—end the feud for us all by realizing that Mrs. Easter was basically matchmaking.” Paige looked proud of herself for having figured this out.
Matchmaking? Had Mrs. Easter really had that in her mind when she’d put this together? I wasn’t so sure. I could see her wanting to end the feud, I doubted she cared about my love life. And how did she even know either of us was single? “I don’t think that’s what she’s doing.”
“Maybe she just wanted the two sides of her family to get back together,” Cormac suggested.
“That makes more sense to me,” I said, letting my eyes slide shut as I thought about the house. “I could actually get excited about renovating the place, being allowed to choose all the colors and surfaces and everything. But I’m not sure at all about the moving in part.”
Cormac chuckled. “Because the place is most likely haunted?”
“No,” I said too quickly, thinking that my hesitation was exactly because the place was probably haunted, but I didn’t want to seem like I couldn’t handle a little fear. “Because it’s old. And I’m used to modern conveniences.”