“Right.”
He coughed. “Maybe I should look up her up, just in case.”
I smiled. “I knew you’d come around. Oh!”
“What?”
My feet cemented to the floor in front of a small burl-elm and fruitwood dining table, magnificently crafted, early nineteenth century. I skimmed my hand over the dimpled surface of the table, worn by time. An inlay of acorn and oak leaf circled the outside. The finish was original and generous waxing had brought out the wood’s natural glow.
“Lucy?”
“It’s gorgeous,” I breathed.
“What is? Me?”
“That goes without saying.”
“I like to hear you say it.”
“Are you flirting with me, Mr. Donahue?”
“Who, me? Never. That would be inappropriate in a hospital waiting room, Ms. Valentine. Don’t you think?”
“And you’re never inappropriate.”
He laughed.
“Actually, I was talking about a table. A gorgeous table. Here in the store. It’s the most beautiful thing ever.”
“I’d disagree.”
Suddenly warm and gushy, I smiled like a fool. “I better go.”
“We’re still on for tonight?”
“You tell me.”
“Thoreau and I will be there.”
“Grendel will be beside himself.” He had a thing for Sean’s Yorkie. No one pretended to understand it.
I slipped my phone back into my bag and found Preston standing under a large oil portrait of a weathered seafarer. It was a lovely piece, but dust and dirt had muddied the surface, dulling its beauty. Someone could do a lot with it.
“Sean?” she asked.
“How’d you know?”
“The oopy-goopy look on your face while you were talking.”
“It could have been from the table,” I said, wandering back to it, drawn like a moth to flame.
An old woman, stick thin, appeared next to me as I crouched down to eye the detail on the table’s edge.
“You have an excellent eye. It’s an Austrian piece,” she said, her voice warbling, as some voices did as they aged.
“It’s lovely. Truly lovely.” I’d been looking forever for the perfect table for my small dining room. This one appeared to have been custom made for me. I flipped the dangling price tag, and tried not to suck in a deep breath. Three thousand dollars. “But a little beyond my budget.”
Creased eyes took me in. Wrinkles, like rings on a tree, lined her face. Short curly white hair hinted that this woman, eighty if a day, had decided to live life to its fullest. She wore a black track suit, sneakers, and a fifties-era apron around her waist. “How far?”
“Unfortunately, miles. But it is lovely.”
Preston snorted. “Budget? You?”
“Guess you don’t know me as well as you think.”
Confusion swept across her face as the cowbell rang as the other customers headed back into the cold.
“Are you looking for something in particular?” the old woman asked.
It pained me, but I forced myself away from the table. “Buttons.”
“You were right about miles,” she said with a small crackly laugh. “Over here.”
Preston and I followed. The woman had a long stride for being such a petite little thing. “Can I ask a question?”
“Indeed!”
“How do you collect your inventory?” I picked up a jar of buttons, poked around them. Preston’s eyes were wide as they watched my fingers sort.
“Estate sales, auctions, consignments, off-the-street sales.”
“Would you happen to remember where you would have gotten a jar like this?” I picked up the Mason jar that held Leo Epperson’s ring hidden among the many buttons.
She flipped the tag tied round the mouth of the jar. “Estate sale.”
“Do you happen to know whose?” Preston asked, jumping in.
I glared.
She ignored it.
“For provenance?” the woman asked.
I shoved the jar of buttons into Preston’s hands to occupy her. “Something like that.”
She pulled a leather-bound log from behind the counter. Her blinding white eyebrows rose. “That lot came in eighteen months ago. The David Winston estate.”
Preston gasped and nearly dropped the buttons. Her amazed gaze met mine for a second before she said, “Sorry, too much caffeine this morning.”
My adrenaline surged. David Winston was the name of Joanne’s son. Somehow Leo’s ring had ended up in a jar of buttons sold at his estate sale.
Though it was terrible Joanne had lost her son, it might help me find her. All I needed to do was search for David’s obituary in the newspaper archives at the local library to see if she was listed as a survivor, and if so, if a current location (at that time) had been printed.
The door opened, letting in four chattering shoppers, talking loudly about Christmas presents and what to buy for whom.
Christmas.
It was less than two weeks away, and I’d barely made a dent in my shopping. My family was nearly impossible to buy for because they already owned everything their hearts desired. And Sean. I had no idea what to get him. A bottle of cologne wouldn’t cut it.
“Thank you,” I told the woman. “We’re just going to take a look around.”
“We are?” Preston asked, clutching the jar of buttons as we wandered deep into the shop. It was irresistible, filled stem to stern with pottery, books, linens, furniture, and everything in between.
“Take your time,” she called after us.
“What did you mean earlier?” Preston asked. “About a budget?”
There was really no use keeping it secret. “I gave up my trust fund when I turned eighteen.”
“You did what? Are you crazy?”
“A little.”
“Why?”
I couldn’t explain to her how I didn’t feel worthy of the money because of my inability to read auras. “Young. Prideful. I wanted to make it on my own.”
“And now that you’re working for daddy dearest?”
Dad would have a fit at the nickname. “The fund is still there waiting for me.”
“And what, exactly, are you waiting for?”
Letting my finger glide along the spines on a bookshelf, I absently checked titles. “Something important.”
“I don’t know. That table looked pretty important to you.”
I felt a stab of longing. So stupid to want an object so much, but I couldn’t deny the pull. “Not that kind of important.”
“You’re crazy.”
“So you’ve said.”
“It bears repeating.”
I smiled as I continued to skim titles.
Preston pulled a Laura Ingalls Wilder title from the shelf, ran a loving hand over its cover. “I grew up reading these stories.”
“You? Really?”
“No, I was thumbing through Joan Didion since first grade. Of course I read the Little House books, who didn’t?” She placed it back on the shelf, a wistful look in her eye. “My mom used to read to me every night.”
“Was it just you and your mom?” I asked, trying to piece together her early years.
“And Nana for a while.”
Sounded familiar. “Did you always live on the South Shore?”
“Scituate, all my life.”
Scituate bordered Cohasset. It was possible my father could have run into her mother at one point or another. “What did your mom do?”
“Why the twenty questions?”
“Curious.”
“She was a librarian.”
“Was?”
Preston continued to browse. “She died when I was seventeen.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. I couldn’t imagine not having Mum in my life.
“Life goes on.” Preston moved over to the next bookshelf.
It was obvious she didn’t want to talk about it, but I was dying to rule out any cha
nce that we might actually be related. I just didn’t know how to ask that question. I pretended to study book spines. I suddenly froze. Gently, I took the novel off the shelf, dusted the torn cloth cover.
“What’s that?” Preston leaned in.
“A second edition of Henry David Thoreau’s Cape Cod.” It had been published in 1864 and was currently in sad repair, with a cracked binding, water marks, and tears, but as soon as I spotted it, I had to have it.
This was it. Sean’s present. “It looks older.” She wrinkled her nose. “And it smells.”
Peeking through one eye as though that would lessen the shock, I checked the price.
Nine hundred dollars. A bit high, considering the condition.
“Nine hundred!” Preston snorted. “As if!”
As I pulled my lower lip into my mouth and contemplated whether I could afford the book, my gaze landed on a Regency-era tortoiseshell, ivory, and mother-of-pearl tea caddy with four tiny copper ball feet, all intact. It fairly cried Dovie’s name. Magnetized, I walked over to it. Grasping the white metal knob, I opened the chest, tried to imagine who’d been using it for the past two hundred years.
Holding my breath, I checked the tag. Three hundred dollars.
If I didn’t eat for the next three months …
“What are you doing?” Preston asked.
“Christmas shopping.”
She laughed. “I thought we were here about the ring.” Shaking the jar of buttons, she added, “We should probably check the local library for an obituary for David Winston.”
“My thoughts, too, but look at this caddy.”
“It is pretty,” she admitted, running her finger across the top. “My nana had one just like it. Well, a knockoff.”
I heard sadness in her tone. “Do you have any shopping you want to do?”
“Nah. Not really.”
“Are you done shopping already?”
She turned away, suddenly interested in a porcelain vase. “It’s just that I don’t really have anyone to buy for. Oh, stop.”
“What?”
“Looking at me that way. I don’t need your sympathy.”
This was my chance to pry a bit, but somehow it felt wrong. Still, I couldn’t help myself. “No other family?”
“All dead. My dad when I was two, Mom when I was seventeen, Nana when I was twenty. And I was an only child.”
“I’m sorry.”
“There’s that sympathy again. It’s all right.” She shrugged. “I’m doing okay for myself. Sure, I get a little lonely sometimes, but work fills the void. You’re really lucky, you know.”
“Why’s that?”
“Your family loves you. As crazy and messed up as they are—and they are—they really love you.”
She was right. About all of it. Yet it made me wonder. Just how much did she know about my family? Had she learned about Cupid’s Curse? My grandmother’s secret divorce? Did she have proof my parents were married in name only? Did she know about the auras?
“I always wanted brothers and sisters,” she said. “Did you?”
I couldn’t bring myself to look at her. Was she hinting? Trying to warn me? “I, ah … never really thought about,” I lied. I’d always wanted a sibling. Someone to laugh with, play with, share the burden of my heritage with.
The subject was making me really uncomfortable, so I picked up the tea caddy and said, “How long do you think I’d last eating peanut butter and jelly?”
“Not long, I’m guessing.”
Over the top of her head, I caught sight of a wooden flute, standing upright, leaning against a shelf as if waiting for someone to come by and pick it up.
“Oh God. What now?” she asked.
I edged past her, gently lifted the flute. Made of boxwood and ivory, it had to be early nineteenth century. I checked for a mark and located “Astor & Co., London.” As a collector of antique instruments, my mum would be in heaven to find this under the tree Christmas morning.
“Budget, remember?” Preston goaded.
“And to think for a second there I was liking you.”
“It was bound not to last.”
Smiling, I checked the tag. Six hundred. A steal. An absolute steal.
I played mental banker. The book, the flute, the caddy, the buttons.
“That’s a lot of PB and J,” Preston said as if reading my mind.
In my head I kept hearing, trust fund, trust fund, trust fund.
It would be so easy to dip into it.
Why shouldn’t I? It was mine, after all. Maybe it was time to grow up and accept the fact that I came from money. It was nothing to be ashamed of.
But why, then, did it make my stomach ache?
Making up my mind, I headed to the register before I spotted anything else.
Preston whistled low. “You must have good credit.”
A smile played on the old woman’s thin lips. “Oh, my.”
I placed my haul on the countertop. “Thirteen hundred for it all, including the buttons.” The thirty-five-dollar jar of buttons.
Her gaze sharpened as she took in each item. “Including the buttons?” she asked, her eyes dancing. “Seventeen.”
“Fourteen.”
“Sixteen.”
I faltered. Sixteen hundred!
“Fifteen?” Preston offered. To me she said, “You would have regretted walking away.”
“Sold.” The old woman beamed. “Cash or credit?”
I handed over a credit card. Undoubtedly I would be paying for these gifts for years to come at a ruthless eighteen percent interest rate.
I needed the Lost Loves venture to succeed. Emotionally, because I had a lot invested in the company. For years I’d longed to be part of the family business, and now that I was, I didn’t want to fail. And financially, because the longer it took for me to be successful, proving myself worthy of the money earned by generations of Valentines putting their psychic abilities to good use, the longer my trust fund would sit, untouched.
“The library?” Preston asked after we dropped the goods in my trunk.
Snowflakes started falling as I checked my watch. I still had enough time before my meeting with Faye Dodd. “The library.”
As we headed back toward the center of the square, I could have sworn I heard Preston humming Mamma Mia!’s “Money, Money, Money.”
And damn if I didn’t find myself enjoying it.
10
Three hours later, Preston had dropped me at the shipyard to pick up my car. I drove to the district attorney’s office and left the latest Handmaiden letter for Aiden on his desk since he wasn’t in. I spent the rest of the drive home with one eye on the road and one on my rearview mirror.
I was doing my best to not only be careful and aware of my surroundings, but not totally freak out as well. I wanted to live normally, as I did before the letters arrived. It would be too easy to sink into fear and paranoia.
Preston and I hadn’t learned much at the library, but we had discovered the name of the lawyer who handled David Winston’s estate. Unfortunately he hadn’t been in his office when we called.
It was closing in on five o’clock by the time I walked in my door. Faye Dodd was due here in fifteen minutes.
I checked my messages as I walked around the cottage pulling drapes. I glanced around for Grendel. He finally emerged from the windowsill in my bedroom where he liked to watch the seagulls. I popped open a can of tuna and dished half of it into his bowl.
He pounced with a fervor he usually reserved for Thoreau.
There was one message, from Raphael. I called him back.
“Uva, you don’t happen to know anything about this electric razor that was delivered here today?”
“Why would I know anything about that?” I tried for outrage but couldn’t keep the humor out of my voice.
“Mmm-hmmm.”
“Don’t get started with your mmm-hmming. Is Dad at home? I need to talk to him.”
“Out for the night.”
/>
It was early to be starting the weekend. He must really have it bad for his latest paramour. “With his new lady friend?”
“Uva …”
“Fine, fine.”
“Nothing’s wrong, is there?” he asked.
Only if you didn’t count that Preston Bailey, roving reporter, might be my sister. “I just wanted to check on him.”
“I’ll tell him you called. You can always try his cell.”
I knew from experience he never answered it while gallivanting, but I could give it a try. I raised myself onto the counter. Grendel had finished dinner and hopped atop the fridge, his favorite napping spot. “It’s just that I’m worried. Something is going on with him.”
“Is there?”
“Don’t give me that. You know him better than anyone.”
“Mmm. Yes. I suppose so.”
“Come on, you have to tell me.”
“It’s not for me to be involved.”
“But you know what’s going on with him.”
“It’s not for me to say, Uva.”
“Secrets can only hurt at this point, no?”
“The truth, also, can hurt.”
The truth? About what? “But—”
“His secrets are not mine to tell, Lucy. Please don’t press. I must go.”
“Pasa—”
He hung up.
Well, fine. I looked up at Grendel and made kissy noises. He didn’t so much as twitch an ear.
“Fine,” I said again, hopping off the counter. I went in to see Odysseus, but he was buried under shavings, sleeping, the pine rising and falling with each breath he took.
I was just about to call Marisol to vent and maybe ask about getting a nontemperamental dog, but the doorbell rang.
Faye Dodd was older than I expected. Late fifties, with brown hair streaked with gray and haunted green eyes.
I took her suede coat as she came in and offered tea.
“No, thank you,” she said, wringing her hands.
“Sit, please.”
She did, smoothing her brown tweed tulip skirt as she did so. A soft creamy sweater softened the hard lines of her face, but couldn’t disguise the pain etched in her features. Crossing her feet at the ankles, she rocked ever so slightly.
Curious, Grendel hopped from the top of the fridge to the counter to the floor. He hobbled in to the living room, meowing pathetically. He wasn’t above playing the sympathy card for affection.