by Kristy Tate
#
“What are you doing?” Grandpa Hank asked the next morning.
Grace had her microscope set up on the kitchen table with the napkin from the party underneath the lens. She didn’t really know what she was looking for, nor did she know why Charmant wanted to poison her—or if that was even his intent. But just having her microscope out of its case made her feel like herself again.
“Have you ever seen paper under a microscope, Grandpa?” Grace asked him. “It’s pretty cool.”
He grunted and returned to his crossword puzzle.
Grace focused the lens.
“Where’d you get the napkin?” Grandma Dorothy asked.
“From the party I went to last night,” Grace told her without looking up.
“Paper napkins are a waste,” she said.
“I know, Grandma,” she answered without lifting her head.
“That’s why we always use linen,” Grandma said.
Grace thought about explaining to her grandmother that linen napkins weren’t necessarily better for the environment because they needed to be washed in water and soap, but decided it wasn’t worth it to argue with someone who was known to fish “gently used” paper napkins out of McDonald’s trash cans and rinse out used sandwich baggies.
“Is that contraption your dad’s?” Grandma Dorothy asked.
“Nope, it’s mine.” Pride tinged her voice. It was one of her dad’s castoffs, but it was hers now.
“What are you going to do with it?” Grandma Dorothy asked.
“Look at stuff.”
“Why?”
Grace slowly raised her head from her “contraption.” She thought about telling her grandmother how there’s a whole unexplored world visible beneath the microscope—how what we see with our eyes is so very different under scrutiny. She could have told her about the beauty of a sliced apple, or the art of a snowflake, or the intricacy of a blood drop.
But before she could decide where to start, her grandma said, “What’s for breakfast? The kitchen is for food, not fancy toys. If you’re going to be in here, you have to make us something to eat.”
Grace pulled away from her fancy toy, grabbed a box of cereal out of the cupboard, plunked it in front of Grandma Dorothy, gathered up her microscope and left the room.
#
On Monday when Grace got to The Lilac Shop, she found a periwinkle blue dress with embroidered yellow flowers on it and a pair of matching silk shoes waiting for her in the dressing room. Her heart stuttered. Did she really want to give up this cushy job that came with dress-up clothes and go back to shoveling stalls at the Wilsons’ dairy?
Grace heard her dad’s voice in her head saying something about honest work and golden handcuffs. She told her dad’s voice to be quiet. If he wanted to have an opinion, he should have stuck around. His voice reminded her that she wasn’t being fair. Skipping out on the reserves wasn’t a choice.
Maybe he didn’t have a choice, but she did.
Grace found Cordelia on a stool behind the cash register. She looked up from her book when Grace walked in.
“I knew that dress would look fabulous on you!”
“How do you do it?” Grace asked her.
“Do what?” Cordelia seemed genuinely confused.
“How do you find clothes that fit me perfectly?”
She smiled and went back to her book. “A woman deserves her secrets.”
“Hmm. Cordelia?”
She looked up and blinked her long eyelashes at Grace.
Grace hated to ask her for more money since her salary was already really generous, but she had to leave and to do that she needed two thousand dollars—enough for a flight and a cheap car.
“Is there any way I can earn extra money?”
“Extra?” Cordelia blinked again. “What do you need, love?”
“A car.”
“A car?” Cordelia echoed.
“I know what you’re thinking, but this is not an Orange County sort of car. My friend Kelly told me I can buy her Uncle Billy’s Buick.” Grace knew that as far as cars went, it was a good deal, but for her, fifteen hundred dollars was about as attainable as the moon. Unless…
“Do you want this Billy’s Buick?”
Cordelia’s question stumped her. Did she really want to drive a Buick with a broken window and a sawed-off muffler? But a car, for her, wasn’t about glamour or prestige, it was about freedom. And home. Grace mutely nodded.
“Well, it just so happens that I do have errands that need running. Would you be willing to go with Freddy to Hurricane Wash and pick up an antique? I was going to send Earnest, but he’s complaining about his bad back and this will require heavy lifting. You’d have to be very careful. What I’m buying is priceless…at least for me.”
Grace looked around the already crowded room, trying to imagine how they could fit another thing in.
“It’s not for the shop,” Cordelia told her, reading Grace’s reaction. “It’s just for me…and Freddy, too, of course.”
“When would we go?”
“As soon as your shift is over, if you’d like. Why don’t I find Freddy and see what he’s got going on? Will you be all right here on your own?”
“Of course.”
Grace watched Cordelia gather up her purse and head out the door before taking Cordelia’s place on the stool. For not the first time, she wondered how Cordelia could afford to run a shop without customers, and she felt guilty asking for more money. The clock ticked slowly on until finally it was time to change out of her dress and back into her jeans.
In the back, she stepped into the dressing room, pulled the curtain closed and tugged the dress over her head.
When she was halfway into her jeans, the curtain flew open. Grace screamed and grabbed at it, but a small gnarled hand held it firmly open.
Seven little men frowned at her from the other side of the curtain.
“Hey!” she yelled as she hastily zipped up her jeans and threw her tank top over her head. “What are you doing?”
“We heard you need money,” the ringleader, Prof, said.
“So?”
“We have money.”
“And you’re just going to give it to me so I won’t go to the police and tell them you kidnapped me?”
“We didn’t kidnap you!” one of them yelled.
“We saved you!” another one barked.
“Huh. That’s not how I saw it.” Grace rose to the tips of her toes. The dwarfs made her feel tall. She liked it.
“You saw it wrong,” another growled.
Grace blew a loose hair out of her face. “Tell me about the money.”
“We want you to find something,” Prof said.
“Why should I?”
He pulled a massive red stone out of his pocket.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“What does it look like?” He held it up to the light, sending glistening beams shooting through the room.
Grace held up her hands. “I don’t know.”
“It’s a ruby!”
“Wow. It’s just…if it’s real it has to be worth a fortune. How would I ever sell it?”
He shoved the stone back in his pocket. “I can get you gold. Do you want gold?”
“Why do you think I can get something you can’t?”
“Because you’re—” He waved his hand in front of her, meaning that she didn’t look like a fairy tale character. She looked like she belonged, which just went to prove how little he knew.
“What are you looking for?” She found it hard to believe that whatever it was could be more valuable than a ruby the size of a peanut.
“A mirror.”
“A mirror?” she echoed.
“The mirror.”
“The mirror?”
“You know, mirror, mirror on the wall. It’s priceless.”
Cordelia’s words echoed in her mind and puzzle pieces fell into place. No. This was craziness. “You’re kidding, right?”
Prof ste
pped so close she could feel his breath fanning her chest. “Do I look like I’m kidding?” he growled.
“No, but…I really don’t know how to find a missing magic mirror.”
“Try!”
“Okay. All right. I’ll try.”
“You do it and we’ll get you a car,” Prof said.
“A nice one,” the one with a worried look added.
“A new one,” the scowling one snorted.
“One with working windows,” the droopy-eyed one yawned.
“And windshield wipers,” the littlest one added. He took a long drink from the flash he carried.
“Those are mighty important in Oregon,” the scowling one said.
Thick and heavy indecision fell over Grace. “How do you know about Uncle Billy’s car?”
At that, Prof spit on the floor.
“Hey!” she said, knowing she’d be the one to mop that up.
“Find the mirror, and we’ll get you a carriage you can be proud of,” Prof said.
“I don’t want a carriage.”
“A car, then.” They turned away, grumbling, and shuffled out the door, brushing past Brock who was on his way in.
He flipped his keys in his hand. “Friends of yours?”
“They wish.”
“You ready to go?”
“Sure. What are we picking up?” she asked, hoping he would say a mirror.
“It’s a cupboard.”
“Aren’t those usually attached to walls?”
His lips formed a half-smile that didn’t reach his eyes, telling her that Fredrick Fitzwilliam either wasn’t happy about going to Hurricane Wash to fetch a cupboard or he was just plain old unhappy.
“This is, according to my mom, a very important cupboard—although I think it’s more of a cabinet or an armoire.”
Grace followed Brock out the door and waited while he locked it. He pointed at a large Ford F-250 propped up on wheels that said they meant business—that if they had to make their own roads through fields, streams, and mountains they were prepared to do so. Brock clicked the fob, unlocking the monster’s doors, and Grace climbed in. This was a very different animal from her mom’s Jeep that only pretended to be okay with going off-road.
“We’re not going four-wheeling, are we?”
“No,” he said without a touch of humor.
“Good.”
He started the engine and the truck roared to life, just as noisy as its tires were huge.
“You know what they say, big tires, big engine.”
“No one says that,” Brock said.
Without conversation, Brock drove out of the back alley and onto Santa Magdalena Parkway. After a few minutes, when the silence—other than the snarling engine—grew too heavy, Grace said, “Want to tell me the story?”
“What story?”
“According to Earnest, everything in The Lilac Shop has a story.”
“This cupboard isn’t for the shop.”
“I bet it still has a story, or else your mom wouldn’t want it.”
He acknowledged this with a twist of his lips. After a few beats of silence, he admitted that he didn’t know the story.
“Is something bothering you?”
He shot her a quick glance, and she could tell he was weighing her trustworthiness. “No,” he lied, obviously finding her unworthy.
Grace accepted this with a nod. She thought back to Snow White’s story. The prince had fallen in love with her only because she was beautiful, but to earn the trust and devotion of the dwarfs, Snow White had to work for it. And true, lots of times beautiful people didn’t have to work as hard as others, but they still had to pay a price. She slid Brock a look beneath her eyelids, trying to read him.
He caught her gaze. “Alicia,” he said.
“Oh.”
“You heard about her and Dillinger at the beach?”
Grace barely nodded.
He slammed his hands against the steering wheel. “Even the new kid knew before me!” He tightened his hands on the wheel. They pulled off the parkway and onto a street Grace didn’t recognize.
The road turned to two lanes and the further they went, the wilder the landscape grew. Haphazard boulders jutted out of the ground. Knobby and gnarled oak trees created a heavy canopy that sheltered them from the sun.
“Is this the best way to get there?” she asked.
“It is today,” he said.
“What does that mean?”
Taking one hand off the wheel, he reached into his pocket, pulled out his phone and flicked it into her lap. The navigational screen freeways glowed in red.
“Maybe we should have waited for another day,” she said, feeling discouraged. The screen showed that although the road they traveled wasn’t outlined with red dots, it was winding and indirect. She foresaw a very long, silent drive.
“Couldn’t.”
“I’m sorry?”
Brock sucked in a long breath. “We can’t wait for another day. My mom is going to Europe on Thursday and she wants to get the cupboard before she goes.”
“So what’s wrong with Tuesday and Wednesday?”
“Today was just better, all right?”
“Sure. Fine.”
“I’m sorry, I’m…”
“Not used to your girlfriends hooking up with other guys?”
He gave her a reluctant grin. “Yeah. That.” He tapped the steering wheel. “I should have known, though.”
“Why? Don’t you know that guys are notoriously bad at picking women?”
“Why would you say that? Geez, that’s sexist.”
Grace bristled. “But it’s true. It’s been happening for generations. In almost every fairy tale some stupid king is falling for a beautiful woman who turns out to be a wicked stepmother.”
He shook his head. “This wasn’t a fairy tale.”
“Well, obviously.”
“Besides, not all stepmothers are wicked. My mom, case in point.”
“I still find it hard to believe you aren’t Cordelia’s. You look just like her!” A strained expression crossed his face, so she quickly added, “But with whiskers and more muscles, of course.”
He barked out a laugh.
“What happened to your dad?” she asked softly, hoping she wasn’t trespassing on forbidden territory.
“I don’t know.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
He shrugged. “Cordelia is all I can remember. She’s more than enough.”
Grace wasn’t quite sure what that meant, so she bit her lip, hoping that he’d offer more of an explanation. She didn’t have to wait long.
“He was military. Died overseas. I really don’t remember anything about him. Cordelia said he was a hero.”
“My dad is also in the military.”
“I know. Your grandpa brags about him.”
“You’re lying.”
“Why would I lie about that?”
“My grandpa hates my dad.”
“Why would you lie about that?”
Grace fell silent, wondering if it was possible that she only assumed her grandfather hated her dad because she knew for a fact that her dad hated her grandfather. She thought back over all the things she’d heard her dad say about Grandpa Hank. Materialistic, prideful, stingy, money-driven were some of her dad’s favorite adjectives for his father-in-law.
“Grace?”
“You know my grandparents, so where’s yours?”
He shrugged. “I don’t have any.”
“What? How is that possible?”
“Cordelia and my dad were both only children. My dad’s parents died in a car accident shortly after my dad died and my mom was raised by a single mother, who, as it turns out, was—according to my mom—not a nice person.”
“It’s so strange you don’t have any cousins, aunts, uncles.”
Brock wagged his head. “I told you, Cordelia is enough.”
“I have a huge family…like really huge. My dad comes from a family of
eleven kids. They all live in Oregon and they all have giant families. I have too many cousins to count.”
“Are you bragging?” he asked, grinning.
“Sort of. You might have lots of money and cool cupboards and stuff…but I have lots of people.”
“Do you miss them?”
“I do, but I’m pretty sure my mom not so much.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I don’t think she feels like she fits in. When people start talking about their chickens or their vegetable gardens, she doesn’t have much to add.”
“Do you feel that way?”
“No. I loved going to their farms. We’d spend a week every summer at my grandparents’ ranch—riding horses, helping my grandma pick apples and berries for jams and pies.”
“I can’t even imagine.”
Grace spent the next hour telling him about her southern Oregon adventures—about the dog that tried to swallow a chipmunk whole, the chicken that lost all its feathers so her Grammy had to knit it a sweater, and Colton, the youngest cousin, who got his tongue stuck to a metal pole one frosty morning.
The navigational system steered them through a small dusty town to where the highway met the I-15. Despite the increase in traffic, he laughed at all her stories. After they pulled off the interstate and followed a long road to a double-wide trailer in the middle of nowhere, he turned to her and put the truck in park.
“Hey, thanks,” he said.
“For what?”
“Making me laugh.”
“You’re welcome.”
The trailer sat at the edge of a ridge bordering a canyon. Before they opened the truck’s doors, a pack of motley dogs greeted them. They came in all shapes and sizes—their only commonality besides the fur, teeth, and noise, was that not one of them was of a determinate breed.
A woman in denim overalls stepped out of the trailer. Although the sun was beginning to fade and a sharp wind blew through the scrub oak, she wore nothing beneath the overalls but a sweat-stained bra.
“Shut up!” she shouted at the dogs. They milled around her, like a collection of furry wind-up toys, bumping into each other to press their noses against the woman’s legs. As a greeting, the woman jerked her head toward a wooden structure too small to be a barn and too dilapidated to be a building.
“I’m Violet Bing,” she said over her shoulder.
Grace followed Brock, Violet, and the dogs into the outbuilding. Sunlight filtered through chinks in the ill-fitting wallboards and cast long shadows over the collection of stuff. The cupboard stood apart from the piled boxes and stacks of books like it had been waiting for them to arrive. Dust and grime clung to its sides and doors, but rosy-wood and intricate carving entranced Grace. A soft whistle escaped her lips.