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She closes the car door with her hip, puts both hands on her lower back, and stretches.

My attention drops to take in her form.

Interesting. It has been a very long time since I’ve found anything interesting.

She is short. Or perhaps everyone is short from this height. Curvy, thick, and round. If I had to pick one word to describe this woman, it would be soft. She just looks soft everywhere.

Her leggings cling to a spectacularly plump ass, and when she reaches both arms over her head, her shirt rides up enough to reveal a strip of pale skin.

Something strange tightens inside me. Or would tighten, if I actually had insides. I resent this immediately.

The woman lowers her arms and looks at the house.

Her mouth falls open.

“Yes,” she says.

I wait.

She turns in a slow circle, taking in the porch, the columns, the three stories of gray stone and dark windows, the turrets and gables Eleanor never had the money to maintain properly.

“Oh, this is bad.”

Excuse me?

She walks several steps backward.

“This is really bad.”

My house is magnificent. Neglected, perhaps. In need of some minor restoration. The roof over the west wing may require attention. And the plumbing makes a noise that would concern me if bodily functions were still relevant to my existence.

But bad?

Hardly.

The woman pulls a phone from her back pocket.

She holds it up.

“Okay, future April. Remember this moment.”

April.

She turns the phone around, presumably recording herself with my house behind her.

“This is the moment you made the completely sane, rational decision to move into a hundred-and-fifty-year-old mansion in a town called Screaming Woods with no job, no money, and absolutely no idea what you’re doing.”

Ah. The new owner. Marvelous. And she’s as penniless as the last. Simply fabulous.

April points the phone toward the house. “Look at this place.”

Yes. Look at it.

“It’s like the Addams Family house had a baby with the Haunted Mansion.”

I beg your pardon? I don’t know any Addamses nearby, and which mansion is haunted?

“And then nobody loved the baby for about forty years.”