house,” Murphy said, indignant. “We split it three ways, right? So, I’m scouting it out for my third. Isn’t that the whole point of our sister road trip?”
“No,” Claire said coldly.
“Then what?”
“Yeah, Claire,” Eileen turned to her, shining the flashlight directly in her face. “Why are we here?”
Claire angrily shielded her eyes until Eileen relented and lowered the beam. Then, and only then, did she answer. She’d been given a chance to lay out a plan. Eileen hadn’t meant it that way, with her snarky question, but Claire was going to seize the opportunity. Impulse had brought her here, but planning was going to get her out.
“We came to see the house for ourselves,” she said, addressing Eileen with a steady glare. “All right, we’ve seen it. We didn’t have to break in, but we did. Now we leave, before anyone finds out, and we proceed the legal way.”
“You can leave if you want,” said Murphy. “No one’s stopping you.”
Claire ignored Murphy, intensifying her glare at Eileen. “We had a deal. You’re here because of my money.”
Eileen’s lips twitched. “The deal didn’t involve me taking orders from you.”
In one rabid swipe Claire grabbed her phone out of Eileen’s hand. “Fine. You have fun exploring a pitch-black house. I’ll be in the van, waiting for you. And if the police show up? Have fun getting back to Emmet on your own.”
Claire stalked toward the double doors, leaving behind the two most infuriating sisters known to earth.
“You’re not curious?”
Claire stopped. She turned slowly to Eileen. “Excuse me?”
Eileen said, “You don’t wonder why Mom didn’t tell us we had an uncle?”
Claire wasn’t going to admit that she’d been asking herself that question minutes ago. She folded her arms and said, “I’m sure she had a good reason.”
“You’re sure about that?”
Eileen’s words were sour with sarcasm, and Claire couldn’t think of a rebuttal. Mom had to know about Uncle Patrick, didn’t she? Mom didn’t talk much about Dad, and Claire had understood that, at least: The memory of him was too painful to revisit.
But why had Mom hidden the fact that Dad had a brother? She’d told the sisters they had no extended family. Mom had been in the foster system since she was two, handed from house to house, never remaining in one long. She’d emancipated herself at seventeen, and that’s when she’d met Dad. He’d been an only child, and both his parents had died when he was a teenager. Car accident. Claire hadn’t ever asked questions, because the stories of her parents’ pasts had made her sad, and because … well, who lied about something like that?
As it turned out, some people did.
“Do you know how Uncle Patrick found out about us?” said Eileen. “Knutsen said he used a private investigator to track us down. He left instructions, too, for Knutsen not to tell Mom about any of this.”
A prickly feeling spindled up Claire’s arms. She couldn’t help herself from responding, “But … why? Did she do something wrong? Was there, like, a falling out?”
“Who knows,” Eileen shrugged. “The way Knutsen talked, the guy was batshit.”
“Then he’s got to be our real uncle,” Murphy said, guffawing.
No one else laughed.
“All I’m saying,” Eileen said to Claire, “is there’s a chance we could find some answers here, if we stick around. Knutsen said this place could be chock-full of stuff. Documents, photographs, antiques.”
“So, what?” said Claire. “You’ve broken and entered, and now you want to steal?”
“I didn’t say that.” Eileen threw out a hand. “I don’t need this crap. I do want some time to see if there’s a clue about who Patrick Enright was, and, you know, what the hell is going on. And you want to know what the place is worth, right? How much you could get for the shit, to pay for Yale.”
Claire was wavering. Eileen had it partly wrong, of course. Claire didn’t need the money for Yale, but she did need it to start a new life. Even if this house was unsellable for four years, it was money for the future. Money she could plan on, down the line. She was curious. About the house, but also—unexpectedly—about family.
She hadn’t let herself think about who Uncle Patrick could be, or how this could have anything to do with her father, long dead of a bad cancer. Those things weren’t part of her golden moment. Now, Claire was thinking better of it. This house wasn’t merely money-in-waiting. It could’ve touched her dad in some way.