Page 22 of Bitter House

“Tell me. Have you kids talked about selling the house?” Edna asks, running her hands over her legs.

“Jenn and Zach want us to,” I admit.

“They’ve been here?” Her eyes widen.

“Both of them, yeah.”

“They’re never going to let it go.” She sighs. “Maybe you should sell. To them or someone else. And get away. From this. From everything.”

“You really think so?” Cole asks, his voice hitching with the surprise that I feel.

Edna doesn’t answer for a while, but eventually, she says, “I know better than anyone what a complicated person Vera was. I have no idea why she wanted you to have this house, and I’m trying to respect her wishes, but I also need to look out for the both of you. If being here isn’t what makes you happy, sell. These are your lives to live. Vera can’t control them anymore.”

There is no malice in her voice, only sadness. Longing that I really don’t understand.

“Why did you stay for so long?” I ask her. “She was cold to you as well. Didn’t you ever think about finding another job?”

“As a person, Vera was…complex, but she was also my best friend.” Tears well in her eyes. “I loved her with everything I had. She gave me a home. A job. Despite everything, she was the closest thing I ever had to a sister. We loved each other in a way that’s hard to explain. We…we understood each other. And she didn’t always have it easy, you know. After your grandfather died.” She studies me, begging me to understand like she always has. But back then, she was asking me to forgive her for hurting other people—my aunt, my cousins. Now, it’s me Vera has hurt, and I’m not sure how I’ll ever forgive her for that.

“Your experience with Vera wasn’t mine,” I say, carefully picking the words as I go. “I know I don’t know everything about her, but someone does. And I’m not leaving this house until I learn the truth.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

BRIDGET

After a few hours, Edna leaves and I find myself wandering down the hall and back toward Vera’s bedroom. Everything Edna said rings through my head in faded whispers. There’s so much about Vera that I don’t know. So much I’ll never be able to understand.

In her closet, there are sets of photo albums. When I first moved to Bitter House, she allowed me to look through them on occasion, to see photos of my mother when she was growing up. Everything seemed different then, when my mother was alive. My grandfather.

Vera was different. In the years when my grandfather was still alive, she seemed so full of life. There are photographs of the family—Vera and Harold and my mom and Aunt Jenn at the park, on the sofa downstairs in the sitting room, playing in the yard. Everything sparked with a light that just wasn’t present in my earliest memories of my grandmother.

She was a different person.

I wish I could’ve known who she was before.

I know this house used to belong to my grandfather’s family, before he married Vera, and I know they inherited it when his parents died. Though Vera never talked about that time with me, I know they were happy from the photographs. I don’t think you can fake that sort of thing. When my mom talked about her parents, it was always fondly. She had a happy childhood, and as I smile down at the face of the toddler she once was, I’m so grateful for that.

I’m grateful she never had to live with the same woman who raised me.

After Harold died, Vera married another man. I don’t know if I ever knew his name until I read the obituary. It was after my mom moved out of the house, and it doesn’t seem like she ever knew him very well. I get the feeling it was some sort of quickie-Vegas wedding that was quickly annulled so he didn’t get his hands on the fortune Harold left behind for Vera, but that’s purely the story I’ve formed in my mind.

“You okay?”

I look over at Cole’s legs, then up toward his face. He’s holding two stemless wine glasses with a fizzy, slightly green-tinted liquid in them.

“Just looking at pictures.” In the one on top, Vera is sitting on the bench of a speedboat, a sun hat tied to her head with her daughters on either side of her. The smile on her face is so unrecognizable, it’s as if I’m staring at a stranger.

“I thought you could use a drink.” He sits down next to me, handing one of the glasses over. “Do you mind the company?”

I sniff the drink, and he laughs.

“It’s not poisoned, don’t worry. I’ll trade you, if you want.”

I hold it out. “Actually, yeah.”

He rolls his eyes playfully but takes it in stride and switches our glasses.

I take a sip. Vodka soda with extra lime juice. One of my favorites, though he couldn’t possibly know that, and I’m pretty sure it was Edna’s favorite, too.

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