Izzy straightened in her chair and fixed Nora with a look that could freeze hellfire. “Could we please take a moment to honor the woman who has passed.”

“You’re right. You’re right,” Nora said, waving a hand in the air then resting it on her forehead. “Constance was a,” she struggled to find the right words, “wonderful woman.”

“Don’t hurt yourself there, Nora,” Beatty said, bringing his own mug to his lips. “Everybody in town knew that Constance was difficult. I can attest to that personally.”

Nora collapsed against her chair. “Thank you. Finally, someone other than me has said it.”

“Of course, everyone does say the same thing about you.”

Nora shot back up. “They do not!”

Nobody answered.

“Everybody loves me,” she said, easing back uncertainly.

“Regardless, Constance was who she was. There’s no denying that.” Beatty let out a long breath. “She didn’t have the easiest of lives though.”

“She didn’t?” Izzy asked, placing the cookie she had taken, untasted, back on her napkin. “I mean, I don’t know much about her other than her being the owner of Graves House. Such a lovely old home. It’s a shame it has fallen into disrepair.”

Nora scoffed. “Disrepair? It looks like a haunted house from a children’s book. The entire family should be embarrassed.”

I had heard Nora express these particular sentiments before.

Evenfall was not just a small town. It was also an old one. During the later years of the industrial revolution the mainly pastoral village had gone through a boom, doing quite well with textiles and later on with financing the railroad expansion. A renowned architect, Frank Hobson Henry, had designed a number of homes for the town’s founding families. Ivywood Hollow was one of them, as was Graves House. It was said the architect had given particular care to Ivywood Hollow because he was in love with my widowed great-great-grandmother, but I got this from Nora, and she tended to believe everyone was prone to falling in love with women from the Warren family. But regardless of whether Frank Hobson Henry had loved my great-great-grandmother or not, his love for Ivywood Hollow was plain. Every detail of the Queen Anne three-story tower house showed care and affection. We had strived to keep up that standard. The same could not be said of Graves House.

“Aside from that, though, I never really knew the Graves family,” Izzy said, looking to her sister. “Nora?”

For the briefest moment, I thought I saw something in my aunt’s expression, but she said, “No. I know nothing of the family.”

Beatty tapped his pen against his notepad. “Constance was a bit older than me, but I went to school with one of her brothers. Their father wasn’t the nicest of men, not after his wife died giving birth to their youngest, Mary. After that, his kids could never do anything right. He pitted all four of them against each other right up until the day he died. Made sure they’d never get along. The boys even competed for the same girl back in high school. Ugly business that. Constance took care of her father in his final years. Bore the brunt of his behavior, from what I’ve heard.”