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Kate slid into her car and pressed her fingers to her throbbing temples. She had two choices. Read the letter now, or read it with Amelia and Megan, people who knew the truth and could support her if the letter was upsetting.
But that was just the issue. What was in the letter? Was it something she’d prefer to keep private?
Who knew?
She’d share it with Amelia and Megan. They’d figure everything out together and then bring Clara in. They’d fight the will, the properties and the furniture and heirlooms inside of the properties would be split evenly, and they’d all move on. Back to normal.
Kate would find an affordable, smaller house. Maybe closer to the boys. Clara would keep teaching and carry on as Birch Harbor’s pretty hermit. Maybe, Clara would even take on the family membership plan at the Country Club and start hosting stilted dinner affairs where she flitted from catered table to catered table.
Doubtful, but at least Clara could start to love her life for once.
Amelia would land an acting gig and never talk to them again once she found that fame she’d been searching for. And Megan would get a divorce and stay put in her three-bedroom two-story in the suburbs, doing whatever it was she did with her free time. Scrolling through her phone with a permanent scowl, probably.
With the plan firmly in mind, Kate dialed Amelia and threw her car into reverse.
Her sister answered on the first ring. “Hey, how’d it go?”
Kate replied quickly, her breath shallow. “Meet me at the house on the harbor. I’m on my way there now. Bring Megan.”
***
Kate stood on the street side of the house. Harbor Avenue stretched like an artery from the south side of the marina up through to the village, but it forked off into something of a frontage road, offering private access to the strip of homes that dotted the lake.
Each of the houses along that narrow side street was immaculately maintained. The Hannigan home, however, less so. Clara had done all she could, no doubt, but she—unlike the couples and families who summered in Birch Harbor—didn’t quite have the motivation or even the means to hire a landscaper or a handyman to come and regularly help with upkeep. Plus, Nora had refused to budget for it.
In Nora’s years of tending to various rental properties, she relied, as she often said in a put-on Blanche DuBois drawl, on the kindness of strangers.
That wasn’t entirely true, since there were few strangers among those who lived in Birch Harbor year-round. However, Nora was a woman who got her way.
A sweet smile to the custodian at Birch Harbor Secondary set her up with an emergency contact for water leaks or power outages.
The right compliment to the groundskeeper at the Country Club resulted in a lifetime of monthly hedge trims and brush-and-bulky hauls.
As for nearly everything else, well, Nora had figured it out herself. Applying her father’s knowledge and her mother’s intellect, she came to be able to fight her way to fix or update anything all by herself. No hired man necessary. Just a second trip to the salon to touch up her manicure.
Still, it was curious that, when Nora decided she was abandoning the big house for her creek-side cottage, she also abandoned her hard work there. And with that, the helpful friends who no longer found their paycheck in the enigmatic smile and home-baked goods of their patroness. Those gentlemen, who’d aged along with Nora, found other ways to spend their time.
Unsurprisingly, Nora allowed her daughters to pick up the slack, much of which fell to Clara. She grew tired of it, or so was Kate’s observation of the matter. But it was an observation she refused to share, since she wasn’t helping much herself.
But, Kate helped in another way. She managed The Bungalows, offering robust contracts that stipulated far-reaching responsibilities of the tenants. But even that was growing tenuous.
Soon, she’d need a real property manager, someone who could make the bigger repairs that Kate had begun to pay out of pocket years earlier. Mentally, she added that task to her to-do list: find a handyman tenant who would take care of the place better than Clara, who didn’t grow up the same as her older sisters or mother, with the expectation of corralling the troops for a weekend of scraping hard water off of swamp cooler panels.
Presently, Kate stood on the sidewalk, just inches from a short, white picket fence, the same style Nora had erected at The Bungalows. Beyond the fence glowed a thick, shaggy green lawn, in desperate need of a mow. Bushes and flowers grew wild along the terraces that crisscrossed prettily beneath the front porch. And behind the untamed yard loomed the house. Two stories. Three if one counted the attic. Four, even, if one counted the basement, which Kate always had as a child.
Back then, growing up and even well after her college years, Kate took great pride in living in that house. She and her sisters pitched in the year their mother decided to paint it a warm, rich red. It took them all summer just to get the front of the first floor coated once. That was when Nora agreed to hire out. A rare occurrence, indeed.
As the years wore on, Kate became aware of flaws and attributes that weren’t previously apparent.
The red paint had long begun to peel and, in some places, curl up and chip off.
The weathered shutters had presented shabby chic potential, but they now threatened to pull away from their hinges. Kate imagined them breaking loose and sailing out to the lake like miniature wooden barges on a waveless sea.
She unlatched the squat fence gate and stepped across the invisible line that divided Birch Harbor from the old Hannigan family home and its previous inhabitants.
As Kate neared the house, she noticed one quality that had been nagging her lately—just how close the property was to the harbor. Less than a stone’s throw to Birch Village and the marina.
Without a doubt, it would sell. It would sell, and Kate and her sisters would get everything in order. Between proceeds from the sale and income from the investment properties, as long as they could agree to split things fairly, Kate saw a future in which she could, for once, have some peace. No worrying about bills. Not her mom’s. Not her own.
“Get off my lawn!”
Kate spun on a heel, her face flushing and her pulse tripling in the time it took her to locate the person yelling at her.
Her eyes bobbed wildly before landing on two women, walking in long strides from up the sidewalk.
Megan and Amelia.
The latter waved her arm in a wide half circle. “I said get off my lawn!” she hollered again, her voice deep, disguised. Megan laughed beside her, and Kate smiled at last.
“You scared me,” she called back. “Sounds like your voice lessons are paying off, though. That’s a good baritone.”
Amelia recovered from her own laughter. “I haven’t taken voice in years. I gave up any chance of musicals long ago.”
Kate walked back to the gate and opened it for them, and they gathered together on the lawn, examining the house again.
Megan sighed. “What has Clara been doing all this time?”
Defensiveness wrapped around Kate like a blanket, seizing her in paralysis for a moment before she answered honestly, deflated. “The bare minimum. It’s all she can do, really.”
Amelia and Megan glanced at each other, frowning in tandem. But Kate just shrugged, adding, “We haven’t been here to help.”
“She could have hired someone. Mom had an income stream, right?”
“A limited income stream,” Kate answered.
“What do you mean ‘limited?'” Megan pressed, crossing her arms over her chest. “The Bungalows are fully rented. Clara aside, we should be pulling in good money from three tenants, right?”
“Yes and no,” Kate admitted. “Three tenants, yes. Two of them are long term people. They signed a contract back in the nineties, if you can believe that. They aren’t paying much, and Mom never raised their rent. The third pays something more reasonable, but it’s still not much. And I have to use some of that income to cover maintenance. Clara dips into whatever is left over to pay electric, gas, and water here.” Kate waved a hand at the house. “And, we pay utilities for the cottage. And taxes on all four properties, the land included.”
“You mean that farmland out west?” Amelia asked.
Kate nodded.
“It’s exactly why we need to be smart about how we handle this. If we play our cards right and make good decisions, we will come out ahead, I promise,” Kate pleaded to her sisters’ impassive faces.
But they weren’t having it. Megan cleared her throat. “So what about Clara? Why isn’t she here?”