do you want a dowry and a side of cattle with that?”
Mr. Knutsen stared, blank-faced, at Eileen. She’d gone a step too far, maybe.
“Fine,” said Eileen. “Why would my dad change his name?”
“That’s for him to say, not me. Go on, open the folder.”
Eileen didn’t take orders. She crossed her arms and studied the wall behind Mr. Knutsen’s head. His diploma was huge, set in tomato-red matting. University of Phoenix. Definitely not Harvard. Eileen got a scratchy feeling at the back of her neck. Was this a scam? She’d heard of elder fraud, but what was this? Recently-graduated-teenager fraud? If so, the joke was on Bill. Eileen was flat broke. And if Eileen thought of it that way, she was invincible to scams, and therefore to whatever was in that folder.
Still, something inside Eileen wouldn’t allow her to open it.
Instead, she focused on something Mr. Knutsen had said: That’s for him to say. This guy couldn’t know much if he didn’t know John Sullivan had been dead for fourteen years. For all that time, he’d said nothing to Eileen from beyond the grave. Why would he start today?
Silence passed, eventually turning obscene. Mr. Knutsen caught on. He slid the folder away from Eileen and opened it himself. He unhooked something from a paper clip—a photograph—and held it out to her.
Eileen took the photo. It seemed a bitch too far not to.
She was looking at a man in his midtwenties standing in front of a wire fence. She knew who this was. Soft jaw. Ruddy cheeks. Strawberry-blond hair. Close-set eyes, colored cornflower blue. Traits Eileen had not inherited but recognized easily enough from other photographs of her father.
“So?” She flapped the photo at Mr. Knutsen.
“So, that’s Patrick Enright.”
Eileen stopped flapping. She held the photo close and looked. Really looked. Traits similar to John Sullivan’s, but it wasn’t him. There were differences. The turn of his nose. The hunch of his shoulders. The gauntness.
A long-nailed claw dug into Eileen’s gut. It was familiar, though she hadn’t felt it in a while—the pain of not knowing a dad who’d died young. There were vague memories of him left in her head: arms swinging her high in the kitchen, bangs that drooped over his eyes. Still, she didn’t know him well enough. Not enough to distinguish him from a stranger.
A real daughter would’ve noticed the difference.
Eileen needed a drink.
“It’s an older photo, of course,” said Mr. Knutsen. “Hadn’t taken anything recent before his death last week. Cirrhosis of the liver, complications thereof. Nasty way to go, I hear. Now, Ms. Sullivan, do you know much about your father’s upbringing? Where he lived before he moved to Emmet?”
You couldn’t imagine the things I know, thought Eileen.
What she said was, “Some other shit town. Why does that matter?”
“It’s really not my place to tell you that.”
Eileen gave Mr. Knutsen a long, hard look. What was this dude playing at? She’d come here for answers, and all she was getting were hems and haws and hedging. It was time to play hardball.
“Right!” she said, slapping her knees. “Thanks, Bill. This has been super enlightening.”
She headed for the door, still holding the photo.
“He gave you a house.”
Eileen stopped. Slowly, she turned around.
Finally they were getting somewhere.
“Beg your pardon,” said Mr. Knutsen. “I’ve been skirting around the point. My job is to tell you about the inheritance, not its history.”
“A … house?” The question dropped from Eileen’s mouth like crusted glue.
“A third of the proceeds from its sale, to be precise. That’s your portion of the estate. Your sisters will inherit the remaining thirds.”
“Uh-uuuh.” Eileen had stopped feeling things right. Her face was numb, or maybe not there. She really needed a drink.
“Please, Ms. Sullivan, take a seat. We have a lot to discuss.”
Eileen obeyed Mr. Knutsen’s order, just this once.
FIVE Claire
It was mailing day, and Claire wished she were anywhere but here, at the post office, three days before Christmas.
“Delusional,” she muttered—to herself, and to the nine customers on her Etsy shop who had placed orders after the Christmas cutoff date. It didn’t matter how clearly Claire had laid out the shipping guidelines; shoppers would disregard them, holding on to false hope that their last-minute gifts would reach them in time.
Some people had no regard for scheduling, let alone logic.
That didn’t mean Claire wouldn’t take their money, though.
As she stood in line, a dozen people away from the mailing counter, Claire copied and pasted a message into the Etsy app, tapping out the previous customer’s name and replacing