I’d gone to the lawyer’s that day confused. My mother had insisted that all her assets be divided while she was alive. She’d signed the house over to me (I’d sold it promptly upon her death, splitting the proceeds with my younger sister, June). She’d gifted her savings, jewelry, and antiques to me and my sister and my nieces—more efficient than waiting for lawyers to do it, and it meant she was present for the proclamations of gratitude that came with it.

I’d thought all her affairs had been wrapped up nice and tidy while she was alive. How very naïve of me. I should have known that my mother would leave something messy for me to deal with. One last reminder of what I’d spent my life trying to forget.

The lawyer casually passed the envelope across his desk to me, as though it were light as a feather. “The only asset willed from your mother’s estate,” he explained.

I kept my hands in my lap. “What is it?”

He pushed the document half an inch closer to me, as though he didn’t want it either. “Just a deed of some kind. Property your family has owned for years. An island, I believe it said. Somewhere in Vermont?”

“You mean Avril Island? On Lake Champlain?” I shook my head. “That can’t be right. My mother sold that place years ago.”

The lawyer gave the envelope one last push toward me. “Yes, that’s the place.”

Avril Island. The words boomed around the room, bouncing off the heavy wood paneling and crashing back against my skull, making my head throb. I took the envelope from the desk and placed it on my lap. I didn’t need to look inside.

My father had bought Avril Island for my mother as a wedding present. Her very own island, complete with a five-bedroom cottage and acres of land. Where we spent every single summer until the summer I was fifteen years old. That year we left in a hurry, never went back, and a couple of years later my mother told me and June that she’d sold it.

Staring down at the envelope, I could feel the lawyer’s watery blue eyes on me, see the arch of his white hairy eyebrows out of my peripheral vision as he waited for my response.

“I’m just a little bit confused,” I managed to get out.

He nodded sympathetically. “If only the dead could talk, I always say. Would make my job easier.” He chuckled to himself, unaware that he’d just handed me a grenade that could blow up my life.