Chapter 1

When the coffin of Granny Maureen disappeared into the ground, only then the first tears ran down my cheeks. Who would do such a thing?! I asked myself for the hundredth time. Staring at the red roses of a nearby grave did not help in solving that question. I held Lucas tightly by his narrow shoulders. I tried not to squeeze but he already pried my hands off his shoulders. Afterward, he did take my hand to feel a bit less sad. This was his first funeral.

''Come on, let's go home.'' Dad walked us to the car and started driving. For a long while it was quiet until he interrupted the silence: ''The police called me yesterday evening and they think the thugs just did it out of spite.''

''Out of spite?'' The same green eyes as I had stared at me in the mirror, they looked sad and angry at the same time.

''There was nothing of value in her house.'' He explained.

Everyone went to their room when we got home. After an hour or so, Lucas silently joined me in my room. I put my arm over his shoulders and together we cried.

''She is in peace now. Do you remember what she used to tell us?'' He shook his head. ''She said that if she would die, she would always be with us. Tonight, her star will shine in the sky so we need to wave at her, just like what dad had promised her…'' I swallowed my last words. …when she was still alive.

Soon it was dinner time. Even though we were not hungry, everyone assembled in the kitchen and ate the lovely food Mom had made. Dad had more things to tell us during dinner.

''Sweethearts, I need to tell you something… it will not be fun to hear for everyone, but Mom and I have been thinking about this for over a few days and we made a decision.'' He first looked at Lucas and then his gaze fell upon me. ''We have inherited grannies' house. And what I am going to tell you may sound very surprising but again, we have discussed this together and we think it will be good for us…'' He paused nervously before he started again. ''We have decided to move into the house of Granny and to sell this house.''

''WHAT?! Why? We've got everything here!''

''We know that.'' He said it in a blunt way and by the sound of it, he was already annoyed because of my reaction. ''The most important reason is that we don't like city life anymore. We both want to go back to a more quiet place. The second reason is that I promised Granny never to sell the house.''

''I understand that her house is important to you, but can't you guys think about it a bit longer? Next school year is my graduation. Can't we at least wait until I have finished secondary school? Everyone is going to study after that anyway.''

''No, we have decided to move during the next summer holiday. With the money we get from selling this house, we can open a savings account for you both so that you can study wherever you like.''

''Another advantage is that Dad and I will be able to live closer to work.'' Mom sounded happy.

''Well, I don't want to move.'' Even though I sounded like an obtuse child, I did say it aloud anyway. What were they thinking? When I saw the look on Lucas' face, I already knew that he did not have any problems with moving to another town. You are being bullied at school, of course, you have no problems with moving away! I was turning my potatoes into mashed ones while trying to stay calm. I had to leave all my friends behind, I had to quit my part-time job, and I had to give up karate!

***

After a couple of months, everything was ready. Our old house was sold within a jiffy and the summer vacation was closing in. After quitting my job at the cinema, they gave me a life supply of popcorn kernels. The only thing was that we did not have a popcorn machine at home. Perhaps that could be my birthday gift?

My parents organized a farewell party for my friends as well as for my karate group… but it was not a real farewell. It was just an hour or two away from Granny's house.

The summer vacation started and I was relieved that I could relax a bit and enjoy the weather with friends before moving away. But then, the time to move away finally arrived.

The day started really great… the stress of moving out had made us all jumpy and cranky so everyone was sitting in the car stuffed with boxes, clothes, and bags filled to the brink with stuff that I forgot. In the process of moving out, we also got rid of a lot of things so now we only had to move less junk around. The old village where Granny used to live looked gloomy as we were driving through the narrow and cobbled streets. Irritated already, I looked through the window and spotted the little chapel in the middle of the village.

Mom was busy on her phone, trying to arrange things for the house while Dad drove. Because of a traffic delay, it took us much longer to finally arrive at the house. I was bored and I looked at my irritable Dad through the inner mirror. Still, I wondered how he got his peculiarly frayed ears. Granny also had those strange ears as well… luckily we got normal ears!

When I was thinking about her again, my heart felt heavy again. She was such a marvelous grandmother! She could tell the most amazing bedtime stories. Every summer vacation we stayed over at her house for weeks. We never met Grandpa, he died in the war. But when we asked about him she told us what he was like, what his favourite type of food was, or what they used to do when they were young. She never told us where she was from though. That was also something Dad also did not know.

Another strange thing was that she did not have any pictures from Grandpa in her house apart from the big painting in the hallway. It was the only way we could imagine what he looked like. And the fun thing was that we found out that we inherited his green eyes. Dad, Lucas, and I had the same eyes and we were quite proud of that! In that sense, we could always remember him in a way… even though we never met him.

Another thing we could remember him by is the mother language Granny taught us during vacation. It was very funny. We would call Granny in her unknown language when we were kids and then Mom would not understand a thing we said!

In the village she was known as the weird lady from the big house because she never went to church… and the villagers did not appreciate that. They were always evading us in a very smart way, at least, the older generation did that. The people living here now are more neutral on the matter.

Within a few minutes we crossed the little village and frankly, I did not find any interesting things except for a broken-down supermarket that was about to fall apart. Damn it! A shitty village with no mall and no sports clubs… I guess I need to find something outside this village.

The houses were smaller in the centre of the village, but as we were driving away from the church and the dusty supermarket, the houses became larger and larger. I recognized the house in an instant even though we don't visit her very often. The house was hidden behind some trees. She refused to cut down the trees even after several complaints from her neighbours. Eventually, she settled for cutting off a few branches. She only did that after a few branches had damaged the house during a storm.

Dad stopped in front of the house. There, on top of the small hill was the house of Grandma Maureen. Apparently, Grandma paid a lot of money to build the house. As a single mother with a child but without a husband, we all still wonder how she was capable of doing that. Right after the war, she moved into the house and paid the bills working as a cleaner, seamstress, and later as a secretary after she finished a course.

The house was too large for her alone. Multiple times we told her to move to a smaller apartment but she would not have it. It was her family's tradition that eventually children would come back home to take care of their parents. Since she was still mentally and physically capable of taking care of herself, Dad only hired a cleaner to help her with chores until the time came he had to go and take care of her. Unfortunately, it never came to that.

Nevertheless, it was a beautiful house and it was close to a nearby forest. There was a large pond in the backyard close to a giant tree. The house looked a bit forgotten, but it still welcomed us... even though Grandma had died there. Suddenly I felt uncomfortable. What would the house look like inside? I thought about that a bit longer before I shook the creepy feeling off me.

Memories flashed through my mind as I thought of the corner of the living room where Grandma had taught me how to play chess. She'd lived here all her life… and now I'm going to live in it.

I woke up from my thoughts when Mom and Dad had already gotten out of the car except for the sleeping Lucas and me. I poked his belly to wake him up.

''Luke, wake up. We're here.'' I climbed stiffly out of the car and reluctantly grabbed my suitcases from the trunk.

"Leanna, go pick a room! Will you help me dust everything off? A lot has to happen before the movers come!"

Mom rushed into the house impatiently. Her arms were full of things that needed to go into the kitchen. Dad followed her closely after stopping for a moment in the hallway he probably hadn't seen in some time. I put down my suitcases and helped Lucas out of the car. I always forgot that his door still had the child lock on it. He ran to the house and disappeared through the doorway without taking his suitcase with him. I sometimes missed that he wasn't small and annoying anymore… now he was big and annoying. I walked to the front door with my arms full of suitcases and tried to put them on the floor as carefully as possible.

I sighed as I recognized the smell of the house. Grandma… I took a moment to take it all in. It felt strange now that she wasn't around the house anymore. But, even though she was no longer with us, I could still feel her presence. I looked at the floor of the hall she always wanted to keep clean. It now had dirty footprints on it from all of us. The floor was made of gleaming beige marble and I could almost see myself in the stone.

The sound of pots and pans was audible from a distance as I walked into the living room. I followed the noise that came from the kitchen. Grandma's living room was dusty and empty except for a few things: the bookcase but then without all the books, her favourite chair, and the rug. Dad had cleaned up the rest a week ago with Uncle Peter, Mom's brother. The items were picked up by a second-hand furniture store.

The wooden floor creaked as I walked around, which made it feel even more empty. A lot of other memories came flooding back to me. Here Grandma was playing chess with me… there I was watching Pippi Longstocking on the old cable TV… and there I went to heat marshmallows by the fire with Grandma next to me.

The high bookcase was empty, like a mouth without any teeth. We heard that they had thrown all her books on the floor in an attempt to find something of value in between the books. Suddenly I smelled a pungent odour. What is that? When I walked to the kitchen I smelled it… chlorine. Mom was busy cleaning and arranging the kitchen cabinets. She had already brought a few pans and plates for the day. This is where Grandma died. I was appalled by the thought and immediately I turned around and returned to where I came from. You could not see anything on the floor but Dad had told us… in the kitchen, close to the back door that led to the garden…

"Ah, sweetheart! Will you help me with putting all the things in the cabinets?'' The kitchen was full of pans and plates.

"Yeah, perhaps in a minute or two... I'm going to help Lucas with his suitcase first." I walked away, out of the kitchen, through the living room until I ended up in the hall again.

"Lucas, where are you?!" I shouted loudly. My voice echoed through the old house. I heard him yell something. The door on the other side of the hall was open where the stairwell was. The spiralling staircase… Grandma called it the rose staircase. The rose staircase that reached all the way to the top floor of the house was made of metal. The old metal squeaked and creaked, often you could tell by the footsteps who was going up and down the staircase.

Every step I took echoed through the narrow space. There were small round windows in the walls so you didn't have to walk up or down through the dark. I saw the overgrown garden with flowers, the terrace, and the pond. We should have visited much more often… she would hate to see her garden look like this!

"Lucas are you here?!" I yelled when I reached the first floor. His voice was louder now.

"I'm here!" he yelled. Damn, why can't he stay put for once? I ran up the last few steps to the top floor. It was the attic room, her writing and drawing room.

In the past few years, she hardly came here because it was too tiring to go all the way up the staircase. Lucas was sitting on the old dusty ottoman playing with his gaming console, but he couldn't see that the whole room was still a mess. The old chair lay broken on the floor, and the doors of the cabinet were wide open, as were all the drawers of the desk. Dad probably threw all the mess in the corner of the room because he couldn't clean it up so quickly. I swallowed the lump in my throat. The thugs have been here as well.

"Lucas, I don't think you want this room. Can't you see it's a girl's room?" He didn't respond. "I wanted to help you unpack, but apparently you're old enough to do it yourself." Nonchalantly I walked to the window and looked at the garden.

''My suitcase is downstairs. I can't lift that thing!" He said annoyed. His green eyes sparkled with irritation as I was distracting him from his game. The silky brown hair he got from Dad somehow looked irritable as well.

"Oh, I am sure you'll manage on your own." I turned and walked back to the door. "I'm going to help Mom unpack."

"Wait!" He yelled as I was already walking downstairs. I looked up.

''Could you bring my suitcase upstairs?!" He asked quickly. I raised my eyebrows. "Please?" he added. Fortunately, he can still act normally.

"You scared me for a minute, Luke, I almost thought we left you and your smiles back home." I laughed. "I'll bring your suitcase upstairs, but then you have to pick a nice room right now." He grinned.

"I'll just open the window for a second so it can air." Lucas stopped playing the game and flew past me. I pushed open the squeaky skylight and stuck my head out the window.

The clouds were grey and mopey, they could erupt in a thunderstorm at any moment. For the next few days, they predicted that we would get a lot of rain. I looked up and saw a tiny attic window sitting just above the room. I had never seen it. When I walked to the stairwell to look for an attic staircase I heard him shout:

"Lea! Mama needs you!" Lucas's high voice echoed through the stairwell.

***

Everyone had gone to bed. The day flew by in an instant. Mom had vacuumed the whole downstairs and then she'd cleaned the bathroom from top to bottom, I'd dusted all the bedrooms and Dad had hooked up the electricity and cleared out the garage to make room for the car. Lucas was enjoying himself in the garden by pulling all the weeds out of the border with gloves that were way too big for him. At the end of the day, I still had to change the sheets of my temporary rickety bed in the attic. Tomorrow my bed would come from home. I was exhausted. I walked into the attic room and closed the window before crawling into my squeaky bed very carefully. Someone came up the stairs, it was probably Dad.

"Goodnight Lea!" I could tell from his voice that he was hesitating to enter. I was still mad at them. I didn't answer and pretended to be asleep. "I know when you're sleeping or not, honey." He opened the door and switched on the lamp. The bright light shone into my eyes. He sat down next to me on the bed. I hope the bed won't crack!

"I know it's unfair for you that we're moving during your senior year." He said in grandma's language. I looked at him in surprise. His voice sounded gloomy again. "But I'm sure you'll get friends here. It is a small town with nothing to do. Now that you're here, maybe things will get a little more lively.'' I felt guilty… but I was still a little bit mad at him. I gave him a smile against my will. He kissed me on my forehead in return. "Go to sleep little elf." That's also what Grandma Maureen always said before going to sleep. He pulled the covers over my chin and left me alone again after he'd turned off the light.