Every room in their house had reminded them all of Cassandra. Her presence lilted and danced around corners, flitted in open windows, settled like soft dust along every surface. She was inescapable.
And Maggie couldn’t breathe in there anymore.
So she’d run off to college, then into her new life, only coming back for brief holiday visits. A system that had worked decently until now.
She reached the three-car garage and pulled in front of the massive doors, turning the car off and drawing a steadying breath. The enormous two-story house looked the same as always from the outside. Pristine front lawn, meticulously groomed and sculpted to showcase the clean brick face and white pillars. Showing their wealth without flaunting it. Her grandpa had been loaded from old family money, thanks to smart investments over decades, but her parents had built most of their own wealth.
As her father’s daughter, her mom had learned the value of a buck from Maggie’s grandpa, the ways to invest and grow money. She didn’t need money but still worked part-time as an investment planner, claiming it was a distraction, something to keep her from being bored at home and that she liked helping others develop their own personal wealth.
The front door opened, and Maggie’s mother stepped down. Maggie noticed the deep lines of fatigue on her mother’s face. While her mother was still lovely, she looked tired to her bones. The funeral had aged her, in spite of her lengthy estrangement with her father. It tugged at Maggie’s heart; she hadn’t seen her mom so bereft, so lost.
Not since Cassandra.
Her mom opened her arms, wrapping Maggie in a hug. She felt frail, thin. “How did it go? What happened?”
“Hold on, let me get my bags,” Maggie replied, giving her mom a small smile. She’d crashed in a hotel room on the outskirts of town before the funeral, despite the guilt that had battered at her chest about being too chicken to return home. Even her grandfather’s funeral couldn’t make her stay there.
But that wasn’t going to work for a long-term situation. She would needlessly burn through her money, and since she was staying longer than she’d originally planned, she had to buy more clothes and find a cheaper alternative for where to stay. Thankfully her current project allowed her the flexibility to do her design work anywhere so she wouldn’t have to take more time off than she already had.
As soon as her brother had taken off after their non-conversation, Maggie had called her mom and asked if she could move back in, just for a bit, saying she’d explain things when she got there.
This wasn’t something to talk about over the phone.
“Need help carrying anything inside?” her mom asked politely.
“Nah, I only brought one bag with me.”
The two of them made their way into the house. Nothing had changed in the family room from what she could see, except for the plush carpet being updated from burgundy to a soft gray, and a handful of new, expensive knickknacks on display in the curio cabinet. Classic elegance poured out of the formal living room, the dining room that seated twelve, the pristine kitchen with its state-of-the-art appliances. Her mom led Maggie upstairs to her old room.
It was strange, coming back here. But the years of distance had given her much-needed space. Cassandra didn’t haunt her now as much as she’d been afraid she would. Maggie’s shoulders relaxed just a touch.
Her mom opened the door. Her bedroom was no longer plastered with posters of rock stars and pictures of friends, as it had been when she was a teenager. Instead, her mother had converted it into a comfortable, if not a little bland, guest room.
Was Cassandra’s room still untouched?
Something she’d have to find out later when her mother wasn’t around. Because if she was going to find out what had happened to her sister, she needed a place to start. And her room, with her belongings, was a logical launching place. All the important case evidence was probably still at the police station, but maybe something had been left behind in Cassandra’s room that could help.
Maggie plopped her small suitcase on the bed and sat down, waving for her mom to take a seat in the open wingback chair. “So, I went to the will reading,” she said, then swallowed, her heart racing. This was going to be difficult. For a brief moment, she was frustrated that her grandfather was forcing her to open her mom’s wounds all over again. A necessary cruelty.
Her mom nodded calmly, but the expression belied the clenched hands, the foot of her crossed-over leg fluttering in the air.
Taking a steeling breath, Maggie quickly explained the terms of the will, watching her mother’s face progress from confusion to sorrow, then plunging into anger, brow furrowed and jaw dropped.
“You have to be kidding,” her mom finally said. Her voice was quiet, but the words were layered in a bitterness Maggie hadn’t heard for a long time. “I cannot believe . . .” She pressed a hand to her throat, drew in a ragged breath. Her eyes blazed. “What was my father thinking? This is insanity!”
Maggie reached over and patted her mom’s knee. “I’m so sorry. I know . . . I know it’s been hard for you and Dad, that you’ve fought to find some kind of normalcy in your life. And this is going to dredge up a lot of things for you.”
Her mother stood, paced, her thin heels clacking on the teakwood floor. “How could he do this to us after all we’ve been through? And why would he let that—that woman get a shot at his money?”
Maggie’s lips pinched and she nodded. She understood her mother’s anger. Bethany had no right to anything.
Her mom turned, her eyes piercing. Her voice was low but resonant. “You and your brother have to keep the inheritance out of that woman’s hands, Maggie. I don’t care what you do. Bethany does not get one damn penny of it.”
“I know, trust me.” Even as she said it, she saw Bethany’s red-rimmed eyes in her mind, pain engraved on the woman’s face. She shoved that uncomfortable emotion aside. Bethany was only upset that her money source had died.
This family grudge against Bethany had been brewing for a while. Maggie had stopped being friends with the woman back in college, a relationship that went from intimate to awkward to nonexistent. But when Bethany had hooked up with Maggie’s grandpa, what started as a grudge had gone near explosive. Bethany was a conniving freeloader, and she’d fixed her sights on the Willingses—and no one in the family would let that go.
Her mom took in a slow breath to regain her calm. “What did your brother have to say about it?”
Maggie shrugged and fought back an irritated sigh. “He took off almost as soon as the reading was done. We’ll probably talk about it later tonight when he’s off work.” In the inheritance meeting, his eyes had looked as haunted as everyone else’s. No one had expected this turn of events.
A phone rang downstairs.
“I should get that,” her mom said, sniffing and wiping an unsteady hand under her eyes. Her public face was back on, her grief safely tucked away once more. “I’ll be back in a moment.”
The bedroom door closed softly behind her.
Sudden pressure of Maggie’s task weighed on her. The enormity of what she had to do—find her sister, keep her grandfather’s inheritance in the family’s name . . . how could she accomplish it all? She dropped her head into her hands as sorrow and frustration swept through her.
Even the police had no answers. They’d investigated, of course. Months and months of searching, questioning, subpoenas, warrants. But when nothing turned up and when her grandpa’s PIs came up empty-handed, Cassandra was labeled as a missing child, possibly a runaway, the unsolved case growing colder with each passing year.
Her sister’s face the last time Maggie had seen her flitted to the front of her mind. Hazel eyes shining as she’d gushed about going to a party for upperclassmen out at the old barn. An exclusive invitation rarely offered to non-seniors. How she was going to make football jock Joel like her, was going to dress s
exy and flirt with him like there was no tomorrow.
For her, there hadn’t been.
The thought was a vise squeezing Maggie’s lungs. Her sister had always been bold, brazen, skirting the edge of propriety without a care in the world. A constant source of struggle between Cassandra and their parents, who’d tried to bring their youngest daughter in line when she’d occasionally go too far. But how could one control such a free spirit?
Cassandra was like a breeze that turned hot or cold, depending on her moods. Never dull. Never predictable. Always the center of attention. Maggie had loved her, had envied her even.
And then there was Andrew. The guy Maggie had left behind when she’d escaped their town, the guy who hadn’t loved her enough back then and had dumped her via a brief phone call on that fateful day. Hence the reason Maggie had stayed home, crying in her bedroom instead of watching her sister at the party.
Andrew and Maggie’s relationship had ended badly, her obviously caring about him far more than he’d cared about her. Unfortunately, he was only more magnetic now, having grown into a confident man. In spite of herself, she’d felt an instant pull, a fluttering in her stomach when she’d seen him at the reading.
How could she get through this with her sanity intact?
Her mom clicked the door open and dropped beside Maggie on the bed, rubbing her back in small, soothing circles. “Oh, honey, I’m so sorry,” she said in a broken whisper. “I know this is going to be so difficult for you.”
She turned and hugged her mom, letting the tears burning her eyes fall on her face. “I was just starting to feel like I could finally heal.”
But that wasn’t quite true. How could one heal when there was a gaping wound with no cure, no answer? Just a never-ending mystery.
The one she had to solve now, in spite of the odds.
Her mom patted her back and then pulled away, her eyes filled with resolution. “I’m sure it’s going to be hard. But you and your brother have to do this,” she whispered hotly. “Don’t let our family down.”
***
Maggie cupped the hot coffee between her hands, willing her fingertips to warm. Her walk to Lakeside Diner, only a mile away, had been good to clear her mind, but it had left her slightly chilled. Ohio was a lot more brisk in the fall than she’d remembered, a far cry from the humid warmth of southern Florida, where she lived now.
But the view was stunning. She’d forgotten what it was like to have green everywhere. Surrounded by grass and trees. And Lake Erie—its gentle rumble had settled back under her skin.
She peered out the diner’s front window, looking at the pockmarked asphalt and narrow road just beyond. The other three should be there any minute now. She’d been beyond surprised to get a quick call from her brother a couple of hours after she’d gotten settled into her room and freshened up. In Robert’s usual straightforward fashion, he’d simply said the four of them needed to discuss the will, to iron things out among themselves before they started digging into the case.
Of course, she’d agreed. But when she’d asked him again if he wanted to discuss teaming up, he’d finally huffed some rambling nonsense about how he didn’t think it was a good idea, given how complicated the whole thing was.
Yeah, Maggie knew what the big “complication” was—Robert didn’t want to split any of the money with her. Maybe it was better this way, anyway, given how often they butted heads and couldn’t seem to agree as kids. Still, it had stung a bit, being so quickly rejected by him. Her mom had encouraged her to try once more, for the sake of the family, that Robert probably just needed a little time to process it all. Though she’d been frustrated, she’d agreed to give it another shot.
Now she was at the diner, waiting for the other three to show up.
The old diner hadn’t changed at all. Being fairly close to her house, they’d come here as teens practically every day, grabbing coffee on the way to high school or eating greasy burgers after a raging party. The restaurant had been a key part of her social life and was generally always packed, in spite of its current state of near emptiness.
Weird to be back here now, as an adult. The red vinyl seats had a few more cracks and strips in them. The tabletops were dented, a little more scratched up from further years of rough use. She’d purposely picked this table instead of the one near the front of the diner, where she and Andrew had scratched their initials into the corner early in their relationship.
“Can I get you something else?” her waitress, an older woman with a short bob, politely asked her.
Maggie shook her head. “Coffee’s great, thanks.” She wouldn’t even be able to think about food until all of this got sorted out. Her stomach was churning with nerves, had been unsettled for hours. Days, really.
The glass door dinged open, and in walked Robert. He glanced around the nearly empty room then saw Maggie, giving an acknowledging nod. With a hand, he waved at the waitress and slid into the booth across from Maggie. “God, I need a drink,” he said on a rough exhale, rubbing the back of his neck.
Maggie resisted the urge to glance at her watch. Her brother’s method of problem solving usually involved a twelve-pack of beer and a long night of partying. But who was she to judge? Her method was only slightly better than his—running away never did fix anything, after all.
“At least the funeral is over now,” she murmured. “And we can all try to move forward.”
He gave a grunt and took the cup of coffee the waitress brought over. Apparently he was still a regular here; she’d known exactly what to bring him.
The next few minutes passed in awkward silence. Maggie was dying to know what her grandpa had written to Robert, but it wasn’t her business and she didn’t feel nearly comfortable enough to ask him. She and her sister had never been close to him, in spite of him only being a year older than Maggie, and two years older than Cassandra. And to be honest, his rejection of partnering up with her still stung. She wasn’t sure how to broach the subject again without him feeling pushed and getting pissed off.
Maggie also wanted to ask him what he thought about Andrew and Bethany. Was he upset that they were being dragged into this family drama? Were he and Andrew still friends?
They’d been thick as thieves, inseparable back then. The same as she and Bethany had been.
Bethany, still wearing the same black-and-red dress from earlier, pushed the door open then, scanning the diner with thinned lips. She saw Maggie and Robert and paused, seeming to draw in a fortifying breath as she slid toward them. Without a word, she slid into the booth beside Robert.
Maggie’s lips pinched closed in a reflexive action. She peered out the window, not wanting to look at the woman. The chasm had grown when Maggie had initially left eight years ago. Bethany had stayed behind, unable and unwilling to shake off the town’s roots. Plus, it wasn’t like her dad could afford to send her away to college, anyway. He’d been too busy spending his sporadic free money at the strip clubs in Brook Park.
Back then, after graduation, Bethany had started at a local community college and dropped out during the second semester of her freshman year, claiming school just wasn’t for her. Over time, the two girls had stopped talking regularly, since Bethany had ignored most of Maggie’s emails and texts except when she’d wanted someone to whine to. After a year or so of that, they’d completely stopped talking.
A wave of frustration hit Maggie. Over the years she’d heard from her brother that Bethany would come on to man after man, flitting from one sugar daddy to another. No steady job, no purpose. Then she’d landed on Maggie’s grandfather, wheedling her way into his life, helping herself to his money without an ounce of shame. She’d even had an allowance from him, according to her horrified mother when Maggie had finally pried her for information.
An allowance, for God’s sake.
What kind of woman did that? A desperate one, that’s who. One who would fig
ht tooth and nail to get his money and estate.
“I can’t believe he’s gone,” Bethany said with a sniffle.
“Didn’t you know he was sick?” Maggie asked, unable to stop herself. Or hide the hint of disdain in her tone.
Bethany shook her head, her eyes flaring. “Of course I did.” She paused. “For a long time he’d said he wasn’t feeling well, but he hid most of his serious symptoms from me,” she said in a defensive tone. “I think he didn’t want me to be upset when he found out he had pancreatic cancer. He always was worried about my feelings.”
Maggie’s stomach roiled. “Maybe he didn’t think you’d be able to handle it,” she said quietly. The unspoken message was there: that Bethany was too busy focusing on herself to fret about someone else’s problems. She was obviously unreliable as a friend, much less as a lover and partner.
Nothing had changed, apparently. Bethany had been like that in high school, bouncing from guy to guy. It had been harmless then, something Maggie could overlook for the most part. Missed sleepovers because Bethany was too busy having sex with her flavor of the week. Classes skipped. Messages left unanswered.
But dating Maggie’s own grandfather? Come on. That crossed a whole slew of lines.
Slitting her eyes, Bethany said, “You know, it’s really easy for you to come back here and lash out at me without knowing what’s going on. You have no idea what our relationship was like.”
“Oh, really? What more do I need to know?” Maggie said, setting her jaw. Anger festered in her chest. Her grandfather had been loving, trusting. And this woman had taken him for a ride. How had he fallen for it?
And why?
“Come on, you two,” Robert huffed. “Knock it off.”
Maggie blinked at the irritation in his voice. She opened her mouth to retort, but Andrew came in. He strode over, his leather shoes padding across the tile floor, his suit still clean and pressed like he’d just put it on.
The Inheritance Part I Page 2