Hazel looked over at her mother. Indigo’s face matched the wallpaper, all creamy white with a greenish tinge. What was going on here? Her mother wouldn’t give her a single, straight answer, not that that was particularly unusual, and now a stranger had arrived, claiming the house belonged to him. Was Indigo lying? Did she know who this guy was? Everything seemed out of her control and beyond her understanding.

“And you are?” she asked, turning to the young stranger who hadn’t moved from the doorway.

“My name is Stefano,” the boy said. “Maria’s nephew.”

“Pfffff…” Hazel turned to Indigo at the sound. She folded her arms across her chest, nearly spilling her tea in the complicated maneuver, and rolled her eyes up to the ceiling with an expression of disgust.

“Pffff what, Mother? What does “pffff” mean?”

Indigo cleared her throat, crossed to the sink and poured her coffee down the drain. “Maria didn’t have a nephew…. I don’t think?” Indigo’s brow creased, giving away the fact that she had no clue what she was talking about. “His sister didn’t have kids, did she? Hmmm… maybe she did, how would I know? Still. She was the younger one.”

What was Indigo mumbling about? Who the heck was Maria? “Mother, who’s Maria? Was she the owner?”

Stefano raised a grubby hand, then scratched the back of his head. He looked as though he hadn’t eaten in a week. “I think I’m the owner.”

“So you’ve said,” Hazel studied Indigo. Her mother was inching toward the door. She was trying not to be obvious but subtlety was not a skill she possessed. “Mother, don’t even think about it. You’re not going anywhere.”

“Maybe I should talk to the boy,” Indigo said. “This should be easy to straighten out.” She inched even closer to the back door.

She was trying to escape Hazel’s questions. This was always her modus operandi when she didn’t want to deal with a problem.

“Are you okay, Mother?”

“I’m fine honey, but you shouldn’t have to deal with this stress. The lawyers told me that there might be claimants coming out of the woodwork. They said it always happens in Italy. Apparently, everyone thinks they are related to everyone else, and everyone wants a piece of everything. I have all the legal paperwork in the car. I’ll take this young man out and show him. The house clearly belongs to us. It's all in the will.”

Over the course of Indigo’s frantic sounding monologue, she’d crossed the distance between the sink and the back door. Now she had the boy by the arm and was dragging him, none too gently, out onto the porch and down the back steps.

Hazel’s phone rang, making her jump again.

She jabbed frantically at the screen and was relieved when she was able to swipe left just in time. “Hello… Hello, Liz?  You there?” There was nothing, just a fizzy buzz on the line, not even a hint that the call had connected. Damn it! She needed to speak to Liz. She needed to know what Samuel was doing. Had he screwed up yet?

She looked up from her useless phone to discover that her mother and the boy, Stefano, were gone. She had no clue what her mother was up to, and all of a sudden, she realized that she didn’t have the energy even to care. She considered going outside and hunting them down, but at that moment a tsunami of lethargy crashed down upon her. She'd been running on fumes since she’d left Jacksonville. She’d had no sleep on the plane at all. The bed was calling to her. She would try and get some sense out of Indigo after she’d had a nice, long, restorative nap. She could sleep for a few hours and shut out all of her anxieties about work and this beast of a house.

She hunted around her feet for her bag and hauled herself to her feet. She’d have to guess at which bedroom was hers. Just as she turned toward the hallway and the grand staircase, Indigo came rushing back through the door.

“There! I’ve taken care of it. He’s gone!” she trilled.

Indigo was flushed beet red, and it wasn’t from the heat. She was up to something, that much was clear, but the thought of playing the interrogation game with her right now made Hazel want to weep. “Honestly, I have no clue what questions to even start with. I have so many, but right now all I want to do is sleep. Can we talk about everything later? I need to go lie down.”

She tried to ignore the look of relief on Indigo’s face, but it still caused her stomach to drop in anxiety - something was going on, and she would need to get to the bottom of it.

“Okay, okay, sweetie. Go lie down. But just one thing?”

The sigh that Hazel felt gathering in her body was so big it was almost painful. She let it out. “What, Mother?”

“Well, the thing is, I have to go out right now because I’m meeting with some people; you know, house-fixing type people. But the lawyer had said he might come by today to countersign our copy of Maria’s will and drop off some more paperwork. I need you to keep an eye out for him. Don’t worry; he speaks English.”

‘House-fixing type people?’ Hazel could not even deal. She hadn’t even had a chance to properly assess the state of the house nor the work required yet, but her Mother was off to meet with some ‘house-fixing type people’? Before she’d agreed to this project, Hazel had made Indigo promise her that the project would be entirely in her hands. Completely under her control. She already felt the floor tilting under her. “That’s fine, but what house-fixing stuff?  I haven’t even started a project plan or anything yet. Please don’t hire anyone or buy anything until I can get myself together?”

“No, no, not to worry, honey. I have everything under control. Well, almost everything. I just need to…,” Indigo was hunting around in the kitchen. Pulling out chairs that scraped loudly on the tiles to reach the piles of paperwork on the table. “Ah.” She lifted a sheaf of papers and waved them at Hazel. “Here they are. When the lawyer guy comes, get him to sign those. Very important, okay?”

Hazel glanced at the paperwork but knew she wouldn’t be reviewing it before this lawyer signed. It was all in Italian. Indigo didn’t speak Italian either. How did she know what she had signed?

“What is this paperwork about?”

“Oh, it’s inheritance stuff.” Indigo waved dismissively across her shoulder as she disappeared through the back door.

Once again, Hazel was left speechless, confused and exhausted in her mother’s wake. It was always like this. Indigo got involved in some crazy scheme. Then Hazel got dragged into it even though her mother couldn’t stay still for two minutes to explain anything to her, that is, if she even understood what she was doing herself.

They’d been through this scenario many times. Like when she was twelve and her mother had decided that she was going to create a yoga studio in their house for recently released criminals, or when she was twenty-five and she'd had to save her mother by paying off the loan shark Indigo had borrowed from to invest in a health-food supplement pyramid scheme. Hazel could go on and on. Why had she thought that this might be different? Why had she thought that it was realistic that her mother had inherited a house in Italy and that this house could save her career? This might just be the biggest mistake she had ever made.

A big glass of sparkling water and bed, that was what she needed. She moved to the fridge and opened it to find it empty, save for a third of a bottle of flat prosecco. Perfect.

Hazel gave up and turned to pick up her carry-on that was still sitting by the back door. As she crossed the vast kitchen, she ran her hand over the massive sink and enjoyed the feel of the cool porcelain under her sweaty hand, cool even in this hot temperature. The feeling was almost as delicious as the cold, antique tiles under her feet. She looked up and admired the dusty, crystal chandelier hanging from the center of the room. It was sparkling in the light coming in from the back windows; sparkling through all that dust and throwing reflecting prisms of light across the wallpaper.

This was a beautiful house. She was already falling in love with it. Let’s hope this time Indigo knew what she was doing.