by Robin Wells
“Jess, you’re not making this easy.”
And why should I? I think hotly. I pause and draw in a breath. Brett’s words float to the forefront of my mind: Married couples should help each other achieve their dreams, live according to their values, and become the best versions of themselves. They should make each other feel cherished and supported and trusted.
I haven’t done a good job at any of that, have I? A sense of shame suffuses me. Hell; I hate failing. Not only have I not been a good partner, I haven’t even been a very good person. I’ve been trying to cross items off my success list without giving much thought to why—without really considering what I had to contribute or how I could make the world a better place. And I sure haven’t given much thought to helping Zack do that.
I try to swallow, but it feels as if a Ping-Pong ball is wedged in my throat. “I’m sorry,” I make myself say. “I’ll—I’ll see if can make the Friday flight the weekend after next.” I hesitate, then force myself to take it further. “I’m okay with spending time with Lily and Quinn, but, Zack—don’t set up any counseling sessions.”
“Okay,” he says.
“Okay,” I echo. “Well, I should get back to my folks. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
“All right. Bye.”
“Back at you,” I say.
For the first time since we started saying I love you, we end a conversation without either one of us uttering the words. I stand there for a moment, the dead phone in my hand. It’s funny how something unsaid can be so loud.
I just said back at you to good-bye.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Quinn
Saturday, May 25
MAYBE I SHOULDN’T have taken Zack up on his offer to accompany me to an estate sale, I think on Saturday morning. Lily and I are seeing way too much of him, and I don’t want Lily to become too accustomed to having him around. I hadn’t arranged care for Lily, though, because Terri was supposed to go with me. I figured, between the two of us, we could manage to keep an eye on a three-year-old and still find merchandise for the store.
What I hadn’t figured was that our new assistant manager would get sick on Friday afternoon, which meant that Terri would need to man the shop today. So when Zack called to see what Lily and I were doing that weekend, I told him about the estate sale dilemma.
“I’d love to go,” he said. “You can shop, and I’ll keep Lily away from breakable objects, sharp knives, and loaded guns.”
Lily, of course, is thrilled. She jumps up and down when Zack shows up bright and early, with a Starbucks tea for me in one hand and a cooled-down hot chocolate for her in the other.
“Thanks,” I tell him, opening the door and taking the tea. I tamp down my own delight at seeing him. He’s married, and he’s moving, I remind myself as I try not to notice how nice he looks in jeans and a black T-shirt.
Lily bounces around and shows Zack her latest artwork while I gather up my tape measure, a stack of sticky notes with the word Sold written on them, a packet of crackers for dealing with sudden-onset morning sickness, snacks for Lily, and water bottles. I also stuff a small magnetic puzzle and a travel doodler in my bag to keep her occupied.
We pile into my car and head out. Lily jabbers about her preschool class during the short drive, then quizzically scrunches up her face when I pull into a residential area. “Where’s the store?” she asks. “These are all houses.”
“Estate sales are held when someone wants to sell their furniture and belongings,” I tell her. “A lot of the merchandise in my shop comes from sales like this.”
“The stuff in your store used to be in people’s houses?”
“A lot of it. You can find all kinds of cool things at estate sales. I like to think of them as treasure hunts.”
“Ooh, I love huntin’ treasure!” Lily says. “What kinda treasure?”
“You don’t really know until you get there and look around. Today I’m mainly looking for furniture that my clients will like.”
“Furniture’s not treasure,” Lily says.
“It can be,” I tell her. “Treasure is anything that someone thinks is beautiful and precious.”
Zack turns around and smiles at her. “Do you know my favorite treasure?”
In the rearview mirror, I see Lily shake her head.
“You!” he says.
She giggles. “You’re silly! I’ll show you what treasure looks like. Can I have the travel doodler?”
“It’s the thing in my bag that looks like an Etch A Sketch with a magnetic pen,” I tell him. He digs it out and passes it to Lily, and she settles down to draw.
Zack looks over at me. “How do you know which one of these to go to? There must be dozens every month.”
“I’m on the contact list of the major companies that run them,” I explain. “They send me emails and photos of some of the items going up for sale. This one looks really promising.”
“Do they let you call dibs on things?”
I shake my head. “Everything’s on a first-come, first-served basis. That’s why we have to get there early.”
The next few moments pass with Lily showing Zack a picture she’s drawn of treasure chests and pirates. I slow as I get close to our destination and search for a parking place. I find one a block away. I kill the engine, grab my tote bag, and open the door. Zack gets out, too, and unbuckles Lily from the back seat. She bounds down, holding Sugar Bear by a paw.
People are milling around the front lawn of the large two-story galleried home on Perrier Street as we walk up. I recognize the owner of the antique store on Royal Street, the buyer for an eclectic lighting store in midtown, and a woman who runs a vintage clothing store in the French Quarter.
“I need to go get a number from the man on the porch and say hello to a few people,” I say.
“We’ll wait for you back here,” Zack says.
I return ten minutes later to find Zack playing “Which hand has the penny?” with Lily. I can’t help but smile at Lily’s exuberant delight. Something warm and tender starts flowing through me. I try to shut it off, but Zack grins at me as I approach. My emotional faucet seems to be broken where he’s concerned, I think with chagrin.
“All set?” he asks.
I nod. “We’re number thirteen, which is really lucky. They’re only allowing fifteen people in at a time, and I wanted to be in the first group.”
“Wow, this is serious business.”
“I’ll say,” chimes in an older man waiting behind us. He’s wearing a newsboy cap and a Hawaiian shirt, and he’s standing with a gray-haired woman in a floral dress. “My wife got me up at the crack of dawn.”
I nod. “It’s kind of a race to see who gets the best stuff first.”
“I love to race,” Lily says.
“When the doors open, I’ll want to head upstairs to the bedrooms,” I tell Zack. “I’m specifically looking for dressers and bureaus.”
“Okay. Where’s the best place for Lily and me to go?”
“I asked the man at the front door if there were any toys for sale. He said there are some in the breakfast room.” I grin at Lily. “There’s also some costume jewelry in the downstairs bathroom.”
“Oh boy!”
“Those are our two treasure-hunting spots, then,” Zack says.
“Why are the people who live here sellin’ their things?” Lily asks.
“They’re probably moving,” I reply.
“Why don’ they take their stuff with them?”
“Well, sometimes people move to smaller places.”
“Or die,” says the elderly man who’d spoken before.
His wife hits his arm. “George!” she scolds.
But the damage is done. Lily’s face crumples. “Did Mommy’s stuff sell at a ’state sale?”
The fault lines in my heart crack a little
more. “No, sweetie.” Not yet, anyway.
“So everythin’ inside my house looks jus’ like it did?”
I search for a way to be gentle but truthful. “The furniture is there. Some photos and other personal things were moved, but Miss Margaret is keeping them for you for when you’re older.”
“What ’bout Mommy’s clothes an’ stuff?”
“Well, your grams saved some of her things, but most of them were given away.”
Her eyes fill with tears. “What if she needs them? At Christmas, I’m gonna ask Santa Claus to let her come back.”
I kneel down to Lily’s level. “Sweetheart, she died. Santa can’t fix that.”
“Why not? How do ya know for sure?”
I meet Zack’s gaze over her head. He squats down beside me.
“That’s just the way it is, Lily,” he says softly. “When someone dies, they’re gone and they can’t come back. No one likes it, but that’s just how it is. It’s a fact of life.”
She wipes her eyes with her fists. Her eyelashes stick together in wet clumps. “I don’ like fac’s of life.”
Zack nods somberly. “Some of them are hard to take.”
“Yeah.” She sniffs.
“But others are wonderful,” he says.
“Whaddya mean?”
“Well, it’s a fact that your auntie Quinn is going to have a baby, and that means you’ll have a new little brother or sister.”
“Sister.” She wipes her eyes again. “It’s gonna be a sister, like Alicia has.”
“It might be,” he says.
“It will. An’ I’m gonna be the big sister.” Her tears have stopped, and her voice is gaining strength.
“I bet you’ll be the best big sister ever.”
“Yeah.” Her face brightens. “I’m gonna help pick out her clothes and toys, and I’ll sing her songs. An’ when I learn to read, I’ll read her books.”
“What books do you think she’ll like?”
“Curious George. An’ Goodnight Moon. I have that one prac’ly mem’rized, so I can sorta read it already.”
It’s like a thunderstorm has passed, and the sun is shining again. I breathe a sigh of relief and smile at Zack. He grins back, and another flood of warm emotion pours through me.
A whistle pierces the air. I look up and see the man at the front porch with two fingers in his mouth. The crowd quiets as he opens the door. “Numbers one through fifteen can enter,” he calls. “The payment desk is by the exit to the back porch.”
“That’s our cue,” I say.
“Ready to hunt for treasure?” Zack asks Lily.
“Yes!” She takes his hand, then grabs mine, her teddy bear’s paw clasped between our palms. The three of us surge forward together, looking like a close-knit nuclear family.
But we’re not. Zack is married. It’s one of those immutable hard facts.
And here’s another, I think with a wistful ache. Sometimes life can be like an estate sale: by the time you find exactly what you want, it’s already been claimed by someone else.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Zack
THE ESTATE SALE was a study in frenzied shopping, but Quinn and Lily made out like bandits. Quinn scored three dressers, a sideboard, a large starburst mirror, an enormous brass tray, a coffee table, and a pair of lamps; Lily left with a long rope of faux pearls, a hat that looks like a UFO with a black veil, and enormous screw-on earrings the size of chandeliers, all of which she insisted on wearing.
After Quinn made arrangements for her contracted movers to pick up the furniture, she suggested we go by the Walnut Street Playground at the front of Audubon Park to let Lily burn off some energy before lunch. Lily is enthusiastic about the plan, but once we get to the playground, she balks at removing her “treasure joolry.” She agrees to take it off when Quinn promises she can put it back on when she finishes playing.
“You have to keep it safe,” Lily tells us as she takes off the bounty and hands it over. “Pirates might be after it.”
“I promise to guard it with my life.” I hold up my hand in a three-finger Boy Scout salute. Quinn laughs, and the two of us sit down on a bench under a live oak. Lily runs toward three children playing on a piece of climbing equipment.
“Does she know those kids?” I ask.
“No, but Lily makes friends easily.” Quinn smiles. “She gets that from Brooke.”
I glance over at her. “I’ve noticed some things she gets from you.”
“Oh, yeah? What?”
“When you’re trying to decide about something, you’ll put your finger on your chin. Lily does that, too.” I scroll through my phone and pull up a photo. “Here.”
I lean in and show her a picture of Lily in the pose at the estate sale. “That’s when she was trying to decide between the pearls and a rope of purple Mardi Gras beads. She did it with the hats, too. And you do the same thing when you’re studying a menu.”
Quinn stares at the photo, amazed. “I never realized she does that.” She looks up at me. “I never really realized I do it, either, but now that you say it, I guess I do.”
“There are other little things you two do alike. You both tilt your heads when you’re listening.”
“Brooke did that! Maybe I got it from her.”
I lift my shoulders. “Or she got it from you.”
“No, I probably got it from her. She had a big influence on people.”
“You do, too,” I tell her.
She looks perplexed. “What do you mean?”
“People start smiling and just generally perk up in your presence.”
Her face turns pink. “They do not.”
“Yeah, they do. You just can’t see it.”
Something like shy pleasure flickers across her face. She turns her head and watches the children on the playground. “What else do Lily and I do the same?”
“When you eat something sweet, you both close your eyes after the first bite. It’s like you’re savoring it or trying to commit it to memory.”
She laughs.
“And you both dab your napkins at your mouth in the same dainty way.”
She laughs again. “We probably got that from Miss Margaret. I don’t remember, but I bet Brooke did the same thing. It sounds very Southern and ladylike.” She smiles at me. “You notice way too much. I’m going to be too self-conscious to ever eat in front of you again.”
“Oh, I hope not. It’s all adorable.”
Her eyes go soft. I look into them longer than I should, then my gaze travels to her lips. In another lifetime, I would have leaned in and . . .
“I lost-ed my mos’ special treasure of all!” Lily runs toward us, sobbing.
Quinn holds out her arms, and Lily races right into them.
“I lost-ed Sugar Bear! I left-ed him at the ’state sale!”
Good gravy. I’d just thought about kissing Quinn! I didn’t act on it—I wouldn’t have acted on it; the thought was framed in terms of “before I was married”—but still, it was wrong. I shouldn’t be having thoughts like that—period, no excuses.
“We’ll go back and get him,” Quinn says.
“What if someone else took-ed him?” Lily’s eyes are large and fearful. “What if they thought he was their treasure an’ bought him?”
I think of the love-worn brown bear, flattened from hugs and missing a tiny piece of his ear. It’s more likely Sugar Bear ended up in the trash.
“I have a feeling he’s just fine,” Quinn says. She gives me a small smile over Lily’s head.
“Is it one of your knowin’ feelin’?” Lily persists.
“What’s that?” I ask.
“Mommy used to say Auntie Quinn sometimes knows things through her feelin’s.”
I wonder if Quinn knows what I was thinking. I’m afraid she does, becaus
e a moment ago, I could have sworn the light in her eyes said we were on the same page.
“I’m not certain, but I’m pretty sure,” Quinn says to Lily. “Where do you think you left him?”
“I don’ know.” Tears run down Lily’s cheeks.
“We looked at the toys and then at the women’s accessories,” Zack says. “He’ll be at one of those two places.”
“Let’s hurry up an’ go get him!” Lily takes both our hands and pulls us toward the car.
“Do you want me to drive so you can call the people running the sale?” I ask.
“That would be great.” Quinn hands me the keys to the car. I unlock it, lift Lily into her safety seat, and buckle her in.
Quinn and I get settled in the front seat.
“Hurry!” Lily urges. “We need to rescue Sugar Bear!”
The reality, I think as I start the engine, is that Sugar Bear rescued me.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Margaret
Monday, May 27
“LOOK AT YOU, out of bed and sitting in a chair!” Quinn smiles as she comes into my hospital room, and it feels like the overhead lights increased their wattage. She leans down and kisses my cheek, then sits in a chair beside me. “How are you feeling?”
I pat her hand. “Well. Very well.” Although I’m not. I’m sitting in a chair, all right, but I needed help to get in it, and I couldn’t stand on my own to save my life. A walker is right there beside me, but I can’t use it without assistance; I’m not supposed to put much weight on my broken hip. The truth is, I’m weak as dishwater and I wear out faster than dime-store socks. The worst part, though, is my mind; my attention wanders, and I’m having trouble remembering recent events. I know that Lilly was ill recently and I think she got better, but I don’t remember what was wrong with her or how much time has passed. “How’s Lily?”
“She’s great.” Quinn sets her purse on the floor. “She’s at a friend’s birthday party this afternoon.”