I bolt out of the study.

It's startling how long it's been since I've felt pure, undiluted fear like this. It's like I'm five years old again, wading through the crowd at the county fair, and I've lost my grip on my mother's hand.

No. Not this house. I don't want it. I don't.fucking.want it.

As soon as I speed into the bathroom, the only place where one could have some god damned privacy in this mansion, the sight in the mirror over the sink startles me.

I don't recognize that girl, her sunburned cheeks, the scrape on her forehead.

Who are you? I think. What happened to you?

I wash my face in the sink, a maw opening in my chest.

The creaky spots in the bathroom floor are like landmines, and I still haven't re-memorized their locations. When I reach the bathtub, the tiles groan beneath me.

Beyond the door, the voices are quiet. Then Mom's falsetto carries up the stairs: "Rhi?"

"Give me ten minutes!" I yell.

I'm so hot and cold at the same time, I feel like I'm drunk. I stumble into the tub and strip. Turn on the faucet and wait until the water starts to steam. I just sit in there and pull my knees to my naked body as the thing fills with hot water. It shoots up my nose, making me choke and sputter. I rotate the handle all the way to the right until the water scalds my skin, until it's almost unbearable. Maybe if I stay like this for long enough, I'll disappear into steam too.

The fear grows so powerful I feel like I might vomit into those stupid flowers mom arranged at the center of the dining room table. Fear because my devious father left me the house; fear because my two worlds are about to collide.

I cover my mouth and I scream, my fist and the blast of the shower muffling the pathetic sound that comes out of me. Past the rainforest sounds of the bathroom, steam leaks out the gap under the door.

My own moan, gentle and unhinged, makes the hairs stand up along my arms.

I stare at the door like something might reach under and catch me.

A shape, phantom dark, looms there. I blink and let out my breath. It's just a towel, charcoal gray, hanging on the back of the door, still seesawing gently from when I'd shoved it open.

***

Mom is waiting for me downstairs, nursing a cup of coffee. She pulls me into the kitchen.

Away from Tom. Away from Beverly. Away from Daniel Kane, the will-reader.

And I am grateful for it.

A sweet vanilla smell wraps me up as we sit down.

Then Mom gives me a smile, equally vanilla-sweet and warm.

I smile back, tight-lipped, without teeth.

She studies my face: my skin and the flush of my cheeks, my sharp chin that sharpens more when I speak and especially when I smile, my autumn-leaves-auburn hair, my round gray-blue eyes.

Doesn't she look just like Victor did, perhaps she thinks.

If you brows through the pictures of my family, you might wonder whether my brother was adopted. Mom, Victor, and I all have blue eyes. Tom's are jet-black, void of any feeling. It's the ginger hair that confirms we're related.           

I remember a time when Tom liked me. There's proof: photographs of us trick-or-treating dressed as Peter Pan and a Disney princess, and videos of us putting on plays on the back patio, starring ourselves and Choco, our azure-eyed Siamese/Common European shorthair mix.

But we were four years apart, and once Tom started middle school, it seemed like my very existence offended him.

"That's just how it is with siblings," Mom would tell me when I was still small enough to climb onto her lap, face stiff with tears after a fight with Tom. Feel her fingers grazing over my ear as she played with my hair. "Aunt Ellen and I didn't become friends until we were in college."

There's a handle of vodka on the coffee table in front of Mom. When I reach for it, she jumps like a skittish cat, and I pull my hand away.

"Don't worry. I won't do it." I hesitate, my eyes falling to the nervous tap of her gray Nikes. "I'm not a drunkard like..." I shake my head.

"Stop it, Rhi," Mom whispers. "You don't know what you're saying."

"Yes, I do," I cry out. "I'm not eight years old anymore. I'm old enough to know that Dad was wrong and the way he educated us was fucked up—"

There's a short crack. Skin on skin. I swallow.  Mom slapped me.

I swallow and wish I could make what I said disappear.

"Oh my god, Rhi. I am so, so sorry." The very look on Mom's face makes me want to stuff the words back into my mouth until I choke.

This isn't me. I argued with my mom, sure. But it was always about stupid shit like a wet towel left on my bedroom carpet. I am never nasty for no reason.

I am so ashamed I just want to slip upstairs like a mouse being chased by a broom.

I should not have said that, let alone mere days after Victor's death. So I sometimes cried myself to sleep while my parents shouted at each other. Boo-hoo. Mine wasn't a unique story.

Mom turns to the fridge without a word, grabs two eggs, cracks them and drops them in a cherry-red frying pan.

There is something so odd about the scene—my mother frying eggs, without Tom being here, without  house service. It is like stumbling across a dog sitting next to a cat, calmly. I do not want to disturb the scene.

When the food is done, she drags out the chair across the table and sits down by my side again. Her eyes are tinged with red. I don't move from the seat across from her, where there's a plate of sunny-side up eggs waiting. I can't believe that after all these years she remembers how I like my eggs.

I didn't know how to cook when I first moved to Canada. Didn't understand that food was its own form of affection, that a casserole or a pie was meant to have the same effect as a hug. Now I know.

"I noticed you didn't eat too much at lunch." Mom buries her face in her hands. After a long pause, she looks up, cheeks blooming to match the crimson in her irises. When she speaks again, her voice is barely a whisper. "I saw this last night. After the service."

I don't get what this she's referring to, not until she hands me her phone.

I scroll through her Instagram feed.

Perfectly posed photos of Aubrey in designer clothes, attending exclusive events, and promoting various brands fill the screen. One photo, seemingly taken at a company event a few years ago, shows Aubrey laughing with Victor. He has his arm around her, and she is leaning into him, her eyes sparkling. The caption reads, 'So grateful for the support of my amazing business partners!'

I zoom in on the pic, noticing the way Victor's hand rests on Aubrey's back. A little too low, a little too familiar.

I prop myself up on an elbow and look at Mom. Her eyelids shine with exhaustion, as if she'd lived a thousand years since last night. Mom produces a crumpled tissue from her hands and uses it to wipe the mascara pooling under her eyes.

"Probably just one of many," she chokes out. "But at least he was always home for dinner."

I stare at Mom, and the realization hits me like a ten-ton truck. She lied to my brother and me for half our lives, telling us Dad's stays over the weekend were work conferences, that he was hospitalized for the flu when he had actually been with who knows which woman, or drunk.

She lied about Dad's habits because she thought she was protecting us.

Which means I can't trust a thing my mother says about him. It also means something else, and I do not want to think about how far would mom go to protect the image of our fucking fake family idyll.

I stand up. "I can't spend a minute longer in this place."

"Oh." A shadow falls across mom's eyes, taking the smile with it. "Rhi, don't say that. Where do you plan on going?" she snaps.

I don't answer, as I grab a Tupperware with shaking hands, dump my fried eggs inside. I shut my leftovers in the fridge and turn to head upstairs, but Mom catches my gaze long enough to blurt: "Please don't. This is your home now, too. You heard Daniel. He left it to you. Not me. Not Tom. You."

"Mom, he never treated us right."

"He's your father. Don't you love him at all?"

"Of course I love him. Victor Carmichael is my father! I have no choice in the matter."

It's the sad truth: you get strongly emotionally attached to your parents, no matter what kind of people they are, because you spend decades sharing a roof with them, and a bond inevitably forms.

But loving someone shouldn't mean giving them permission to hurt you over and over, which is exactly what Dad did to us.

It shouldn't mean trapping them, which is exactly what he is trying to do to me, even in his death.

"It's just how life has always been. With Victor. We've spent over three decades together. I don't think I've ever seriously considered living without him. He has always been a part of my life, and I, of his."

Mom looks down at her ring, like she is seeing it for the first time. "Yes, I still wear my wedding ring." A small, pained smile. "If I'm being honest, I'm not sure I could take it off anymore if I wanted to." She attempts it, pulling at the metal band. "No, it's stuck on there pretty good. Guess my fingers are a little fatter than they used to be. It's engraved on the inside, the date of our wedding: July twenty-third, 1991. Best day of my life."

I sit back on the chair and stare at her, incredulously.

"I had no one left in my life, Rhi. My nana had been dead for three years. Her fanciest clothes came from Chico's and she sometimes left the house with parakeet crap on her shoulder. Victor and I, we were high-school sweethearts. Same age, same class. I got pregnant with..."

"With Tom, when you were eighteen, I know." I've heard this story dozens of times.

"Yes. We married young and we built everything together. As equals."

But were they ever equals? This is not the first time that the thought crosses my mind.

Perhaps my father got what he deserved.

"Will you please stay at least until your flight is due? Till Thursday?"

Ugh. I have two major character flaws. One: I have trouble asking people for things. And two: I have a hard time saying no, when someone asks me for a thing.

Pretty self-destructive combination, one would say.

"Fine." I huff.

"And... Thank you for listening to me."

"Sure, Mom. Learned it from my therapist. Did you know that this thing they call 'therapy' is way too easy? All you do is sit and listen, then you are told things you kind of already know."

"You're right." She pulls me in for a hug. "Remarkable, how little we do things like that though, isn't it?"

The weight of the mansion deed in my name still feels heavy, still alien.

I don't understand why Dad left it to me, the one who ran away.

Suddenly, the doorbell rings, a sharp, insistent sound that breaks the quiet.

"I'll get it," I say, needing a distraction.

I open the door, and there he is.

Eli.

He grins.

Dang, he looks so yummy, even in that old jeans and a slightly crumpled t-shirt.

I mentally go back in time to when he used to have a floppy mushroom cut and a chubby round face.

Eli catches me staring at him, and my face burns so hot, I feel as if I could disintegrate. I avert my eyes.

He's slimmed out and muscled up in the usual manly places now, but still has awkward-boy mannerisms. Like the way his eyes never meet mine as he nods and says: "Hey, 'sup. Came to pick up the old man."

"Eli," I manage, a small smile tugging at my lips despite myself.

It's... nice to see a friendly face after the will-reading shock.

"So," he says, his eyes sparkling with that old mischievous glint. "Now that you're kinda back in town... you wanna grab a drink? Catch up properly? I'll be your designated driver tonight."

I hesitate. "I... I don't know, Eli. Things are kind of complicated right now."

Mom appears behind me, her expression softer than it's been all day. "Oh, Eli! It's lovely to see you. Rhiannon, dear, why don't you? It would do you good to get out for a bit."

I look at her, surprised. She actually seems to want me to go.

Eli's smile widens, hopeful. "Yeah, come on. Listen to your mom. Just one. My treat. We can go to O'Malley's. It hasn't changed one bit."

I waver. A drink with Eli. Sounds tempting. But is it a good idea? Based on what just happened between us last night. "I... I don't know..."

"Nonsense," Mom says gently, giving my arm a little push. "Go on. You haven't seen Eli in ages. It'll be nice."

I look from Mom's encouraging face to Eli's expectant one. A small part of me, the part that remembers easy laughter and shared secrets, wants to say yes.

"Okay," I say, a small smile finally breaking through. "Okay, one drink."

Eli's grin broadens. "Great! Let me just tell Dad about the change of plans." He glances back into the house. "Tom can drive him back home. He's probably still dissecting the will with him anyways."

***

I've kept things light at O'Malley's, steering clear of unsettling events surrounding Dad's death.

And Eli, bless him, seems to sense my boundaries; his usual easy flirtation reined in, his questions respectful.

But when a text from Daniel Kane arrives during our ride home, he whistles and sizes me up.

"Your old man really left the mansion to you?" He turns slightly towards me, his warm brown eyes earnest.

I shrug, picking at a loose thread on my jacket. The weight of that unexpected inheritance still feels surreal.

"It's... a lot of house," he says.

"You have no idea," I reply, a small, wry smile touching my lips.

A comfortable silence settles between us. It's different from the awkward silences of earlier; this one feels... companionable.

Like we can just be, without pressure or expectation.

I appreciate that. I really do.

"So, does that mean you're... you know... back?"

"In Gaffney?" It's not a hard question, but I'm having trouble answering.

"Yeah. Are you here for good?"

"I need to figure out what happened to my father. But I still have a flight to catch on Thursday." I now pick at the rubber peeling from his car wheel.

His expression shifts, the easygoing charm replaced by a flicker of concern. "The markings you mentioned... you're serious about that?"

I nod "I am. Something wasn't right, Eli. And I need to know what it was."

He's silent for a moment, his eyes thoughtful. Then, he leans a little closer, his voice low. "If you need anything... anything at all... while you're digging into this, just let me know, okay?"

"Thanks, Eli. I appreciate that."

He smiles a small smile that doesn't push, doesn't ask for more than I'm offering.

When we arrive close to the mansion, he parks the car and gets out. I follow him, thankful to be able to leave it at that.

On our right is a chain-link fence blocking off the elementary school playground. They've replaced all the equipment since I was a kid.

"I kinda remember you guys playing with those little plastic bears in Ms. Brogan's kindergarten class. She said they were for practicing counting, but you guys always made bear armies out of them." I giggle.

"Yeah, those innocent kindergarten days. After that everything got a lot tougher, more competitive."

"I bet."

"For sure. Everyone thinks they got a little Tom Brady. Parents of first graders are slipping the coach videos of their kids' games now." His laughter is warm by my neck.

He's standing close to me so I can smell the minty body wash lingering on his skin, the cola and booze on his breath.

Uh-oh.

My heartbeat is alarmingly irregular. Part of me wants to forget about the stupid investigation and simply exist without an agenda, even just for one night.

Do whatever things Eli had in mind when he told me he hoped I'd come to O'Malley's with him. Things normal people do all the damn time.

A laugh bubbles between my lips.

"What?" Eli turns to me.

"Nothing."

He nudges his shoulder into mine playfully. "Say it."

I shrug. "Your taste in girls is predictable."

His cheeks go pink. "I don't think you of all people should complain about my taste in girls."

My heart stutters as Eli's hand starts moving toward my face. He cradles my chin, and my blood hums. He leans in, his lips soft and perfect-looking, and I want to kiss him again, badly.

I know it would be nothing like a shitty eighth-grade kiss we had in a movie theater, that it would be just like last night, that it's okay to want it this badly—

I place my hand flat to Eli's chest. Stop. He opens his eyes, confused. "Sorry—I thought—"

"Eli," I say, my voice a little breathless. "It's... it's a bad idea." "I... I don't want to start something... something I can't finish. I don't want to... to hurt you, Eli. Not again." The last part is an admission, a confession of the guilt that still lingers from years ago.

He's silent for a long moment, his stubborn gaze searching my face. "So, that's it? Just because you're leaving in a few days, that means we can't... that we can't even have this?" He gestures  between us. "And what if I want to try again, despite the distance?"

"It's not that simple. It's... it's complicated." I hate how vague I sound, but I don't know how to explain the tangled mess of my emotions, the fear of vulnerability, the need to protect myself. To protect him, too. "I just... please, Eli. Just... let's leave it at this, okay?"

***

No one waits for me when I enter the mansion, even though Tom's car beeps as if it was trying to alert the whole neighborhood when I pass it by, and the stairs groan so loudly under my weight I think the whole house might collapse.

I leave the lights off in my room as I strip off my clothes. The amount of adrenaline coursing through my body makes getting into pajamas a task.

I sleep in staccato bursts, between checking my phone for an update from Eli, and scrolling on social media to see the same image of Victor and Aubrey, time and time again.

I need to figure out how his death happened.

And I need to figure out how to get rid of this house.