Chapter 1
My husband forged my signature and sold the inn my father left me.
I found out when I arrived with my ten-year-old stepdaughter Sophie and saw workers tearing down my father’s sign.
"Stop!" Sophie shouted.
She had her seat belt off before I killed the engine. She ran across the lot in her red rain boots, one hand clamped around the brass key she wore on a cord beneath her sweater.
"Sophie."
I caught her at the orange barrier just as a worker lowered the sign onto the bed of a truck.
"You can't take that," she called. "My grandfather made it."
The foreman pushed up his hard hat. "Ma'am, you and your daughter need to stay behind the line."
"I'm the owner." I took out my wallet, though no card inside could prove what seventy years of Bennett family records already did. "Clara Bennett. This property belongs to me."
His expression changed from impatience to caution.
"You should speak to the project office."
"There is no project."
Behind him, plywood covered the dining-room windows. A temporary fence cut across the hydrangea beds my father had planted when I was twelve. Spray-painted arrows marked the east wing.
The front door had a new steel lock.
Sophie pulled the key from beneath her sweater.
"Maybe they only changed the front one."
She ducked under my arm before I could stop her and ran around the veranda to Room One. That door had been hers since she was six. Every summer, she slept there beneath the sloped ceiling and measured herself against the frame.
The old brass key went halfway into the lock and stopped.
She tried again.
"It doesn't fit."
I looked at the foreman. "Who authorized this?"
He returned to the truck and brought me a plastic document sleeve. The demolition permit was on top. Beneath it sat a site plan stamped by the county building office.
Applicant: Shoreline Renewal LLC.
Authorized representative: Vanessa Cole.
The name struck me with the clean shock of cold water.
Vanessa was Sophie's aunt, her late mother's younger sister.
"When was this filed?"
"Last week. We were told the property transferred."
"It didn't."
He turned to the final page.
There, beneath a paragraph authorizing the sale of Harbor House and all attached land, was my name.
Clara Bennett Mercer.
The signature looked like mine. It even carried the impatient upward slash I made through the final t.
I had never seen the document.
For three years, the inn had been closed while I worked through engineering reports, preservation grants, and the debts my father left behind. Grant had called it my expensive shrine. He had also promised that when his rehabilitation ended and Sophie was settled at school, we would decide its future together.
Apparently, one of us had already decided.
"I need copies of everything," I said.
"The project office has the originals."
"The final authorization came from Grant Mercer's office," the foreman added. "Your husband confirmed the demolition schedule this morning."
My husband.
Grant had not only signed my name. He had made himself the voice that replaced mine.
"No one enters the building until I speak to them."
The foreman shook his head. "We can give you two hours. After that, you need an order from the county or the owner."
"I am the owner."
His eyes fell to the signature.
I photographed every page. Then I photographed the new locks, the trucks, the workers' company names, and the sign lying facedown in the truck bed.
My father had painted it after my mother died. He said a house needed a name if it expected people to find their way back.
Sophie stood beside Room One with her shoulders rigid.
"Did Dad sell it?"
I wanted to tell her no.
Instead, I said, "I'm going to find out."
The foreman unrolled the demolition plan over the hood of his truck. Red crosshatching covered six rooms in the east wing, the old gallery corridor, and the narrow stairwell that led to the attic.
Sophie leaned over the paper.
Her finger landed on a square at the joint between the east wing and the original house.
ROOM 1.
Across it, in capital letters, someone had written:
DEMOLISH FIRST.