I knew what she meant before she said it and still flinched when the words came.
“Sell it,” she said. “Fast. Cash. Clean exit.”
My first instinct was grief. Aunt Betty’s house? The Victorian with the wraparound porch and the kitchen she taught me to cook in and the library where she let me curl up during my parents’ parties because she knew I hated being displayed? Selling it felt like cutting off a limb.
Cassie saw it happen on my face. “Listen to me. Betty left it to you, not to a street address. If the walls are what keep you tied to predators, then the walls are already contaminated.”
The rain shifted, softening for a moment. In that brief quiet, another thought surfaced.
“I have an offer,” I said slowly. “In London.”
Cassie blinked. “What?”
“I interviewed in February with St. Bartholomew’s. Head of pharmacology research. I was going to turn it down because Brett said long distance was ridiculous and because he couldn’t leave his market and because—”
“Because you were engaged to a parasite,” Cassie supplied.
I laughed again, but this time there was shape to it.
“I never responded,” I said. “The recruiter followed up last week.”