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Abby rubbed her chin and glanced at her sisters; they looked as puzzled as she was.

“It’s a chicken stew,” Maria said.

“I bet it tastes as good as it smells,” Abby said.

“It’s my husband’s favorite,” Maria said.

Maria walked them through the house with her head raised high and a big smile as if it were a ten-million-dollar estate.In the living room, there was a Puerto Rican flag on the wall, which contrasted with the furniture’s rustic American farmhouse theme.There was a denim couch with a red, white, and blue quilt across it and a pine wood coffee table, like the one that Abby and Alex had in their house.

Maria then led them into the kitchen.The kitchen didn’t look as if it had been updated.The cabinets were scratched and worn, indicating that many people had lived there.Could they be the same cabinets their mother opened to get cereal out?Carla told them her mother wouldn’t allow her to eat cereal when she was a kid, but whenever Beverly was gone for work, Carla would buy five boxes of Frosted Flakes and eat them for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

“You’re welcome to look around,” Maria said.“I need to add a few things to my stew.”She pointed toward the stairs.“The bedrooms are on the second floor.”

The sisters headed up the stairs alone and began exploring.They looked into the bedrooms and bathrooms.

“This feels weird,” Morgan said.“We’re not going to find anything in a house our mother moved out of many years ago.”

“Maybe, maybe not.Look,” Charlie exclaimed an octave higher than her normal voice.She pointed to the door frame at the stairs to the basement.It had pencil marks.They all stopped to take a closer look.The writing was almost illegible, but next to one pencil mark, it looked like a capital C, and on another, a capital R.

“The C has to be for Carla and the R for Roy!”Abby said.

“Wow, is that whose growth chart that is?”Maria asked as she came up behind them.“My husband and I wondered who C and R were.We had fun making up our own stories.”

“Carla was our mom, and Roy was her brother,” Morgan said.

“How wonderful that you found this,” Maria said.“I doubt there’s anything else in the house, but I can show you the backyard.”

An old tool shed sat in the corner of the yard.The grass was an inch taller than it should have been and looked wild.

Maria’s face took on a rosy glow, and she let out a tiny giggle and didn’t make eye contact with them.“My husband promised to mow the lawn every afternoon for the last few weeks.I’m embarrassed that you have to see it looking like this.”

“I live in the desert, so any grass is beautiful to me,” Charlie said, pulling her coat around her tightly to ward off the chill.

Maria smiled and seemed to relax.“I wish there was more from your mother here, but it was empty when we moved in,” she said.

“How long have you lived here?”Abby asked.

“About two years.The man we rent from bought it fifteen years ago from a charity.He said the woman who owned the home for over fifty years died, and since she had no heirs, she left it to some suicide prevention organization.”

“That must’ve been our grandmother,” Charlie said.

“Maria, you’ve been more than kind allowing us to come into your house,” Morgan said.

“We appreciate it,” Abby said.

“It was my pleasure.I wish I could’ve been more help.”

The women said goodbye, and the sisters walked back down the path.

“Isn’t it strange that our grandmother left her house to some charity to help prevent suicide years before her daughter took her own life?”Morgan said, holding the gate for Charlie and Abby to walk through.

“It’s eerie,” Charlie said.“And Mom was alive when her mother died, so why wouldn’t our grandmother leave the house to her?”

“Maybe they had a fight,” Abby said, then wondered what happened in that house that Carla wouldn’t talk about and Beverly disowned her?

“Now what?”Charlie asked as they headed back down the street.

“That park Antonio told us about is local, which means it has to be near here,” Morgan said.“Let’s check it out.”