"How?" I asked.
"What?"
"How did you know my mom?"
"What do you mean? She lived here."
"Not at the motel," I pointed out. "She lived in town."
"Yes."
"So how did you know her? Were you friends?"
The man's brow furrowed, and he crossed his arms over his chest.
"What's with all of these questions?" He asked.
"I miss my mother," I said honestly. I hoped he didn’t feel like I was interrogating him. "I'd like to get to know the people she cared about, at least while I'm in town."
"But you won't be in town long," he said pointedly. "You'll wrap up her affairs, and then you'll go back to where you came from."
I looked at him, but I didn't nod my head or shake it. I didn't give him an answer. Partly, it was because I didn't have one. Was that what I was going to do? Apparently, it was what people expected me to do.
Maybe I wouldn't, though.
Maybe I'd do something else.
Maybe I'd stay.
I was saved from having to answer because Leslie stepped away from her computer and placed her hand on my shoulder.
"Let me show you to your cabin, dear."
Chapter 2
Leslie indicated where I should move my car, so I hopped in and parked it directly outside of the little cabin. The lights were already on inside, somehow. Maybe they were on a timer. I hadn't noticed them on before. The cabin looked rustic, and I felt happy that I'd chosen to stop and sleep in a real bed, even if it was only for a few hours.
The little room itself was cleaner than I could have possibly imagined. In fact, for a place that looked wildly run-down on the outside, it was wildly beautiful on the inside. Leslie didn't seem to notice my awe. If she did, she was probably too tired to deal with it. She helped me with the lock and made sure I could use the key, which seemed a little strange to me, but it was always nice to be over-prepared than under-prepared, right?
Once she left, I looked around the little room. There was a large, four-poster bed in the center of the cabin’s single room. To one side was a huge, ornate dresser with a mirror. There was no television set, but there were several other interesting pieces of furniture. Each of them seemed to call me. I'd never been especially interested in furniture at all, but I found myself running my hands over the different tables and stands in the room. There was a bookshelf, but it was empty except for a copy of a random herb guide.
The rest of the room seemed very modern. Maybe it was just dark outside, but the entire motel had appeared very run-down to me. I'd expected to find myself sleeping on a flea-infested bed with paint peeling off the walls, but this place was very different from what I'd thought.
"First impressions aren't everything, I guess," speaking to the silence of the room. I'd brought in only my little overnight bag. It had a change of clothes and my toiletries. Despite the fact that I'd loaded my life's belongings into the car, I had remembered my traveling days well enough to remember to pack a special bag that contained everything I needed for a single night. It had clothes, a book, a hairbrush, makeup...everything.
I went into the bathroom and took a look at the huge waterfall shower and the enormous bathtub that filled the room. The bathroom was almost bigger than my old apartment. How was this possible?
Was the cabin bigger on the inside?
I knew it couldn't possibly be, but I was really shocked at just how pretty everything was. There was no television and no phone, but it didn't matter. I took a long, hot shower, pulled on a t-shirt, charged my phone, and climbed into the big bed for the night. It was soft, like sleeping on a cloud, and I fell asleep and dreamed of my mom.
*
The Law Office of Eliza Warthog was located downtown in a beautiful renovated Victorian era home. I wondered what the house had looked like before Eliza took it over because as I stood in front of the building, I couldn't imagine it ever looking any other way. It stretched high into the sky and gave me serious haunted-house vibes. There was a big turret and at least three stories. I couldn’t tell if there was a fourth floor or not.
The entire town of Which Village looked different in the daytime, too, but only a little. It was brighter, for one. The buildings were all painted vibrant colors – blue, green, shades of yellow – and everything seemed to be designed to be looked at, stared at. I rather liked it. It was strange, seeing this place. My mother had spent so many years here and I hadn't been around. Part of me felt like I was getting a chance to see a part of her I might never have otherwise gotten to explore.
Now, standing in front of the legal office, I wondered what I was about to walk into. My mother's death had been unexpected and rather strange. Then again, a lot of recent events had been unexpected and strange. For one thing, it seemed as though this town was the kind of town that held secrets. That was probably true of any small, off-the-cuff sort of place, but I had a feeling it was especially true of this particular village.
I was from the city, so I was used to things being a certain way: fast. Even in all of my traveling with Stanley, things had moved very quickly. Our lives had been busy and bustling and wonderful. We'd caught trains and busses. We'd hurried from place to place trying to catch our rides on time. We'd done so many wonderful things, but Which Village was different.
It felt...slow.
I wasn't sure if that was good or bad.
Unfortunately for me, nothing was going to get done if I stood outside of a legal office and just gawked, so I finally got up and started walking up the wide staircase that led to the front door. Then I stared at it.
What was the protocol for this type of situation? It was a place of business, but it was located in an old-looking house. Was I supposed to just barge in? Perhaps the right decision was to knock, but then enter. I couldn't tell.
Suddenly, my mom's voice sounded in my head.
"Any decision is better than no decision."
That was something she'd said to me as a kid. It meant that making a choice, no matter what that choice might be, was important. It meant that no matter what I chose, actually moving forward and making a decision was the only way I could actually do anything with my life.
A lot of people got hung up on problems that didn't really matter. Sometimes you couldn't weigh all of your options endless. Every once in awhile, you just had to jump.
I knocked on the door, and then I entered. I was in a beautiful entryway. There were doors on either side of the entrance. Straight ahead was a hallway coupled with a staircase that led up to the next floor. The staircase was on the right and the hallway was on the left. The staircase had a little chain over it with a sign that said EMPLOYEES ONLY.
Okay, so I wasn't supposed to go wandering up there. Duly noted.
"Hello?" I called out into the space.
Nothing.
No response.
The doors on either side of the entryway seemed closed off for a reason. There was no secretary. There was no one I could check in with. I decided to walk down the hallway, and as I did, I stared at the walls. There were big, beautiful pictures hanging on each side of the hallway. Mostly, there were portraits. The women in them seemed to stare down at me, and I felt the skin at the back of my neck prickle a little bit.
I just wanted to hurry up and get this over with. I didn't want to spend my time loitering around a creepy old house. Surely, dealing with my mom's estate wouldn't take too long. I just had to get over the scary paintings and the weird ambiance in the house.
"Hello?" I called out again. This time, I heard a noise. It wasn't human, though. It was some sort of bird. I reached the end of the hall and to the left, there was an open door that led to a little sitting area. I walked into the room and saw a large black bird sitting in a cage.
I walked up to the cage, ignoring the rest of the space. It was beautifully decorated, to be sure, but I only had eyes for the creature in front of me. It was a lovely raven, and I could tell that whoever owned this bird
loved it very much. The cage itself probably cost more than I'd ever made in a month, and the bird seemed calm and serene, almost.
Then it squawked again, and I changed my mind.
"What's wrong?" I asked the bird.
"He's just a crabby old codger," someone said from behind me.
I whirled around, surprised. I was shocked that someone had sneaked up on me. Even though I hadn't been doing anything wrong - I'd only been looking for my mom's attorney - I somehow felt as though I'd been caught red-handed with my paws in the cookie jar.
The woman standing before me had on a suit. Not a suit dress: a suit. It looked like it had been perfectly tailored for her tall, slender body. Her hair was pulled back in a tight bun, but it didn't make her look stern or scary. She didn't look like a professor. She looked every bit the businesswoman, and even though there was a softness around her eyes, I could tell that this was the kind of woman you shouldn't really mess with.
"You must be Jaden," the woman said.
"Yes," I told her. "I'm Jaden Quartz. I'm actually here because I'm supposed to meet someone: Eliza Warthog."
"That would be me," the woman said. She pressed her lips together, but didn't smile. She held out her hand and I took it, shaking it. I was embarrassed that my hands felt a little cold and clammy. Gross. It was just that I was very nervous, and I was completely out of my element.
"It's nice to meet you," I said.
"Likewise, albeit under unfortunate circumstances."
"Agreed."
"Come with me."
She turned and didn't look back to see if I was going to follow. She just started walking down the hall. Of course, I wasn't an idiot. I knew what that meant. She was asserting dominance. She was showing me that she was the one in charge. Great. I didn't care. I just followed her back into the hallway and to one of the doors that were located by the front door.
"I called out when I came in," I said.
"I didn't hear you, dear," she told me, looking over her shoulder as she turned the brass doorknob. "I might have been on a call."
"Okay. I just wanted to let you know because-"
"You didn't want me to think you were snooping?"
"Well, yes."
"I know you weren't snooping."
"Oh, okay."
How had I known this woman all of one minute and she’d already managed to make me feel like I was back in school? Suddenly, I didn’t feel like an almost 35-year-old woman. I felt like I was 12.
We went into the office. It looked surprisingly like a normal office. There was nothing creepy in this part of the house. There was a large, simple desk with two chairs in front of it. There were plants throughout the room. Apparently, Eliza liked her greens. There were flowers and a couple of cacti. There was even a miniature tree in one corner.
"This is very nice," I said, gesturing to the space.
"Thank you. I've done my best to make it hospitable. Now, there is the issue of your mother's estate."
Yes.
There it was.
Suddenly, my entire body felt like it was on fire, and not in a good way. Somehow, it hadn't really hit me yet that my mom wasn't just gone. She was dead. She wasn't away on some summer vacation. She wasn't on a wonderful, all-expenses-paid cruise. Nope. She was gone. Perished. Dead. My mom was dead and I had to clean up everything she'd left behind.
I squeezed my eyes shut for a second. Then I opened them and looked at the attorney. She was watching me carefully. She was probably used to people having total breakdowns in her office. Most attorneys were. They were good at dealing with people who were down on their luck and having a hard time.
Why else would you visit an attorney?
If you were meeting with a lawyer, something was wrong. You were either there because you thought you were going to die, so you needed a will, or maybe you were in trouble with the law, so you needed advice. Some people went to attorneys because they wanted a divorce. Some people wanted to have paperwork drawn up for contracts. It was never anything simple, though. It was never easy.
Sitting in an attorney's office felt a lot like sitting in the school office, only instead of waiting for the principal, I was waiting to hear about all of my dead mom's stuff.
Cool.
I took a deep breath, steeling myself.
"Did you and your mother discuss her wishes before she passed?"
"No."
That was an easy enough answer. My mom and I had been someone estranged. Well, no, we'd been totally estranged. There hadn't been any bad blood, though, not really. My mom just wanted to be alone and I always felt the need to respect that. Once I’d left with Stanley, she viewed that as me taking sides. In her mind, I’d made a choice. I’d chosen to run off with a boy, and she didn’t really want to be any part of that.
She hadn’t been mad, though. Most people might consider our situation and think she’d been mad enough to cut me out of her will and her life, but the truth was that she’d just been resigned to the reality. I wanted to explore, and I wanted to escape. My mom wasn’t like that. She always just wanted to stay put. She liked the idea of settling down in one place forever. She wanted to be in a space where everyone knew everyone.
"She left behind a will," Eliza said. She placed a document in front of me. "It basically outlines what she wanted done with all of her belongings."
"And what was that?"
"See for yourself. I'll give you a minute."
Eliza got up and left the room. She left me there staring at the will. It was my mother's final wish, was it? I didn't really want to read it. Somehow, I kind of felt like reading the will meant that I was going to have to actually say goodbye to her, and I just wasn't ready. There were still so many things I had wanted to do with my mom. I'd hoped that I'd be able to visit her and to reconnect with her. I'd thought about it a million times, but the timing had never been quite right.
Besides, I had never been sure how to balance her need for privacy with the fact that I wanted to see her. She would have asked me about Stanley, and if we were still together, and if I’d said yes, that I was still very happily married, she would have been bothered. My mom loved the single life. In her eyes, there was no reason to be tied down to a man. We’d never figured out a way to work around that. Instead, we’d treated each other with absolute and utter silence.
It didn't really seem okay to be going through her last wishes or her belongings without having reconnected with her. All I could think about was the fact that I thought Mom figured I had betrayed her by running away with my husband. Had she missed me, at the end? Had she wondered why I hadn’t come to visit her more?
With a sigh, I leaned my head down on the desk. This sucked.
Everything about it sucked.
What did I know about dealing with someone's estate?
You know who was good at this?
My mom.
"I miss you," I whispered out loud.
"I miss you," a soft, feminine voice said. It wasn't Eliza's voice, though, and I bolted upright in the chair.
"Who said that?" I demanded to know.
"Who said that?" The voice repeated. It sounded sultry and smooth, like it had been waiting for someone to notice it. I had the distinct impression that whatever had made the sound was an "it" and not a real person.
I stood up and looked around. It couldn't have been one of the plants, right? Definitely not. There wasn't really anything else in the office, though. There was the desk, a bunch of books on a single bookcase, and the plants.
There were so many plants.
"You aren't talking to me, are you?" I looked at the plants, narrowing my eyes. Was I going crazy? This was how it always started, I knew. First, you heard voices in your head. Next, you started imagining things where there weren't any. Finally, you were locked away in an insane asylum. Was that what I was destined for?
"You aren't talking to me, are you?" The voice said again.
Shit.
It was the plants.
> I jumped to my feet.
"Eliza!" I called out. It wasn't professional like, at all. It wasn't appropriate. I should be addressing her nicely and using whatever the right dialogue was. I stared at the plants.
"Eliza!" One of them called out.
Yeah, they were definitely talking.
Eliza opened the door very calmly and walked in. Her heels clicked against the floor as she walked over to her desk. She completely ignored my outburst and glanced first at the will, and then at me.
"Have you already had a chance to look over things, dear?"
The plants were silent.
I looked over at them, and then I looked back at her.
"Eliza, I have a really weird question for you."
"All right," she said. She sat down and crossed one leg over the other. "What's your question?"
"Uh..."
It was now or never.
I could let her know that I was completely insane, or I could pretend that I hadn't been going crazy. If I let her know I was hearing voices, then she'd probably be legally required to call the hospital or something like that. Maybe she'd even have to have me committed. How did those things work, anyway? I had no idea. I just didn't know anymore.
Maybe it was a sign of weakness, but I decided to play it safe.
"I'm really sorry," I said. "I'm just having a hard time, you know, emotionally." I gestured vaguely around the room. "I didn't expect to lose my mom."
Her eyes softened, and she nodded.
"I completely understand," she said. "Losing a parent is never easy."
"I don't really understand the legal jargon, either," I said. "Is there any chance you can clear a few things up for me?"
"Absolutely," she said.
She reached for the papers and started talking. She ran her finger down the paper as she explained what everything meant. There were a lot of words I didn't understand and a lot of legal terminology that seemed superfluous, but at the end of the meeting, I realized that my mother had left me everything she owned.
A Hex a Day (Which Village Book 1) Page 2