The Heiress by Rachel Hawkins
CHAPTER ONE
Jules
There should be some kind of warning when your life is about to change forever.
I don’t need a siren or bloodred skies or anything, but I still think there should be just the littlest bit of … I don’t know, a frisson. A feeling under your skin and inside your bones when something fundamental shifts, when the ground underneath your feet grows suddenly unstable.
And you should definitely not be wearing a fucking bonnet when it happens.
But that’s exactly what I’m wearing the September evening I come home and Camden drops the bomb that’s the beginning and the ending of everything.
Not just a bonnet, I should add, but also a black dress and white apron that are supposed to say “pioneer woman,” but instead just make me look Amish, plus a pair of stiff leather boots that rub my ankles raw and pinch my toes. It’s all part of my costume at the living history museum where I work in Golden, Colorado.
You know the place.
I mean, even if you don’t specifically know Homestead Park, you know the kind of place. Beautifully constructed re-creations of old farmhouses, barns, general stores. Docile farm animals in pastures, the mountains rising around us, with only the whooshing of cars on the nearby highway and the black rectangles of cell phones lifted to capture anything even vaguely Instagrammable as signs that you haven’t somehow time-traveled to the nineteenth century.
Manifest Destiny Disneyland.
That’s where I work Tuesday through Saturday, playing the part of “Mrs. Hiram Burch,” a farmer’s wife who tells school groups and tourists about the hardships on the Western Frontier, how people lived Back Then, all of that.
All in all, it’s not the worst job, and it’s certainly one of the few that actually lets me use the few semesters of theater classes I took nearly a decade ago, but it isn’t without its drawbacks.
“Do you have any idea,” I call to my husband as I enter the front door of our little house, a house we’ll leave in just a few days and never see again, “how hard it is to talk about churning butter without saying the words ‘cream’ or ‘pole’？”
There’s no response, but I know he’s here. I saw his car in the driveway, and this house is so small it would be impossible for him not to hear me. “Three entire junior highs at the park today. Like, nine thousand prepubescent boys, and there I am, trying to figure out how to do my job as an ‘interpreter of the past’ without getting sexually harassed. Real banner day for Mrs. Burch!”
Still no answer.
Frowning, I hang up my keys on the little hook by the door and move farther down the hallway.
There’s nowhere to hide in this house. It’s more or less a box. Front door opens onto long hallway. Directly to the left? Living room. Across from that? A small closet where we’ve managed to store most of our winter gear. Just past the closet is the kitchen, and if you keep going down the hall, you’ll find a tiny bathroom and, finally, our bedroom.
I’m beginning to wonder if Cam is sick and laid up in bed, but as I pass the kitchen, I spot him sitting at the small wooden table we picked up from a flea market last year.
His back is to the door, but even without seeing his face, I know something has happened. Cam never hangs out in the kitchen, and never like this, sitting stiff in his seat, his elbows on the table, his hands clenched in front of him.
That’s when I realize it’s Wednesday, the day Camden usually tutors at the junior college until seven. It’s only just past five thirty now, and there’s real worry in my voice when I lay my hand on his shoulder and say, “Cam?”
Camden turns, his hand automatically coming up to cover mine, and while there’s still a trio of wrinkles over the bridge of his nose, and the knuckles on the hand still on the table are white, he smiles. It’s quick and distracted, but it’s something.
His gaze moves over me.
“If I’d known Goody Proctor was haunting this house, I would’ve tried to rent something else,” he says, and I tweak his earlobe.
“I didn’t feel like changing at the park,” I reply, moving past him to the refrigerator where I take a can of Diet Coke. “And I assumed I would be free from mockery in my own home. I take enough shit from the eighth graders, you know.”
Another half-assed smile, then his eyes drift to his phone. It’s nearly on the other side of the table, far enough away that he’d have to get out of his seat and really reach to retrieve it.
I sit across from him, the phone just inches from my soda when I set it down, and I study the man I married in a California courtroom nearly a decade ago.