“What do you want, Tamsin?” I asked, already emotionally exhausted from our conversation.

“I just got the property tax bill for Mom and Dad’s house. I need you to send your half as soon as possible.”

After our parents died, the house we had grown up in was left jointly to the two of us. I had an understandable attachment to the place, though Tamsin didn’t seem to share my sentiments.

Tam just didn’t get it. She never had.

She had already been living away from home when our mother was diagnosed with melanoma shortly after I had turned fourteen. Less than a year later, Mom had died and our father was diagnosed with lymphoma.

While Mom had gone relatively quickly, Dad had lingered for almost two years, finally passing just before I graduated from high school. And Tamsin hadn’t been there to watch him die.

I was the one who had had to deal with all of it.

Even though I still felt strongly linked to the house, I had moved out as soon as I was able. I hadn’t been emotionally capable of living in the house by myself. Tamsin worked in Northern Virginia and had no desire to return to Southborough, thus leaving the place empty.

However, when Tamsin had suggested selling the property, I had fought her tooth and nail. There were very few times in my life that I fought Tamsin on anything, but that was one of them. While I couldn’t deal with the ghosts left behind in the house I grew up in, neither could I stomach the thought of it not being in our family anymore.

So we compromised and had rented it out. I had hired a property manager to handle finding tenants. Tamsin and I split the taxes and maintenance costs as well as the monthly rent checks.

But the house was aging and I had noticed in the last six months that the cost of maintaining the property was starting to exceed the money we earned from the rent. At the beginning of the winter we had to replace the roof. Just last month the boiler had given out. Between the two of us, Tamsin and I had spent close to ten thousand dollars on repairs.

On top of that, the property tax had increased and I had known that the day was coming when Tamsin would again insist on selling.

The easiest thing would be for me to live there, if I felt so strongly about it. But I wasn’t sure, even after all this time, whether I could deal with living in the place I had watched my mother die and my father fade away.

“Have you seen how much the property tax has risen?” Tamsin demanded.

“Yes, I saw that—”

“Because it’s too much, Corin. I can’t afford to keep spending money on a house I’m not even living in. Unless you’ve finally gotten over your issues,” she spat. “We need to have a serious conversation about what we’re going to do with the place,” Tamsin said firmly.

“We could increase the rent,” I suggested weakly. A group of elderly ladies came into the shop and I slipped into the storeroom, knowing that this conversation could very well get heated.

“Who in their right mind would pay more than eight hundred dollars a month for that house? It’s a shit hole!”

I started to see red. Tamsin had never shown an ounce of regard for the house our parents had purchased shortly after they had gotten married. Sometimes I wondered if my older sister was missing that vital ingredient that made us all human. Emotions.

On the flip side, I guessed that’s what made her such a great lawyer.

“Look, it’s too much. Jared and I really want to sell.”

“What does Jared have to do with it? His name isn’t on the deed!” I exclaimed, my voice rising. In some ways, Jared, Tamsin’s husband, was worse than she was. Shallow and vain, he seemed to only care about making money and being a prick.

“Jared is my husband, Corin, so of course he has a say in my affairs. Don’t be an idiot!” she seethed, and I clenched the phone so tightly in my hand that I thought it might break.

“I can’t deal with this right now. I have a lot going on—”

“Is this about your stupid health stuff?”

I couldn’t help the tears that welled up and started to drip ever so slowly down my cheeks. I hated crying but it seemed an instinctual response when talking to my sister. Tamsin could be hateful and cruel. Sometimes there had been glimpses over the years of a person who could be kind and loving. But it was usually overshadowed by her irritation with me.

I spent most of my life desperately hoping that my parents had simply never gotten around to telling me that Tamsin was actually adopted.

“Stop it,” I whispered hoarsely into the phone, knowing I was only moments away from breaking down. And my sister was the last person I wanted to detonate in front of. Even if it was only over the phone. She’d hold it against me forever.

Tamsin sighed. “Okay, I don’t mean to give you hard time. I just think you really need to get over this block you have about selling the house. Financially it doesn’t make sense for us to hold onto it just because it belonged to Mom and Dad.”

I couldn’t justify myself to her again. It wouldn’t matter anyway. The best thing to do was to shut the conversation down.

“We’ll talk about this another time. I have to go.” I didn’t give my sister a chance to speak and disconnected the call.

I stood there for a few minutes after Tamsin hung up. Talking to my sister was akin to jumping in front of an oncoming train. Probably avoidable, but totally devastating all the same. She could squeeze my heart and stomp on it like no one else.

Adam came into the storeroom and grabbed a box off the shelf, pausing a moment to look at me as I stared blankly into space.

“You okay?” he asked.

I grabbed my purse and slung it over my shoulder. “Not really. I need to get out of here for a few minutes. Are you good to watch things until I get back?”

“Uh, sure,” he said, giving me a strange look, but true to form didn’t ask any questions.

I wiped at the tears drying on my face and hurried out to my car.

I thought about going to my parents’ house but I hadn’t been back since moving out years before. The house was all mixed up with hard-to-place emotions in my mind. There were so many good memories there. But the bad ones seemed to trump them every time.

Instead I somehow ended up at the park. Which was strange, given that even as a child, I wasn’t exactly a “park” kind of person. I didn’t like swings. I didn’t do jungle gyms. And don’t get me started on sandboxes. The thought made me shudder.

I parked my car and got out, walking across the crunchy grass, my shoes soaked after stepping in a pile of melting snow.

I would probably end up with hypothermia. I should get back in the car and take off my shoes and socks. I could feel my toes going numb and started to experience the telltale signs of unreasonable hysteria as I thought about all the possibilities of letting my toes stay in my freezing, wet shoes. Amputated toes. Irreparable nerve damage.

I was out of breath by the time I had reached the far side of the park. I noticed that a soccer game was going on. What sort of maniacs played in this weather? And wearing only shorts and T-shirts? Were they nuts?

It didn’t look like any sort of organized game. Just a bunch of guys kicking a ball around while shouting obscenities at one another.

I scanned the field, not sure why I had come there in the first place, only knowing that I had needed to be somewhere, anywhere but closed up in my shop.

I suddenly caught sight of a familiar face and stopped.

Beckett Kingsley, my unwanted savior and fellow Mended Hearts group member, sat on a bench, leaning forward, with his elbows braced on his knees. He was watching the group of soccer players fixedly, his brown hair a messy mop on his head.

He didn’t notice me, his focus entirely on the soccer game.

There was something about his face that made me pause. I half hid behind a giant oak tree, peeking out from behind it like a weirdo. He didn’t know that I was watching and I didn’t want him to. It would ratchet the awkward between us up to an agonizing level.