She mentioned in the car that her assistant, Suzanne, was supposed to pick me up but there was a last-minute change in plans. I can’t tell whether Maura is annoyed by the inconvenience. It’s late, eleven o’clock, because Seaview is on the ass end of nowhere. Northern California: where, with layovers, it can take you four hours to fly from one regional airport to another and then you still have to drive two hours to your destination. But her expression remained in a pleasant-grandma mask. A brave face for the orphaned grandchild. Warm hugs and sad smiles.

“You’ll want to get to bed, since you have school in the morning. I’ll take you to get registered. Eight o’clock sharpish. They’re expecting you.”

It’s early October, so school has already started. I’ll be the strange new kid with the dead mom, moving in with the town’s most famous resident, and six weeks of work to catch up on, because death does not time itself conveniently to school schedules. Not to mention the lifetime of friendships I’ll never edge in on. Kids in towns like these are born here, die here. Relationships go from womb to tomb. My mom hated it. People were always coming and going when we lived in LA. Easy to be anonymous.

I lug my suitcase behind me, the tired wheels scuffing against honeyed hardwood until I reach the foot of the grand staircase. I brace myself to heft my bag—my entire life somehow reduced to a single suitcase—all the way up.

“I think that will fit in the dumbwaiter,” Maura says, backlit by the warm hallway light, haloed like an angel. Silver hair, peppered with the barest wisps of deep brown, cut short, ear-length, and flipping out at the edges. Big brown eyes with lids smudged smoky gray. Brows overplucked, the vestiges of a vintage trend. An old woman reflecting the heyday of her youth.

I search for my mother’s face in hers. Try to imagine Mom if she’d been allowed to reach old age. Pointed chin, yes. Maybe the cheekbones. The turn of her mouth. Not the eyes, though. Mom’s were deeper set. She’d have killed to pull off that eye shadow, or a delicate wing, like I can.

“You got that gorgeous wavy hair from me. You’re welcome. But those eyes…must be your father’s,” Maura says, apparently taking me in as well. “You’re lucky. Such a pretty color.”

Green, like the phantom man my mother wouldn’t talk about. It was one of the few sore points between us. My father is a ghost. My mother, now ashes. My grandmother, a stranger. But she’s agreed to take me in, and she’s sweet enough. And very rich. This old mansion is nine times the size of the apartment Mom and I rented in Pasadena.