There were real-world headaches, too, and across multiple dimensions. So it was creepy having a single distant figure emerge suddenly from that total darkness, pointing a gnarled, bony finger at me and hissing, “You, Kent Avery- you are the one.” When she married my dad there was no one from her past at all, and dad’s relatives ended up sitting on both sides of the church and when she died, it was just our lot at the funeral.
Supposedly he was my mother’s father’s father, or at least that was what the probate lawyer said, but my shy, smiling mother had been so secretive about her past she might as well not have had one, and for all we knew she’d sprung from the ground fully formed like the Spartoi sewn from dragons’ teeth. For one thing, I didn’t know the first thing about this great-grandfather. Let me tell you, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.
Suddenly inheriting your great-grandfather’s remote island mansion sounds like something that happens in the first chapter of a gothic novel-or maybe a steamy romance full of randy stable boys and snarky family retainers.
