Finn arrived at Muir House at twenty past one with a toolbox in one hand, damp hair curling at his temples, and the expression of a man who had been summoned by rumour and disapproved of the transport method.
'There are two versions in the builders' merchants already,' he said from the kitchen doorway. 'In one, Gran has joined a cult. In the other, Isla has found a sister. I bought screws and said nothing, which has only made it worse.'
'You saying nothing would make the parish nervous,' Isla said.
He looked at Nora, at the baby, at the photographs, and finally at the brass ring. Finn had their grandfather's shoulders and none of his cruelty, which was to say women trusted him with heavy things before remembering he was not obliged to carry all of them. His gaze softened when it reached the child.
'Who's this wee commander?'
'Rose,' Nora said.
June closed her eyes. Only for a second. Isla saw it anyway.
'Of course she is,' Catriona said, and there was so much ache under the sarcasm that Isla nearly forgave her for the morning.
The solicitor cleared his throat. Mr Bell had arrived during a pause in the first wave of shouting and had spent forty minutes pretending his folder contained ordinary documents rather than matches. He was young, freckled, and already visibly reconsidering property law.
'Perhaps,' he said, 'we might return to the question of title.'
'Title?' Finn echoed.
'Ownership,' Isla said.
'I know what title means.'
'Then look less like someone just offered you a salad.'
Mr Bell opened the folder. 'Muir House is currently held in trust under the terms of Angus Muir's estate, amended by Mrs June Muir in 1994 and again in 2018. The council's acquisition offer has triggered a review of interested parties.'
'Interested parties,' Catriona repeated. 'What a bloodless phrase.'
'Law does that when it knows families are listening,' June said.
Mr Bell touched the top page as if it might bite him. 'There is also a letter of wishes. It is not binding in the way a will is binding, but it clarifies intention.'
'Whose intention?' Finn asked.
June did not move. 'Mine.'
Isla felt the floorboards answer with a small groan. Around this table, intention had been a luxury item, like fresh figs or central heating. Women did what had to be done and called it character. Men made choices and called them plans.
'Read it,' Catriona said.
June looked at Nora first. That was the moment Catriona understood there had already been a choice made without her. Her face did not crumple. Catriona Muir would never give anyone the satisfaction of visible collapse. She went still instead, which was worse.
Mr Bell began. The language was formal, but the meaning was not. Muir House was to be preserved, if possible, as a living home before a public asset. Any sale required consultation with the descendants of Morag Muir through the female line. Any restoration funds must protect the kitchen table, the stair photographs, and the harbour-facing room known in family correspondence as June's room.
'There is no June's room,' Finn said.
June looked at him. 'There was.'
The house seemed to lean closer. Even the baby quieted, fat hand resting against Nora's collarbone.
'Upstairs,' June said. 'Back bedroom. Bricked fireplace. Blue wallpaper under the paint.'
Isla knew the room. Everybody knew the room. It had been locked for years, then used for boxes, then avoided because the ceiling sagged and because avoidance was cheaper than repair.
'Why is it called June's room?' Nora asked.
Catriona answered before June could. 'Because every woman in this family has been expected to vanish into it sooner or later.'
No one laughed. Not even Isla, who could usually find humour in a tax audit and once did so at her own divorce mediation, which had annoyed Duncan enough to make the fee worthwhile.
They went upstairs because houses, like arguments, eventually demanded witnesses. Finn led with the toolbox as if a screwdriver could defend them from memory. Isla followed with her phone torch. Nora came last with Rose asleep again, while Catriona and June moved in the middle, mother and daughter separated by two feet of carpet and forty years of unsaid things.
The back bedroom smelled of dust, salt, and old paper. Finn forced the swollen door with his shoulder. Paint flaked from the frame. The room beyond was smaller than Isla remembered and colder than it should have been, with boxes stacked under a sheet and a single high window looking towards the harbour.
On the wall beside the bricked fireplace, someone had scratched a line through the paint. Not a crack. Letters.
Finn leaned in. 'What does that say?'
Isla raised the torch. The words emerged slowly, pale against the blue wallpaper hidden beneath the later coats.
Not gone. Sent.
Nora made a sound that was not quite a sob. June sat down on the bare mattress as if her bones had been cut.
Catriona read the words once, twice, then turned to her mother with a face Isla had never seen on her: not anger now, not performance, but a child's terror dragged into middle age and made to stand in daylight.
'Who sent her?' Catriona asked.
June looked at the wall, at the proof the house had kept when every person in it had failed, and answered at last.
'I did.'