Heirs of Grace

by Tim Pratt

  I switched on the lamp and sat on the bed. The mattress was soft and the blankets smelled clean, so I flopped onto my back. I took out my phone, not expecting much, but I actually got service—which was weird, since the phone still utterly failed to display GPS coordinates, like the property was in stealth mode or something. Maybe Mr. Grace worked for the CIA and this was a safe house. (No, I didn’t really think I was living in a techno-thriller. Though that would have been simpler, in some ways.)

  I called Mom and Dad. They’d been a little skeptical about the whole “long-lost relative” thing, but they were supportive about my desire to check things out, and happy to hear I’d arrived safely. They offered to come out and help me “take care of things” again—by which they meant sell the place and take the money and run—and I declined politely. Again. I was on an adventure, damn it. I wasn’t ready to be all responsible and practical just yet. I had a magical house in the forest and I was going to witch it up a little.

  I called my best friend, Charlie, but he didn’t answer—he was probably either getting ready for a night on the town or sleeping all day to recover from the last one. I left a message: “Charlie. You ass. You should have come with me. You would not believe this place. You could make found-object sculptures for the rest of your life with just the crap in the living room.”

  I hung up and felt a sudden stab of terrible loneliness, which was either exhaustion or perspective. Either way I put a pillow over my face and fell asleep in seconds.

  #

  I hate dream sequences in novels and movies and stuff. They’re either so surreal they’re pointless, or the symbolism is so heavy-handed it’s an insult to your intelligence. It’s like the artist is yelling, “Here is my theme, let me show you it!”

  But I did have a dream in that bed, and unlike most dreams, it didn’t fade from my mind when I woke. In fact, it’s stayed with me ever since.

  I dreamed of seeing myself, but I was all in black and white and kind of grainy, like old movie footage. There was me as a baby, on my back, waving my arms and babbling. Me, a little older, at a playground, on a swing, laughing. Older still, sitting on pavement by a fallen-over bicycle, clutching a bloody knee. Then, faster, snippets: first day of kindergarten, first soccer game, first trip on an airplane, first time snorkeling in Hawaii, first school dance, first kiss with a boy, first road trip with friends, first kiss with a girl, first day of college, firsts firsts firsts. One frame, just a fraction of a moment, was me, sitting at the desk in Trey’s office, writing things down on a piece of paper.

  I woke, gasping, and sat up. I was disoriented because my own face was looking at me, and for a minute I wasn’t sure who I was—I couldn’t tell where my insides began and the outside ended—and then I realized it was just the mirror: the drop cloth had fallen off, and I was seeing my own reflection. I groaned and picked up my phone: 3:37 in the morning. I switched off the bedside lamp and rolled over and slept. This time, I had no dreams worth mentioning.

  #

  The next morning I braved the downstairs bathroom. The water pressure was actually too good, like being sprayed by a fire hose, and the only temperature settings the balky knobs seemed to allow were freezing and scalding, but by the end of the ordeal I was entirely awake, at least. I made coffee and ate a granola bar while I wandered around trying to figure out how to get to the rest of the house.

  And there was obviously a lot more to the house, but it became apparent there was a “You can’t get there from here” situation going on, and I couldn’t help but wonder if maybe some of the additions could only be entered through exterior doors, and didn’t connect from the inside at all? That was a crazy way to build a house, but I had no evidence for Archibald Grace’s sanity. I’d have to go outside and poke around.

  In addition to that conundrum, there was one ground-floor door I couldn’t open, a narrow one squeezed into a corner of the kitchen. It was secured with a large and rusty padlock, and none of the keys on my ring would open it. Probably led to the room where old Archibald kept his severed-head collection. Oh well. Nothing a pair of bolt cutters wouldn’t fix, once I got around to it.

  I did finally discover one path deeper into the house: in a corner of the living room, a heavy black drape hung down, and when I pushed it aside, surprise! I found a doorway in the form of a ragged rectangle cut into the wall, leading to a hall narrowed by dark wooden bookcases lining both sides. I felt around for a light switch and found one, a low-wattage bulb on the ceiling casting dusty shadows on the hall. I pressed inward and onward, and the short corridor led into a series of rooms carpeted with patchwork remnants. These added-on rooms were mostly windowless and strangely proportioned, with sharply slanting ceilings and bizarre alcoves, stuffed with draped furniture and freestanding shelves. You could play hide-and-seek in here and die of starvation before anyone came close to finding you.

  I wound along the person-wide path through the overstuffed shelves, heaps of disorganized junk, and occasional neat collections of objects clearly treasured—one room contained a glass case full of arrowheads, another full of fossils, and a third full of thimbles, of all things.

  Then I pushed through the last door, and blinked at the sudden onslaught of sunlight. The room was large, roughly rectangular, entirely empty, and walled in glass, with ample skylights in the ceiling as well. A solarium—and a nice change from the dark, dingy rooms that led here. I was in the back of the house, and the backyard was a long gently sloping expanse of overgrown meadow, with a dilapidated gazebo and a big rock-lined fire pit surrounded by fallen-log seats, and eventually, more dark woods. There were no trees in the immediate vicinity, though, and every scrap of available light filtered through the glass, making even the dust motes glow. The floor was pale hardwood, polished to a mellow glow.

  That’s when I decided to stay.

  Because that room would be the perfect artist’s studio. If I was going to keep on stubbornly trying to create art good enough to show anyone besides my parents and Charlie, at least this was a beautiful place to start failing.

  My parents always taught me to think things through. My mom used to say, “Don’t be afraid of leaping—but take a look at where you’re going to land first.” So I ran through it all in my head. There was enough money in the inheritance to pay my student loans and other expenses for a year plus, especially since I didn’t have to pay rent. I had all the seclusion I could eat out here, no distractions, and no noise, either literal or psychological. It could be a break from my life, to focus on my life’s work. I could watch the seasons wheel past, cool summer to spectacular fall to snowy winter to spring thaw. I could see how the light moved through this room for a year.

  And if, after that year, I still hadn’t managed to create any work I felt was worth two craps in a bucket…I’d take my dad up on that introduction to his curator friend and get a job working behind the scenes at a museum. There were lots of museums in Chicago, and I knew my parents would be delighted. Nothing wrong with that kind of life. It just wasn’t the life I wanted, where instead of working with art, I made it. Here was my chance to see if I could make my dreams intersect with reality, without starving in the process.

  I needed to get that cashier’s check in the bank, so I decided to go into town. I figured I’d stop by the lawyers’ office to sign whatever and see if they had any more keys, maybe something that would open that rusty lock.

  I made my way back to the main part of the house. When I opened the front door to leave, I found a sun-browned young woman in a yellow sundress and a big floppy hat standing on my porch, holding a basket full of flowers. “Hi!” She waved with the frantic enthusiasm of a little kid watching a parade go by, the numerous bracelets on her wrist jingling. “I’m Melinda. You must be my new neighbor!”

  “Oh. Hi, I’m Bekah. I didn’t realize I had any neigh…”

  “Do you mind if I come in?”

  I blinked. Neighborliness is one thing, but…“I was just headed out, actually—”

>   Melinda covered her mouth like she’d witnessed a scene of terrible horror. I revised my sense of her age, moving it up a bit. The wide eyes and big smile and high-energy demeanor made her seem younger, but now that I had time to observe her more, I thought she was probably closer to her fifties than her twenties. “Of course! You’re just getting settled in, don’t mind me, we’ll catch up another time. I knew Mr. Grace, oh, for years, but I didn’t know him well, you know, just to say hello. I’m his closest neighbor, and I was always willing to lend a hand but he never needed it, he was pretty spry right up until the end.” She thrust the basket toward me, and I took it from her in self-defense. “Here, fresh flowers will brighten up the place. If you ever get lonesome or want a local guide, you just come see me, I’m in the cottage on the other side of the woods out back. Bye, Bekah! I’m sure we’ll be great friends!” She pretty much skipped down the steps and vanished around the side of the house.

  Where was she going? Had she walked here, and from where? Maybe the woods weren’t as deep and dark as they looked, if people lived within walking distance. As for us being great friends…I wasn’t counting on it. Mere proximity’s not a great excuse for friendship, in my experience, and not to sound all woo-woo, but she had a weird energy.

  Maybe Melinda was friendly like a hurricane was windy, but the wildflowers were pretty, and they smelled nice. I went back inside long enough to put them in water—since I hadn’t found a closet full of vases yet, I settled for putting water in an R2-D2-shaped cookie jar—and resumed my attempt at exodus. I was tempted to crank up the roadster, and perversely interested in giving the Studebaker a whirl, but the prospect of driving a strange car with an ancient manual transmission on these insane hills was too daunting for the moment. Instead I took my old faithful car, coated in road dust, and meandered on down the driveway toward the wider world.

  The trip back to town took only fifteen or twenty minutes, and I didn’t pass one single other car until I got a mile outside of Boone. I couldn’t decide if country living was peaceful or creepily isolated. Whatever cultural-social event had clogged up the parking situation the day before was over, and I found a spot in front of the lawyers’ office without any trouble. I strolled around a little before going in, though, just to get the feel of the place, and it was pretty charming—King Street was a combination of college-town-quirky and cynical-tourist-bait, with lots of restaurants, a brewpub, a game shop, an antique mall, a bead shop, a couple of used-book stores, and plenty of cafes, none of them Starbucks. I saw lots of flyers for local bands, and people looking for roommates, and various political and environmental causes.

  It wasn’t so long since I’d gotten out of college myself, and the whole campus-life vibe was comforting, a familiar element in an alien periodic table. I wondered when classes started up again—it had to be soon, summer was fading fast—and if the university had a decent art department. Maybe I wouldn’t have to labor in total isolation. It would do me good to meet more people, especially since so far I’d only really met my lawyer—who was cute, but who’d fled my presence like I was radioactive—and a neighbor I didn’t expect to click with. Making art is the most important thing in my life, but having somebody to make out with is also pretty nice. There are cute boys and girls at college. That’s a true fact of nature.

  I made my way back to the lawyers’ office, and June greeted me by name.

  “Trey said I should come sign some papers,” I said.

  “I’ll help you,” a voice said. I turned and saw the old guy from the day before, who’d popped out of his office like a horizontal jack-in-the-box. His face was all bushy eyebrows and disapproval. “Come in.”

  His office was immaculate—it looked like a photo from a catalog, not a place where actual work happened—and he gestured for me to sit down, then took his own chair, putting a great slab of polished mahogany between us. “I’m Stacy Howard Senior. This is my firm. My grandson has asked me to take over dealing with your affairs.”

  I blinked. “Ah. Why?”

  “You’d have to ask him. I don’t tend to deal with routine paperwork, but…” He shrugged. “Anything for family, wouldn’t you agree?” He didn’t wait for a reply. “We just have a few documents for you to sign.” He slid over a folder, and I opened it up, glancing through to make sure I wouldn’t be signing over power of attorney, declaring myself incompetent, or any other melodramatic movie-lawyer-villain stuff. The senior Howard handed me a pen that looked engineered to tighter specifications than my car, and I started signing where the little sticky-note arrows indicated.

  “You knew Mr. Grace?” I said, scribbling away.

  “I did. Not well. I’m not sure anyone in town knew him well. But I was his lawyer for decades, until he passed.”

  “Did he ever say why he left me everything?”

  Mr. Howard made a low hmmming sound. “Just that you were a relation from an estranged branch of the family, and that he wished to make amends for being absent from your life. He instructed us to help you while you were in town, in any way you require. I told him I couldn’t imagine a young woman, fresh out of college, would want to live in that ramshackle house, out in the middle of nowhere—young people like cities, I said, life and possibility, but…” He shrugged. “If you do want to sell the place, let me know. There are several interested buyers for the property—some people think it’s an area ripe for development. You could parlay that modest inheritance into a small fortune.”

  “Actually, I think I’m going to stay awhile,” I said. “But I’ll let you know if I change my mind. Mr. Grace…did he die here?” Did he die in the house was what I really wanted to know.

  “No, he had a house near Lake Tahoe. I’m told he passed away of natural causes.”

  “Tahoe. Nice. Who inherited that house?”

  Mr. Howard sighed. “It was sold, and for well below its value, I’m sad to say. Most of his holdings were liquidated promptly upon his death, as per his instructions. The money was used to settle his debts, pay estate taxes, and so on.” He glared at me, doing a fair impression of a pissed-off bald eagle. “I can provide you with documentation of the expenses if you wish. As for the rest of the money—you received what was left in the form of a cashier’s check.”

  Right. I wasn’t accusing him of ripping me off, but he was clearly the type to take any question as a criticism. Happily, his mentioning of the check gave me a graceful way out. “Speaking of money, I should go to the bank.” He rose, and I did too, and he shook my hand with a lizard-dry grip. I couldn’t tell if he disliked me personally, or disliked everyone equally, or was annoyed that I didn’t want to sell the property, or annoyed that he’d been forced to take over dealing with me from his grandson. (I wondered again what I’d done to make such a bad impression on Trey that he’d felt the need to flee my house and sunder our professional relationship. Except I knew I hadn’t done anything…so screw that guy.)

  I left his office, nodded farewell to June, and went out into the sunlight.

  Trey was leaning against my car, which wasn’t a good idea, given how dirty it was. He wasn’t dressed in his lawyer-suit today, but in black chinos and a black polo shirt that showed off his arms. He smiled widely when he saw me. “Hello, Ms. Lull.”

  “Hello, ex-lawyer. Do you want something?”

  “I do, actually, but only if you do, too. Now that we no longer have a professional relationship, I can ask if you’d like to get a drink sometime without trampling all over my ethical or moral boundaries. Of course, for all I know you have a serious boyfriend, or you don’t care for men romantically, but I thought I’d take a chance.”

  I looked at him for a second, trying to muster up my death glare, but I couldn’t help it—a little laugh slipped out. “The way you ran out of my house yesterday, Trey, you acted like I had leprosy or something. Now you’re asking me out? Maybe some girls like the mixed-message man-of-mystery thing, but it doesn’t do much for me.”

  He ducked his head, sheepish. “Sorry ab
out that. Yesterday, in your kitchen, I realized I was alone in a house with a client, and I was thinking a lot more about how good you looked when you stretched than about protecting your interests.”

  Well. It’s always nice to know an attraction’s mutual, but I wasn’t going to let him off the hook that easily. “Don’t the lawyer gods frown on consorting with clients?”

  He nodded. “Yes. Exactly. So I decided I’d better do something about the problem. I told my granddad my, ah, concerns, and he agreed to take over handling the estate, even though we mostly try to keep him away from clients unless they’re as old and cranky as he is. But now that I’ve eliminated the conflict of interest…”

  “A little confidence can be a good thing, but you might be getting ahead of yourself a little, don’t you think? Conflict of interest aside—what makes you think I’m interested?”

  “Just blind hope and stupid optimism. Two things I have in abundance. But I didn’t want to put you in a bad situation, either way. Now you can reject me, and when you do, you won’t have to worry about working with a guy who just hit on you inappropriately.”

  “Hmm.” I looked him over, letting him twist for a minute, and giving it some thought. Feel free to leap, but do it with your eyes open. He was cute, and there was definitely a spark, though whether it would fizzle or ignite remained to be seen.

  “I do like drinking,” I said at last. “And you have the advantage of being almost the only person in this town I know, so you’re not competing in a crowded field. And, no, I have no serious partner, and I am not entirely uninterested in men. No promises, and I’ll buy my own drink, but yeah, you can be next to me when I buy it.”

  “Almost the only person you know? Who else did you meet? Unless you’re counting granddad and June—”

  “I met this woman, Melinda…”

  “Ah. Sure, Melinda Sharp. She lives in a little cottage on the edge of your property—technically I guess you’re her landlord, but she signed a hundred-year lease or something with Mr. Grace, and she pretty much acts like she owns the place. She’s a character.”