Katherine Kim
Sarah's Inheritance
The Spirits of Los Gatos
First published by Katherine Kim in 2018
Copyright © Katherine Kim, 2018
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Contents
To Richard, who has never stopped encouraging me.
A quick word
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Ninteen
Twenty
Twenty-one
Twenty-two
Sneak Peek of A Spirit's Kindred
Author's Note
About the Author
Other Books by Katherine Kim
To Richard, who has never stopped encouraging me.
A quick word
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One
Sarah’s headache started at the airport in New York and kept her company, throbbing painfully behind her eyes, all the way across the country. She thought back to the phone call just after winding through security that set it off.
“Sarah, what are you doing?” Elaine’s voice was calm, almost coaxing, but Sarah heard the command in it as clearly as she heard the words. Her mother mastered that trick years ago. “I just got your email, since you have the day off already, come here and I’ll make some calls and get you sorted out. There is no reason for you to take any sort of vacation time to deal with this. Have the lawyer handle the details.”
“Mom, I’m at the gate already. My flight will start boarding soon. I have to do this.” Sarah squeezed her eyes shut, bracing for the rest of the conversation. She already knew what her mother would say, how she would say it, and the disapproval that would lace every word.
“I don’t see why you have to do it in person, in California.” Sarah’s mother somehow managed to make the state’s name sound like a deep, unexplored jungle in a pulp fiction novel. Someplace wild, dangerous, and terrifyingly uncivilized.
“I have to go there in person because she was my grandmother, and if you had told me she died in the first place I could have been there for the funeral.”
And that was the point that had finally driven her to buy the plane ticket at all. Gran died and her mom had known within an hour. Sarah hadn’t found out for three weeks. It was unusual for them to go that long without talking. She kept leaving messages on Gran’s old-fashioned answering machine to no avail, and Sarah had been starting to worry. Finally Gran’s lawyer called with a question about the estate, at the same time accidentally delivering the sad news.
“She deserves to have family there to deal with her estate in person. She left it to me, and I’m going to do right by her. And she deserves to have someone from her family visit her grave at the very least. I wish I could have gone to the funeral.”
Sarah left out the fact that she hadn’t used her vacation time for this trip. She’d quite the job entirely— which had been far easier to do than she’d thought. Nor did she mention that she had sublet her apartment to an old college friend for the next few months while she herself figured out a next step or two, because she had no desire to return to New York anytime soon. Some fights were best left as long as possible. It hadn’t much worked, really, her evasiveness didn’t prevent an argument, just took the argument they did have down a different path.
“Just tell the lawyer to hire someone to clean out the house and sell it. Or keep it as a rental property, if you really feel that sentimental about it, not that I see a reason to feel any attachment to the place. There’s certainly no reason at all for you to actually go there. There was no need to take time off work. Your life is here and you shouldn’t just put it on hold for no purpose.”
That’s when the headache started in earnest. It had already taken all of her courage to make the decision to go to California in the first place, and she had really wanted to avoid the conversation with her mother until she was already there, well out of reach. Her life wasn’t in New York, and Elaine Richards would never allow that. Sarah didn’t know where she did belong, but she knew that much.
Sarah breathed out some of her stress as she drove off the car rental parking lot. The swirl of airport traffic reminded her enough of the familiar rush hour traffic back home that she felt the tension ease back slightly. The thought crossed her mind that she should call her mother, tell her the plane had touched down in San Francisco and she was on the road. Instead, she sighed.
Sarah had lost track of the number of times she’d sighed since locking her apartment door that morning. It was starting to feel like normal breathing. She’d deal with Mom later. Elaine Richards was an intimidating, weighty presence that she simply didn’t have the strength to withstand right now.
Sarah maneuvered the car off the wide curving ramp and slid into the flow of traffic. The lawyer, a Ms. Anderson, had suggested that she take 280 south to drive away from San Francisco. She had assured Sarah it was a more pleasant drive and the route would bring her out closer to the house she had inherited from her grandmother.
God, Sarah missed her grandmother. It had been years since they’d been in the same place, but they had talked on the phone at least once a week, usually much more often. Gran had been her best friend, always there to listen to Sarah’s complaints about work or her mother, or to lend a long-distance shoulder to cry on after a breakup or some other of life’s little tragedies.
Sarah sighed again, this time in frustration. She’d noticed the strain in her grandmother’s voice over the past few months and had wondered if perhaps age was finally taking its toll on the older woman but whenever she brought it up Gran assured her that it was nothing to worry about. Sarah hadn’t even considered that Gran was sick. Isn’t cancer the sort of thing you tell people about? The traffic around her swam slightly as she was forced to blink tears away. Why Gran suffered all alone out here like that Sarah would never understand.
The rolling green hills flew by as she read the exit sign. Not too much farther, she thought. Ms. Anderson had given her clear directions, which was good since the last time Sarah had been here she’d been in middle school. She was also glad that Ms. Anderson offered to meet her at Gran’s house. The numbness and adrenaline were wearing off and she was both heartbroken and terrified, and being surrounded by Gran’s things would maybe help her keep it together.
“Stop that.” She muttered to herself. “Just meet the lawyer, get inside the house, and figure out dinner. In that order. Anything else can wait until morning.” Just as long as the churning in her stomach didn’t get any worse.
After about an hour of driving, she turned finally onto the street where she intended to live for at least a few months and felt self-conscious as she pulled into the driveway, still not able to believe that she owned it now. The street was full of well-kept houses all about the same size, all probably built for quiet 1950’s families and recently adapted to being a Silicon
Valley suburb. The freeway noise drifted over her where she stood, but it wasn’t overwhelmingly loud, and the breeze carried the smell of water from somewhere nearby.
The house felt low-slung and cozy, only one story and a few rooms, though Sarah knew that it would sell for a completely insane amount of money in the current market, thanks to her mother’s very pointed hints. She could hear her mother’s voice whispering the potential listing. Two bed, one and a half bath. Fourteen hundred square feet on a lot big enough for landscaping as desired. Two million dollar listing price. Actually, list it at two and a quarter, and let them talk you down a small bit.
Landscaping. Gran didn’t have ‘landscaping.’ She had a garden. One for the front and one in back of her little, one story house. Sarah noted the big ceramic pot, glazed a flamboyant peacock blue, with some sort of flowers spilling over the rim in a welcoming riot of colors. The garden was not too badly overgrown and the wooden fence had been recently painted. Someone had been weeding recently, too, and there were new flowers planted along the walk from the driveway to the door to welcome her with their cheerful faces. An image of Gran— kneeling in the garden bed, a pink scarf tied around her hair, waving a trowel around like a conductor’s baton as she chatted— sprang so clearly into Sarah’s mind that she almost answered the memory out loud.
“I hope you haven’t been waiting long?” A voice startled her out of her trance and she turned to see a woman hurrying up the road. She wore fashionable dark jeans and sneakers under a silk blouse and tailored suit jacket, and Sarah blinked as the woman reached out a hand.
“Jennifer Anderson. You must be Sarah Richards?” The hand that took hers was warm and friendly, but Sarah had the distinct feeling that there was a great deal of physical strength in this woman, though she looked like any fit middle-aged businesswoman having a casual meeting. Sarah just nodded; the anxiety that had been building all day started to take hold again and she had to work to keep herself from fleeing back to the airport.
“You must be worn out. Cross-country flights can be such a pain. Let’s get you settled in. And please, call me Jennifer. Your grandmother was a good friend. She told me so much about you that I feel like we’ve known each other for years already.” Jennifer smiled, but Sarah saw the grief in her eyes and suddenly the other woman wasn’t such a stranger anymore. They had both loved Gran.
“Oh? I’m sorry, she never talked much about her life when we chatted. Nothing specific anyway, unless it was about her garden. I didn’t even know she was sick until Mom got the call about…” The tears came swimming back again and she didn’t have the chance to blink them away before she was wrapped in Jennifer’s arms.
“Oh honey,” she murmured. “Oh, I miss her so much too.”
They stood there sniffling for a few minutes before Jennifer let go, holding on to Sarah’s shoulders and looking at her with all the maternal concern and care that had been missing from her own mother’s eyes when she had learned of Gran’s death.
“Listen. I was your grandmother’s lawyer, but I was also her friend, and if you need anything at all you just call me. Day or night. I live in the apartment complex just a few blocks away, and I can be here anytime you need me, okay? And I’ve got two strapping young sons who can do your heavy lifting, if you need it. They’ll only grumble the whole time about being volunteered, I promise.” She grinned, the tears wobbling in her own eyes. Sarah just nodded, afraid she’d break down if she tried to speak. Jennifer seemed to understand and bustled her into the house, and into her new life.
Night was not soft here, Sarah thought. Not like she had expected anyway. She knew that there were what felt like millions of miles of relatively wild parkland very nearby, and she remembered spending all the time in Gran’s garden which was surrounded by tall hedges. Her memories of the house were all of lush plantings and playing in the dirt— one year they visited and found chickens in a coop in one corner of the garden— and Elaine had always been deeply averse to being casually social when they visited, so Sarah had never spent time in the front yard where the nearby houses were obvious.
As a result, she’d always felt that Gran lived out in a grand farmhouse and had for some reason thought that meant she would feel isolated and far from civilization, but she could hear the freeway noise as a soothing rumble and her neighbors were yards, not miles away. Definitely within screaming distance, she assured herself, then laughed at her entirely city-girl train of thought. She’d never been here at night, though. When she boarded the plane that morning, she’d expected to be nervous, the whispering nighttime sounds of wildlife being the only thing that kept her company while she watched the Milky Way spread overhead. No such luck, Los Gatos was firmly suburban and far too close to San Jose to see that many stars. It was not soft, but it was comfortably familiar.
She had very few memories of visiting after dark. She rarely saw Gran after dinner— usually at a restaurant somewhere, but sometimes at home when Gran could talk her daughter-in-law into a home cooked meal— and she had then returned to the hotel they invariably stayed at. It made sense, Sarah supposed, since there was only one bedroom in the house. Gran had turned the second bedroom into an office and crafting area, though she swore that she would make up a bed in there for them to share. Sarah’s mother was far too dignified to sleep on any sort of temporary bed, and that had been that.
Besides, the house had been— and still was— far too geared towards comfort for Elaine’s taste. Gran favored plump, colorful cushions and overstuffed easy chairs that made Sarah feel like she was lounging in a hug. The kitchen was made to work in while chatting with people setting the antique farm table that could seat a dozen people comfortably. It wasn’t the same sofa that Sarah remembered from her childhood, or if it was it had been reupholstered with a soft tan-and-cream striped fabric. Red and orange and blue throw pillows were tossed on all the living room furniture, and a shaggy coffee brown rug lay a safe distance from the fireplace. No, it would have deeply offended Elaine’s sensibilities, Sarah saw now. From the well used hall tree by the front door to the row of hooks and the tray for gardening shoes by the back door, her mother would have felt like she was slumming the whole time she was here.
She grimaced at herself and sipped her tea. There was a lot of tea in the kitchen to keep her leftover Chinese takeout company, all sorts of different kinds, mostly with hand written labels that said things like ‘for sleep, if you like old gym socks’ and ‘have some tea and calm down.’ The labels made her grin as she heard her grandmother’s voice reading them in her mind’s ear, and selected a jar that said ‘take this tea with a hot bath and maybe some scotch’ and smelled like blackberries and something she could only describe as green. Sara dutifully poured in a small dribble of the scotch she found in the next cupboard over but she’d taken a quick shower while her tea steeped instead of the recommended bath, and now sipped her tea while gazing out into the backyard as dusk started giving way to true night.
Gran’s garden was lovely still, even in the January cold. The recent rain had been just enough to green things up, though to her east coast mind all the weather here was inside out and bizarre. Still, now she had a few small fruit trees and a kitchen garden full of things she couldn’t identify, and she was determined to make Gran proud.
Earlier, before she left, Jennifer said that she knew someone who could help Sarah identify everything in the back garden, and when Sarah was feeling up to company they’d come see her.
“Rosie had a real gift.” Jennifer had smiled. “Truly a green thumb. I could manage to kill a plastic plant, but your grandmother could work her magic and make it bloom.” Sarah had grinned to hear the woman talk about her Gran, and Jennifer felt much more like a friend than a lawyer. But now it was her own garden, and she needed to find out if she had any garden magic of her own.
The bush in the back waved wildly and as Sarah’s eyes widened, a fox darted out into the center of the yard. She’d always imagined foxes to be small, cute animals, but this o
ne seemed huge; its head would easily come up to her knee at least. It stopped in front of the window she stood at and she swore that it stared right at her with a look of concern, it’s night-black ears swiveling to catch some elusive noise. It darted a look over its shoulder, back the way it had come, then bolted out past the house into the front yard.
Sarah frowned, suddenly uncomfortable and peered into the gloom to see what— if anything— had spooked the creature and saw nothing. She tried to laugh at herself, but couldn’t quite make the sound convincing, and pulled the curtains firmly closed against the darkness outside. She went around and locked all the doors. She looked out the front window into the street, in case the fox was still there, but there was only a man walking quickly down the street towards the corner. She shivered, unable to say why she felt so uneasy or why she was oddly concerned about the stranger’s safety walking alone through the night. Shaking her head as if to clear the thoughts from her mind, she closed the curtains tightly and turned to get ready for bed.
Two
Sarah bustled around her kitchen, humming to herself. It was early, well before dawn here thanks to her body not understanding the concept of ‘time zones.’ In New York it was already nearly 7 am, and as usual, sleep had abandoned her entirely to allow her to get a shower before work. She had no job to get to now so instead of rushing through coffee-shower-makeup-coffee to look like a pretty office drone like she was used to, she was gathering things into her grandmother’s backpack and putting on layers like she’d heard was the best idea, not that she thought she would shed any.
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