Description
Evangeline is dead. A Gothic family seat in the Hudson Valley reopens: either to a disinherited adult summoned back by probate, or to an estates' attorney with a morning appointment that should be paperwork. The heir recalls only fragments—cedar wallpaper, a third-floor lock, a grandmother who would not look up. The lawyer opens the same file and finds, on day one, a grandfather in the ledger she has been hunting for years, and a housekeeper, Vivienne Crane, in the gatehouse, who has been expecting the names on the page longer than either visitor wants. The east wing is sealed. The book lists four hundred years of names, dates, marks, and debts. The building knows blood. One path must keep, sell, or burn a bargain struck before a birth; the other must decide when duty to a client detonates into duty to truth. The house, in either case, prefers the old arrangement survive.
