What She Inherits

by Diane V. Mulligan

  “If morbidity is fun, sure.” People didn’t get what it was like to actually encounter the spirit of someone who had died. If they did, they would know to leave the dead alone.

  The bartender came back and set the beers in front of them. Brett waited for him to move away before he answered.

  “Don’t try to hide behind me if we see the ghost tomorrow,” he said, tipping his glass to her before taking a sip.

  Casey shook her head and rolled her eyes. Ghosts. One of the things she liked about living on Devil’s Back was how few ghosts lingered here. Rosetta was full of shit.

  And then, somehow, Casey found herself on her fourth beer. In the haze of alcohol, Brett seemed funny and not nearly as ridiculous as he had sober. He was handsome, too. Maybe a little too put together, which was not her usual type, but still, he was an undeniably good-looking guy.

  “You know, the vegan selection on the island is appalling,” he said. “I might have to adopt a ‘when in Rome attitude’ for this project. I’ve heard the clam chowder here is fantastic.”

  “Are you hungry?” Casey asked, remembering suddenly that she had not eaten lunch or dinner. The room swayed, and she knew she absolutely needed food before she attempted to stand up again.

  “I could eat,” Brett said.

  They ordered a plate of fried calamari and two cups of clam chowder, good heavy food to hold the beer down. They ate in companionable silence and when they were finished, Casey noticed how empty the bar had become. She glanced at the clock behind the bar and saw that it was nearly eleven o’clock, closing time at the bar on the early-bird island.

  “Well, that was worth it,” Brett said, putting his napkin on his plate and pushing it away from him. “You know, I don’t mind skipping meat and even dairy, but there’s nothing like some good seafood.”

  “Why are you vegan, anyway?” Casey asked. Her pre-meal giddiness had settled down. She still felt drunk, but not fall-down drunk.

  “The things we do for love,” he said, shrugging.

  Casey made a face. In her experience, when people said they were doing something for love, what they really meant was that they were acting out of fear. When people actually did something for love, it wasn’t something they had to explain to a stranger as an act of love, because it was so obvious. Giving up two food groups sounded like an act of desperate approval-seeking to Casey.

  “What about you? You have a significant other?”

  “Significant other?” she asked, raising an eyebrow. Around here, no one bothered with politically correct questions. She couldn’t imagine any islanders using the words significant other. “Where are you from?”

  “I live in Los Angeles, but I grew up in upstate New York.”

  “Vegan. Significant other. I should have guessed California. That’s all a little New Age for me.”

  “Soulmate?” he said, smiling and raising an eyebrow.

  “Gentleman caller?” Casey said, enjoying his banter. “No. I do not. Pickings are slim around these parts.” She thought about Jason, the wounded look on his face just hours earlier. He was a nice guy, and good in bed, but he was so young. And a pothead. It wasn’t as if she’d broken his heart.

  “I have noticed an age gap,” Brett said.

  Casey shrugged. “I’m not here looking for love,” she said, draining the last of her beer and deciding that she must not order another, though she was tempted.

  “Oh come on. Everyone’s looking for love.”

  “Okay, Mr. Romantic.” Casey stood up and had to reach for the bar to steady herself. The food had taken the edge off her drunkenness, but she was by no means sober. “We can discuss this more in the morning.” That early wake up call for a morning of kayaking was going to be miserable. Her punishment for how she’d treated Jason.

  “Calling it quits already?” he asked, glancing at his watch.

  Casey was suddenly flooded with a feeling of exhaustion. Her afternoon nap had not been enough to make up for a string of sleepless nights. She wavered a little on her feet. Had she been sober, she probably would have made a joke about how he was on West Coast time, but she couldn’t manage any quips at the moment.

  “I’ll walk with you,” Brett said, slapping a few bills on the bar and standing up.

  Casey realized he was paying for her, but she didn’t object. Her head felt heavy and fuzzy. She hated the way alcohol hit her in waves. One minute she was having a fine time and the next she was utterly dysfunctional. “It’s fine,” she said, her tongue feeling thick in her mouth. “I’m fine. It’s only a short walk.” She waved him off and turned to walk away, wobbling. For a moment, she was afraid she was actually going to pass out, and when she felt Brett’s hand on her arm, she knew that resisting his offer would be a mistake. She actually might not make it back to her place if she struck out on her own.

  “Come on, lightweight. Let’s get you home.”

  Outside, the warmth of the day had faded, although the humidity still hung in the air, thick as a blanket. In the morning, there’d be fog. Casey liked going out on the water in the fog, even though she knew it was dangerous. She loved the sense of being the only person in the world, just floating on the nothingness of a glass-smooth bay with nothing to look at and no one looking at her.

  “I live above the café,” Casey said, leaning into Brett a little. Then she hiccuped and burst into hysterical laughter, which she quickly suppressed, realizing that it was late, that the windows of the cottages they passed were probably open in hopes of catching the evening breeze.

  “I think I owe you an apology,” Brett said. “I may have influenced you into drinking a few too many beers.”

  Casey snorted. She had gone to the bar with the express purpose of getting drunk. She’d be stumbling in the dark alone now if Brett hadn’t been there. She knew better than to do this to herself. She really did. But knowing and doing are two different things. “I don’t usually drink this much,” she said.

  “Yeah, I’m getting that impression,” Brett said, catching her as she staggered sideways on the gravel path.

  “I’m sorry. Rough day is all.” She didn’t know why she felt like she owed him an explanation, but she did. She always felt like apologizing, that was her problem. Why did she always feel like she’d done something wrong? Everyone gets drunk sometimes.

  “We’ve all been there,” he said.

  He was being so nice. Just like Jason. So nice. It would be so much easier if he’d act annoyed. Then she could be annoyed that he was annoyed. Instead, she felt like crying.

  They arrived at the café and she led him around to the back stairs. She gripped the railing and stepped out of his grasp.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  “Maybe I should help you up.”

  If he hadn’t professed his deep love for his vegan girlfriend just an hour before, Casey would have been suspicious of this offer. She didn’t think he had any untoward designs. Actually the offer was sort of insulting. She wasn’t that drunk. The walk had sobered her. For heaven’s sake, she could make it up the stairs.

  “No, I’m fine,” she said, firmly. She pulled herself up the stairs, but she noticed that he was standing at the bottom watching her, not walking away. She got to the door and struggled to pull the key from her jeans pocket. She leaned her forehead on the door and fumbled with the door handle. She just needed to lie down. If only she could get the damn key in damn lock.

  “How about I help with that?”

  She hadn’t even noticed that Brett had come up the stairs to stand beside her. He took the key from her hand and opened the door. Then he put a hand on her back and escorted her into her apartment as if he owned the place. He walked with her to the bedroom, where she dropped onto the bed, a dead weight.

  Brett picked up her ankles and swung her legs over onto the bed. She felt him hovering over her. Her eyes flickered open, and she felt a little flutter of fear. What was he doing? She glanced up at him and he smiled. “You have an alarm clock? I don’t want
you to be late tomorrow.”

  Casey groaned and turned her face into the pillow.

  “You going to be okay?”

  She could hear a note of concern in his voice. He was probably imagining her asphyxiating in her sleep.

  “I promise I’ll sleep on my stomach,” she said.

  “Sweet dreams,” he said. He reached across her and pulled the blanket over her, and then she heard his footsteps as he showed himself out.

  Chapter 29

  St. Nabor Island, South Carolina

  Marilyn hadn’t meant to show up at twelve-thirty in the morning unannounced, but nothing that day had gone as planned. Starting around eight o’clock that morning, she had begun trying to reach her brother-in-law and her niece, right after she checked her email and got the Google alert to her sister’s obituary. She’d set that Google alert years ago. It had been so long since it turned anything up, she’d forgotten all about it. And then that morning, there it was. Deb was dead. She couldn’t begin to believe it.

  First she called the number for her sister’s office, but no one there would give her any information, not surprisingly. After more sleuthing, she discovered that Angela had been enrolled at St. Katherine’s College in New Hampshire, so she called there, but again, only dead ends. In a stroke of inspiration, she called the parish the obituary had listed in the funeral information. After explaining who she was to the secretary, she’d been passed on to the priest, to whom she explained her long estrangement from her sister, and he revealed that Richard was in a nursing home and that Angela was living at home for now. And then, gem of a man that he was, he gave her the home phone number and address. Marilyn left a voicemail message, but when she didn’t hear back after an hour or so, she was too antsy to keep waiting. She did what anyone would do: She drove to the airport. She couldn’t just sit there and do nothing.

  Having made up her mind to take action, however, the universe conspired to detain her. First she’d had to wait around at the airport for hours on standby to get a flight. Then, once she’d been assigned a seat on one, severe thunderstorms delayed take off from JFK. She kept calling her sister’s house and leaving messages, updating her plan and ETA. At last, her plane departed from New York, and it should have been a short flight, but backups at the Charlotte airport, where she had a stopover, had caused the plane to circle for an hour before landing, which caused her to miss her connection, and of course, she couldn’t call to offer more updates or check to see if Angela had ever returned any of her calls when she was in the air. When she landed in Charlotte she raced to the ticketing counter and got rebooked onto the last flight into Savannah. She had to race to get on the plane and never had a chance to call.

  When at last she got off the plane in Savannah, she was exhausted and emotionally drained, and all she wanted was to go to sleep. It only then occurred to her that perhaps she should have made hotel arrangements. But, she reasoned, Angela was a kid. Kids stay up late. She would just go to the house. Enough of this waiting game. She’d waited twenty years to know her niece, and she wasn’t going to wait any longer.

  She was somewhat dismayed that Angela hadn’t returned any of her phone calls, but then again, weren’t her friends always complaining about how their children never responded to their messages? And if Angela’s reason for ignoring her was not just typical young-adult laziness, if it had to do with the fact that Marilyn and Deb had been out of touch for the entirety of Angela’s life, then better to face Angela as soon as possible and get it over with.

  Marilyn found a cab willing to drive the 40-odd miles to St. Nabor Island, and they pulled up at half-past midnight. The house was dark, but there was a car in the driveway. She could see lights in one of the rooms upstairs, too. This was it. She was here. She was almost too tired to be nervous as she pressed the doorbell.

  And the handsome young man opened the door. And the lovely young woman—Angela—fainted like a Victorian lady. And the gypsy woman looked on in a bemused but unsurprised way. And Marilyn realized that she had probably acted in haste, flying down here like this.

  The gypsy woman, who turned out to be a psychic medium named Calliope, of all ridiculous things, took Marilyn into the kitchen, while the handsome young man took care of Angela. Calliope briefly explained that they had been trying to communicate with some spirits that had been troubling Angela in the house since her mother’s death. Marilyn half-listened, but she was so overwhelmed to be in her sister’s house, to be surrounded by her sister’s beautiful possessions in her perfectly decorated home, to pay much attention. When she did pay attention, she understood that she should be concerned for her niece if she thought she was being haunted, because ghosts weren’t real.

  Eventually the young man came to the kitchen and told Marilyn that Angela wanted to see her. Calliope declared that she would send him a bill and headed for the door. Marilyn followed the young man, who introduced himself as Randy, to the living room.

  Angela was sitting up now. She didn’t appear to have suffered any injuries in her fall, thank God. Marilyn supposed the expensive-looking oriental rug in the entry was plush. Marilyn sat opposite her, a coffee table between them, and Randy sat beside her. Angela resembled Deb, and by extension herself. Marilyn could see that now. That must have made Deb’s lies so much easier.

  “You look like her,” Angela said.

  “You do, too,” Marilyn said. Then, as Angela sat silently, expectantly, Marilyn realized Angela wasn’t going to ask questions or make this easy. It was up to Marilyn to explain herself, which seemed entirely unfair since it was Deb’s fault that she hadn’t been a part of Angela’s life.

  She cleared her throat and said, “Your mom and I were only a year apart,” Marilyn said. “She was my little sister. For a long time, my best friend.”

  “She said she didn’t have any siblings,” Angela said, accusingly.

  “We had a disagreement, before you were born.”

  “And now she’s dead and you thought you’d just show up?”

  Well, yes, Marilyn thought, something like that. But she said, “You and I are family.” She thought she saw Angela’s cold facade melt a little at the word family. “I was so lucky that I got to watch Ryan grow up,” Marilyn said, and as she spoke the words began to tumble out of her. “He was such a good kid, smart and funny and handsome. The only thing I hated about living in New York was that I didn’t get to see him more often. I loved him so much. My God he would be proud to see you now—” Marilyn stopped when she noticed the strange look on Angela’s face. “I’m sorry, did I say something wrong?”

  “Why did my parents lie to me?” Angela asked. “Why didn’t they tell me about you and about my dad’s siblings?”

  Marilyn shook her head, wondering if she’d done the right thing coming here. Why had she come? For closure, she supposed. For some kind of proof that her little sister was really dead. But if that’s what she wanted, she could have just gone to the cemetery and then flown back home. She had been drawn to Angela, she had been pulled here with a sense of purpose, and, if she was honest with herself, she knew exactly what that purpose was: To tell her the truth. But to what end? What good would it do Angela to know the truth now? She would never be able to look back on her childhood again without seeing it through the haze of the lie, and if this beautiful home were any indicator, the girl had had a very nice life so far.

  “Your mother and I disagreed about you,” Marilyn said.

  “And my dad’s siblings did, too?” Angela asked, looking at her dubiously.

  What could Marilyn say? No lie she could invent would be big enough to cover her sister’s lies.

  As far as Angela knew, Deb and Richard were her parents, but biologically, they were not her parents. And that was the reason Deb and Rich cut off all ties with the rest of the family. That was the reason they moved to South Carolina. That was the reason Marilyn had lost her little sister and best friend. Marilyn hadn’t approved of the deception, but she had sworn that she’d go along with
it, if only Deb wouldn’t leave, but Deb knew better. She knew that if they stayed, the truth would find its way out. Too many people would know. Too many people for it to be a secret.

  Actually, some part of Marilyn had believed that by now Angela must know the truth. Adopted children always seem to find out, one way or another. They have the wrong blood type to be their parents’ biological child, or they see a birth certificate and something on it doesn’t make sense, or someone accidentally lets the truth slip. Rich had a big family. In all this time, had none of them ever sought to reconcile with him? Apparently not. So now it was up to her. Tell the truth that tore the family apart, or let Angela keep her family story as she knew it. Before Deb could make up her mind, Angela spoke again.

  “Am I adopted?” Angela asked.

  “Yes,” Marilyn said.

  “And you didn’t think my parents should adopt me?”

  “No. I mean, we were happy for them to bring a new child into their lives after Ryan’s death, but your mother told me she wanted to pass you off as her own child, and I didn’t think that was right,” Marilyn said.

  “So my parents took me away.”

  Marilyn nodded.

  “And they never spoke to you again?”

  “I tried a few times over the years, but your mother wouldn’t.”

  “Why?”

  “I guess she thought I’d tell you the truth.” And, it seemed, Marilyn silently conceded, that Deb had been right.

  ***

  First Belle had been so sure her mother was alive. Then Calliope had been so insistent that her father was dead. As Angela put those things together with the fact that her parents had hidden their actual pasts and families from her, there seemed to be very few logical conclusions she could reach. Either Belle and Calliope were frauds who were in cahoots or her parents were not her parents at all. But she looked just like her mother. Everyone said so. They couldn’t coincidentally look so alike, could they? Then again, that a mother and her adopted daughter might look alike was at least as likely as hearing the voices of ghosts. When she had asked Marilyn if she was adopted, she had hoped, deep down, that the answer was no, but she knew it would be yes.