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Fairfield van Dorn had been born and raised in Avalon, and was a card-carrying member of the town’s old guard—the elite upper class, her roots going back to the days when the Roosevelts and Vanderbilts used to keep summer places in the mountains. Yet while most people grew more stuffy and more pretentious as they aged, widowhood had the opposite effect on Kim’s mother. Kim’s father had never liked this little Catskills village, even though it was his wife’s hometown. Daddy had always preferred the city, pulsing with the noise of commerce. But Mom claimed her heart had never left here, and she seemed happy enough to live in the house where she’d grown up. Even as a child, Kim had observed that her mother used to be happy here in a way that eluded her in the big city. This was the only place she’d seemed truly relaxed and at ease.
    And finally, Kim came to understand why the house of her girlhood was so important to Mom and why keeping it meant everything to her.
     
    Kim found jeans, a T-shirt and a pair of thick socks lying on the bed beside the sweatshirt. Her old—ancient—clothes were not too small for her, but the fit was different. Not quite comfortable. The clothes, however, were the least of her problems.

    She towel-dried her hair, reapplied her makeup and, after checking out the hallway to make sure the coast was clear, headed downstairs to the kitchen, which was blessedly warm. She took a seat and curled her hands around a thick china mug of her mother’s hot chocolate.
    The kitchen gleamed with a coat of tomato-red paint, the trim a garish shade of yellow. Kim watched her mother wiping down the stove and sink, and dark thoughts crossed her mind—clinical depression, early-onset Alzheimer’s, a rare form of dementia…
    “Mom—”
    “It was the only way I could see to keep the house,” her mother said, replying to the question even before it was voiced.
    “I thought you owned the house free and clear after Grandma died.”
    “I did. I do. But then I needed money, so I agreed to an ill-considered equity loan. I’m afraid it was a rather bad decision on my part.”
    It felt strange, talking with her mother about finances. Kim’s father used to handle the money exclusively, and she and Penelope never heard a word about it. “How bad?” Kim asked. “Are you saying you can’t afford to live here without taking in boarders?”
    “I’m saying I can’t afford to live at all without doing something,” her mother said, her voice quiet and resigned.
    “This is crazy, Mom. What happened? We had everything. Dad earned a ton of money.” Kim studied her mother’s face, wondering why she suddenly felt like a stranger. “Didn’t he?”
    Penelope paused, set down her cloth and took a seat at the table. “Kimberly, perhaps I was wrong to keep this from you, but I didn’t want you to fret about it. I knew you’d worry if I explained my new circumstances.”
    “Worry?” Kim said. “You think?”
    “No need to be sarcastic, dear. We’ve both kept our secrets.”
    “I’m sorry. What part of ‘my boyfriend gave me a black eye’ is the secret part?”
    “Oh, Kimberly. I’m the one who should be sorry.”
    “Just level with me, Mom. I’m a big girl. I can take it.”
    “Well, the truth is, your father left behind a great deal of debt.”
    That simply didn’t compute. They hadn’t lived like a family in debt.
    “I don’t get it,” Kim said.
    Her mother smiled, but without amusement. “I had some notion of preserving your memory of your father, but I suppose that was naive of me.”
    “I don’t understand. Did he have some secret life you only discovered after he was gone?”
    Penelope folded her hands on the table. “In fact, he did, in a way. When he was alive, he never said a word about his debts. I had no idea and to this day, I still don’t quite understand. He invested in a number of hedge funds that were called in, and had to mortgage and remortgage all our property.