Page 9 of A Heart So Haunted
The funeral was just this morning. I didn’t even have Aunt Cadence’s ashes yet.
This felt wrong—too soon. But I couldn’t back out. I couldn’t pay to keep Harthwait when I already had other jobs waiting on me. My wallet screamed at the thought. I didn’t have a year to get this house in shape. Ithadto be sold by end of summer so I could move on to my other clients.
“Well, Miss Landry, it was a pleasure meeting you. Thank you for allowing me to poke about.” She pushed to stand. The chair scratched the floor.
“The pleasure was mine. I appreciate you coming out.” The words tasted fake.
With a nod to me and a sharp smile, Eleanora pivoted on a heel and stalked from the room. Sayer and I waited as she showed herself out. I could picture the stained-glass covers trembling like my fingers. There it was again, that fluttering at the base of my throat.
Sayer took Eleanora’s seat and snatched the paper from my hand.
“This is typed,” he said.
I sighed, brow scrunched. “I noticed that.”
“How did she bring this on first meeting,typed?” he pressed. “What happened to just taking a look?”
I shrugged. Covered my face with my hands. “I don’t know, Say. Maybe she made an assumption from selling homes like this before?” All it emphasized, to me, was the urgency.
That thought burrowed against my spine. Urgency wasn’t always a good thing, though—I’d seen it, felt it on my own skin. It could mean impatience or lack of thought for others, a selfishness that could be driven by an undisclosed, rabid desire that I knew nothing about.
Or I could just be letting doubt creep in. I shifted in my chair.
“You don’t have to give her the listing,” he said, low. “You can wait. Pick someone else. Give it time. Today’s already been—enough.”
“I don’t have a choice.” My skin erupted in goosebumps. The projected sell price of Harthwait glared at me from the bottom of the reno list. Underlined in red.
That money could do so many things. Provide cushion. Pay a credit card, or better yet, remove the last couple thousand I owed on my car. Yet somehow, those zeros did nothing to cushion how the house had come into my possession.
I ran a finger over an eye in the wood of the table. It was dull in this spot, where the finish had worn away. How many elbows had sat in this tiny, square inch of space? How many years had it taken to wear it down to the grain?
Had it been my younger elbows, during day visits? My mother’s? Aunt Cadence’s?
Maybe even my father, the few times before he left Mom.
“This would bother me, too, if I were you.” Sayer looked at me over his glasses’ frames. Instead of librarian, all I saw was subdued pity.
I settled against the wooden back of the chair. My mouth watered while my stomach churned and churned. Like a cauldron eddying over a rolling flame. It didn’t really matter what I thought or what I felt. I was one person—one single, unattached individual that had no partner, no child, no roommates, and no reason to root myself in Stetson. The only logical routewasselling.
Unbidden, a memory needled me.
Will it get better when I’m old like you, Aunt Denny?I’d asked. Her name was a lilt of highs and lows on my tongue.Live in a house alone like you? Away from people like Mommy?
She’d looked at me with glassy eyes. A hard swallow.Don’t know if you’d want a house like this, Lanny. Lot of empty rooms can be lonesome.
But I wanna be alone.
Well, that’s fine.
Is this what better felt like?
“I need to go back to the funeral home,” I said, changing the subject.
“What for?”
“I need to pick up the floral arrangements that were left behind. The lady said she’d keep them in the front office for after I met with Eleanora.”
“I have a car,” Sayer said. “Let me go.”
