Lisa nodded. “It’s a conditional will. You can’t force someone to do something … he can’t force you to restore that mural, for example … but he can tie your doing so to his bequest. And he’s tied you and me together, for some bizarre reason known only to him, and he’s not around to explain it. I can’t open the gallery until you finish the mural and if I don’t open the gallery by August fifth, I lose the thing that’s most precious to me.”

“Wow,” I said. “That sounds … extreme. Why didn’t he at least give you more time?”

“I told you he was manipulative,” Lisa said. “I suppose he figured the more time he gave me, the more I’d dawdle. And don’t get me wrong. He’s not leaving me destitute. He left me cash—I won’t starve—but it’s the house I want.” She gave a sorrowful shake of her head. “He had faith that I’d move heaven and earth to keep it.”

“Still, it’s only a house, Lisa,” I said. “I mean, I get that it’s beautiful and everything, but if he left you some money, too, couldn’t you just buy another? You’re only one person. You don’t need this much space.”

“You don’t get it,” she snapped, the prickly, dry-eyed woman I’d come to know suddenly back. “Don’t you have strong feelings about your childhood home?”

I pressed my lips together, remembering the chaos of the house I grew up in. The shouting and fighting between my parents, while I hid out in my room. The haphazard meals, bags of cheap burgers or fried chicken tossed on the kitchen table for dinner most nights. Staying home alone and scared most of the night when I was as young as five or six because they were out drinking. Spending as much time as I could at my friends’ houses, afraid to go home to my unpredictable parents. I’d felt safer and more cared about in my friends’ homes than I had in the house where my parents lived.

I thought of the height chart in Lisa’s pantry, the handprints on the front walk, and my heart contracted with envy.

“I never really felt attached to the house I grew up in,” I said, not wanting to get into all of my crazy history with her.