Blanchard Manor looked much the same as she remembered it, although she hadn't seen it in a few years. The once-cheery yellow paint showed signs of wear, the wraparound porch sagged a little, and the grounds had lost some of their former grandeur. Then again, the same could be said for Kate herself, so she wasn't about to judge. Instead, she'd receive the gift in the spirit it was given and be grateful for it. Lord knew they could use the money the place would bring once they'd sold it. She made a decent living as a school nurse, but with summers off, Frank’s hours being cut at the warehouse, and their house in Shreveport mortgaged to the hilt, they were running on fumes.
"You honestly think she's going to stick around?" Sasha asked, blowing a wisp of blond hair from her eyes as she stared out at the horizon.
The heat was July thick, and Kate took a long pull from her sweaty glass of sweet tea before she answered her younger sister. "Yup."
"You're always giving her the benefit of the doubt and I have no idea why," Sasha said, crossing her legs in the hammock as she took a careful sip from her whiskey sour, leaving a smear of crimson on the goblet where her lips had been. "Her highness thinks her crap don't stink and doesn't say boo to any of us except on Christmas, when she lowers her standards to call. Still, you think she walks on water. I'll never understand why," she added with an indignant sniff.
"I'm surprised she came, myself," Maggie said from her perch on the rocking chair in the corner. "Don't get me wrong, I love Lena...always have. I just thought she'd avoid coming back if she could help it."
Maggie was right. If Lena could've helped it, she likely wouldn't have come back. But as much as she'd tried to cut this town off like a festering limb—along with everyone in it—family was family. When push came to shove and it mattered most, their big sister would come through for them. She always did, whether the others realized it or not.
"She'll be here," Kate said quietly, as sure of that as she'd ever been about anything.
A low drone filled the air around them, joining the cacophony of bullfrogs croaking and crickets chirping. The mosquitoes had apparently gotten the memo that the sun was going down, and came to feast as if on a timer, sending Kate to her feet.
"Well, she's only got until midnight to get her ass here, or we're all kissing our inheritance goodbye," Sasha said, swinging her bare feet off the hammock and standing to join Kate. "I don't know about y'all, but I'm not about to let them sell everything our mama worked for and give it to those old biddies on that beautification committee because of some ancient feud between her and Lena. I'm giving her another hour, then I'm going out to find her."
Assuming she was still in La Pierre, that wouldn't be hard to do. Lena had cut ties with any friends she'd had before skipping town at the age of sixteen, and hadn't made any attempts to reconnect with them during the handful of times she'd visited over the years. Plus, there was only one place open after eight PM. Crawdad's Pub. Sasha would cause a scene if she went there and found Lena, so Kate sincerely hoped that her oldest sister was near done moping.
As the three of them filed into the house to escape the swarm of bloodsuckers, Maggie veered off upstairs to change. Kate was just contemplating whether or not to text Lena when she heard a car door slam.
“That’s probably her now,” Kate said, heading back toward the door to peek out.
“Or one of the three remaining souls in a twenty-mile radius who hasn’t dropped off a pie or a casserole yet,” Sasha said, a hand on one lean hip as she waited for confirmation from Kate.
Thinking she might be right, Kate pressed her face against the dusty window to see Lena making her way up the path. Just short of the porch, she paused to run her fingers over the garish fuchsia blooms of the azaleas that flanked the pathway. Then, she tipped her face to the sky for a long moment, as if pleading to the heavens above. Whether she was praying for strength, guidance, or death, Kate couldn't be sure. The one thing she did know was that her big sister wasn't nearly as unaffected by Maeve's death as she pretended to be.
"Is it her?" Sasha asked, sidling up next to Kate and casting a glance out the window.
"Yeah."
Sasha turned away wordlessly, crossing the creaky pine floors to return to her seat and the box of pictures she'd been going through before they’d gone outside for a spell.
There was a firm rap on the door, followed by a long moment of silence.
"Figures she'd knock on the door of her own dang house," Sasha muttered as Kate bustled into the foyer.
She pulled the door open and wordlessly stepped to the side for Lena to come in.
"The gang's all here, I imagine?" Lena murmured.
The faint, though not unpleasant, smell of whiskey clung to her breath, but there was no indication that her older sister was drunk or anywhere near it. For that, Kate was grateful. Sasha was two whiskey sours in, herself, and adding a lot of liquor into the other side of an already tricky equation would be a recipe for more disaster.
"Yeah. Maggie is upstairs changing. We were all going through some boxes. Figured we might as well get started."
No comment from Lena on the fact that Kate wasn't the least bit surprised to see her, or that she and the others had begun the daunting task of sorting the house without being certain that the items inside were even theirs to sort.
Lena knew as well as Kate did that the choice Maeve had given her was no choice at all.
"All right, then, let's get everyone in the same room. I have a few ground rules I need to set before I commit," Lena said with a grim nod. "Might as well do it now and get the tantrum out of the way. It's not like this day can get much worse."
Kate shut the door and trailed after Lena, riding the line between relief and apprehension. She was glad to have her here. Maggie was smart and easy to get along with, but she was also eight years younger than Kate and twelve younger than Lena. They both tended to watch their words and keep their emotions in check around her in an effort not to burden her, the way a mother might with a child.
As for Sasha, she’d practically come out of the womb a full-grown woman in so many ways that it made the age gap feel smaller. But she felt things so deeply that her mood was contagious, which could either be a blessing or a curse. She was a gorgeous Spring afternoon full of sunshine, her bubbling effervescence intoxicating everyone around her, or she was a tornado, dragging everything in her path into that maelstrom of destruction. Sometimes all in one day.
Not Lena, though. Lena was rock steady. It wasn’t always good—judgment was swift and often harsh. Criticism was both constructive and plentiful—but you got what you saw. Kate didn’t have to guess what Lena would do or think, there were never any surprises.
Almost never, anyway.
She was Kate's contemporary, as well as her port in the storm. Most importantly, she’d be an ally when Kate needed one. And, when Sasha was around, everyone needed an ally at some point or another. When a person was that quick to pop off—quicker than a thought—it was only a matter of time before even the most passive, conflict-resistant person got caught in the crossfire.
But as happy as Kate was that her oldest sister had stuck around, she was also apprehensive. Lena and Sasha were oil and water on their best day, and today certainly wasn’t that. No matter how you sliced it, the next few months under the same roof was going to be tough on all of them.
She shoved her worries aside for the moment and stopped in front of the winding staircase. “Mags? Come down when you’re done, Lena’s here,” Kate called.
“Be right down!”
Lena and Kate made their way into the living room where Sasha sat, still looking through pictures.
“Mama and Ma’ Mere,” she said, a fond smile pulling at her lips. “This one must’ve been taken after she picked them up from the nuns.”
Maeve’s mother, a French Canadian beauty named Lorraine, who traveled south to Louisiana just before World War II, had run into tough times with her first husband. When he left her to find work and never ca
me back, she’d brought her two children at that time, Maeve and her brother, Leo, to an orphanage. Once she managed to land herself a factory job and a second husband a year later, she went and got them back so they could be a family again.
Aside from her lifelong staunch refusal to eat canned baked beans after having been fed little else so often as a child of poverty, and a few offhand references about the nuns making her clothes, Maeve rarely spoke of that time in her life. Despite her outwardly matter of fact view of the events, Kate had always felt the experience had broken something in their mother that had never fully healed. As she moved closer to Sasha and examined the picture, she wished now that she’d taken the time to ask more about it. And now it was too late. Such a crying shame that people took all of their memories with them when they died.
Then again, sometimes, maybe it was for the best…
Kate turned away. “How about some tea?” she asked Lena. “Did you eat something?”
Lena nodded. “Étouffée at Crawdad’s. I’m good.”
“Were you sad they didn’t have any avocado toast or whatever it is people eat in Portland?” Sasha asked sweetly. To an outsider, it might’ve sounded like genuine curiosity, but all three of them knew better.
Lena set her purse on the coffee table and faced their sister with a tight smile.
“First of all, I live in Seattle, as you well know. And second of all, I might have left Louisiana, but I still know good food when I taste it. Can you give it a rest for tonight, Sash? I’m exhausted.”
The pitter-patter of footsteps on the stairs stopped the tense conversation short and had Kate blowing out a relieved sigh.
“Maggie is here, so we can hash this out now if you want, Lena.”
Maggie swept into the room, auburn curls still damp from the shower, dressed in a pair of boxer shorts and a tank top, fresh-faced and looking far younger than her forty-two years. She wiggled her fingers in Lena’s direction. “Hey, sis. I already put up the kitchen, but if you’re hungry--”
“She ate,” Sasha cut in, back to pretending she was still looking at pictures.
“Oookay, then,” Maggie said, plopping into one of the empty chairs beside the coffee table. “What’s happening? You staying, Lena? I put fresh sheets in all four bedrooms, just in case.”
Kate sat on one side of the couch and Lena took a seat on the other.
“I’ll stay, but I have a few requests.”
“Naturally,” Sasha muttered. “Do go on, Doctor.”
Kate shook her head and bit back a wry smile. Only Sasha could make that sound like an insult. It really was a wasted talent.
Lena ignored her and pressed on, tucking a strand of silver hair behind one ear. “I’ve had Alistair email me copies of the will in its entirety, along with the accompanying letters. I’ve forwarded them to my lawyer to review and check for loopholes.” She met each of their gazes in turn. “Make no mistake. If there is a way out of this circus, I’m going to find it.”
Sasha fake yawned and set the box of pictures on the floor beside her. “And if there isn’t?”
“Then we’re stuck here together, aren’t we?” Lena said, brows raised. “We’ll have to make the best of it. I’m in the middle of a project for my work that I can’t just drop on a whim, so I’m going to need sole access to Maeve’s study.”
“Meaning, you have no plans to, I don’t know, help, or anything?” Sasha asked, gesturing around the house with a bitter laugh. “This place is packed from wall to wall with knickknacks and brick-a-brack, dolls and jewelry and clothes and furniture. All thirteen rooms, plus the attic. Three months is about what it’s going to take to separate everything out, pick what we want to keep, make a pile to donate, not to mention coordinating a dumpster and the like, getting repairs done so we can sell it, trying to find a realtor. You’re just washing your hands of all that…let the peons do it, right?”
“That’s not at all what I said, Sash. I just need to make sure I have some time to work and a space to do it. The rest of the time, I’ll help with the house.”
Kate shot a glance at Lena to gauge how close she was to the edge and was dismayed to find that she was pretty close, but Sasha was too far-gone to realize that she’d breached the danger zone.
“It really has been a long day for us all,” Kate cut in smoothly as Maggie tried to disappear into the overstuffed cushions of her chair. “Now that we’ve heard Lena’s concerns, let’s all sleep on it, and see how things look in the--”
“What about Mama’s funeral?” Sasha demanded, eyes flashing, arms crossed over her heaving chest. “Are you going to help with that?”
“She explicitly expressed to Alistair that she didn’t want a funeral or a wake,” Lena shot back. “That, when the three months were up, we’re to have a party to celebrate her life.”
“So that’s it? The four of us just are going to pretend she’s not dead until then? No private ceremony to say our goodbyes…No nothing? You know, if you ever gave a rat’s crack about anyone but yourself, you’d--”
“Tais-toi!” Lena thundered. “That’s enough of your mouth! You think you’re the only one going through something right now?”
Kate was just about to intervene again when the silence was broken by the shattering of glass, followed by the sound of splintering wood, loud as a gunshot. She instinctively covered her face and head with her arms as adrenaline shot through her.
Fear was like a living thing, holding her heart in its icy grip as she tried to make sense of what was happening. But the loud noise was gone as quickly as it had come, and now all she heard was the sound of glass, tinkling against hard wood like a thousand little bells mingling with the sound of her harsh breaths.
She forced her eyes open as she tried to determine what had happened, only to realize she couldn't see a thing because Lena was sprawled over her like a tarp.
"Is everyone okay?" Lena demanded, her voice whip-sharp enough to cut through both the confusion and pounding of blood in Kate's ears.
"Yes...yeah, I'm fine," she croaked as Lena unglued her body from Kate’s and stood.
"M-me too," Sasha replied faintly.
Kate turned to find Maggie staring openmouthed at the large object nestled in the pile of wood and decimated glass that had been the coffee table not two feet away from where she was sitting. She pushed herself to her feet and moved toward it, bending closer.
From Kate's vantage point, it looked like a large rock, slightly smaller than a bowling ball, wrapped in white paper.
"Get back, Mags," Lena said as she held up a staying hand and approached the projectile as if it might be a bomb in disguise. “Don’t touch it.”
Maggie stilled, nostrils flaring as she looked at Lena in panic.
"Did you get hit with any glass?" Lena demanded, searching Maggie's face.
"No. At least, I don't think so," she said as she glanced down at her bare arms and legs, clearly still in shock.
"What the hell is it?" Sasha demanded. True to form, she had transitioned from terrified to furious on a dime, but Kate knew she was as shaken as the rest of them as she glared at the rock.
"It looks like a note," Lena said softly. She bent low, glancing out the shattered window before scooping up the massive stone.
Kate leaned in to get a closer look. Sure enough, bold, blood-red letters stood out against the stark white of the paper used to cover the rock. It was crumpled and misshapen, but one word was clearly legible, written in all capital letters.
Kate swayed in place, suddenly unsteady on her feet, but it didn't matter that her eyes were now closed. The word was stamped on her brain like a fresh tattoo.
MURDERER.
Sasha
“I still can’t believe it,” Maggie murmured.
The four of them sat around the living room, staring at the note between them like it was a cottonmouth. It had been a half hour since it had come sailing through the window by way of a giant rock and, so far, other than Kate making chamomile tea to "cal
m everyone's nerves", they'd done nothing about it.
"We need to call the police," Sasha said for what felt like the fiftieth time as she scrubbed a hand over her face in frustration.
Listening to her three sisters go around in circles over what to do next was exhausting, and she could already sense the tension headache building in the back of her neck.
"Someone vandalized Mama's home,” she continued. “Our home, now. Not to mention that this thing is huge. Unless they used a catapult to launch it, they were close enough to the window to throw it through, meaning they saw us. They saw all of us sitting here and didn’t care if they crushed one of our skulls in the process. I don't even understand the debate, here."
"The debate is whether we want to open this can of worms again, Sash," Lena said.
Her calm, even tone only irritated Sasha more.
"Just because you're never around to witness it, doesn't mean it didn't happen, Lena. But I'll break it down for you nice and slow." She inched forward on the velvet, leopard-print armchair she'd been sitting on. "The ‘can of worms’ was never closed. People have never stopped saying Mama killed Clyde. Sure, they might whisper it now instead of shouting it at her in public like they used to, but the people who thought it back then still think it. That much, I can handle. Who cares what a bunch of jealous, bitter old-timers think? When they start making threats, that's where I draw the line. So I'll give you five more minutes to pull out the big guns and convince me of something different. If not, I'm calling Sheriff Fletcher."
With that, she flopped back, crossing her arms over her chest, one brow raised in a challenge.
“If the Sheriff comes here at ten o’clock at night, the whole town will be flapping about it before breakfast. You know that. Calling is out of the question.”
Sasha shot to her feet, her blood pumping now. “Mama may have died, but she certainly didn't make you boss before she did it. I’ll call if I want to call.”
Lena stood and met her toe to toe. Her green eyes, the color of chipped sea-glass, narrowed and Sasha lifted her chin, refusing to squirm under the weight of her stare. It wasn't easy. The ten years between them felt more like a generation and, while Lena hadn't been around much after she'd left, she'd still practically raised all three of them when they were small.
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