Steven flushed. “Father left you a property.”
“A mystery,” Peggy said. “You got millions and this house and the satisfaction of knowing he valued you as legacy. I got a rusty key and thirty days to vanish.”
Steven’s mouth opened, but Peggy got into her car before he could respond.
She drove away from Brookline—away from the mansion, away from the life she thought she lived—following her GPS toward a town she’d never heard of.
She glanced at the brown envelope on the passenger seat like it might suddenly speak.
Trust me one last time.
Peggy whispered into the empty car, “If this is a cruel joke, Richard… if this is all there is…”
She didn’t finish the sentence.
Because she wasn’t sure what would be left of her if it was.
Milbrook, Massachusetts wasn’t on most maps people cared about.
The main street had maybe fifteen buildings clustered around a small square. A general store with a faded awning. A diner with checkered curtains. A tiny post office. A gas station with two pumps. A white church with a modest steeple. A library that looked like it had been built in another century.
As Peggy drove slowly through town, following the GPS, something strange happened.
People watched her car pass.
Not with suspicion.
With recognition.
An elderly man sweeping the sidewalk paused mid-sweep and lifted his hand in a small wave. A woman arranging flowers outside the diner nodded gently as if confirming something. Teenagers outside the library looked up with curiosity that felt almost… respectful.
Peggy’s skin prickled.
The GPS directed her off Main Street onto Oakwood Lane. The pavement lasted two hundred yards, then became dirt, rutted and uneven, leading into dense forest.
Ancient oak trees lined the road, massive trunks and branches creating a tunnel of shade that filtered afternoon sun into shifting patterns across her windshield.
The road felt like a passage into somewhere outside time.
After about a mile, the GPS announced cheerfully: “You have arrived.”
Peggy stopped and sat in the car, almost afraid to look up.
She imagined Catherine’s voice: an old falling apart house in the middle of nowhere.
She took a breath, lifted her eyes, and froze.
The house was not falling apart.