and her sisters could jointly decide what to do: keep the house, or sell it. Until then, Patrick Enright had left behind enough money for Mr. Knutsen to manage the estate.
Mr. Knutsen had descended into legalese after that—mumbo jumbo about capital gains and property taxes. Eileen had stopped listening. She’d heard what mattered most.
Maybe it was the donut sugar blasting through her veins or the fading buzz of two shots’ worth of Jack Daniel’s. Maybe it was Christmas delirium, but there, on her bed, Eileen Sullivan was hatching a plan. Mr. Knutsen had scheduled a follow-up appointment with her, for after the holidays, but Eileen wasn’t one for appointments. Or waiting.
What she had was tonight. And tonight? She was going to Rockport.
She couldn’t shake what Mr. Knutsen had said, right before she’d left his office:
“Who knows what he’s kept locked away in there.”
“Sorry,” Eileen had said. “What?”
Mr. Knutsen had patted his sides and chuckled. “Patrick … well, he’s been the oddest of my clients, by far. Do you know, he found out about you by way of a private investigator? The PI’s findings brought Patrick down here, where he sought out my services. I’ve never had such a client: insisting on secrecy, informing me of his impending death—and I believed it, the man looked like hell. Directing me to not breathe a word to your mother and only send the letters out to you girls individually, when you were eighteen. Funeral? None. And a private burial. No relations or friends to speak of. Quite the eccentric.”
“Yeah, reminds me of someone.”
Eileen had been thinking of herself.
“As I was saying,” Mr. Knutsen had said, “it’s a mystery what’s in that house. Documents, photographs, antiques, maybe. Could be piles of junk. But he’s shut it all up. No estate sale. Left it waiting for you girls.”
On her bed, Eileen squinted in thought.
Documents.
Why would Mr. Knutsen have used that word? Not “knickknacks,” not “possessions.” He’d distinctly said “documents.”
Documents could mean answers.
Hadn’t Eileen’s troubles begun with documents? With the letters she’d found in the linen closet two years ago?
Documents could mean change.
The word pumped through Eileen’s heart, filling the ventricles, rushing in from veins and out through arteries: Ch-change, ch-change, ch-change.
She’d known the secret for two years. It had messed with Eileen’s head, fucking up everything—her art, her life at home, her will to do anything but drink in this drafty garage.
All because Eileen believed the secret to be true.
But what if.
What if Eileen didn’t have all the facts?
Patrick Enright. Her uncle. He had to have known the secret too.
And there were documents.
What if those documents told a different story from the ones she’d read?
Eileen hadn’t considered the possibility before. Now she craved it: a diary entry. A written confession. A letter to Eileen herself, left for her to discover—an inheritance of a different kind.
That was another thing: She’d inherited a house. So, best-case scenario, she got an answer to the question that had eaten her alive for two years. Worst-case? She was richer than she’d been a week ago. Either way, things were looking up.
This was ch-change, ch-change, ch-change.
It was after two o’clock when Eileen got up and filled a backpack with supplies: a blanket, socks, a thermal shirt, a refillable water bottle, Dubble Bubble, her flask of Jack Daniel’s, and lastly, the manila folder Mr. Knutsen had given her.
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse, and that was when Eileen crept out of the house.
Eileen owned a 1989 Dodge Caravan. It was equipped with wood paneling, a red interior, and a finicky alternator. Eileen hated the Caravan with her whole heart. It sucked that you could work hard for three years and in the end all you could afford was something you hated with your whole heart. In fact, Eileen considered this reality the running theme of her life.
For the Caravan’s engine to start up, you had to turn the key in the ignition just so. Eileen had mostly mastered the trick of it, but every once in a while she had to try a second or third time through a primordial sputtering under the hood. Tonight she needed stealth on her side, so with one hand she crossed her fingers and with the other she turned the key.
The engine started.
Her lucky night.
Eileen drew her seat belt snug across her chest and shifted the van into drive.
This was it. She was leaving.
Fuck Emmet.
Fuck everything.
But first—one deep, long breath.
THUMP.
The sound came from the passenger window. On instinct, Eileen shrieked.