“She’s coming after the house,” Mama says.

“Who? What house?” I say.

“The split level Cape Cod in Martha’s Vineyard, ya dolt. Whaddaya think? This one.” She pours herself another dose of gin. “Saint Sarah. Fallen on hard times, I guess. She needs the money.”

Unbeknownst to me until just now, Mama never actually owned the scruffy little trailer and the swath of land that she and I have called home since I was four days old. All this time, we’ve lived here by the grand good graces of my father’s people, the Spensers, who were known to buy up any scrap of land they could get their hands on, just in case. In case of what, God only knows. In this case, it was to keep Effie Fortune and an illegitimate grandchild out of their neatly combed hair.

“Not like they ever gave us a goddamn thing otherwise,” Mama says, bitterly tossing out the familiar refrain. “This was literally the least they could do for their only grandchild.”

But with Rosalind dead and Spenser Mining Inc. losing money hand over fist with some overseas mineral extraction company, Sarah can’t afford to finish renovating the monstrous old family home and spend the rest of her winters at the condo in Florida and get her cheeks and chin pumped full of baby seal eyelash stem-cell extract, or whatever it is that makes her face look like plastic. The property went on the market on Christmas Day. We can stay until it sells. But as soon as the deed is done, we’re out on our arses.

“What did I always say about them people? Never trusted them as far as I could throw them,” Mama says. “Selling for a song, too. Thirty grand for the trailer and the land. Some goddamn American tourist will be all over that like ugly on a codfish.”

“Hey, maybe not. Maybe it’ll —”

“Oh smarten up, Crow,” Mama groans. “It’s land. They ain’t making any more. Somebody’ll take ’er if she’s up for grabs. Wouldn’t be surprised if one of their sleazy business buddies already has designs on it.”

The mere thought of some rich old American duffer buying this place to build a summer cottage that puts every house on the road to shame, or it getting snapped up by some finger-tenting tree-chopper keen to gut the land for a buck makes me intensely nauseous. Then again, everything makes me intensely nauseous these days.

Mama pours herself another shot of gin and tips it down her throat before heading over to the record player to rifle through her stack of moods and memories. “But see Sarah Spenser, eh?” Mama says, eyes narrowing, “That old tit-headed cow won’t get rid of us that easy. Over my dead body.”

Mine too, Mama. Mine too.

Once upon a time, New Year’s Eve was magical. A time to reflect on the past while setting intentions and imagining the potential of the coming year. A time brimming with hope, and hors d’oeuvres, and opportunities for drunk sex in random rooms of other people’s houses. Dave proposed to me on New Year’s Eve two years ago. After I said yes, we did it in the Martha Stewart craft room at Ami’s house. I left ass-cheek prints on the marble countertop of her glitter application table. Funny how all the lofty plans and aspirations that were born on the night Dave placed that ginormous rock on my finger and asked me to be his wife went straight down the toilet exactly one year later. That’s when I stumbled into the bathroom at the New Year’s Eve party hosted by Dave’s nasty old cougar of a boss, and found her giving him a New Year’s Eve blow job.