Page 5 of House of Royals

Two weeks ago, I got a phone call from an attorney here in Mississippi. The woman on the other line started going off about a Henry Conrath and his passing away. She explained his will, which was helpful. I’d gotten the official, large envelope just the day before and hadn’t understood why it had landed in my mailbox.

I was the daughter of a wealthy man from Silent Bend, Mississippi. The daughter of a man I didn’t know the name of. And I had just inherited his Estate, his money, everything.

My mother had lived here in Silent Bend for all of three months after getting her associate degree at some community college in Levan—where she’d grown up, an hour east of here. She’d gotten a job here. One night she went to a party where she met a charming man—and one thing led to another.

It was the end of the summer, and she left for college two days later, heading to veterinary school in Colorado. Only three weeks later, she learned she was pregnant and barely remembered the name of the man. But she never said a word to him, and all my life she simply told me that we were strong women—we could do anything on our own.

Shewasstrong. Right up until she was killed by a distracted teenage driver playing on a cell phone three years ago.

I was nineteen. Able to take care of myself, live on my own, but still miss her every day.

And then there was the phone call.

Apparently, my mother had told the man who made me that I existed, just a few months before she died, but asked him to not make himself a part of my life so late into my existence.

I wasn’t sure if I appreciated that or not.

So, here I am, fulfilling my unknown father’s will. I am his only child. So this plantation house is mine. His millions of dollars are mine. His workers and his cars are mine.

I know nothing about him, though. Only that he made me and was rich. No idea how he’d made his money. Nothing of his personality.

It leaves me feeling kind of empty.

Like this house.

I take another deep breath, reminding myself to take this one day at a time.

I close my eyes and imagine myself back in Colorado. Leaving my tiny apartment, with it’s old, hand-me-down furniture, slightlyoffsmell, heading to work at four in the morning to start the rolls. And the muffins. And the scones. And everything that smelled like comfort.

I’d worked at the bakery for four years. I liked the job. I was good at it. But it could never pay me much, and I could never go anywhere with it.

Well, I’m somewhere now. With more money than I’ll ever know what to do with. My entire life had changed.

And there is this constant feeling on my shoulders that something extraordinary is about to happen.

FOR A WEEK, I HID on the property. Katina cooked for Rath and I, and the grounds crew and the housekeepers. I made an extra effort to be nice to them, to be polite and sweet, but there was always fear in their eyes whenever they looked at me. I didn’t understand that.

I wandered the gardens. Memorized the maze. Made use of the pool.

And I moved into the master suite.

It’s grander than me. A massive king-sized canopy bed dominates the room. Ornately carved furniture lines the walls. Beautiful drapes hang in the windows that look out over the river on one side of the room and over the front gardens on the other side.

The space is immense.

But I can feel my father here.

And with every passing day, I feel the hollow hole inside of me growing bigger. I want to know him. I want to know what he was like.

But there is a problem.

Even though this was his house and, as far as I can tell, he’d lived here for a very long time, there isnothingpersonal around. No journals, no letters, no knickknacks. Nothing. The only traces of him I can find are his wardrobe in my closet, that portrait of him in the library, and the fear his staff felt—and has now transferred to me.

Rath had said my father was a great man, so why was everyone else on the property afraid of Henry Conrath?

I want answers.

IT TAKES NINE DAYS FOR me to feel like a self-caged animal. I’ve been hiding in this mansion to avoid embracing my new Southern life, and I need to be brave.

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