CHAPTER 2

My dearest Julia,

I fear you won’t remember me, since it has been so long since we last met—you were still a young child then, but I remember your curious nature and gifted you a black widow (your mother, I believe, frowned at the idea, but a dead spider is a harmless spider, and girls are too frequently immersed in dolls and dresses and other meaningless pursuits). I am your great-aunt, sister to Annabelle, your mother’s mother, and I have a proposition of sorts that, I believe, merits your serious consideration.

Although it would be very American for me to just outright state my intentions, I was raised in a time, and a country, when it was gauche to do so, so instead I choose to defer to my more indirect upbringing. Would you be so kind as to join me for tea? The orange blossoms are lovely, and I still have enough land for beekeeping, so our honey is infused with their flavor.

Ah, this is the problem with writing by hand. How ridiculous that last sentence seems to me now, how easy it would be to backspace over it on a computer and pretend it never existed. Who gives a damn about honey? Pens force a commitment to all one’s thoughts, no matter how ridiculous, and my hands are too arthritic to throw my previous effort away. Let me try again.

I apologize for our estrangement, because that’s what it is. You must have wondered why you visited so rarely (two or three times maybe, all told), and I doubt your mother ever spoke much about her family. We pass on, generationally, not only our physical traits—color of eyes, etc.—but the sorrows of familial conflict. I was sorry to hear of her passing, and found out too late to properly express my condolences.

You see, when Annabelle married, she did so without my father’s permission, and she was subsequently cut off from the family: shunned, so to speak. We had pretensions of nobility (although the money was gone, the crest remained), but I suspect it wasn’t so much her elopement as the fact that she’d eloped with a Jew. Father, you see, was an advocate of eugenics and a good friend of Ernst Rüdin, and Annabelle was a free and open spirit, with more heart and compassion than the rest of us combined. My older sister, Irene, and I hoped he would eventually get over it, but he never did, and by the time we reached out to Annabelle, she was so hurt by our silence that she refused all our letters. Nothing poisons quite so well as rejection.

When your father left, I reached out to your mother, hoping to rekindle our relationship, and I was encouraged when she chose to revert to Annabelle’s maiden name, Greer (that crest is so very alluring). Which is how you ended up in my house so long ago (I saw you, little sly one, creep past the door into the basement). But the damage was too great, the grudges too deeply set. And to be honest, the nurturing of emotions is not my strong suit. I inherited my father’s fascination with genetics, and am much more comfortable developing a culture in a petri dish than developing a relationship. One reason why I am old, and alone. I was one of the first scientists to substantiate endosymbiotic theory, but unlike my single-cell friends, long-term interaction with any species is beyond my ken.

That said, there is nothing like the whisper of death to alter one’s perspective. The things we bury have a way of digging their way out—they creep and clutch and bloom in our dark, shadowy places. I find myself haunted by things left unsaid, undone, by ghosts looking for a place to finally rest. I will explain more should you decide to come.

Perhaps it’s too late, and, like your mother, you want nothing to do with a decrepit old woman teetering on the brink of annihilation. So now, because I’m desperate, I will be gauche. I understand you are facing dire financial challenges, while I am sitting on a nice fortune, with no heir in sight. Money is one of those things that have little value when you’re too old to enjoy them. It’s just numbers on a computer screen, it’s ash in the mouth. You, however, could put it to good use.

I do hope you’ll come for a visit. You are my last of last resorts.

Sincerely,

Dr. Lydia Greer

It’s hard to know what to make of the letter. Mysteries hinted at, a jumble of scientific jargon and family history, and an endnote her great-aunt must have surely known would strike a chord—a fortune in play. Just the thought of it makes her heart beat a little faster, makes it hard to sift through the rest.

First things first. She remembers an epic fight between her parents before the visit to Aunt Liddy, something about braces, what they cost, how her father was doing the best he could, but money doesn’t grow on trees. Of course somewhere simmering below that was the opinion her father, and many in her school and neighborhood, shared. Julia would never be a great beauty. Not with her crooked nose, somber gray eyes, and wild, curly brown hair that seemed to have a will of its own. Straight teeth would be a poor investment.

You’re so clever, they would say. You’re so smart.

Never You’re so pretty.

Which was liberating, in a certain way. While girls her age experimented with different shades of blush, she experimented with different genres in the library, immersing herself in distant planets, alien cultures, swords waiting in stones for the right king to lay hands on them. She never tried to tame her frizzy, curly, rebellious brown hair, something that always made her Palo Alto hairdresser suck her teeth whenever Julia turned down the suggestion to straighten it. She never felt the need to look ten years younger, like the women in Ethan’s circle. Over the years, she watched them voluntarily get cut and stretched and plumped into strange, mutant beings, until they barely resembled themselves, or women at all. Frankenfemmes, she’d whisper to Ethan at parties, and he’d laugh into his napkin.

No, it was her mother who had tried to fight reality, who’d ironed a dress (a dress!) and trundled her off to her great-aunt for inspection. Shortly afterward, Julia had gotten the braces, not that they’d done much good because her teeth had started to drift again in her twenties.

I love your crooked teeth, Ethan would say. Until he didn’t.

What harm could there be in tea? In hearing Aunt Liddy out?

Still, something about it makes her uneasy. Other memories surface. Her mother’s stiffness as they entered the mansion, the forced smile when Aunt Liddy extended a clawlike hand, something glazed and hard in her eyes. The foyer was massive—the size of their entire two-bedroom apartment—with gleaming marble floors covered by a soft Oriental carpet. A palace straight out of Grimm’s Fairy Tales. Aunt Liddy told her to run along and explore, so she did, ditching her patent leather Mary Janes as soon as her mother and Aunt Liddy disappeared into the library, closing the oak doors behind them.

She found the vanilla cake in the kitchen first, cooling on the counter, and scooped a handful out with her fingers. Then she found the billiard room and dropped crumbs on the table as she rolled the balls around, trying to see how hard she could hit them. Then she found a small study with a desk and red carpeting, records stacked on shelving and an old turntable. Individually wrapped caramels in a crystal bowl; she filled her pockets with them. Some kind of servant checked in on her, asked if she’d like some lemonade. Julia felt a small amount of shame, since her mouth was covered with stolen crumbs, her pockets near bursting with candy. So she said no, although she would have loved a glass. When the servant headed in the direction of the library, Julia slipped back into the kitchen to see if she could get the lemonade for herself.

That’s when she saw the basement door. Remembered her mother’s warning. But she was angry at her mother—she didn’t want thick metal covering her teeth; braces would only make her look even more awkward. And she’d always had that curious streak. She imagined herself a great explorer about to descend into an Egyptian tomb, took a broom with her to fight off the mummies.

So she opened the door. Felt the thrill of breaking a rule that could have no real consequence. Because, deep down, she knew there was no such thing as monsters.

Afterward, her mother chastised her for breaking the broom, which she doesn’t remember doing. She doesn’t remember going back to her great-aunt’s again either, although the letter in her hand says she did.

But then, her parents’ families were always a mystery. Once she’d overhead her mother on the phone, something about Annabelle—a divorce, a stint in a mental hospital, a suicide. Her father’s side of the family wasn’t much clearer. There were occasional references to cousins in New Jersey, and when her father was killed in a car accident—drunk driving, and oh, used to such great effect against her in court: Your Honor, there’s a family history—none of his relatives showed up for his funeral.

At the time she hadn’t understood why her mother had changed their names back to Greer—it felt somehow adulterous, like she was cheating on her father’s memory. But after her divorce from Ethan, Julia understood. Just the name alone, spoken daily, was self-flagellation.

God, her mother’s face that day at Aunt Liddy’s, pale and tight when she left the library, as if she’d just been slapped. She’d said goodbye in a clipped, pained tone, hands shaking as she opened her purse for the car keys, and instantly Julia had felt defensive on her mother’s behalf. So when Aunt Liddy extended an arm in some attempt at a hug, Julia slipped away and skipped to the entry, kicking the door with her bare feet, leaving dusty prints. She knew damn well how to be loud and annoying.

Julia drops the letter on the kitchen counter. That was all so long ago. Another lifetime, another person. Why stir up old ghosts?

Money, of course.

I am sitting on a nice fortune, with no heir in sight.

You, however, could put it to good use.

The allure of it quenches parched, hopeless places in her mind. Money for lawyers, money for appeals, money to relocate closer to Evie, bridge the vast distance that separates them. She has visitation rights. She could see her on the weekends. Maybe she could even get a fair divorce settlement, one that wasn’t written by a pack of experts who knew she wouldn’t be able to defend herself against any of the salacious allegations in court, not if she couldn’t afford a lawyer, which they made damn sure she couldn’t. Alcoholic, they submitted to the court. Mentally unstable. She’d believed in the justice system until then, foolishly thought that truth had a place there.

You are terminally naive, Ethan had texted back when she complained he’d committed perjury.

She pulls out the electric bill marked URGENT with a red stamp. Slices the envelope open with her finger. Pulls out the statement, scans for the total due, and the total overdue, and the late charges accrued. Overwhelming, of course. Impossible.

Or maybe not.

It’s just tea.