This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2021 by Lisa Unger
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Amazon Original Stories, Seattle
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eISBN: 9781542027274
Cover design by Anna Laytham
1.
Merle House was quiet, and the night was silvery with moonlight, the cold fingers of winter already reaching into the air. He hadn’t planned to get there so late.
In fact, he’d planned to arrive in the bright light of afternoon, when the place looked more like what it was—a crippled giant, felled among the tall pines. Just a house—too big, too old, too decrepit to sell. Probably uninhabitable, definitely uninsurable. And, Matthew Merle was discovering, possibly unrepairable, due to the cost and the impossibility of convincing local trade workers to set foot on the property.
He brought the car to a stop and stared through the windshield.
Once upon a time, the Merle name meant wealth and power in this town. Now it meant something else altogether.
The name. The house. These things were his birthright, his family legacy. Those words implied a boon, a gift of inheritance that anyone would be happy to receive.
No.
Matthew’s wife, Samantha, was uncharacteristically silent in the passenger seat.
Really, dumbfounded was more like it.
Down at the towering stone and wrought-iron entrance, she’d woken from sleep and issued an amazed laugh. He’d climbed out of the car, opened the thick padlock with the key he’d been sent, and pushed the impossibly heavy gate open, hinges issuing an unpleasant squeal.
Up the winding drive in the old Wrangler, which he hadn’t even been sure would make the drive from Florida:
“Oh my God,” Samantha breathed, a hand, urgent, on his thigh.
As Merle House rose into sight:
“You’re fucking kidding me, right? Matthew. Is this a joke?”
“No joke,” he said.
He climbed out of the car, and Samantha did the same. Now, as they stood before the house, he felt her arm slip through his.
“It’s . . . amazing.”
She didn’t know the half of it, not really. He’d told her some; other bits she’d gathered from her research and the documents they’d received in the mail from his grandfather’s lawyer, Benjamin Ward, after virtually attending the reading of the will.
Certainly, Samantha didn’t know everything, not about the house, the land, its history.
They’d never talked about any of it, or about his grandfather, except in the broadest possible strokes. His parents were gone. So discussions about his family and childhood were brief and vague. A time best forgotten. And Matthew never even thought about Merle House, his grandfather’s place where he had spent long, languid summers exploring all its dusty rooms and back corridors. It had disappeared into the recesses, with other things he’d rather not remember. He’d never imagined that it would come to him. That he’d be called back to care for it, deal with it.
“You know what I’m thinking,” said Samantha. There was a breathless quality to her voice when she was excited about something, and it always aroused him.
“Run?” he offered.
She squeezed his arm with hers.
“Writers’ retreat.”
His wife was the kind of person who came upon a pile of shit and asked, “Where’s the pony?”
He loved that about her. Looking down into her dark bedroom eyes, he saw something he hadn’t seen there in a while. A kind of light of possibility. Hope. She’d been through so much. He wanted this to be something good for her, for them.
“Or what about a yoga and wellness center?” she went on. He felt a little twinge of guilt. A private yoga teacher and wellness coach, Samantha had had to leave behind all her clients, a base that had taken her years to build, work she loved. She’d never complained, not once.
“I like the way you think,” he said, kissing the thick softness of her hair. It smelled like lilacs.
Never mind that they were dead broke.
Ideas aren’t money, Matt. Stop dreaming.
But that was his father’s voice—heavy with pessimism.
Matthew knew that sometimes ideas had a power of their own.
Just like Merle House had a mind of its own.
The old giant seemed to sigh with relief as Samantha put a hand on the porch railing, ready to make her way up.
“We should head back to town,” he said, feeling the urge to pull her back as she climbed up the staircase. “Find someplace to stay the night.”
She raised her eyebrows at him. “We’re not staying here?”
“Uh.”
“I mean—this is where we live now, right?”
This is where we live now, right?
It was not an accusation, a nudge meant to remind him how miserably he’d failed them, how he’d lost his job, had to sell their dream house—because Samantha was just not that woman. She didn’t have a manipulative bone in her body. She was all practicality, clear vision, an okay-this-sucks-but-how-do-we-manage-it kind of woman.
“I don’t think it’s livable, Sam,” he said.
The porch groaned under her step. From the looks of the place, he wouldn’t be surprised if she stepped through a rotting board. He knew the old man hadn’t been able to keep it up at the end. “Be careful.”
“But that’s why we’re here, right? To make it livable?”
Or at least salable.
Had they discussed this? Where were they going to live until Merle House was repaired? He’d assumed that they’d stay at the little B&B in town for a couple of nights, then rent something cheap. But the truth was that they really couldn’t afford to do that. Ideas aren’t money.
“And your grandfather lived here, right? Until just a few months ago, when they took him to hospice.”
The old
