Sarah's Inheritance

by Katherine Kim

  But then Gran really didn’t talk much about herself or her life outside the garden, Sarah remembered. And that fight with her mother… Sarah realized that there was a great deal about her family that she didn’t know, and that had been deliberately kept from her by her mother. No wonder Mom didn’t want me to come out here in person. Well to hell with that. Come on, Gran, what didn’t you want to tell me on the phone?

  Five

  The phone was ringing when Sarah stepped out of the shower. She felt much better now that she was clean— less confused by the weird events of that morning, and on much surer footing, emotionally. She had decided, as she washed her hair, that Doc was right about at least one thing. Gran would most likely have left her some sort of letter or note. Gran always said that there was so much she wanted to pass along to Sarah, but she’d need weeks to say it all, then laugh when Sarah huffed about getting time off to visit. Someday, she’d always said. Soon Gran, I promise.

  Well, that hadn’t happened, Sarah sniffled again, feeling the guilt well up and knowing that she deserved it. She heard the answering machine pick up and only paid a sliver of attention, since it was unlikely to be a call for her anyway. No need to rush out of the bathroom dripping wet and make a mess just to tell someone that ‘sorry, she passed away.’ She smiled sadly as her grandmother’s voice told the caller that she couldn’t get to the phone, then shrugged when there was a pause of dead air after the beep.

  “Sarah Elizabeth Richards. Answer the phone. It’s your mother.”

  Sarah tensed and she debated whether she should answer the summons or not. She wasn’t sure she had the emotional energy for a fight about whatever her mother wanted to argue about today. Then, with a deep, steadying breath, she wrapped her robe tightly around herself like armor and picked up the phone just before her mother hung up.

  “Mom, sorry. I was in the shower,” she said, cheerfully. “I went for a walk this morning on the path by the creek here, and wanted to clean up a bit.”

  “If you want to keep fit you could simply hire a personal trainer who has the qualifications and experience to know what you need to do and work out in a nice, safe, clean gym with security cameras. There is absolutely no reason to get filthy wandering around by that drainage ditch and put yourself in harm’s way like that. God only knows what could happen to you, you could get mugged! There could be rabid wild animals that attack you! You don’t know what you might run into out there.”

  Sarah squeezed her eyes shut then just as quickly opened them again when images from her walk flashed behind her eyelids. She shied away from the memories she’d just managed to pack away and tried to focus on her mother’s words. It was an old argument.

  “I don’t know where the nearest gym is yet, and the path is right here, and I got home just fine. In fact, I met some neighbors and one of Gran’s old friends. We had a nice chat about tea. Did you know that Gran made her own herbal teas? There are a few kinds in the cupboard, and they’re pretty tasty.” She hoped changing the subject would help, but the instead, she was surprised by a sudden silence from the other end.

  “Mom, are you okay?” Sarah asked into the uncharacteristic quiet. She heard her mother take a deep breath.

  “That is one of the reasons I called. Your grandmother knew some unsavory people, and she seemed to be collecting more as she got older. That is just one of the reasons I didn’t want you around her anymore. It was easier to provide a buffer for you when your father was still alive,” Elaine’s voice wobbled, but she caught herself after the smallest of pauses. Even grief counted as an unpleasant emotion in public. “He knew his mother better than I did, and could help me keep you safe from the less respectable aspects of his mother’s life.”

  Sarah frowned. Unsavory people? Less respectable aspects?

  “I haven’t met anyone unsavory. Just some business owners and Jennifer Anderson, the lawyer, who was also a friend of hers, and she seemed really nice, to say nothing of doing a great job with the estate. She went out of her way to let me in the house and helped me to settle in. And Doc was sweet. A bit odd, but nice to me. I certainly wouldn’t call them unsavory,” Sarah felt compelled to defend the few people she’d met. “And I met the owner of a local apartment complex. He seemed more tired and distracted than unsavory, but I guess he’s been renovating the place. And he was perfectly nice, too.”

  “What is this person a doctor of, did they tell you or just try to scam you with a fancy title?” her mother said. Sarah could hear an edge to her voice. “And you know to stay away from strange men. Those California people, especially, are barely civilized.” The familiar headache was starting to form. Maybe Gran had a tea for that, too? Worth a look.

  “Doc is more of a nickname because of where she works, Mom. It’s a tea shop somewhere nearby, in some historic building. The locals call it the Apothecary, so the woman who runs it is called Doc. At least that’s what I gathered, and she didn’t try to scam me at all. She’s not a real doctor and didn’t imply she is We mostly just talked about Gran. You didn’t call just to cast aspersions on people you’ve never met, have you?” Sarah realized that one of the great advantages to being across the country from her mother was that she could just hang up the phone after this conversation and not worry that the woman would show up in person 20 minutes later to keep harping at her. She wondered if she was brave enough to just hang up? She sighed. Not today, anyway.

  “You have been out there for almost a week now, surely you’ve finished making arrangements to clean out the house and put it on the market. When do you plan to come home?” Well, it was bound to come up sometime. Sarah braced herself.

  “I’m not selling this house, Mom, and I’m not coming back for a while.”

  “What?” The shock was clear even over the phone. “What do you mean you’re not coming home for a while? What about your job? You can’t simply disappear from work and expect them to brush it off.”

  Sarah took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Here it came.

  “I quit the job, Mom. And I sublet the apartment. I’ve moved out here for a few months at least.” It was odd that silence could say so much and sound so loud.

  “You… moved. Into Gran’s house?” the voice on the phone was quiet, and Sarah could see her mother’s face behind the lids of her closed eyes. It would be still and white as marble, her perfectly made up lips pursed and her eyes focused as lasers.

  “Yes, Mom. You know I’ve been unhappy for the past few years. I was already thinking about doing something when Gran died, and it just seemed like it was time. I should have come out sooner anyway, to visit Gran while she was alive, but I just kept telling myself I’d take some time off soon and put it off until it was too late. So now I’m here. Even though I can’t visit with Gran in person, I’m going to take the opportunity I’ve been given.” Her mother’s personality was a physical presence in the room, disapproving and angry. But, Sarah reminded herself, that’s all it was: a presence. A voice in her ear that would disappear when she hung up the phone. The silence weighed her down for almost a minute until her mother finally spoke again.

  “Why would you go visit her, Sarah? There was no reason for that. It isn’t as though you had any sort of relationship, after all. We only ever went to see her out of respect for your father’s memory, and after that last horrifying visit I made sure she had no contact with you. Just because you were the only granddaughter, that did not give her any right to dominate your life with her delusions.”

  “Delusions?” Her mind flashed to the thing she’d encountered on her walk. “Mom—”

  “I don’t understand why she left you the house rather than to your uncle, but I see no need for you to stay there. If you have quit, then we will find you another job here in the city, and then we will find you a therapist.” Elaine steamrolled over her response, as usual.

  “Mom, I—“

  “I will email you a list of flights that leave first thing in the morning. Just choose one, and I will pick you up a
t the airport. You may stay here until you can return to your apartment.” Her mother’s voice was a sledgehammer, pounding away at her resistance. It had always worked in the past, making Sarah crumble and do whatever it was that her mother wanted. But now there was an entire continent between them, and Sarah found it easier to stand up.

  “Mom, no.” Sarah put enough force into her words to break though to her mother. “I’m staying. For at least the next few months. I hated my life out there, and I’m not going to come running back to it just because you want me to. I know you wanted me to be some sort of society wife and volunteer on committees and whatever, but that’s not me. I don’t know what I’m going to do instead, but that’s why I’m taking my time to figure it out now, while I can.” Sarah said. The pain in her head was spreading down the back of her neck and seeping into her eyeballs now, but she figured she could hang on just a little longer.

  “What do you think you are you doing, Sarah? What are you looking for out there?” Her mother got very quiet, setting off alarm bells in Sarah’s mind. Was there, in fact, something to find? Sarah’s mind flashed back to Doc urging her to look around the house for some message from Gran. Maybe there was something to find after all. Something about her mother’s call was becoming unsettling, and she found herself reluctant to hold a long discussion, so she fell back on the reason she left New York.

  “Myself, I guess,” she sighed. “Mom, I don’t know. I just needed to make a dramatic change in my life because I couldn’t keep going like I was, and I suddenly had a place to go that was different. Maybe I can find out more about Gran while I’m here. Work on a genealogy project or something? One of those fancy family trees.” She wasn’t sure where that idea came from, but she heard the sharp hiss of her mother’s breath through the phone.

  “Your grandmother was a lunatic, Sarah. There won’t be anything sane there for you to find.”

  “She was not, Mom. I know you hated her, and I’ve never understood why. Gran and I were talking for years, over the phone, and she was as sane and rational as anyone else.” Sarah was surprised at the vehemence coming over the phone line. Elaine fell silent again, and Sarah felt the weight of the disapproval and judgement as if her mother was physically pushing her down.

  “Well. I can tell that this conversation is over for now. You clearly are not ready to listen to reason. Stay away from those teas, Sarah. God only knows what poisons that woman put into them. I will arrange for some real food to be delivered to you. And you listen to me, young lady. You stay far away from that woman’s insane friends as well. The world would be better off if the whole lot of them were scrubbed off the face of the planet.” The phone clicked and her mother was no longer a tangible presence in the room with her.

  Sarah blinked at the handset she held. She had never heard so much venom in her mother’s voice as she had at the end of the phone call. Disapproval, certainly. Disdain and a holier-than-thou sort of controlling tone of voice, absolutely. But never such clear loathing. Sarah realized that she was shivering and her head was throbbing. Today was entirely out of hand, and she wasn’t sure she could cope with it much longer. So far it had been the most bizarre and exciting day she’d ever had, and it wasn’t even noon yet.

  Six

  After she got off the phone, Sarah sat on the sofa for a long time, trying to sift through the feelings that fought for her attention. Shock and concern and more than a little anxiety at her mother’s attitude. Confusion and curiosity about her grandmother’s life and the possibility of a message somewhere. Nerves and worry about her conversation with Doc which hinted at some huge secret. Her mind reached back to the adventure this morning and she firmly shut the door to those memories.

  If they even were memories and not just hallucinations or strange dreams or something. Honestly, foxes just don’t behave like that, and there is no such thing as monsters in a rational universe. The whole experience felt completely surreal and foggy now, with the distance of time and the warm sunshine pouring in through the curtains. Curiosity won, in the end, and after getting dressed and taking some aspirin for the pounding agony that had settled into her head and brewing some tea— deliberately defying her mothers’s decree— she started her search for any messages Gran might have left her.

  It was something she knew she should do anyway, going through everything in case there were bills she should know about, or people who needed to be told of Gran’s passing. The obvious place to look was Gran’s desk in the bedroom she’d converted to an office and workroom. Sarah wondered what Gran had done in here besides pay bills and write emails on the laptop she found tucked into a drawer.

  There was a sewing machine under a cover and what looked like two good sized boxes of fabric stacked neatly by the work table under the window. There were also shelves full of empty bottles and jars and a stack of blank labels, filling up a bookshelf with glass doors to keep out the dust, and there were bookshelves crammed with books and papers and decorations and jars full of beads and buttons and stones and well, stuff. Sarah hadn’t yet even glanced in the closet in here, but she suspected there was just more fabric and other craft supplies. Just standing in the room made her feel closer to the grandmother she hadn’t seen in over a decade.

  Well, nothing to it but to do it, she thought to herself, and dug into the file drawer in the desk. Rosemary Richards— Rosie to her friends apparently— had mostly been a tidy, organized sort of person. Paid bills had been filed for two years, by date and type. There was a large file of medical bills, all neatly paid in full, and Sarah had to take some time when she came to that one. How Gran could have been sick for so long? How could she have not said anything about fighting lung cancer of all damn things? They’d been chatting on the phone at least once a week until the end, and emailing at odd hours of the day as well. She thought that Gran would have let her help somehow, if not come out to take care of her then at least as emotional support. Sarah couldn’t even begin to understand it.

  She was just wiping the tears away with her sleeve when the doorbell rang. God, couldn’t she just have one hour of peace today? It had been nonstop all day, from the effort to be brave enough to go for her walk, then all through the madness of whatever happened, then waking up in a stranger’s apartment, and her mother calling and everything, she just wasn’t sure how much more she could take. She glanced at the kitchen clock on her way to the door. Just after one in the afternoon. It felt like days since she’d gotten up that morning to stuff her phone, some snacks, and a first aid kit into her backpack.

  She opened the door to a tall man with sandy, sun-lightened blonde hair and a shy smile that warmed his light brown eyes and made her feel less annoyed at the interruption.

  “Can I help you?” she asked. She hoped she didn’t look too wrecked, between the headache that still throbbed across her brain and the sudden crying jag a few minutes ago probably making her face all puffy.

  “You left your backpack at Doc’s place,” he held it up in his left hand. “I offered to bring it by when I came to thank you for this morning. Thank you.” He now held up his right hand, which gripped a grocery store bouquet of flowers. Sarah blinked.

  “Thank me for what?” her confusion must have been written clearly on her face, because the man on her porch started to look a bit embarrassed.

  “For stopping me from fighting that wight. It would have been pretty much suicidal just then, and I know that, but sometimes I can be pretty stupid,” he ducked his head. “And you know. The ridiculously macho idea of saving the pretty girl probably factored in there. Instead the pretty girl saved me. Thanks.” He held out the flowers towards her. She didn’t move to take them, swaying a bit in the doorway.

  “But I’ve never seen you before,” she said.

  “Oh, well. Not to talk to, that’s true. I should have said that right off at the beginning, I’m sorry,” he shifted his packages to one hand and reached out to shake her hand. “I’m Sebastian, Kai’s brother. It’s really great to finally meet you
properly.” Sarah thought she heard him swear as she slid to the ground, but mostly she just let the darkness take over again.

  When she opened her eyes after passing out for the second time that day, Sarah found herself on her own sofa at least. She heard footsteps and the man who called himself Sebastian came back with a glass of water.

  “Oh man, I’m so sorry. Are you okay? Here,” he handed her the glass and helped her sit up to drink it. He crouched by the sofa, waiting till she lowered the glass again and watching her with worried eyes.

  “Thanks. I’m sorry for that. I don’t think I’ve ever fainted before today. It looks way more exciting and glamorous in the movies.”

  “Hey, after this morning, you’ve earned a bit of leeway. The first time I saw one of those things a couple of weeks back I think I screamed like a kid, and you totally kept it together until the adrenaline wore off. I’m super impressed. If you weren’t feeling at least a little shaken up I’d be more worried.”

  Sarah frowned at the glass, trying not to look him in the eyes for fear of what she might see. She needed answers, though, and now was probably the only time she was likely to get them. She’d been too disoriented and off balance that morning to ask Doc— not that she was a lot better right now— but a number of the things Kai had said made no sense to her, and she didn’t think she could keep track of all the questions she needed to ask now.

  “So…” she started, trying to figure out how to get the information she wanted first. She was more than a little afraid of hearing her suspicions confirmed. Maybe her mother was right and these people were crazy? “So you were there then, this morning?”