Mr. Reed answered. “Diane has been staying here since Eleanor’s hospitalization. She was instructed to vacate after the reading of the will.”
“I was taking care of my mother,” Diane snapped.
“No,” Mr. Reed said. “Mrs. Alvarez was taking care of your mother. You were attempting to locate property records.”
Diane’s face went pale with anger.
I did not know who Mrs. Alvarez was, and I did not understand property records, but I understood enough. Diane wanted the farm. She had expected it. And now I stood between her and it.
The front door opened wider, and an older woman with brown skin and gray hair tied in a bun appeared.
“Sam,” she called. “The girl must be freezing.”
Mr. Reed looked relieved. “Hannah, this is Maria Alvarez. She was your grandmother’s closest friend.”
Mrs. Alvarez came down the steps and took my hands in hers before I could react.
“Oh, niña,” she whispered. “You have her eyes.”
Something in her voice broke me more than Diane’s cruelty had. Not all the way. Just enough that I had to look down and blink hard.
Diane turned sharply. “Mason, get our things.”
“We’re leaving now?” he asked.
“We are not sleeping under the same roof as her.”
He looked at me, then away.
They carried out suitcases, boxes, and one framed painting Diane insisted belonged to her. Mr. Reed made her put it back. There was an argument over a silver tea set, another over a quilt, and one more over a locked rolltop desk in the study. By the end, Diane was shaking with rage.
Before she left, she leaned close enough that only I could hear her.
“You think this is a fairy tale,” she said. “But Eleanor was a bitter old woman, and Rachel was no saint. This farm ruins every woman who tries to keep it.”
I said nothing.
Diane smiled coldly.
“You’ll leave before spring.”
Then she got into her SUV and disappeared down the lane, red taillights fading between the cottonwoods.
That night, I slept in my mother’s old room.
I knew it was hers because the closet door still had tiny pencil marks inside: Rachel, age 6. Rachel, age 8. Rachel, age 12. The walls were painted pale yellow. There was a white iron bed, a wooden dresser, and a shelf of horse figurines. On the desk sat a cracked music box shaped like a carousel.
Mrs. Alvarez made chicken soup and sat with me at the kitchen table while Mr. Reed went over practical matters. The estate would remain in probate for several months. Because I was not yet eighteen, the court would appoint Mr. Reed as temporary trustee until my birthday. Diane had filed notice that she intended to challenge the will, but Mr. Reed said she had little chance unless she could prove Eleanor was mentally unfit.
“Was she?” I asked.
Mrs. Alvarez slammed her spoon down. “No.”
Mr. Reed shook his head. “Your grandmother was very clear until the end.”
“Then why would Diane try?”
“Because land makes people forget shame,” Mrs. Alvarez said.
After dinner, Mr. Reed left for town, promising to return in the morning. Mrs. Alvarez stayed in the guest room because she said the house was too full of ghosts for my first night alone.
I thought I would not sleep. But the room was warm, and the quilt smelled faintly of cedar. Sometime after midnight, I woke to a sound outside.
A scrape.
Then another.
I sat up.
The moonlight through the curtains painted the floor silver. For a moment, I thought I was back at St. Agnes listening to girls whisper after lights-out.
Then the sound came again.
Scrape. Drag. Scrape.
From below my window.
I got out of bed and looked outside.
A figure stood near the old smokehouse behind the kitchen garden.
I could not see a face, only a dark shape moving against the snow-crusted ground. The person was dragging something toward the tree line.
My heart hammered.
I ran into the hallway and knocked on Mrs. Alvarez’s door.
She opened it with a robe clutched around her. “What is it?”
“Someone’s outside.”
Her expression changed instantly. She grabbed a flashlight from the nightstand and a heavy iron poker from beside the fireplace.
We went downstairs together. The house creaked around us like it was warning us to go back.
By the time we opened the kitchen door, the yard was empty.
But tracks marked the thin snow. Boot prints led from the smokehouse to the trees, then vanished where gravel met frozen weeds. Near the smokehouse door, the padlock hung open.
Mrs. Alvarez shone the flashlight inside.
The smokehouse smelled of old wood and rust. There were shelves, empty hooks, broken jars, and a dirt floor disturbed in one corner.
Someone had been digging.
