Forty-five thousand pounds...about sixty thousand US dollars. Jo sat in a private corner of the Red Lion, nursing a beer and wondering if her stomach would ever stop galloping about. Numbers, though, were always comparable objects. A brand-new Alfa Romeo. A Toyota Prius (two, if you got them used). About a year of rent in Manhattan. And almost exactly, after the exchange rate, what Jo had left to her name after selling her mother’s house and liquidating everything else.
Jo pressed palms against her eyes. It wasn’t, Rupert had said, an insurmountable sum. By which he meant the property hadn’t been seized due to nonpayment and transferred to the National Trust. When her uncle died, he’d left whatever remained of his assets to the place; that apparently put the cottage in the clear. But Jo’s mother had not touched it—not to take ownership and not to refuse it. She’d spent four years putting Rupert off, making promises, delaying. Then, when the cancer came back, she told him Jo would handle it. Except she never told Jo. She could at least have mentioned the cottage, or said how much trouble the place was in. They could have made a plan—
Jo started dialing the number from muscle memory...then hiccupped in surprise. No one was waiting on the other end anymore. And somehow remembering her mom’s death didn’t hurt half as much as forgetting it. Jo curled her fingers tight around each thumb. The irony of that hurt, too; she could almost hear her mother’s voice, Jo doesn’t ‘do’ feelings...no empathy. It wasn’t true. Jo did ALL the feelings. She just failed at their articulations. An almost-sob cracked her lips and she drowned it in a gulp of brown ale, choking down a host of unruly emotions.
“Another round, miss?”
Jo looked up to see an attractive, buoyant-looking barkeep.
“No, thank you, I’m just—” She sniffed and dabbed her eyes. “I’m, um. Jo.”
“Dinner? We’ve stew tonight. Popular.” His smile was so genuine, it almost hurt. Jo tried to mirror it back.
“Sure. Why not?”
“You’re the one bought the old estate, are you?”
Jo started at the question. “I didn’t buy it. I inherited it. How did you know?”
“Village news travels fast,” he said with a wink. “Plus, there’s your accent.”
Jo nodded with her mouth shut. Everyone must know about the place, she supposed. It was deeply unfair. She’d only known for three months. Three months almost to the day. That day.
She could replay it like a movie clip: it had been raining the way only Chicago could rain. And a lawyer was telling her several things that didn’t make sense as she tried to piece together her situation.
“My mom left England more than forty years ago,” she heard herself say to the lawyer.
“Yes. The property was in the care of her brother, your uncle Aiden. Then it passed to you, as your mother’s next of kin.”
Uncle Aiden had always been a shadow figure in Jo’s memories. The only other surviving member of the Ardemore family, but she’d never met him. Not even when she lived with her mom in Chicago as a child and came to England on a school trip. Her mother said she had written ahead of time, but he never answered.
“An estate,” she’d repeated. “And it’s mine.”
“You have to go there to take full possession, but yes. It’s yours.”
Except the lawyer hadn’t mentioned the back taxes, either. Or why the house had been deserted since 1908—or why Uncle Aiden, whoever he was, had allowed the roof to partially fall in. Unless that happened under her mother’s watch. Jo pursed her lips and fought another wave of semipanic. Today, she’d found herself in another lawyer’s office, and it wasn’t mystery mansions with ghosts or locked up heroines or unreliable narrators. Most of the property, like much of the Pennines, wasn’t arable. The bit that could be farmed had been leased; that kept them out of hock because, as Rupert told her, steady payment meant no enforcement action.
Still, signing the papers made it Jo’s, and she found herself two Prius’ worth in debt from the property taxes, enough to wipe out her finances completely. And it hadn’t been twenty-four hours yet.
Jo sighed and fidgeted with the salt shaker, screwing and unscrewing the cap. This should be very upsetting. But under her grief, a bubble of senseless joy kept popping up. She’d just country hopped and taken over a massive property, and it felt like free fall and freedom all at once. Her mother had done something similar when even younger than Jo: packed up and left England for Illinois, pregnant and alone. But she never, ever spoke about it, and she certainly didn’t celebrate it. Rebecca Jones didn’t believe in unpacking “unpleasant” things; you overcame them, or you ignored them. She had a tendency to think of Jo’s autism that way, too, and made sure Jo knew it.
But not anymore, she reminded herself. It was her life. The divorce, the loss of the publishing house, and a year spent watching her mother die had only solidified it: This was the life of Jo Jones. Her way. Now she just needed a job, that was all. Surely somebody could use the services of a hyperlexic editor with a read rate of 1500 wpm. She’d let her old contacts go fallow for a year, but maybe a call to some writers in need of editors? Long-distance freelance? She had a few weeks to figure it out, at least. Hell. In a pinch, she could—more or less as Rupert suggested—rent the damn cottage, at least until she figured out the next step in her career.
Jo pulled out her phone and opened a browser window for a search, but could find no home page for the cottage, not a Facebook page, not even an AirBnB. (According to Rupert, Sid never finished the application process.) Finally, she turned up a one-sentence description on a travel site’s listing of holiday lets. It had a single blurry photo and a number, presumably Sid’s. Little wonder he wasn’t making a return on investment.
“Hot plate!” the barman said, putting the bowl down. “Lucky you came early—lamb stew makes for a busy night.”
A peek over her booth confirmed the place had filled to the point of bursting. It was noisy, too, especially near the door, where patrons stood clinking glasses in raincoats. Jo turned back to her food. The stew was, as promised, phenomenally good. But now that her ears were tuned to the sound of whisky glasses, she could scarcely focus on anything else. Tony, her ex-husband, used to tease that her favorite wine was single malt. He also liked to claim it wasn’t a “lady’s drink.” And that memory more or less sealed her desire. Jo scooched out of her cubby and started across the room to the bar.
“Someone’s bought that old estate,” said a suit nearby with his tie tossed over one shoulder. A second fellow sat with him. “Cottage, too.”
“American is what I heard.”
Jo pursed her lips tight, as though her accent might escape. The suit’s companion flagged the barman.
“Ben, you heard about the goings-on up at Ardemore?”
“House is staying in the family, Ricky,” Ben said, filling a tumbler. He didn’t look at Jo—and she tried to exude mental thanks in his direction. But of course, she still had to use words for whisky, and the suits looked a little too comfortable. Jo cleared her throat and pointed to the rack of whiskies lined up neatly behind the bar.
“Single malt,” Jo mouthed, figuring any would be fine.
That earned her a look from Ricky. It wasn’t easy to parse, but she certainly didn’t like it. Ben handed her the glass and she retreated to the corner—except the booth was now half-occupied. Sid Randles was waiting for her.
“Red Lion’s on my way home,” he explained, lifting a pint of lager. “Can I get you a drink?”
“Have one already.” Jo lifted her glass.
“Right.” He clinked the rim of his pint to hers. “Cheers, then. I’ll get your next round.” He sat down across from her, as if invited, and stretched out his legs. Jo sat down, too. Awkwardly. She wanted to walk out of the bar and back to her room, but that was abrupt behavior she’d been taught to keep in check. Most recently, by Tony.
“I’m not having a next round,” she explained, adding the obligatory “sorry.”
“Aww, come on. You’re making it hard for me to apologize,” Sid chuckled. “Should I have brought flowers or something? Always worked on the ex-wives.”
Jo set her drink down a little too hard. Wives? Plural?
“That’s—hard to believe,” she said, but he was talking over her.
“Look, I don’t think I made the best of impressions, today. Came as a shock, you moving in on my territory, as it were. I been managing the cottage for years, you know.”
“I couldn’t even find a booking page,” Jo said flatly.
“Well, now, okay.” Sid nodded as though they just agreed on something. “You can see why, right? I’m not good with computers. And I got on fine renting the cottage without them. I could rent and manage the property for you. See?”
Jo felt an internal tremor of frustration.
“But I am not renting it. Remember? I’m going to be living in it.”
“Oh, but you can’t be serious about that.” Sid kicked his legs back under the booth table and leaned forward. “I mean, look at you!”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Well, you’re just a little thing! Can’t be expected to take care of the whole place yourself! Plus women shouldn’t be left all alone out there. Miles from town. No neighbors.”
Jo was, in fact, five foot three (and three-quarters). She swallowed fuck you and replaced it with: “Why do you care?”
Sid huffed into his empty glass. “Look, lady, I’m trying to be your friend, here. That place is a wreck, and you’ll need help.” He offered her the toothsome smile again. “I’m here for it, see? I’m your man.”
His self-aggrandizement was interrupted by Ben, the barman.
“You’ve a call, Sid. A woman? She’s been trying to text you—says you’re meeting up in a half hour.”
Sid waved him away and dug out his phone. In the moment, Jo found herself considering him afresh. Reynard the Fox was meant to be wily and clever and charming; Sid did not live up to these expectations. There was something boyish about him, yes, possibly even disarming. At least two women must have found it charming, and this phone caller might be a third. But it wasn’t working on Jo. Her hackles were up, and for once, she was going to trust her guts.
“So?” Sid said, putting the phone away. “What do ya say ’bout me staying on?”
“I say no. Thanks. But no.”
Jo stood, drained her whisky in one go and set the glass down hard on the tabletop. She wasn’t going to wait for a response, either. Partly because she didn’t care—and partly because a double in a gulp was going to rob her of uprights pretty quickly. She gave a half-hearted wave at Ben the barman and managed to get upstairs with dignity before the room got spinny. Jo flopped onto the bed, spine greedily soaking up the horizontal. She wanted to hang up clothes. She wanted to take a shower. Instead, she basked in the liquid afterglow of knowing she was single, alone, and in a brand-new country. For the first time, maybe ever, she could do as she damn well pleased.