The envelope arrived on a Tuesday, slid through the mail slot of Cordelia Pruitt's weather-beaten farmhouse sometime between the rooster's first crow and the kettle's whistle. She found it on the braided rug just inside the door, its cream paper soiled with road dust from the carrier's truck, its wax seal a deep burgundy she did not recognize. The house smelled of last night's pork roast and the apple wood stacked by the stove. Sunlight cut through the kitchen curtains in pale gold slats, falling across the envelope as though trying to read it alongside her.
Cordelia set her teacup down on the counter, the china giving a small click against the laminate. She wiped her fingers on her flannel sleeve, then picked up the envelope and turned it over. No return address. Just her name and the route number in a spidery hand she had not seen since childhood birthday cards.
She cracked the seal with her thumbnail and slid out a single sheet of heavy stationery. The letterhead read HARGROVE, HARGROVE, AND WHITTLE, ATTORNEYS AT LAW, in embossed block letters. Her eyes skipped past the formal salutations, past the condolences she did not need from a firm she had never contacted, and landed on a phrase that stopped her breath.
You are hereby named the sole beneficiary.
She read it twice. Three times. The ink did not change.
Beatrice Bellweather, a name Cordelia had not spoken aloud in the better part of fifteen years, had left her everything. The will listed assets in careful, legal language that seemed almost embarrassed by its own contents: the Honeybell Hollow Inn, with its nineteen rooms and its reputation for creaking pipes and clotted cream scones; the contents of every drawer and cupboard therein; one automobile of unspecified vintage and condition; one orange tabby cat named Lord Featherbottom, described in the document as, and Cordelia squinted at the words, of aristocratic bearing and unapologetic appetites; and a sealed letter addressed to her, to be delivered by hand at the reading of the will.
She set the page down on the counter and pressed both palms flat against the surface, as though the kitchen might shift beneath her. The kettle began to whistle, thin and shrill, and she ignored it.
Outside, the apple orchard her grandmother had planted forty years ago stretched in crooked rows down the slope, half the trees gone to fire blight, the rest stubborn and gnarled. Cordelia had come back to Pippin Hollow three winters ago to keep those trees alive after the accident took her parents. She had not come back to inherit anything. Least of all from Beatrice.
The kettle screamed on. She crossed the kitchen, lifted it off the burner, and poured the boiling water over her forgotten tea leaves. The steam curled up and stung her eyes, or she told herself it did.
She picked up the letter again and read the final paragraph.
The reading of the will will take place at Honeybell Hollow Inn on the seventh day of October at ten o'clock in the morning. Attendance is, Cordelia noted the lawyer's careful choice of word, strongly encouraged.
She folded the letter along its original creases, slid it back into the envelope, and set it by the door where the morning light would not fade the ink. Then she picked up her tea, carried it to the porch, and sat down in the wicker chair that had been her grandmother's.
The valley below her was still half in mist. Somewhere down by the creek, a woodpecker was hammering at a dead limb, the sound carrying up through the cool air in bright, rhythmic bursts. The smell of turned earth drifted from her neighbor's field, where old Mr. Garvey had been plowing since dawn.
Cordelia sipped her tea. It was too strong. She drank it anyway.
She had met Beatrice Bellweather exactly twice in her life, and both times the woman had looked through her as though she were a pane of glass. The first had been at a church social when Cordelia was nine, all pigtails and missing front teeth, pressed into a stiff dress her mother had made. Beatrice had been standing by the punch bowl in pearls and a hat the size of a serving platter, holding court with the county wives. When Cordelia's mother introduced her, Beatrice had smiled the way people smile at furniture and said, How nice, and turned back to her conversation.
The second time had been worse. Cordelia was twenty-three, home from college for a weekend, and had run into Beatrice at the post office. The older woman had looked her up and down, sniffed, and said, You have your grandmother's jaw. Then she had swept out the door with her chin held so high Cordelia had wondered how she navigated doorframes.
And now this woman had left her everything.
Cordelia finished her tea, set the cup on the wide arm of the wicker chair, and pulled her phone from the pocket of her overalls. She had two voicemails from the florist shop she used to run in the city, one from her cousin in Charleston asking about pie recipes, and a text from Deputy Penny Pickett, who patrolled the unincorporated roads out past her property and who had, in Cordelia's considered opinion, a troubling habit of texting about nothing at all.
The deputy would know about the will by dinner. Everyone in Pippin Hollow would know by sundown. In a town this size, a sealed envelope from a lawyer's office was a louder announcement than the church bell.
She did not call anyone. She sat a while longer, watching the mist burn off the valley, and thought about the sealed letter waiting for her at Honeybell Hollow Inn. The will had said it was to be delivered by hand. The will had also said it was, and Cordelia could almost hear the lawyer choosing his words, a matter of some urgency.
The sun cleared the tree line and struck the porch in a sudden wash of warmth. Cordelia stood, picked up her cup, and went inside to find her good boots.
By the time she had laced them and pulled on a flannel shirt the color of October, the letter had burned a hole in her pocket. She locked the farmhouse door, pocketed the key, and walked down the dirt road toward the hollow where the inn sat on its low rise among the old beeches, waiting, as it had waited for over a hundred years, for someone to tell it what to do.
She had not gone halfway when the black town car came up behind her, moving slow, its tires hissing on the damp gravel. Cordelia stepped to the side and waved it past, the way you wave past anyone on a country road.
The car did not pass. It rolled to a stop beside her, and the rear window purred down with the soft, expensive sound of good insulation. A hand in a kid glove gestured her closer.
In the dim, leather-scented interior, Lord Featherbottom himself regarded her over the rims of a pair of reading spectacles.
Good morning, Miss Pruitt, he said. I have been attempting to reach you by telephone for the better part of an hour. Your answering machine is, if I may say so, an instrument of singular cruelty.
Cordelia blinked. Lord Featherbottom was tall, even seated, and wore a three-piece suit the color of dried chestnuts. His hair was silver at the temples, swept back in a way that suggested both effort and disdain. He had the kind of face that had been handsome once and had decided, somewhere around fifty, to become distinguished instead. He smelled faintly of pipe tobacco and, beneath it, of something green and faintly rotting, the way a greenhouse smells at the end of a long day.
She had not seen him in five years, not since her parents' funeral, where he had arrived unannounced and uninvited, swept her into a brief and bone-crushing embrace, and vanished before the reception. He had known her grandmother. He had known Beatrice. He had known everyone, it sometimes seemed, who had ever had any weight in Pippin Hollow.
Lord Featherbottom, she said. You're here early for the show.
The orchid exhibition does not open until Thursday, he said. I am, in fact, here on a matter of considerably greater delicacy. He lifted the spectacles from his nose, folded them with a precise motion, and slid them into his breast pocket. He looked, for the first time since Cordelia had known him, uncertain. May I offer you a ride, Miss Pruitt? I find I have something to discuss with you that I would prefer not to discuss on a public road.
Cordelia looked down the valley. The mist had cleared enough to show the rooftops of the village, and beyond them, just visible through the bare beeches, the pale clapboards of the inn.
She looked back at Lord Featherbottom. He lifted a gloved hand and gestured, almost imperceptibly, at the open door of the town car.
She got in.
The interior smelled of old leather and lavender sachets. The driver, a thick-necked man with a shaved head and the build of someone who could carry a refrigerator down a flight of stairs without breaking a sweat, glanced at her in the rearview mirror, said nothing, and put the car in gear. They pulled away from the shoulder with the faintest whisper of tires on gravel.
Cordelia waited.
Lord Featherbottom waited longer.
Finally, he cleared his throat.
I expect you have heard the news, he said.
I have heard there is news, Cordelia said. I have not heard what it is.
He regarded her with the kind of attention most people reserve for misbehaving children and rare orchids. Beatrice, he said, and paused, as though the name itself required a moment of adjustment. Beatrice has departed this mortal coil. Last Wednesday evening, in the upstairs parlor of the inn, of what the constabulary are at this moment calling natural causes, though I will tell you, Miss Pruitt, between ourselves, that constabulary is a generous word for what passes for law enforcement in this particular county.
Cordelia did not move. The town car swayed gently around a bend in the road, and a stand of oaks slid past the window in a wash of brown and gold.
And the will, she said.
Yes, Lord Featherbottom said. The will.
The car went on. The driver, whose name, Cordelia recalled, was Fierce Fabien, although she had never figured out whether Fierce was a given name or an acquired one, kept his eyes on the road with the dedication of a man who had been paid not to look anywhere else.
Lord Featherbottom opened a leather portfolio on the seat beside him and drew out a single sheet of cream paper, folded twice. He held it for a moment, considering, then extended it toward her.
I have, he said, taken the liberty of obtaining an advance copy. Not, I assure you, through any improper channels. The good attorneys at Hargrove and Hargrove are friends of mine. They sent this over by special courier this morning, with the suggestion that I deliver it to you in person before the formal reading.
Cordelia took the paper. It was the same legal language she had already read, but with a single additional line, typed at the bottom in a different font, and signed in a hand she did not recognize.
The line read: To be delivered to the beneficiary at the reading, with the sealed correspondence.
She read it twice. The ink did not change.
There is a letter, she said.
There is a letter, Lord Featherbottom agreed.
From Beatrice.
From Beatrice.
The town car crested the low rise, and through the windshield, Honeybell Hollow Inn came into view. It sat among the beeches like a woman holding her breath, its paint a shade of pale yellow that had once been called cream and was now closer to the color of old piano keys. Three stories, a wide veranda, and a widow's walk that had not seen a soul in forty years. The sign out front, swinging in the breeze on a single stubborn hinge, still read HONEYBELL HOLLOW INN in faded gilt letters.
Cordelia looked at the inn. The inn, she felt, looked back.
She folded the advance copy of the will, slid it back into the portfolio, and handed it to Lord Featherbottom. She did not thank him. She was not, at that particular moment, in the mood.
The car rolled to a stop at the base of the front walk. Fabien cut the engine, and the silence that settled over them was the kind that has texture.
Lord Featherbottom cleared his throat again.
There is one more thing, he said, and for the first time in Cordelia's experience of him, his voice lost its practiced smoothness. He sounded, suddenly, like a man who had walked into a room and forgotten why. There is the matter of the cat.
Cordelia turned her head.
The cat, she said.
Lord Featherbottom gestured, with a kind of weary dignity, toward the back seat of the town car. Cordelia had not, until that moment, paid any particular attention to the back seat. She had assumed it was empty, as back seats in town cars are assumed to be empty.
It was not empty.
On the wide leather bench sat an orange tabby of considerable girth, who regarded her with the kind of unblinking stare most people reserve for either judges or tax collectors. He wore, around his neck, a silk bow tie the color of bruised raspberries. His whiskers were the longest Cordelia had ever seen on a domestic animal. His expression suggested that he had been expecting her, and that she had kept him waiting.
His name, Lord Featherbottom said, with the careful emphasis of a man introducing royalty, is Lord Featherbottom. He is, I should warn you, the other beneficiary.
The cat yawned. The yawn was, in its way, a speech.
Cordelia looked at the cat. The cat looked at Cordelia. The cat looked away first.
Lord Featherbottom produced a small enameled carrier from under the seat and set it on the leather between them. Lord Featherbottom, the man, gestured toward it with a gloved hand.
I would be most grateful, he said, if you would see to his comfort. He is, I am told, finicky about his supper.
Cordelia picked up the carrier. It was heavier than she expected. From inside it came a low, sustained sound that was not quite a purr and not quite a complaint, but somewhere in between, like a cello being tuned.
She stepped out of the car. The morning air smelled of wet leaves and woodsmoke from somewhere down the valley. Behind her, Lord Featherbottom remained seated, one gloved hand resting on the portfolio, watching her through the open door with an expression she could not, for the life of her, read.
Miss Pruitt, he said.
She turned.
Beatrice, he said, and stopped. He started again. Beatrice was, in her time, a difficult woman. But she was not, in the end, a foolish one. Whatever she has left you, she has left you for a reason. I would suggest, most earnestly, that you find out what it is.
Cordelia nodded. The carrier shifted. From inside it, the cello sound resumed.
She turned and walked up the flagstone path toward the inn. Behind her, the town car door purred shut. The engine turned over. The tires whispered on the gravel, then were gone.
Cordelia stood on the front walk with an orange cat in an enameled carrier, a sealed letter waiting for her inside, and a will she had not asked for, and she thought, with the kind of clarity that only comes when one is out of options, that her grandmother would have had something to say about all of this.
She rang the bell.
The inn door opened before her finger left the bell. A woman stood in the threshold, tall and angular, her silver hair pinned in a low chignon that looked architectural rather than comfortable. Wire-rimmed spectacles sat low on a nose that had been broken at least once and healed with character. She wore a wool cardigan the color of dried thyme, and she held a leather folio against her chest like a breastplate.
Miss Pruitt, she said. Her voice was dry as old paper. I am Erasmus Quill. I have been expecting you.
She stepped aside. The foyer beyond her smelled of lemon oil and old books and something floral that had been cut and dried decades ago. A grandfather clock ticked in the corner, its pendulum catching the weak morning light. The floor was worn oak, pale where generations of feet had scoured it smooth.
Erasmus Quill did not offer her hand. Instead she tilted her head toward the parlor to the left, where the curtains had been drawn back to let in what gray light the day would permit. Cordelia followed, carrier in hand, and the cat inside it had gone silent, as if it understood the gravity of the moment.
In the parlor, a wingback chair had been turned to face the door. Beside it stood a small table bearing a water glass, a box of tissues, and a single yellow tulip in a bud vase, so fresh the stem still wept. Two more chairs sat opposite, upholstered in faded rose brocade. On the mantel, a clock identical to the one in the foyer kept its own time, and between them, on the wall, hung a framed cross-stitch sampler that read HOME IS NOT A PLACE BUT A PRESENCE.
Erasmus Quill gestured toward the wingback.
Please, she said. Sit. The reading of the will should not be conducted standing. Beatrice would have found it vulgar.
Cordelia sat. The cat carrier she placed on the floor beside her. From inside it, a small sound, almost a sigh.
The solicitor took the opposite chair, opened the folio on her lap, and withdrew a single envelope, cream-colored, unsealed, bearing Cordelia's name in handwriting she had not seen in eleven years. She set it on the table between them.
Your grandmother's wishes, Erasmus Quill said, were specific. I am to read the entirety of her last testament aloud, in the presence of the primary beneficiary, before any other parties are informed. The other parties being her son and his wife, the mayor.
Cordelia nodded. Her mouth had gone dry. The tulip on the table nodded too, though there was no breeze.
Erasmus Quill withdrew a second document from the folio. Several pages, typed in a font that looked institutional. She cleared her throat, adjusted her spectacles, and began.
I, Beatrice Pruitt, being of sound mind, if not entirely sound body, do hereby set forth my final wishes regarding the disposition of my estate, real and personal, tangible and intangible.
The room smelled of lemon oil and the dust of old upholstery. The clock ticked. Cordelia listened, and the cat listened, and somewhere in the walls of the inn the bones of the building settled with a sound like an old woman clearing her throat.
The will was, by the standards of wills Cordelia had heard about, peculiar. The orchard, including all thirty-two acres, the packing she'd, the cider house, and the family dwelling, was to pass to Cordelia Pruitt, to do with as she saw fit, with the singular exception that no portion of the land was to be sold, leased, or transferred to any development interest, corporate or municipal, for a period of not less than twenty-five years from the date of this document. The financial accounts, modest but not negligible, were also to pass to Cordelia. The household contents, the antique furniture, the porcelain, the silver, the library, were likewise to pass to Cordelia, with one small exception.
There was a ring, Erasmus Quill said, pausing to wet her finger and turn the page, a ring belonging to Beatrice's late mother, which is to be returned to the Pruitt family line, of which Cordelia is the sole surviving representative. The ring is therefore hers by right.
Cordelia nodded. Her grandmother's ring. She remembered it, a thin band of rose gold set with a single, small diamond that had always looked to her like a drop of frozen water.
There were further bequests. A sum to the Pippin Hollow Public Library, unrestricted. A sum to the Puttergill Cemetery Perpetual Care Fund. A set of orchard ladders to the Hesper County Agricultural Historical Society. A wooden ladder-back chair, of no particular value, to the Reverend Moberly, if he wished it.
Then Erasmus Quill's voice changed. It dropped a register, and she leaned forward slightly, and the spectacles slid another millimeter down her nose.
There is a codicil, she said. Added four days before her death. She paused. She was very insistent that I read it aloud, and in full, and that I impress upon you, Miss Pruitt, the seriousness of its contents.
Cordelia's hands, folded in her lap, tightened around each other. The tulip on the table leaned toward her as if listening.
Erasmus Quill turned the page. The paper was a different stock, heavier, and it made a sound like a suppressed cough as it moved.
Codicil to the Last Will and Testament of Beatrice Pruitt, the solicitor read. I, the undersigned, being of sound mind, do append the following. In the event that my granddaughter, Cordelia Pruitt, should accept the inheritance as described herein, she is to be made aware of certain facts concerning the circumstances of my death, which facts I have until now withheld from all parties, including my own physicians.
Cordelia did not breathe. The cat, in its carrier at her feet, did not breathe. The clocks did not breathe, though their pendulums swung.
I did not die, Erasmus Quill read, of heart failure, as my son was informed and as the death certificate records. The certificate is in error. I was, in the period preceding my death, the recipient of a campaign of harassment and intimidation designed to compel me to sell the orchard and the surrounding parcels of land to a development interest of which I will not speak the name here, as the matter is, I am told, under investigation. The interest was brought to my attention by my daughter-in-law, the mayor, who urged me, with increasing urgency, to consider the financial advantage of so doing. When I refused, the pressure increased. Threats were made, against my person and against my property. I reported these threats to the local sheriff, who was kind but skeptical. I then, in my own way, began to investigate.
Erasmus Quill paused. She looked at Cordelia over the top of her spectacles.
She was investigating something, Erasmus Quill said. That is what she told me, three days before she died. She came to the library. She asked me for records. Property records. Deeds going back to the original Pruitt land grant of 1823. She wanted to know who had owned what, and when, and who had sold to whom, and why. I gave her what I had. She was, she said, looking for a pattern.
Cordelia's throat was tight. She managed, what kind of pattern.
Erasmus Quill shook her head. She did not say. She said she would tell me when she had found it. She was, she said, close. Then she died.
The word fell into the room like a stone into a well.
Erasmus Quill set the page down.
There is one more provision, she said. Beatrice left you a key. It is on the mantelpiece in your grandmother's bedroom, in the orchard house. She told me to tell you that the key opens a safe deposit box at the Pippin Hollow Savings and Trust, and that inside it you will find what she could not bring herself to put in this document, because documents, she said, can be stolen. What is in the box, she said, is the proof.
Proof of what, Cordelia asked, though her voice was barely a whisper.
Erasmus Quill looked at her steadily. She did not answer. She simply folded the document, returned it to the envelope, and set the envelope on the table beside the yellow tulip.
Your grandmother was a difficult woman, Erasmus Quill said. She was also a stubborn one. I would not have agreed to read this aloud if I did not believe, in my own way, that she had cause for what she wrote. She paused. I have been the keeper of this town's records for thirty-seven years. I have seen a great many things come to light. Some of them were buried on purpose.
She stood, tucked the folio under her arm, and adjusted her cardigan.
I will leave you now, she said. I will be at the library, if you require me. The library opens at ten. I suggest you go to the orchard house. I suggest you do not delay.
She turned and walked out of the parlor. Her footsteps were soft on the worn oak, and then the foyer door opened and closed, and Cordelia was alone with a cat in a carrier, a sealed letter, and a will that smelled faintly of her grandmother's perfume, which had been, for as long as Cordelia could remember, lily of the valley.
The clocks ticked. The cat sighed. Outside, the rain had begun again, a soft, persistent tapping against the windows.
Cordelia reached down and unlatched the carrier. The cat emerged, orange and substantial, and sat on the floor and looked at her with eyes that were very old and very green.
Well, she said to it. I suppose we had better go see what she left us.
The cat blinked, once, slowly, as if in agreement.
Cordelia gathered the cat under one arm, the envelope under the other, and stepped out onto the porch. The rain had settled into a fine mist that clung to her hair and made the porch steps slick. The Hemlock Inn sat at the end of a gravel drive, three stories of faded yellow clapboard with a widow's walk and a porch swing that had not been swung in years. Her grandmother had not been the swinging type. Cordelia had often thought that the swing was the most melancholy thing in the world, an invitation no one had accepted.
She crossed the yard toward the orchard house, which stood at the crest of the rise behind the inn. The path wound through a stand of sugar maples, their leaves still half green, and Cordelia could hear the drip of water from every branch. The cat meowed once, a sound of mild complaint, and shifted its weight.
I know, Cordelia said. I am soaked too.
The orchard house had been the original Pruitt homestead, a stone-and-timber structure with a slate roof and a chimney that leaned a little to the east. The apple trees grew right up to its walls, gnarled and patient, their branches heavy with late Honeybell fruit. Cordelia had not been inside since the funeral. She had not wanted to be. There were too many ghosts in there, and not enough windows that opened.
She tried the door. It was locked. She stood for a moment with her hand on the knob, listening to the rain, and then she remembered the key her grandmother had given her on her sixteenth birthday, the one she had put in a wooden box in her apartment in the city and never thought about again. She had brought it with her when she came home for the funeral. She had brought it because she had not known what else to bring.
She set the cat down on the porch bench, dug into her coat pocket, and produced the key. It was old iron, warm from her body heat, and it turned in the lock with a sound like a small bell. The door swung inward, and the smell of the orchard house came out to meet her: dried apples, cedar, dust, and beneath it all the faintest trace of lily of the valley.
Cordelia stepped inside.
The front room was dim. The shutters were closed. She crossed to the windows and pushed them open, one by one, and the gray light came in and laid itself across the floorboards. The room had been arranged as a sitting room, with a stone fireplace, a pair of wing chairs, a low table, and bookshelves that climbed to the ceiling. Her grandmother's things were exactly as she had left them. A pair of reading glasses on the mantel. A cup and saucer, empty, on the side table. A shawl draped over the back of the chair nearest the window, as if she had just stepped out and would be back in a moment.
Cordelia stood very still. The cat, who had followed her inside, wound once around her ankles and then jumped onto the wing chair and sat.
Right, Cordelia said. Inheritance clause.
She crossed to the rolltop desk that stood against the far wall. The desk had been her great-grandfather's, and it had a hundred small drawers and cubbies, each one labeled in her grandmother's careful hand. She pulled out the chair, sat, and began to look.
The first drawer she opened held seed catalogs from 1987. The second held rubber bands, paper clips, and a tin of buttons. The third held receipts, bundled with twine. The fourth held letters, dozens of them, tied with ribbon in colors that had faded to pastels.
Cordelia untied the first bundle. Letters from her mother, written in a younger hand, addressed to Granny Pruitt, c o the Hemlock Inn. Letters about a boy Cordelia had once had a crush on. Letters about a recipe that had gone wrong. Letters about a cat that had died.
She set them aside. She was looking for something else.
The fifth drawer held the original deed to the inn, on sheepskin, with a wax seal that had gone brittle and cracked. She lifted it out carefully and set it on the desk. Beneath it was a map of the property, drawn in ink, with the orchard boundaries marked in green and the inn itself circled in red. Beneath the map was a folder, and inside the folder were several pages of legal stationery covered in her grandmother's handwriting.
Cordelia read.
The first page was dated twenty-two years ago.
My darling Cordelia, it began. If you are reading this, then I have gone to the orchard and not come back, and the lawyers have done what lawyers do, and you have opened the orchard house desk and found what I left for you. I am sorry for the drama. I have always believed that if you cannot be dramatic about the important things, you ought not to be dramatic at all.
Cordelia smiled, despite herself.
The inn is yours, the letter continued. It is yours, and it is yours to lose. There is a clause in the will that I wrote myself, with the help of a young man in Asheville who owed me a favor. The clause requires that you, or your heir, or whoever holds the deed at the time of the reading, must host the Honeybell Autumn Festival in the year of inheritance. If the festival is not held, the property reverts to the Pippin Hollow Development Corporation, a company that I suspect is a front for something unpleasant, and which I suspect is run by someone I would not trust to water a houseplant.
Cordelia read the paragraph twice.
She turned the page.
I have arranged for Erasmus Quill to be present at the reading. Erasmus is a dear woman and a careful one, and she will not have led you astray. The festival is four weeks from the date of the reading. That is the law. That is my law. I could not change it if I wanted to, and I do not want to. If you choose to fight the clause in court, you will lose, and the inn will be lost. If you choose to ignore the clause and do nothing, the inn will be lost in six months, when the corporation files its claim. If you choose to host the festival, you will have four weeks of misery, and then you will have the inn, and I will be able to rest.
Cordelia set the page down.
She picked up the next page.
There is more, the letter said. There is always more.
Cordelia read on.
The Honeybell Autumn Festival had been her grandmother's pride. It was a weekend-long celebration of the Honeybell apple, the strange, bell-shaped variety that grew only in the orchard behind the inn. There had been tastings, and pie contests, and a parade down Main Street led by the high school marching band. There had been a dance in the inn's ballroom, and a bonfire, and a crowning of the Honeybell Queen. The festival had drawn people from three counties, and it had put Pippin Hollow on the map for one glorious weekend every October.
It had not been held in eleven years. The last festival had been the autumn Cordelia's parents died, and her grandmother had not had the heart to continue.
Cordelia had not known that the festival had been written into the will. She had not known that her grandmother had made it a condition of inheritance. She had not known any of this.
She sat back in the chair. The cat, who had followed her across the room, jumped onto the desk and sat on the map.
Get off, Cordelia said, without conviction.
The cat did not get off.
Cordelia looked at the legal pages, then at the map, then at the deed. She looked at the cat.
I have four weeks, she said.
The cat blinked.
Cordelia laughed, a short, sharp sound that surprised her. She had not laughed in months. She had not thought she had any laughter left.
She gathered the papers, tucked them into the envelope, and stood. The cat meowed, jumped down, and wound around her ankles once more.
All right, Cordelia said. Let us go see Lord Featherbottom.
She locked the orchard house behind her, pocketed the key, and walked back down the path toward the inn. The rain had stopped. The mist had lifted. The sky over Pippin Hollow was the color of old pewter, and through a break in the clouds, a single beam of sunlight came down and struck the porch of the Hemlock Inn, turning the faded yellow clapboard briefly, impossibly, to gold.
Cordelia stopped at the foot of the porch steps. She looked at the inn, and the inn looked back.
Four weeks, she said again. I can do this. I have to do this.
She climbed the steps, opened the door, and went inside.