4. Maeve

Most people spend the days after their twenty-first birthday with the worst hangover of their life. It was the reward for finally reaching adulthood – the gift of knowing you were no longer invincible, and that all your actions have consequences.

I was spending mine at my parents funeral. In terms of life lessons learned, I’d much rather have the hangover.

But that’s what happens when your name is Maeve Crawford and you live a cursed life where every imaginable shitty thing that could possibly happen to a person happens to you, all in the same week.

It was almost laughable how little I was surprised.

I sat in the pew beside Kelly while the church band played Dad’s favorite worship song. Her hand gripped mine as a fresh wave of tears cascaded down her cheeks. Over the last week, Kelly cried practically every moment she was awake – she sobbed through the meeting with our family lawyer (when he showed us just how little money was in our parents’ accounts). She sniffled down the phone to reporters writing piece after sensational piece with headlines like COUNTY FAIR ENDS IN GRUESOME DEATHS and ARIZONA GOVERNOR CALLS FOR FERRIS WHEEL BAN. She bawled while Pastor Tim (formally assistant Pastor Tim) sat us down to talk about the “next phase of our life,” and informed us we’d need to move out by the end of the month. She snuffled while we discussed options with the funeral director, who gently guided us toward closed caskets, given the extensive burns and damage to our parents’ corpses.

She cried enough to start the second Biblical flood. Which was just as well, because I still hadn’t cried. Not once. I played the memory of the accident over and over, watching the Ferris wheel toppling from the sky, crashing into the tents, the flames tearing through the fairground like demons hellbent on destruction. I heard the screams, smelled the burning, felt the smoke scratching the back of my throat…

It felt like a dream, like some movie I’d seen.

I told myself over and over again how sad it was, how much I’d miss them. But my body refused to cooperate. My tears didn’t come.

The vise-like grip on my chest hadn’t eased. I had this odd sense of watchfulness, as though I was waiting for something to happen, for some sign to tell me what to do next. I had nowhere to go, nowhere to live, no plan for the future. Kelly at least had an aunt she could live with this year while she finished her senior year at high school. (My aunt too, technically, although they never really acknowledged me).

I, on the other hand, was completely untethered.

What the hell am I going to do?

On the raised stage at the end of the vast church hall (our denomination didn’t believe in grand buildings like the Catholics, so there was no interesting architecture to distract me) the newly minted Pastor Tim finished the opening prayers, and my parents’ friends stood to deliver eulogy after eulogy, talking endlessly about Matthew and Louise’s charity work, their mission trips, their contributions to the community.

Then Kelly got up, her whole body trembling as she folded and unfolded the paper containing her own eulogy. I raised an eyebrow at her, asking in sister-code if she wanted me to be up there beside her. But she didn’t even see me.

Behind the lectern from which we’d heard Dad deliver sermons every Sunday since I could remember, Kelly cleared her throat. She spoke in one long sentence, her words ragged from grief. She pushed them out in a rush – of our parents’ surprise when they found out they were pregnant with her (Mom wasn’t supposed to be able to have children, hence me), memories of our childhood, a rambling story about Dad’s obsession with The Beatles – eager to have it over with. In front of her, two closed coffins sagged under the weight of the floral arrangements Pastor Tim donated.

I stared at Pastor Tim in his formal black suit, my chest so tight I struggled to breathe. I couldn’t even manage to work up a righteous anger that he was taking away our home.

They were very pretty flowers.

At the cemetery, Kelly and I hung back behind the crowd, our fingers laced together. The bright Arizona sun bore down on us and beads of sweat trickled down my back, sticking my dress to my skin. Black clothing may be de rigueur for funerals, but now I knew why we didn’t ever see any goths in Coopersville. Black is not the fashion for an Arizona summer.

The pallbearers moved past us as they made their way down the path toward the family plot. The vise tightened around my heart. I gasped for breath. Kelly rested her head on my shoulder and smeared tears and snot all over the sleeve of my dress.

“You’re not crying,” she sniffed.

My stomach flipped. I was hoping she hadn’t noticed. “Not now. I was before. During your eulogy. You did a great job, by the way.”

“Oh.” A pause. “Hey, did you ever open that other letter?”

“Letter?”

“That one from the lawyer in England.”

It took me a moment to remember what letter she was talking about. With all the preparations for the funeral, and the whole losing the house and my scholarship and burying my dead parents thing, I’d completely forgotten about the second letter, which I’d shoved in my purse at some point during the week to remind myself to open it.

I fished around in my purse and pulled out the crumpled envelope. “It’s right here.”

I stared down at the envelope as though it might contain a bomb. Which it probably did. Everything I touched turned into bad news.

Kelly ran her black-tipped fingers over the logo in the corner. “Go on, open it. I could seriously use the distraction right now.”

Fine. If it made Kelly feel better, I’d open the damn thing. I flipped the envelope over. Weirdly, it was sealed with a proper wax seal, including a monogrammed shield containing the letter “B” pressed into the wax. I slid my finger under the wax and broke it, pulling the flap open and sliding out several sheets of paper.

On top was a letter, written on the same letterhead as the envelope.

Dear Ms. Crawford,

I trust this letter finds you well. As lawyer for her estate, your mother – Aline Moore – entrusted our office with the articles in her will. Her will included a stipulation that as her only living offspring, at the age of twenty-one you were to inherit her estate that has been held in trust until the time you could claim legal ownership.

This estate incorporates Briarwood House, the surrounding acreage, and the outbuildings and chattels contained therein. The house is currently occupied by four tenants, who wish to continue to reside in the property if you will allow them to do so.

I’ve enclosed a copy of the deed to the Briarwood Estate. In order to take up ownership of the property officially, you will need to visit our offices to sign the papers, or arrange a signing with a local lawyer.

Should you wish to inspect the estate in person, the tenants informed me that they would welcome your presence in Briarwood House. There are many available rooms and you would be able to take up residency for as long as you wished without breaking the tenancy contract.

Please contact me at your earliest convenience.

Sincerely,

Emily Lawson, LLB.

A second, smaller note fluttered between my fingers. It was handwritten in a messy scrawl that took me a few moments to decipher.

Hi Maeve,

Happy Birthday! I bet this letter has come as a shock! Emily mentioned that you’re welcome at the house any time. I just wanted to tell you in non-lawyer speak that we (your tenants) would be chuffed to have you. We’re all about your age, and we’d love to turn on the British charm for our new landlord.

My family has lived at Briarwood for the last twenty-one years. My parents were good friends of your mother.

Briarwood is pretty special. I think you should come see for yourself. Shoot me an email and let me know.

Cheers,

Corbin

I stared at the letters, unable to process what they were saying. “This is some kind of joke. It’s like those emails from Nigerian princes promising millions of dollars if I send them a check for fifty bucks.” I turned the first page of the deed. “I’m surprised there’s not a voucher for a penis enlargement.”

“Um… Maeve?” Kelly tapped her mobile phone. “I just searched Briarwood House. It’s… um, well… see for yourself.”

She thrust her phone under my nose. I gasped, the first real reaction I’d had to anything since I got the news about my parents.

Briarwood wasn’t a house. It was a full-on castle.

The square keep jutted out of a rolling hill, flanked by two turrets and an outer curtain wall with a gatehouse. A crisp green lawn punctuated with box hedges and water fountains and beds of wildflowers spread out around it. Off to the side, I could see a later addition and a couple of outbuildings.

Holy shit.

I shook my head. “The letter’s not real, Kelly. It’s some dumb joke.”

“I don’t think so,” Kelly tapped her phone screen. “That lawyer is legit, at least according to the English Bar Association. And look, this page says that the castle is currently held in trust for the Moore family, with four tenants living on site. Moore is your birth mother’s last name!”

“It’s a pretty common name. It doesn’t mean?—”

“You own a castle, Maeve,” Kelly squealed. “A castle.”

Several members of the congregation spun around, tutting at Kelly under their breaths.

I grabbed Kelly’s arm and dragged her back from the edge of the crowd. We sat on a bench between two large family mausoleums, and I handed the letter over to Kelly while I scrolled through the Briarwood website on her phone, my chest fluttering with something like excitement crossed with nausea.

“What’s this?” I jabbed my finger at the small logo in the corner of the screen, declaring the castle an “English Heritage” site.

“Duh. Weren’t you paying attention? This isn’t some roadside curiosity like the Winchester Mystery House. Briarwood House is a legit castle in England.”

“England?”

“Yeah, you know, land of Queens and crumpets. That’s genuine Bridgerton shit right there, and it’s all yours.”

“My mother lived in a castle. Now I own a castle.” Nope, saying it out loud didn’t make it any less crazy. “But… what do I even do with a castle?”

“You live there, Your Majesty.” Kelly punched me in the arm. “Which is convenient, since you’ve recently become homeless. Geez, and I thought you were the smart one.”

“I can’t live there! It’s in England! How would I go to college and—” I remembered with a start that I wouldn’t be going to college now.

Unless I somehow managed to sell this castle, which I may or may not even own. I don’t know how much medieval real estate fetches these days, but I’m guessing it would be enough to pay for my tuition.

“Now she’s getting it.” Kelly squeezed my arm. “You’ve got nothing tying you here. You could go over, sign the papers, sell your castle, and live off the proceeds for probably the rest of your life.”

“Inflation and taxes would take a chunk,” I said. My hand trembled as I read the letter again. If my birth-mother used to live at Briarwood, then if I sold the castle, I’d be losing the one link to her that I’ve had in the last twenty-one years. I’d never had anything of hers, not even a photograph. Just my name and a story Mom told me about the nuns in the orphanage crossing themselves furtively whenever the name Aline Moore was brought up, as if they thought she was a witch or something ridiculous like that.

To see where she lived, to touch the things that she touched, to maybe find a diary or her letters or photographs…

“I don’t know if I should sell it,” I said. “It belonged to my birth-mother. She wanted me to have it. But the money could pay for college?—”

“Do what the letter says. Go and visit it. Walk the ancient halls. Jump on the tiny medieval beds. Drink mead and wear corsets that squish your boobs. Who knows, maybe you will find a way to make some money off it without selling it. The website says they run tours. And doesn’t it come with a bunch of land? Maybe you have sheep or truffles or something. You could live in your castle and go to a school over there, like Oxley?—”

“Oxford,” I corrected her, my mind whirring. I’d never even considered a foreign university. I knew the Crawfords would never have had the money to help me with that, even if I could get a scholarship, and international student fees were insane. But Kelly was right. With my own castle, maybe I didn’t have to worry about that. I could do whatever I wanted…

The problem was, the only thing I wanted was the one thing I couldn’t have: for the Crawfords to be alive again.

The idea of leaving Arizona made the nervous butterflies in my stomach crash into each other. Apart from the summer I spent at space camp in Alabama, I’d never even been out of the state. Going back to England… to a house – sorry, castle – that belonged to a mother I’d never met…

Kelly patted my shoulder. “Don’t look so horrified; you don’t have to decide right now. Just think about it. You’re always Miss Play-It-Safe, but I don’t want you to miss out on this just because you’re scared of a change.”

“I’m not scared…” I stared down at a map on the tenth page of the deed. It showed the location of the castle in a county called Loamshire, nestled between two towns called Crookshollow and Argleton. The map was old – not printed off Google but clearly a photocopy of hand-drawn cartography. I admired the intricate border and strange notations dotting the landscape. England looked like an entirely different world.

“You’re totally scared. You never do anything exciting or rebellious. Remember when Bobby Kennedy gave us that joint and you made me throw it in the trash and the Hunters’ dog ate it?”

I blushed at the memory of having to confess to Mr. and Mrs. Hunter that their dog was stoned. We would’ve got into far less trouble if we’d just smoked the damn thing. I shot back. “I had premarital sex. That was pretty rebellious.”

The sex was with Andrew, this sort-of geeky boy from my community college physics class who was obsessed with science fiction books. We were the two youngest members of the local astronomy club, which meant Andrew and I spent several warm Arizona nights tracking lunar phenomenon from the middle of deserted fields. One thing led to another and we spend most of last year making Jesus blush until he moved away for grad school.

The sex itself was underwhelming – the best thing about it had been the thrill of knowing I was breaking the Crawford’s cardinal rule, and the fact that Kelly was spitting with jealousy that she hadn’t done it first.

Yeah, the teenage rebellion was strong in me.

“So mediocre sex with a physics nerd is the most wild and crazy thing you’re ever going to do in your entire life?” Kelly snorted. “Excuse me while I yawn.”

I jabbed her in the arm, but her words stung. Kelly was right. I didn’t exactly take a lot of risks. I was saving all my risk-taking for the space program. But maybe that was the wrong attitude. Leaving the country to go live in a castle so soon after my parents’ deaths seemed like the stupidest idea in the world, but then, so did doing anything except crawling into bed and sleeping until it felt okay again, which it never would.

I ran my finger along an illustration in the corner of the map; three small mounds in the middle of a field behind the castle, marked with a weird series of lines and dashes.

What did it mean?

Did I really want to find out?

I could defer my place at MIT for a semester. It wasn’t a big deal. Maybe this was just what I needed. Maybe if I went to England for a little while, I could find the peace I needed to mourn, to cry for what I’d lost, and then I could move on.

“You know what?” I folded the letter and stuffed it into the cup of my bra, the paper rustling against my naked breast. “I might just do it.”