Except for the fucking front door.

Sucking deep breaths in through my nose and out through my mouth, I dragged myself back to the present. Open the door. It’s okay. It’s probably just Mormons or something.

My stomach dropped when I saw it wasn’t Mormons. I definitely would have preferred that to the sight of my father’s lawyer and an unknown woman.

“Miss Stone. It’s good to see you.” Mr. Lief, my dad’s lawyer, didn’t say I looked well, because I really didn’t. I looked tired, exhausted both physically and emotionally.

“It’s nice to see you too, Mr. Lief. I’m surprised, though?”

We’d done the reading of my parents’ wills. They’d left me everything, but as their only child, it was pretty standard. I’d sold my father’s partnership in his chiropractic firm back to his business partners. My mom had been a customer service clerk at the DMV. They didn’t have much except this house and their 401(k)s, so the whole process had been reasonably simple, especially as we didn’t have any close extended family. All my grandparents were gone, as well as my Uncle Jerry. My dad had been an only child.

“Not as surprised as I am. May I introduce Mrs. Janette Fischer? She’s from Child Protective Services.”

Well, now I was super confused.

Mrs. Fischer leaned forward and shook my hand. “Nice to meet you, Miss Stone.”

Smiling tightly, I returned the gesture. “Please, call me Nova.”

She nodded, the shadow of a smile passing over her face. “May we come in?”

I frowned but nodded, standing to the side as they stepped through the doorway. I was kind of glad I’d just been floating through life like a ghost, because the house was still clean from the last time Chloe had come over and baked me cookies, hovering like a mother hen as she tidied my house for me.

Janette Fischer looked around my childhood home, still filled with my mother’s knick-knacks and family pictures, as if my parents were just going to walk back in the door again. It screamed undealt with grief, but screw it.

I’d be ready when I was ready.

“I’m not sure what this visit is for, but I promise you, despite the baby face, I’m actually twenty-four,” I joked weakly.

Mr. Lief gives me a tight smile. “Sorry for the intrusion, but after Mrs. Fischer reached out, I thought it would be best if I sat in on this meeting. A familiar face, and all that.”

Mr. Lief had been my father’s golfing buddy since I was ten. If he wasn’t here in an official lawyer capacity…

“I’ll get straight to the point, Miss Stone.”

“Nova,” I corrected weakly, because I could already feel my heart beginning to pound too hard in my chest.