Page 3 of The Manor of Dreams

“What, your mother isn’t allowed to decide what to do with her own house?” The girl finally spoke, tipping her chin up. Her short hair framed insolent narrowed eyes.

Lucille’s cheeks suffused with color. Elaine said in a low voice,“Nora. Let me handle this.” She spread out her palms. “I don’t know why I was added to the will—”

“Don’t you?” Rennie’s sister spoke quietly, in that cool, lethal tone. She turned to the lawyer, Reid Lyman, who peered at them through his glasses with a slightly bewildered expression. He looked familiar, though Rennie couldn’t place him. “Was the will changed recently?”

Reid shifted. “It was, actually.”

“When?”

“A few… well, two weeks ago. Late July.”

Lucille then turned to Elaine. “Well. The will gets conveniently changed shortly before our mother’s death so that you get the estate. Isn’t that interesting?”

“What are you implying?”

Lucille tilted her head.

Elaine stood too, her petite frame belied by her flashing eyes. “Believe me. I knew nothing about this will before today. I’m here because I wasaskedto come. By your mother.”

Lucille’s gaze shifted to Rennie. She couldn’t play hardball like Lucille, but she could plead their case. She cleared her throat. “Come on. This isn’t—fair to us.”

It sounded feeble even as she said it. Her older sister pursed her lips slightly, in a way that indicated her disappointment.

“Fair,” Elaine said slowly. “The daughters of Hollywood elite want to talk about what’s fair.”

The shimmering in the corner was back.It wasn’t dust.Rennie’s heart tapped out a wild beat. A prickling sensation came over her. She rocked onto the edge of her seat. Her niece, Madeline, glanced at her, and Rennie tried desperately to stay calm.

“Our ma came to this country as an immigrant,” Lucille said. “She, more than anyone,workedfor this—”

“And you expected to step right into it,” Elaine said. “Maybe this was her way of telling you that you didn’t deserve this. ThegreatVivian Yin has passed on, and all you say in her memory is that the money she left you is nothing. All you care about is who inherits her home.” She pursed her lips in disgust. “Look at the state of this place. Did you evencare for her in her last years? Or did you just abandon her in this house and leave her to die?”

Rennie curled into herself, feeling sick.

“Don’t you dare speak about our family like that,” Lucille spat. “You don’t know us. You never did.”

In that split second a figure appeared behind Elaine. Rennie was immediately flooded with a childlike burst of relief as she looked upon her mother.She’s back; she’s here to explain things—

And then she remembered that they were all here because Ma was very dead.

Her mother grabbed the back of Elaine’s chair and looked straight at Rennie. She was wearing the same blue blouse as she had been the last time Rennie saw her. Her inky eyes bulged. Ma opened her mouth wide, as if to say something, and dirt spilled out.

Rennie lurched up, pointing, just as her mother disappeared. Everyone stared at her in alarm. She bolted from the room, heaving the contents of her stomach into her purse.

She settled on the cold granite floor of the empty foyer against the banister of the stairway and stared high up, where the chandelier glittered. The ridged ceiling plaster was cracking. Strange, discolored stains dripped down the wall now, like spindly, elongated fingers. She didn’t want to go back into the library and face the other family. Or hers. Because what Elaine had said was exactly what her ma had told her the last time Rennie visited her.

A visit Rennie wouldn’t ever tell anyone about.

She hadn’t told Lucille what their mother had looked like then. How paper-thin her skin seemed, how pale she was in the waning light. How it seemed a miracle that Ma was sitting up at the kitchen table, as if she was animated only by her furious gaze.

How pathetic Rennie was, coming to ask her for money.

“?,” her ma had said, looking off to the side.Look.“She’s back.”

Rennie didn’t know what to say then.Who’s back?Her mother refused to even look at her. But she simply nodded. If she wasn’t desperate, she would never have come in the first place. She had returned in hopes that her mother would do what she had always done: bailRennie out. After a nasty, expensive divorce with a manipulative and powerful art collector, and a career dead end with ruinous amounts of credit card debt, she thought that her situation was dire enough that Ma might be sympathetic.

“The thing about you, my daughter”—she spat the last word out—“is that you became soft. You never grew up to be great.” Her breath rattled in her chest. She coughed, and spittle dripped from her lips. “You’re waiting around, aren’t you?” Ma accused. “I know what you’re thinking. Who gets the money, who gets the house? I built this up. I endured more than you can imagine. And now you and your sister are just circling me. Like vultures.”

“No,” Rennie whispered. “No,no,that’s not—”

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