“Wait.” I sipped wine to fortify myself before ranting. “So, according to you guys, I was wrong, then followed it up by being more wrong. Then I finished up by being unreasonable and unappreciative of what I had?”
After a moment’s consideration, they all nodded. “That just about sums it up, yes,” Thomas said.
“This has not been helpful, at all.”
Thomas took my chin in his hand and made me look him in the eye. “Sweetheart, if you want someone to cuddle you and stroke your ego, get a dog. But we will always tell you the truth, which is why a lot of people don’t spend time with us. You’ve screwed up. And you’ve screwed up big. Own it, apologize for it. Either make up with him or move on.”
I frowned, draining the last of my wine. “Can I get a second opinion from a panel of lesbians?”
“No,” Emmett told me. “All verdicts are final, no appeals. Who wants dessert?”
Emmett was never one to let me dwell. The bastard.
Instead of being a decent brother, he allowed me only two days of wallowing in the intensely cheerful comfort of his guest room before forcing me to come in to work with him.
“Come on. Up and at ‘em, kid,” he called as he poured himself a cup of coffee at his kitchen counter. “There are no free lunches in this house - what the hell are you wearing?”
I looked down at my usual daytime ensemble of yoga pants and a hoodie. “What? This is what I’ve been wearing during the day.”
“Well, then, my darling sister, it wasn’t luck that landed you Monroe. It was a miracle.”
“Keep the gloves above the belt, Em,” I muttered. “You’re the one who’s told me for years that I dress like a Junior League fembot. I’ve just taken your advice and relaxed a bit.”
“You left ‘a bit’ behind a long time ago, Lacey,” he said, dragging me into the guest room and going through the dresser drawers. “We need to find you a happy medium.”
I flopped down on the four-poster canopy bed, wallowing in the mussed white eyelet spread. Emmett’s guest room was a 1950s teenager’s dream come true. Candy-striped pink-and-white wallpaper, the princess bed, and a picture of Elvis in his army uniform on the refurbished nightstand. He didn’t even like Elvis. He just loved a good theme. Emmett’s own room was a little less innocent, a lot more Pier 1 Imports. I loved my brother, but he was a throw-pillow junkie. I’d been planning on an intervention before Cherry Click came along and derailed the course of my existence.
That seemed so long ago now, like it had happened to someone else. And yet, the idea of going into town with Emmett was exhausting. So far I’d managed to dash into town to visit Sam’s office without encountering any of my former Singletree friends and neighbors. Once people knew I was helping Emmett at The Auctionarium, they’d make up any excuse to come by for a chat, just to get a look at me.
I could probably deal with being a sideshow attraction if I wasn’t busy throwing myself a big Monroe-based pity party. At the moment I just wanted to go back to bed and pull the covers over my head.
“Come on, Lacey, out of bed, this stopped being cute about five minutes ago,” he said, tossing dark jeans and a tomato-red sweater at me. “If you’re going to stay with me, you’re going to pull your weight, which means coming into the store and humoring the cranky techno-phobic geriatrics who insist they could get ten thousand dollars for their mothers’ china if they took it to Sotheby’s.”
“Well, you make it sound so attractive,” I snarked, tossing the sweater back at him. “Why do you even have women’s clothes here?”
“Merry Christmas,” he said, opening the guest room closet to show me several color-coordinated, accessorized outfits in my sizes. “When you left Mike, I figured there would be a makeover at some point. Though, I’ll be honest, I thought it would be sooner. I like to be prepared.”
“Emmett, were you not listening last night when I was drunkenly ranting about men who keep pushing me to do what they want?”
“Yes, but I don’t count, I’m family,” he said, frowning.
“Bullshit!” I exclaimed. “Being family means you count twice. I don’t want a makeover. I don’t want you laying out outfits for me like I’m six years old. I’m perfectly comfortable in what I have on, thank you, and old enough to pick out my own damn clothes.”
“Fine,” he said icily, dropping the sweater on the bed. “You have ten minutes to do something with your face and get your poly-blend-covered ass in the car, woman, or I’m calling Mama and telling her you chose to stay here instead of with her.”
I gasped. “You wouldn’t dare.”
“Try me,” he said, before sweeping out of the room. “No. No dramatic exits this time. I have something to say to you. So your life didn’t turn out exactly as you expected? Well, boo fucking hoo, sweetie. You think this is how I saw my life turning out? Despite dating every eligible man between here and New Orleans, I don’t know if I’m ever going to have someone to share my life with. Dad doesn’t have anything to do with me. Even though I have plenty of acquaintances, including that coven you met the other night, my baby sister is my closest friend, which is just fucking sad. The only thing I have going for me is my keen eye for breakables made fifty years ago and the fact that you occasionally let me boss you around, even if it’s just about your hair. But that’s my life. It’s what I make of it.”
“I’m your closest friend?” I asked. “That is flicking sad.”
He ignored me. “But you want to know what pisses me off more than anything? That in the end, Mike gave you something most of us would kill for.”
“A vulnerability to STDs?”
I made an “uhhf” sound when he threw a pillow at me. “A second chance! Thanks to his boffing the secretary, you found a man who loves you and is just waiting for you to stop being a moron so you can make a life together.”
“No, I have a man who thinks I’d be great if I just tweaked my personality a bit here and there to suit his needs,” I countered. “Look, I opened myself up to someone completely. And I got burned for it. I’m afraid now that I won’t be able to love anybody else. And part of me thinks that’s okay, that maybe it’s worth it if I don’t have to hurt like this anymore.”
Emmett sighed. “Lace, let’s not romanticize your time with Mike. We both know -”
“I’m not talking about Mike; I’m talking about Monroe.”
“Oh.” Emmett chewed his lip for a moment. “Well, then, that was a valid and well-constructed argument.”
“I’m sorry, Em. I do appreciate what you do for me. Maybe I just need a little less of it. I’ll be in the car in five minutes,” I said, squeezing his hand.
“Take seven,” he said, patting my leg as he pushed up from the bed.
“I’m wearing the sweats!” I called, flopping back on the bed. “I do not know who won that argument.”
A cold strawberry Pop-Tart and a colder Coke later, I was sitting at the computer at Emmett’s desk, cataloging a set of milk glass pitchers.
“I do not know how you drink that stuff so early.” Emmett shuddered as I took a long pull from the frosty red can. “It can’t be good for you.”
“Says the man drinking three hits of espresso mixed with overheated milk and four sugars,” I said, searching through the tangle of spreadsheets on his hard drive for the appropriate tracking number.
“It’s low-fat milk,” he said.
I shook my head and ignored him. Emmett’s office! storeroom was a sort of cross between Au Baba’s cave and Grandma’s creepy attic, filled with old bicycles, old framed movie posters, kitschy cookie jars, and the odd antique wooden dressmaker’s form. Emmett had a special case to protect the books, magazines, and comic books from humidity and dust. There were dozens of china dolls lined up on Lucite cases on the shelves, like an imprisoned evil doll army. I had a hard time turning my back on them.
Emmett had remodeled the former Faber’s Hardware Store so that the storeroom took up the majority of the real estate. He’d walled off the reception area to create a cozy space where he could greet clients at a refurbished Queen Anne table, appraise their valuables for a reserve bid, determine a commission, and sign their paperwork.
While Emmett was willing to sell online for anyone, there was also a small showroom for the items Emmett had gleaned from estate sales and auctions. Emmett sold direct to select, discerning clients who drove hundreds of
