Chapter 1

“You know what?” Ashlynn grunted beneath her armload of luggage. “I’m glad none of them returned your calls. Who needs men, anyway?”

“I suppose,” Chloe shrugged as she came out of the house for what felt like the thousandth time, trash bag in each hand. “Still, it would have made this go a lot more quickly. You’d think at least one of the companies would have been interested. I guess we only wanted to hire them for the day so it wasn’t enough money, maybe? It’s still kind of weird, though, don’t you think, Claire?”

When her sister didn’t respond, Chloe paused and glanced over her shoulder to where her twin stood on the lawn, chewing her nails and staring up at the large farm house.

“Claire?”

Her sister started and turned. “Sorry, what?”

“I said, don’t you think it’s weird that none of the movers wanted … Never mind. You okay?”

“Huh? Yeah, I’m just… This house. Anyway. I dunno, I thought you said one of them seemed interested?”

“Well, he did at first, until he started taking my info. I guess it wasn’t worth driving all the way out here just for a few hours’ work?”

Ashlynn chimed in. “Yeah, even your mom refused to drive out after the funeral. I still can’t believe your parents aren’t helping. Lazy jerks.” She grinned, her smile belying the harshness of her words.

“Yeah, Mum hates this house, or something. She’s only been here a few times in her life but whenever it comes up, she always talks about how she can’t stand it. Says every time she’s been to visit, she counts down the minutes ‘til she can leave. She didn’t flat out refuse to come back with us, but I could tell she didn’t really want to so I cut her some slack. It’s just clearing out the obvious junk today; the rest of this stuff is going to take weeks to sort through. So, I told her we could handle it.”

“And we CAN!” Ashlynn grinned, dropping what she was carrying to pose in a body builder’s stance, flexing her biceps. “GIRL POWER.”

Chloe laughed, then asked, “Besides, since Ravi will be here in a few days anyway and he’s bringing that friend, we can leave the heavy stuff for them. I just wanted to get the junk that was obviously just trash cleared out.”

Indicating the bulging garbage bags she was carrying, she resumed her walk to the end of the drive, where she deposited them on the pile of others they’d already stacked there. On the way back, she stopped to grab the last of their things from the car before shutting the rear gate. As she turned to carry it inside, she noticed her sister standing in the grass in the same spot, still just gazing at the house.

“Um, gee, Claire, thanks for all the help unloading the car and clearing junk out of your house.”

“Eh, cut her some slack.” Ashlynn came out of the house dusting her hands and chimed in before Claire could respond. “She’s been kinda run down lately, haven’t you, girl?”

Claire shot her a grateful look and shrugged. “I still should have helped. Sorry I’m so out of it.”

Taking in her sister’s pale, dazed face and ragged fingernails almost hidden beneath the sleeves of her absurdly oversized sweater, Claire felt a surge of affection and relented. “S’ok. Let’s head inside and see what we still need to tackle tonight.”

Ashlynn walked over and put her arm around Claire’s shoulders, drawing her into a one-sided embrace before--almost protectively, Chloe noted--guiding her up the grey stone steps and across the porch into the house.

Chloe followed a few lengths behind, distracted by thoughts of everything the girls still had to do that evening, when, a few feet from the porch, she stopped. Hairs rose on her arms as, all in an instant, she felt certain she was being watched. Glancing behind her to find no one, she looked to the closed screen door expecting to see one of the girls had turned back to wait for her, but Ashlynn and Claire had already disappeared from view. The two windows on either side of the front door showed only faded curtains hanging, no spying faces peering out.

Backtracking a few steps, she gazed up at the farmhouse with its dingy white siding and peeling paint. Its dusty windows didn’t even make up a very realistic proverbial “face” gazing back at her like some houses, anthropomorphized by people more imaginative than she. There was no movement on the second floor from behind the three curtained windows there, nor from the small attic window on the floor above.

Studying the house, she found herself again surprised at its sound condition. It would need repairs, obviously, plus a good cleaning if--when, undoubtedly--her sister decided to sell it, but considering it was close to 150 years old, it was in pretty good shape. The wooden porch would probably need repainted, the windows cleaned, and who knew what chores lay in wait for them inside--carpets vacuumed and shampooed, floors mopped, everything dusted, not to mention the immense clutter she’d already noted on trips into the house earlier, carrying bags and luggage--but, all things considered, it could have been a lot worse.

“Let’s hope Auntie Nutball kept the plumbing and wiring in as good of shape as the rest of the place,” she muttered under her breath, then felt a stab of guilt. Poor Aunt Mabel, living here by herself all these years. No wonder she was so weird.

The feeling of being watched had lessened and Chloe, already scolding herself for the clichéd notion, headed inside to find her sister and their friend.

As she entered the front hall, she heard the two of them to her left in the room Ashlynn had declared the “fohr-mal pah-luh, dahlings,” when they’d first started bringing in their things over an hour ago. She dropped the bag with the rest of their stuff just inside the door and joined them.

“--still can’t believe your aunt left you a house,” Ashlynn was gushing to Claire as Chloe entered. She stood shoeless in the center of the room, toes buried in the blue and gold rug, head back as she examined the crown moulding. “I thought that sort of shit only happened in gothic romance novels.”

Claire, feet tucked beneath her where she sat curled in the corner of the faded flower-patterned chaise longue against the far wall, examined her nails and didn’t answer.

“Actually,” Chloe said, “I said the same thing, but the lawyer told me it still happens all the time. There was some money, too, but a lot of what was left of that went to pay the estate and inheritance taxes. But yeah, Auntie Mabel’s will specifically left it all to Claire, and apparently it was a ‘considerable amount’.

“I mean,” she continued as she crossed the room to plop down next to Claire, making her sister jump, “It’s not like we’re--excuse me, like Claire’s--rich now, or anything, but it’s a house, for Pete’s sake. Mum said she didn’t even know Auntie Mabel had a will anymore. She said there’d been talk of it years ago but she figured after what happened when we were little, if there was anything left of the ‘estate,’ the batty old thing would have left it to, like, a charity for orphaned cats or something.”

At the mention of her name, Claire had turned to Chloe a with hurt look. “It’s not like I asked her to leave it all to me, Clo. And it’s not like I’m going to be stingy and--”

Her sister cut her off with a kiss on the top of her head. “I know, darling. I’m just teasing. Ashlynn’s right, though. It’s all so out of the blue. Mum said that Auntie had changed her will when we were born to write us in as beneficiaries or whatever, but after that whole scare the last time we visited decades ago, Mum figured she’d just written us out.”

Ashlynn turned from her enraptured study of the room. “Wait, what? What ‘scare’? I haven’t heard this story. How have I not heard this story? We were just in the car for like, 97 hours together on the way here.”

“Five and a half,” Chloe corrected, and stuck out her tongue. “But with that godawful music you insisted on playing the whole time, you’re right, it felt infinitely longer. Aren’t black girls supposed to have great taste in music? What’d you, miss that gene ‘cause your dad’s white?”

“RACISM!” Ashlynn shrieked, laughing. “And, dad’s an accountant, remember? You’re lucky I don’t insist on NPR talk radio. Besides, nineties alt rock ballads speak to my soul. They’re a very underappreciated--”

“Ugh, DON’T CARE,” Chloe groaned. She picked up a throw pillow to toss at her friend but was interrupted by a distant clanging.

The girls all looked at each other.

“Is that--”

“I think it’s a phone?”

“I didn’t even know she had a phone,” Chloe proclaimed, rising quickly from the couch to go discover the source of the ringing. “I mean, I suppose I would have assumed, I just hadn’t thought about it…”

Her voice trailed off as she left the room and crossed the front hall to what looked like a den. Even as she threw a quick glance into the dark paneled room, she could tell the ringing was coming from elsewhere. She backed out only to bump into Claire. Her twin was standing behind her with a bemused expression.

“Claire! What is up with you? Why aren’t you looking for the phone?” she demanded, just as the noise ceased abruptly mid-ring.

The near silence after the clanging of the telephone echoing through the rooms was almost disconcerting, but Chloe could hear Ashlynn’s murmured greeting floating from the somewhere deeper in the bowels of the house. She moved to find her friend, Claire following like a shadow. They had just reached the end of the hall when Ashlynn popped out of a door on the right.

“Well, that was weird,” their friend admitted, wrinkling her nose.

“Who was it?”

“I honestly have no idea. Wrong number, I guess? But it was all echo-y and staticky, and I could hear voices but… anyway, doesn’t matter, I guess I’m just so used to having a cell that I barely remember how to talk on those clonky old things.” She gestured vaguely into the room behind her.

Claire leaned past them to peer into the murky bedroom as Chloe pulled her own cell from her back pocket.

“Oh, that reminds me.” She held up her phone. “No bars, no service, nothing. It’s like we’re cut off from civilization.”

Ashlynn wrinkled her nose again, her piercing glinting in the glow from the phone’s screen. “I’d say, ‘Just as well, we can concentrate on my designing and your writing, blah blah blah,’ but that’s going to get old fast. And what happens when we need to—“

“This is where it happened.” Claire’s voice was a hoarse whisper.

The other girls peered stopped talking to peer at her. She took another step into the room.

Comprehension flooded Chloe. “Oh, babe, you mean where they found Auntie Mabel?”

Claire didn’t respond. She reached a hand toward the bed, just inside the door to the left, then let it drop with a shudder.

Chloe stepped past her and flicked on the switch. Dingy yellow light illuminated the room and Ashlynn peered up at the overhead fixture with a look of distaste while Chloe reached around her to turn on the lamp on the nightstand as well.

“Uck, that ceiling light is ugly,” Ashlynn sniffed. The sickly yellow glow made the highlights in her normally dark curls look brassy.

“Yeah, this room was pretty recently updated, I think, but whoever advised Auntie on décor had some seriously bad taste,” Chloe conceded as she made her way around the room, examining a porcelain pig before hastily setting it back down again atop the dresser.

“At least it’s less drafty than the rest of the house, and I think…” She crossed to another doorway in the left corner.

“Yeah, thought so. There’s a modern bathroom, thank god, so even if there’s one upstairs that isn’t the greatest, this one—” She stopped talking long enough to poke her head in and more thoroughly survey the bathroom. “—is totally updated. I mean, compared to the rest of the house. Apparently, Auntie sunk a good chunk of the remaining family money into having this room added a few years ago, after there was some accident and it turned out she was starting to have trouble with stairs.”

“Spent a good bit on it too,” she continued, returning to where her sister and Ashlynn stood by the doorway. “According to the lawyer. There was some hassle with the insurance and Aunt Mabel ended up paying for most of it out of the remaining family money. He sounded really apologetic when he was telling Claire about it, though. The lawyer, I mean. He seemed like a nice man, didn’t he, Claire?”

“Hmm?” Claire turned to regard her sister with a blank stare.

Chloe raised her eyebrows at her sister’s lack of attention, and pointedly continued addressing Ashlynn. “Something about how, there was some freak accident? A man drove into the side of the house, or something? Even though she’s all the way out here and that side of the house isn’t even next to the driveway. It’s all pretty bizarre and I don’t know the details. And then, when insurance wanted to repair it, she refused to have men in the house and searched and searched until she found some female contractor that she had to bring in from out of state. Then, she made the lady add this whole room and bathroom on as an addition instead of just letting her fix the damage; wouldn’t let her touch the original structure. Or something weird like that. I dunno. It was interesting but I was getting antsy by that point.”

Ashlynn whistled through her teeth. “Whoa, that’s… your aunt sounds like she was kind of… well, the phrase ‘batshit crazy’ comes to mind, but you know me, never one to speak ill of anybody.”

Chloe snorted.

“Yeah, I know. I feel bad she was so alone but after everything I’ve heard about her the last few days, I don’t know that I’d have wanted to be the one to keep her company. Well. Anyway. We should probably—” She started to move past her sister back toward the hallway but stopped when she noticed the tears in her eyes.

“Claire? Babe, what the…?”

The other two stared at the girl in bemusement before Ashlynn took her by the shoulders and turned her to face them.

“Sweetie, what is wrong?”

“She didn’t want to stay in here. She missed her room upstairs.”

Ashlynn and Chloe exchanged a look, and Chloe bemusedly reached out a fingertip to touch a tear as it made its way down her sister’s contorted features. At the touch, Claire seemed to come back to them. With a sniffle, she scrubbed at her pale cheeks with her palms and the girls watched as her grey eyes lost their distant look and focused on their faces. “Oh. Sorry. What? Sorry. I’m just being silly. I just… I kind of hate this room. I keep thinking about getting old and living in a house all by yourself and dying alone with no one to… I’m just tired, I think.”

Then, almost as an afterthought, she mumbled, “IdontwanttosleephereClo.”

It took Chloe a minute to parse what her twin had said, but when then she folded her sister into her arms. Claire’s actually trembling, she realized, impatience and concern wrestling within her.

“Oh, babe, you don’t have to sleep here. We haven’t even scoped out the upstairs floor, and I’m sure Ashlynn or I’ll—”

Their friend cleared her throat. “If we’re all being honest, I’m not super keen on sleeping in a dead woman’s bed, myself, so…” She trailed off with a look of embarrassment.

Now Chloe did roll her eyes. “I had no idea my nearest and dearest were so friggin’ superstitious. Besides, aren’t all of these beds going to be dead women’s…”

At the look of alarm on Ashlynn’s face, Chloe stopped talking. “Fine. Let’s go check out the rooms upstairs, and I’ll happily take the newly renovated bedroom with the queen-size bed and the attached full bathroom.”

She let go of Claire with an affectionate squeeze and let the way back out into the dimly lit hall. The others followed, trudging up the stairs to the second floor, the rust-colored carpet not hiding the squeak of the old floorboards beneath their feet.

The upstairs hallway had four doors, two on each wall. All but one stood slightly ajar. At the hall’s end in front of the window hung a frayed rope from what was presumably a pulldown trapdoor ladder leading to the attic.

Ashlynn peered through the open door on the right at the top of the stairs. “Whoa, there’s stuff piled up everywhere in this one.”

Chloe peered over her shoulder. “Urgh, this’ll be fun to sort through.”

“I know you’re being sarcastic, you pessimistic harpy,” Ashlynn chirped, “But I think it will be. Look, is that one of those old foot-pedal sewing machines? And check out that hat!”

She made to start into the room but Chloe said, “Hold on, it’s starting to get dark and I know Claire’s tired. I’m pretty beat, myself. Let’s look at the rest and figure out where we’re sleeping tonight, and we can make a plan for tackling the rest of this stuff over the next few weeks, okay? We didn’t bring sleeping bags and if we need to, like, wash sheets or… I dunno… I should have thought this through better…” She trailed off tiredly, hoping one of the others would offer a solution.

Claire, who seemed to have recovered from her emotional breakdown, didn’t respond. Though still pale, she seemed more energetic and was moving down the hall toward the closed door at the end as though she hadn’t been listening. Ashlynn, at least, acknowledged Chloe with a sigh, her lower lip protruding slightly.

“Oh, go and get the stupid hat if it’ll make you happy,” Chloe rolled her eyes, and Ashlynn crowed and hopped back into the room, re-emerging with a haughty expression and a green silk bonnet squashed on top of her dark girls.

“Have Jeeves bring the car around, would you? I’m off to the theatre,” she intoned.

“They weren’t British, dork,” Chloe shot over her shoulder as she opened the door to the room across the hall. Her laugh changed to a sound of disgust.

“Ugh, this one’s maybe even worse than the first one. Look, there’s boxes of stuff everywhere. It looks like —” she flicked the light switch against the inside wall with an audible click, “— old newspapers and photographs and books and stuff. And it’s all --” she interrupted herself with a loud sneeze.

“Ha. Dusty?”

“Indeed.” Chloe took a few steps into the room. “I can’t even tell whether there’s a bed in here.”

“The first room had one, buried under the hatboxes. Nifty old brass frame. I’ll clear it off and sleep in there, if Claire doesn’t want it. I like it. I think there’s loads more hats and I saw a wardrobe—bet there’s all sorts of vintage clothes.Besides, the dust in here is making me sneeze too.”

“But what’ll we do when Ravi and… what’d you say his friend’s name was?” Chloe asked.

“Mark,” Ashlynn reminded. “Well, it’ll be a few more days ‘til they drive out. We can have this room cleaned up by then. Ravi can sleep with me,” she smirked, “And maybe Claire found another room in better condition.”

“Speaking of,” Chloe turned off the light and closed the door to the dusty, book-strewn room. “Where did she get off too?”

They traipsed down the darkening hallway and found her standing still, left hand on her stomach and right hand over her heart, in the center of the room. Chloe stepped inside, their friend at her heels.

Both girls gawped.

“Whoa,” was all Ashlynn could seem to manage at first.

Claire turned to face them, almost radiant in what remaining light filtered softly in through the gauzy curtains.

“Isn’t it perfect?” Her voice had taken on a breathy quality.

The room was, Chloe had to admit, surprisingly pretty in an antique, frilly, feminine sort of way. The bed to the left of the doorway was made up with a delicate, lazy coverlet that matched the curtains. A small tablecloth atop a dark occasional table before the window echoed the design and even the doily runner on the mirrored vanity looked to be a match. The wallpaper was a faded fleur-de-lis pattern, the color indeterminate in the darkening room.

Chloe realized her sister had failed to turn on any lights – how long had she been standing there in the dim room? She looked to the wall but there was no switch. In fact, casting her gaze upwards, she noticed there was no overhead light at all. It looked as though perhaps there had been at one time; branching hairline cracks, barely noticeable in the gloom, spread outwards like veins from a spot in the center of the ceiling where once a chandelier or light fixture had hung but there was nothing now.

Her eyes raked the walls until she spotted a small lamp on the other side of the bed, atop yet another lace doily on a nightstand there. When she leaned across the bed and snapped it on, glints caught her eyes from all around her. The bulb’s light reflected off the silver accents that seemed to be everywhere, from the metallic handles of a matching hairbrush and hand mirror on the vanity to the gleaming detailed scrolling of the bedframe a glittering picture frame hanging on the far wall.

“Wow,” Ashlynn echoed herself. “This room’s like something in a Victorian museum. It’s not even dusty!”

“I know,” Claire breathed. “It’s mine.”

“… ‘kay….” Ashlynn looked at her with annoyed bewilderment.

“It’s been waiting for me.”

Chloe shuddered. She didn’t like the room at all, though she couldn’t pinpoint why, exactly; it was certainly more orderly and clean than the other rooms, but it felt drafty and chilled to her. She was glad she wasn’t the one sleeping in this eerie time capsule.

Regardless, she was suddenly sick to death of her sister’s bizarre behavior.

Apparently, Ashlynn shared her sentiments.

“Okay, girl, that’s enough of that. You’re being a total weirdo today. ‘It’s mine, it’s been waiting for me,’ what the hell is that supposed to mean? What are you now, a Brontë character? I know there’s a lot going on and you’re still upset about Jason, but I’ve had just about all—”

Chloe’s head whipped around. “Jason?! Who’s Jason?”

Ashlynn snapped her mouth shut so hard that her teeth clicked audibly, but it was too late. Claire’s turned to glare at her.

“Great, Ash, thanks.”

“Oh, shit. I forgot… shit. Sorry.”

Chloe, ignoring Ashlynn, glared at her twin. “Who the heck is Jason? Were… you were seeing somebody and didn’t tell me?”

With a sigh, Claire seemed to deflate before Chloe’s eyes.

“Please, can we talk about this some other time? I’m so tired.”

“Um… no, how about now? Yeah, now’s good.”

“Fine. Look, I didn’t tell you at first because I knew you wouldn’t like him. And I thought it was just going to be a one time thing. Then, when we started seeing each other and it was looking more serious, right when I was trying to figure out how to tell you, a bunch of stuff happened and we ended it, okay?”

Stung, Chloe clung to her exasperation even as Claire shot her a pleading look.

“I’ll tell you more about it in detail some other time. I promise. And I really am sorry. But please, I don’t want to talk about it tonight. Please, Clo?”

Chloe looked away. “Fine.”

The three of them stood awkwardly, avoiding eye contact, not sure what to do next. It was Ashlynn, per usual, who broke the silence.

“So!” her falsely cheery voice was startling in the silence. “So. Claire, you claimed this room, and I’ll take the one at the top of the stairs. Clo, you want the one on the first floor.” She looked around for acknowledgment and received a weak nod from Claire and shrug from Chloe.

“Alright then.” She puffed her cheeks and then blew the air out through pursed lips. “Shall we explore the last room and pray it’s a fully decked out spa?”

Both of the twins still felt wronged and remained silent, but obligingly following their friend out of the room and across the hall to what did in fact turn out to be a second bathroom, albeit one that looked as though it had been installed around the same time that indoor plumbing came into popularity and hadn’t been updated since. The only light in the room was a single bulb with a pullchain hanging from the ceiling.

“I mean… the clawfoot tub is fabulous…” Ashlynn tried to sound excited. “If we can get rid of the rust stains…”

Chloe raised an eyebrow. “That toilet looks ancient.” She couldn’t completely hide her smugness. “Well, ladies, enjoy using this ‘commode’ while I take advantage of my own personal adjoining bathroom complete with full shower.”

Claire gave no indication of caring one way or the other, and after the earlier disagreement Ashlynn now seemed determined to put a positive spin on everything.

“Whatever. It’ll be something to tell Ravi’s and my grandchildren about.”

Chloe couldn’t hold back a burst of laughter. “Yes, it’ll be just like pioneer stories.” She mocked in the cracked voice of an elderly woman, “Back in my day, we didn’t have any of these fancy ‘holopotties’ you kids take for granted! Why, I once had to use a toilet so old it relied on a system of tubes and levers –”

Ashlynn shoved her playfully and even Claire giggled. The mood lightened after that. When Ashlynn announced that she was hungry enough to devour whatever they found in the kitchen, even if it turned out to be “pioneer food,” they all agreed. The trio made their way downstairs, giggling, to see what meal they could scrape together.