The letters were the most interesting thing we found, besides the pictures. But without knowing quite who the people in the photos were, it was hard to learn much from them—except that the house had been beautiful once. And I was starting to feel invested in the hope that it would be again. Even a couple days of pouring my energy into the place had made it feel more like mine, like something I cared about.
“This one is totally gushy,” Daniel called from the corner of the attic where he sat reading letters. “Listen. ‘My love, I cannot imagine what you’ve had to endure during your time in France. I can only hope that the knowledge of your imminent return home is as much a balm to your soul as to mine, and that the love I have for you will help to heal any wounds your soul may have sustained. I do not care what my father says. We will be together. As you said, it is fated in the stars. I wait for you, always. All my love, Lucille.’”
My heart warmed, imagining Lucille waiting for Robert to return. I’d read through dozens of their letters now, and the love story between Filene’s parents touched my soul in the same way a great romantic movie always did. They weren’t worried about what their parents thought about Tuckers and Tanners together. Of course, they’d never met Lottie.
“That’s a love letter, all right,” Michael agreed.
“Gah.” Daniel made a little retching noise. “Who’s Lucille?”
“Filene’s mother,” I answered.
“Who’s Filene?” Daniel asked.
“Filene Easter,” Michael said. “The lady who left us this house.”
“This letter is addressed to Robert Tucker,” Daniel said. “And it’s from Lucille Tanner. So who is Easter?”
“Those were Filene’s parents. Easter was her married name,” I explained, setting the mannequin back upright as I suppressed a shiver at the gash in its torso.
“So Mrs. Easter was a Tucker?” Daniel asked, looking pleased.
“And a Tanner,” I reminded him.
“Oh, that must’ve made people mad,” Daniel said.
“Probably,” I agreed. “My mom says the feud has been going on for hundreds of years.”
“What started it?” Daniel asked, his freckled face lit by the dusty sunlight coming in from the high round window. He looked so young and innocent in the daylight, and the attic itself looked so harmless and ghost-free.
“I’m not sure.”
“I don’t think anyone remembers,” Michael said. He’d been quiet for a while, sorting newspapers in the far corner.
“Then why don’t we give it up?” Daniel asked.
“Old habits, I guess,” Michael said. “And people get their feelings hurt and want revenge.”
“Aunt Verda’s feelings are definitely hurt,” I said. Mom had told me that Verda saw moving her moose around town as akin to desecrating her husband’s grave. Mom had been pretty upset about it herself, telling me that she was going to help get revenge this time. I’d suggested we could be the bigger family and just let it go. But it didn’t sound like that was what Mom had in mind at all.
“Virge and Emmet are so invested in the whole thing,” Michael said. “I’ve tried to get them to just give it up, but they have so little else going on, I guess.” Michael had spent the better part of an hour this morning on the phone with them, walking them through what needed to be done at the store in his absence. They didn’t sound like the brightest fellows to me, but they were family to Michael and Dan, so I kept my mouth shut.
Eventually, we’d managed to sort the attic back into order, tucking the letters and clippings into boxes and setting them back on the shelves. I swept the space out and even cleaned the windows. By the time we headed back down, the place didn’t look ghostly at all, and I found it hard to believe how terrified I’d been the night before. The whole house was starting to feel less haunted and more, just, old.
We finished sanding floors on the main level Saturday evening, falling into bed—me in my own room—and immediately to sleep with no ghostly interference all night. On Sunday, we started upstairs, working through the bedrooms we weren’t using. By the lunchtime, the house was almost livable, the company we’d called to complete the job of refinishing the floors would show up Monday. We’d agreed early on to do as much of the work ourselves as we could, but since Michael had a store to run and I had very little home improvement experience, there were limits to what we could do. And we also had the improvement fund to work with.
I was vacuuming up some of the last bits of sawdust from our sanding when Michael stepped in front of me to get my attention. I shut off the vacuum. “What’s up?”
“Since the guys are coming in to finish the floors, it probably makes the most sense for us to stay somewhere else, keep off of them until they’re done.”
I hadn’t thought about that. “Somewhere else?”
He shifted his weight, wrapping a hand around the back of his neck, and I sensed the same reluctance in him that I felt in myself. I didn’t want to leave the house. In the few days we’d been here, it had begun to feel like an odd kind of home, and we’d gotten along so well it was hard to remember that we weren’t actually any kind of family. “Yeah, I thought maybe you could go back to your mom’s for a few days? Dan and I could stay at my place. Get him out of the construction zone.”
“Oh yeah, sure.”
“It should take the guys a day or two to finish prepping and then they’ll refinish. I think the hardwood will be cured and dry in a week.”
A week with Lottie? I swallowed back my disappointment. “Sure.”
I said goodbye to Michael and carried my bag down the hill to the Tin. I went back to Mom’s house with her that afternoon.
Sunday dinner with Lottie was always a bit of an inquisition, but this one was particularly painful.
“So you two are getting along?” Mom asked over a forkful of chicken.
All eyes at the table were on me—my sisters, Wiley Blanchard’s, and Cormac’s. His girls were at his brother’s house, so he and Paige were both free to offer opinions and advice about my odd living situation.
“Yeah, we are,” I said.
“No in-house pranking? Maybe you could switch the sugar and salt or something. Keep the feud rolling on a smaller scale,” Cormac suggested.
“Definitely not,” I said. “The feud is ludicrous, and you should all just forget about it.”
“Tell that to poor Verda,” Mom said. “Her moose got dinged when they moved him back to her garden this time, and now he has a divot right in his privates.”
“In his what, Mom?” Amberlynn laughed.
“You know.” Mom sniffed, clearly too refined to repeat her comment about moose privates.
“Let me get this straight,” Wiley said. “The moose sustained a feud-related groin injury?” He was barely suppressing a grin.
“Yes,” Mom said stiffly. “And you know Verda thinks of that moose as representative of Harry. It’s almost like those horrible Tuckers kicked Harry in the balls or something.”
No one at the table was doing a good job showing the appropriate amount of respect for the idea of Uncle Harry’s dearly departed balls at this point.