by Darcie Chan
And although she had already helped several couples find new homes, what was it about this particular couple that had set in motion such an avalanche of sadness?
Even if Tony had survived, they never would have had the designer clothing and luxury accessories of the Stanfields. They never would have been able to afford a home like the chalet in which she now stood, fighting back tears and keeping an artificial smile plastered across her face. But something about the Stanfields reminded her of exactly how it had been with Tony.
Edward and Elizabeth were completely in tune with each other. They strolled through room after room, often communicating through facial expressions alone. They moved in sync, separately and yet strangely in rhythm. The couple never drifted too far apart, and one of them often reached out casually to touch the other. Certainly, their physical attraction to one another was palpable. And, when they looked at each other, their gaze conveyed an unending, quiet affection. The Stanfields were soul mates—perfectly matched and hopelessly in love.
Just as she and Tony had been.
It was late by the time she had finished drawing up a contract for the Stanfields to sign. Once the couple had left her office, she deposited the finished offer on Ned’s desk and went to her car. Finally alone and hidden from view in the darkness, she sobbed as she drove home, happy to have effectively freed herself from Ned’s leash but overwhelmed by a renewed grief and deeper awareness of how alone she really was.
When she slipped into her house, Ivy was up reading on the sofa, as usual. Her aunt took one look at her and immediately jumped up. “Please tell me those are happy tears,” she said. Josie forced a smile and nodded as Ivy rushed to hug her. “I knew it! Oh, you did it! The girls and I knew you would.”
“I’ve just got to focus on studying for the broker’s exam now, and once my first year with Ned is over, I’ll be able to—”
Josie caught sight of the table in her kitchen. There were balloons of every color taped around it and a lone plate covered in aluminum foil. Next to the plate stood an empty wineglass and a bottle of sparkling grape juice. There was a card, too, a piece of folded yellow construction paper with “MOM” written in crayon on the front.
“What’s this?” Josie asked.
Ivy came up beside her and shook her head. “The girls wanted to fix you a special dinner for getting your eighth deal,” she said. “They made it themselves. Well, I supervised and helped a little, but it was mostly them. Have a look.”
Josie opened the card and read, “You can be a brokur now. Love, Rose and Emily.” Blinking back tears as she smiled, she then uncurled the foil from around the plate to reveal a large, stiff glob of macaroni and cheese, an apple cut into slices that were beginning to turn brown, and a pile of overcooked peas.
“We didn’t know you’d be home so late,” Ivy said. “I even let ’em stay up a while to wait for you, but Emily was falling asleep sitting up, so you’d better be sure and visit with ’em in the morning.”
Josie nodded, but she barely heard Ivy’s words. She reached up and touched her locket. Her babies had fixed her supper for the first time ever, and she hadn’t even been home to eat it. She gathered the pieces of apple in her hand and took the rest of the food to the microwave to heat it.
Ivy watched her with sympathetic eyes as she came back to the table with the plate, sat down, and poured herself a glass of the grape juice. Her aunt quickly took another glass from the cupboard and held it out to her, and Josie filled it as well.
“To Rose and Emily,” Josie said, holding up her glass. “The treasures of my heart.”
CHAPTER 17
EMILY WAS IN A FABULOUS MOOD WHEN SHE AND GUS LEFT her house and stepped into the morning air. It was just after seven o’clock, and she knew Ruth’s bakery-café would already be open and serving up rich, dark coffee. When they reached the sidewalk, though, Emily noticed that her car seemed to be resting at an odd angle along the curb.
The front right tire was completely flat.
In an instant, her buoyant mood was gone. She rolled her eyes and cursed under her breath. Gus whined and pulled on his leash, but she stood rooted to the sidewalk, reworking her morning plans. Since it was Monday, the hardware store was open, and she was scheduled to work all afternoon. She had been planning to go over her list of possible clues again beforehand, and she wanted to start cutting glass for a new design she had in mind. But now, she would have to deal with the tire before anything else.
Emily put her hair into a ponytail and let Gus out into the backyard. It took some time to move things around in the back cargo area of her car so she could access the spare tire compartment.
The wheel cover was easy to remove, but the lug nuts proved to be difficult. They were rusted solidly in place, and pulling on the tire iron with all her strength did nothing to budge them. Her next move was to give each nut a good shot of WD-40. After waiting a few minutes for the substance to work its way through the rust and grime, she repositioned the tire iron and tried again, heaving backwards as hard as she could until she lost her footing and fell onto her rump. Frustrated and out of breath, Emily jumped up and stormed into her house. When she reemerged, she carried a Hot-Head torch, safety goggles, and a can of MAPP gas.
The damned lug nuts had met their match.
She put on the safety goggles and screwed the torch into place atop the gas canister. Rather than throw away the bits of glass left over from her projects, she’d learned how to use the torch to melt them down and form beautiful glass beads, which she could sell to bead shops or on eBay. But, a torch was useful for many things other than beadmaking.
Emily ignited the flame and positioned it on the head of one of the lug nuts. The WD-40 she’d sprayed earlier immediately started smoking, but it didn’t take long for the lubricant to burn off. After the first lug nut had been under the flame for several seconds, she turned off the torch and picked up the tire iron. This time, a gentle tug on the wrench was all she needed to spin the heated lug nut from the bolt.
She had jacked up the car and was positioning the spare on the newly exposed bolts when she heard the front door of Rose’s house open and close. Her nephew walked toward her, looking over his shoulder every few steps.
“Hey there,” she called as Alex reached Rose’s black BMW and stopped. He glanced around again and came over to where she was working.
“Hi,” he said. “Mom’s coming soon. We’re going out for breakfast, and food shopping, after that.”
“Oh.” Her first thought was to wonder whether Rose was sober and could safely drive Alex anywhere. She noticed that Alex’s posture was tense, and he seemed preoccupied with watching the front door of his house.
“That sounds like fun. Hey, are you okay?” she asked. “You look worried about something.”
Alex frowned, and she could barely hear his muttered reply. “I heard you and Mom talking yesterday. She’s not a bad mother.” His big blue eyes were filled with hurt and anger.
A lump of regret formed in Emily’s middle. “I’m sorry you overheard that,” she told him. She just looked at her nephew, trying to decide what more she should say. “As angry as I was, I shouldn’t have said that. The truth is, though, your mom does drink, and it’s not good for her, or you, that she does.”
Alex was quiet for a minute. “Dad says that drinking too much is a disease, and she can’t help it.”
“Your dad’s right about it being a disease,” Emily said. “She can help it, though. She just has to want to change badly enough, but that’s a tough thing for anyone to do.” She sat down in the grass and looked squarely into Alex’s eyes. “Listen, I know we don’t know each other, and you overhearing me and your mom talking probably didn’t give you a good impression of me. I’m sorry things started out with us that way.” Emily waited a moment before turning back to the spare tire. “But, Alex, if anything happens with your mom and you feel like you need help, or if you think she needs help, I’m here for you.”
Alex seemed to m
ull over her reply. “She won’t tell me why you don’t like each other,” he said next, “but she says it’s better if I stay away from you.”
Emily was disgusted with Rose and sad for Alex all at the same time. She also felt a strong instinct to do everything she could to make sure he was being cared for properly. “If your mom doesn’t want to explain it yet, it’s probably not my place to do it,” she told him. “But, we’re family. You’re my only nephew, and I think it would be really cool if you and I could get to know each other a little.”
Alex didn’t reply, but his expression was pensive as his eyes searched her own. After a moment, he looked back over his shoulder again.
“Hey, if you think your mom will be ticked if she sees you over here with me, just go up and stand by her car. We can still talk.” She encouraged him with a mischievous grin.
Alex smiled back at her, although his eyes conveyed more relief than anything else, and he hurried up toward Rose’s car and leaned against the front passenger’s door. “What happened to your tire?”
“I have no idea.” Now that the spare was in position, Emily lifted the tire iron and began to spin the lug nuts loosely back onto the bolts. “It was flat when I came out here this morning. Might’ve been a nail or something. I’m going to take a closer look at it once I finish with the spare. How’re things going for you today? I wondered if you were okay after you went inside yesterday.”
“Oh,” he said, shrugging. “Mom always yells. I try to stay out of her way when she does, until she calms down.”
“She yelled all the time growing up, too,” Emily said. “It about drove me crazy.”
Alex didn’t respond to that comment, and she quickly changed the subject.
“Your mom told me you’re in charge of going through the books in your house, so we can figure out whether one of them is a clue Grandma left us.”
“Yeah,” Alex said. His face brightened. “I’m pretty much done. I’ve been meticulous about it.”
“Meticulous, huh? That’s great!” Emily said. She sat back on her heels beside the wheel of her car. “My list is done, too, so I guess now your mom and I need to compare them. We know our two clues are different, so we need to be able to see which you have in your house that I don’t have in mine. I think it’s the only way we can narrow down what the clues might be.”
She started to say something else, but Alex suddenly crossed the sidewalk and bent over to examine the lawn between their houses. He reached out and grabbed a feather that had been sticking out in the grass. It was long and blue, with black stripes and a white patch at the end. Alex held it up and twisted it back and forth, watching the sunshine play off the surface.
“Looks like a blue jay lost a tail feather,” Emily said. “There’s lots of them around here. I hear them squabbling in the morning. They bully most of the other birds.”
“I love birds,” Alex said, still staring at the feather. “There are quite a few kinds in the city, but they’re hard to spot, other than pigeons.”
“There’s everything here,” Emily said. “Cardinals, blue jays, grackles, sparrows, woodpeckers. What about in Central Park? I’ll bet you can see tons there. I think I read a while back that falcons had moved into Manhattan, too.”
“Yes,” Alex said. “There are sixteen nesting pairs right now. They eat pigeons and other birds. Did you know they can fly more than two hundred miles an hour when they’re hunting?”
“No, I didn’t. That’s amazing,” Emily said. “I feel sorry for the pigeons, though.”
“Well, yeah,” Alex agreed. “I wish I could go to the park more, but Mom says all the trees and plants bother her allergies. Plus, she doesn’t like birds much.”
“Or dogs,” Emily added. “But, hey, now that you’re here for the summer, you can see all sorts of birds in the yard.” She frowned as she watched her nephew and his fascination with the feather. It was obvious that, despite having been born into a world of privilege, Alex had lived an incredibly sheltered life. “A little sunshine would do you good. You should kick off those shoes and go barefoot, at least on the grass. That’s not something you get to do much in the city, is it?”
“I’ve never walked on grass barefoot.” Alex was staring at his new-looking sneakers.
From the look of those shoes, he doesn’t walk outside much at all, Emily thought.
“Alex?” Rose yelled. She emerged a moment later wearing a miniskirt, heels, and the usual large, round sunglasses. A shiny leather handbag was looped over her shoulder.
“I’m over here, Mom,” he said, backpedaling to her car. “I’m all ready to go, just waiting for you.” Emily noticed that the blue feather he had been holding lay in the middle of the sidewalk.
“All right,” Rose said as she came down the front steps. Emily watched her every movement, searching for any indication that she might be intoxicated. Her sister unlocked the doors so Alex could climb in, but instead of going to the driver’s side door herself, Rose came around to the back of the BMW and leaned against the trunk.
Emily couldn’t see her sister’s eyes through the sunglasses, but there was no missing the curl of Rose’s upper lip or the haughty, raised chin. Emily focused on lowering her car back down so that she could tighten the lug nuts.
“Alex told me this morning that he’s almost finished going through the books. I could meet tomorrow to go over our lists again, if you’d like.”
Emily glanced up at her sister. “Sure.” She stood up under the pretense of repositioning the wrench, but as she moved slightly closer to Rose, she took in several deep breaths through her nose. With Alex already in the backseat of the BMW, it reassured her that the only scent emanating from her sister was a heavy perfume. She knelt down again and tried to concentrate on the tire.
Still hesitating before getting in her car, Rose gave an exaggerated sigh. “Now, that flat’s just a shame. I guess you never know what sorts of problems an older car might have,” she said in a light, taunting voice. Emily glanced up in time to see Rose run a perfectly manicured finger over the gleaming surface of the black BMW and check it for dust.
“Even a new car is only as good as its driver,” Emily blurted out.
Rose turned and glared at her. “I’m a perfectly good driver—”
“—when you’re sober.” Emily finished for her, with her gaze focused on the spare tire.
“I would never drive if I’d had anything to drink, especially with my son in the car.” Rose’s voice was little more than a hiss. Emily looked up and saw Rose’s nostrils flaring.
“Well, then, maybe I was wrong about what I said. About how nothing’s changed.” Emily looked evenly at Rose’s dark sunglasses. Her sister stood silently for a few seconds, working her jaw as if she were thinking of what she could say, before getting into her car and slamming the door.
Even after the BMW had pulled away and turned the corner, Emily was still so angry she was shaking. She grabbed the tire she’d removed from her car and hurled it as hard as she could onto her lawn. The rubber made a muted thwup as it hit the grass. Emily wiped the sweat from her forehead with the back of her arm and leaned against the hood of her car.
“You okay, honey?” a voice called to her from across the street. Emily stood up straight and turned to see Ivy leaning on her cane on the porch of The Bookstop. She exhaled slowly and waved.
“I’m fine,” she said when she’d reached her great-aunt. Ivy held out her free arm for a hug, but Emily only took her hand and pecked her on the cheek. “You don’t want to squeeze me right now. I’m sweaty and gross.”
“Fair enough. What were you doing over there with that tire?” Ivy asked.
“Changing it,” she said. “It was flat when I got up this morning.”
“So, you threw the tire to punish it for going flat?”
“No, I was just blowing off steam,” Emily said. “Rose saw me and offered some helpful comments as I was finishing up.”
“Oh.”
“She and Al
ex were headed out. She didn’t look like she’d been drinking,” Emily said, easily anticipating Ivy’s next questions. She hoped that her tone made it clear she didn’t want to go into what happened.
“Well, that’s good, at least,” Ivy said as she sat down in the porch swing. “I guess you two didn’t make any more progress on your mother’s clues?”
“No, but I think we’ll meet again soon, and I was able to talk with Alex alone before Rose came outside. The poor kid’s doing what she should be doing, and he’s so eager to help. Rose doesn’t want him interacting with me, but I’m going to try to figure out ways around that.”
Ivy nodded. “Might be a good way for you to keep tabs on him, and Rose.”
“Exactly.” She sighed and looked across the street at her car. “Where should I go to have a flat repaired? I’ve got to work this afternoon, so I need to see if it can be patched this morning.”
“Take it over to Russell’s, just off Route 103. It’s about the only place to go outside Rutland, but they do honest work. They could probably help with your bumper and anything else you wanted fixed, too. Ask for Bob Russell, the owner. I’ve known him a long time. He’ll treat you right.”
“Okay. Thanks, Aunt Ivy.”
“Don’t mention it, honey,” Ivy said. She kicked off her sandals to reveal hot-pink polish on her toenails as Emily turned to go back across the street.
When she was upset or angry, talking with Ivy, or even just being around her for a few minutes, always made Emily feel better. After she retrieved the tire from her yard and loaded it into the back of her car, Emily picked up the blue feather from the sidewalk and put it in her back pocket. She would give it to Alex when they met later.
Russell’s Auto Repair was easy to find. Emily pulled into the parking lot carefully and rolled the flat tire up to the door of the office. An older man wearing greasy coveralls and a faded baseball cap leaned on the counter reading a wrinkled copy of the Rutland Herald. He looked up as she entered.