Cursed by Love

by Jacie Floyd

  “I wasn’t expecting you, sweetie. How was your day?”

  “Great.” Disappointed that her mother had not only backed out of joining her on Your Grandma’s Attic, but had also forgotten it, Molly switched on first one lamp and then another, dispelling the gloom. “How was yours?”

  “Long, but fine.” Her mother blinked against the sudden light and tucked a loose curl behind her ear. The gesture hardly mattered in the riot exploding from a scrunchy at the base of her neck.

  Molly boldly moved to her dad’s seat. She reached out and touched the chenille-covered arm, pulling her mother’s attention away from Wheel of Fortune. “I went to the taping of Your Grandma’s Attic today, to have Nonna’s pink jade appraised, remember?”

  Her mother massaged her temples, as if attempting to jumpstart her memory. Still, the expression in her eyes came up blank. “Was that today?”

  “Yes, and guess what?” Molly leaned forward, hoping to generate a spark of enthusiasm. Ever since her father had moved out of the house, her mother’s interest had been about as easy to engage as a coma patient’s. Penny sat up and rested her head on her favorite human’s knee, as if joining Molly in her bid to grab Mom’s attention.

  “I don’t know.”

  Molly unwrapped the jade from its dishtowel cocoon and handed it over, relating the tale about the emperor’s carver, the matching base, the rubies, the sexual nature of the piece, and the Sleeping Lotus’s estimated value. She employed her best storytelling abilities. The effort paid off as a glimmer of interest stirred deep in her mother’s sterling blue eyes.

  “Five-hundred-thousand dollars!” Mom leaned back and held the lotus blossom at arm’s length, as if searching for an explanation of the object’s value. Her mouth dropped open as she switched her gaze from the jade to Molly. “For a piece of erotica? Whatever could Mama have been doing with such a thing? That’s worth more than her house. It’s worth a hundred times more than that Spode china she was so proud of.” Her eyes twinkled. “Was it embarrassing to discuss such an intimate topic with the appraiser and the other owner?”

  “Well, yes!” Molly clapped her hands over her burning cheeks and chuckled. The details of the kiss flashed front and center in her mind. “I kept having to remind myself we were looking at a masterpiece of Asian art, not X-rated porn.”

  “What was the young man like, dear?”

  Molly ignored the flare of heat in the pit of her stomach and omitted her reaction to Gabe’s voice, his smile, his physical presence, his kiss. She focused on his less savory characteristics instead.

  “When I first saw him, everything about him said he’d be Type A in that too-tight-around-the-collar, hyper-intensive way. But then I noticed his Goofy socks.”

  Her mom quirked an eyebrow. “How goofy can a pair of socks be?”

  “Goofy like the Disney dog, not silly. I thought they might be a glimpse into his real personality. You know, that he might be a free spirit hiding behind all that control. But then he yelled at someone on the phone, and I thought, no thanks.” She shuddered at the memory.

  Penny curled up on the floor. Mom kicked off a slipper to rub the dog’s back with her toes. “How did he react to the value on the exotica erotica?”

  “Blown away, just like I was. We had a nice conversation, and I thought we were starting to connect.” She swelled with indignation all over again. “But as I was leaving, he said—” Molly stopped to increase the drama of her bombshell “—he wants to sell the Sleeping Lotus.”

  Her mother pursed her lips. “That doesn’t seem so unreasonable. Maybe he needs the money.”

  “But there are other things to consider! And selling something as unusual as the Lotus isn’t going to happen overnight. The appraiser warned us to establish provenance before we do anything else. And it wasn’t just Gabe’s response that bothered me. I didn’t like the way other people reacted. Just on the basis of the jade’s supposed monetary value, like the thing had taken on a life of its own.”

  Mom shrugged. “I suppose people find the novelty intriguing. Everyone likes the idea of hitting the jackpot, getting something for nothing."

  “I guess, but I’m like the winner of the lottery who keeps quiet about it for a few months. I want to hang onto this jackpot while I mull over the options. And possible repercussions.” Molly stood and stretched. “Meanwhile, I plan to go through the rest of Nonna’s stuff, looking for provenance. Want to help?”

  And faster than a snap of the fingers, her mother’s interest vanished. She set the jade aside as casually as a crumpled paper towel and returned her foot to her slipper. “I think I’ll stay here and read.”

  Molly hesitated, fingering the charms on her bracelet. In recent months, she’d teetered between waiting for her mother to break out of her despondency on her own and intervening to talk some sense into her. After the breakthrough they’d shared in the last few minutes, Molly favored some plain speaking.

  “Mom, you weren’t reading. There wasn’t even a light on when I got here.”

  Her mother twisted her platinum wedding ring round and round on her finger. “I stopped for a minute to mull over an interesting article in The Education Journal. The sun must have set while I was lost in thought.” She picked up the magazine, adjusted her reading glasses, and focused on the open page.

  “Must have.” Molly pressed her lips together to contain her disappointment and turned on her heel.

  Penny pushed herself up to see if Molly was heading off to do anything interesting. But as she crossed the room, her gaze caught on the family pictures resting on the piano that no one had played in months. She picked up her brother Steve’s wedding photo from the year before. The last picture of the family before Steve had moved to St. Louis with a new wife and a new job. Before Nonna had died. Before Dad had taken leave of his senses and dumped his beautiful wife of thirty-two years.

  Seeing their smiling faces and remembering the closeness they’d shared kicked up the feelings of guilt and loss that Molly felt about her parent’s separation. It wasn’t her fault. She knew that, rationally and logically. But she couldn’t forget the argument she’d overheard them having, the day before Dad had packed up and moved out.

  Frowning, Molly turned back toward her mother and noted the cell phone on the table beside her, as if she were expecting a call. “Have you talked to Dad today?”

  “No.” Her mother turned a page. “But he might call.”

  “Mo-om... He won’t. He’s at the ballgame.” Molly placed the photograph back on the piano and moved to her mother’s side. Penny resumed her reclining position, tongue lolling out the side of her mouth. “I love him, too, but I hate to see you sitting here night after night waiting for him to call. You need to get busy, to take an interest in something besides his possible return.”

  “I do take an interest in things.” Under Molly’s steady gaze, her mother waffled. “I mean, I will, sweetie, I promise. But not tonight. I’m exhausted, and I want to relax.”

  Her woebegone look tugged at Molly’s heart. “Tough day at school?”

  “No tougher than most.” Mother pulled off her reading glasses to rub her eyes. “Sometimes I wonder why I quit teaching math to become a paper-pusher. Math makes so much sense. A formula works or it doesn’t. The answer is right or it’s wrong. The students get it or they don’t. They pass or they fail. It’s about statistics and percentages and finite answers. There’s no gray area, nothing illogical about it. In my job as a principal, there are no set answers. Nothing ever gets resolved. Everyone wants to decide by committee, but no one agrees on what needs to be done.”

  Molly shook her head, dismayed by her mother’s outburst. “You aren’t seriously thinking of resigning as Elmwood’s principal and going back into the classroom, are you?”

  “Thinking about it, yes. Seriously thinking about it?” She hesitated. “I’m not sure.”

  “Mom, you were a fabulous teacher, but I know what an impact you make from the principal’s office of that
school every day of the year. I wish the principal at my school was half as effective as you are at yours.” Frustrated by her mom’s collapsed self-confidence, Molly spoke frankly. “Maybe you feel uncertain about yourself right now and want to go back to the way things were, but taking a backward step in your career won’t bring Dad home.”

  Her mother twisted the wedding ring some more. “Is that what you think I’m doing?”

  “Possibly.”

  Mom rejected the suggestion with an emphatic shake of her head. “No, it isn’t.”

  “If you say so.” Having planted the seed, Molly left it to germinate. She stood up again and headed toward the door. This time, the dog stayed with her mom. “Have you eaten yet?” she asked over her shoulder. “Suddenly, I’m craving Chinese. Why don’t you order something from Peking Garden while I start picking through those cartons?”

  “All right.” Her mother reached for the phone. “After we eat, I’ll come downstairs and help you.”

  “Good.” Molly left the room, humming a happy tune, but inwardly cursing her father.

  Not sell the Sleeping Lotus?

  Gabe couldn’t believe the delectable Molly Webber could be so impractical.

  He juggled grocery bags and pushed his way through the back door of the small, shabby rental he shared with his grandfather, sister, and niece. Suspended on the verge of optimism for the first time in a long time, he ignored the worn linoleum and clutter that obscured the chipped Formica counter. The house was better than some of the dumps he’d lived in as a child, but a far cry from the upscale condo he’d lived in last year. Maybe he’d be able to return to that level of comfort again someday.

  “Granddad!” He shoved a stack of mail aside to dump the bags on the counter. “I’m home.”

  Since the television blared in the next room, he stopped to put away the box of Dreamsicles he’d bought on impulse. He stuck a frozen pizza into the oven, before following Alex Trebek’s voice into the living room.

  The small space was crammed full of one after another of his grandfather’s former interests. Stamp-collecting… cameras… partially constructed model ships… baseball cards… a telescope. Varied, fascinating, and now, abandoned. Gabe always worried about what the old guy would get interested in next. Some hobbies had been more affordable than others. He wondered if it would be worthwhile to resell any of them.

  “Normandy,” his grandfather shouted from his recliner. “What is Normandy?”

  Gabe nabbed the remote and lowered the volume. “He can’t hear you, no matter how loud you yell. And you can only hear me if you wear your hearing aid. Where is it?”

  “In the bedroom.” As usual, Granddad roared the answer, as if Gabe had the hearing problem.

  He cupped his hand around his mouth like a megaphone. “Where are Sierra and Chloe?” He loved his grandfather, but sometimes communicating with him gave him a headache.

  “Sierra’s at the office. She’s as bad as you are, working all the time. Chloe’s eating and playing at her friend Isabel’s house.”

  “Good.” Gabe would rather have this discussion without either one of them around. Especially without Sierra. She’d be all over the possibility of a curse like black on midnight.

  Granddad eyed Gabe suspiciously. “What happened with the appraisal?”

  “Get your hearing aid,” Gabe told him, helping him up. “I’ll tell you about it when you get back.”

  The old man scuttled out of the room and returned twice as fast, following Gabe to the kitchen as he adjusted the device in his ear. “Okay, now tell me. Which appraiser did you have? You didn’t let them stick you with some newbie who didn’t know ancient Chinese artistry from his elbow, did you?”

  He stopped and looked Gabe over with the same penetrating gaze he’d used from the time the five-year-old boy came to live with him and occasionally tried to get away with something. Granddad was eighty-two and Gabe was thirty-one now, but no one could read Gabe better.

  Granddad must have liked what he saw, because he grinned from ear to ear. “The jade is valuable, isn’t it? Didn’t I tell you? Tell me the truth, boy. Is it valuable?”

  Unable to suppress his grin, Gabe couldn’t keep him in suspense any longer. “Extremely.”

  “Hot damn!” The old man attempted to slap palms with Gabe in an arthritic high-five. “I knew it! Tell me everything. What is it? How much is it worth?”

  Gabe unwrapped the jade and placed it in the center of the table as he began the story. Granddad dug around in the fridge and retrieved two longneck bottles of beer. He popped the caps off, passed one to Gabe and sat down across from him. He listened to the tale with rapt attention.

  When Gabe finished, Granddad shook his head in wonder. He stroked his finger along the jade’s protuberance. “A man and a woman doing what nature intended, huh? Who would’ve guessed?”

  “Not me and certainly not Molly.”

  “Molly?” Granddad’s white caterpillar eyebrows crinkled together above his wire-rimmed glasses. “Is that the other owner? What’s she like?”

  “Pretty. Sweet. Smelled good.” He thought of Dreamsicles and shifted in his seat. She’d tasted good, too. Damned good.

  “Where’d she get hers?”

  “From a grandmother who died a few months ago. Molly didn’t know any more about it than I know about this one.” He took a swallow of beer, then pushed the bottle aside. “The appraiser said if we can establish the history and the chain of ownership, the value of the Sleeping Lotus could be increased.”

  “Oh, sure.” The old man waved the obstacle away with a gnarled hand. “I know all about provenance.”

  Gabe snorted as the oven-timer dinged. “Well, you could have shared that information with me before I went there.”

  “I would have, but you didn’t want to listen.”

  “I’ll listen now.” Having saved the best for last, Gabe waited until he’d pulled the pizza from the oven before revealing the amount. “For half-a-million dollars, I’ll listen to damn near anything.”

  “Half-a-million dollars? Lordy, Lordy.” Granddad clapped a hand to his heart and sagged backward, feigning a heart attack. But not for long. His arthritic knees creaked and he got up to pace the kitchen. “Yesss!” He pumped his fist in triumph. “Didn’t I tell you?”

  Wearing one of the wild Hawaiian shirts he favored and a pair of baggy green chinos, his rim of frizzy gray hair fluttered behind him. He looked even more like a demented island gnome than usual.

  “That’s fan-damn-tastic!” he continued. “More than I ever dreamed. We’re saved, aren’t we? The company’s saved!”

  “Not so fast.” Gabe hated to put a damper on the old man’s spirits, but he couldn’t let him get carried away. He set the pizza and a couple of plates in the center of the table. “There’s more to it than that.”

  Granddad dropped into his chair at the table. “Like what?”

  “For starters, this so-called provenance you say you understand.” He nipped off the pointy end of his wedge of steaming pizza.

  “Don’t worry about provenance, boy. We’ve got provenance out the wazoo.” Granddad waved away the concern and dug into his slice of pizza, too.

  “And the fact is, if you divide the Sleeping Lotus by two, we might end up with twenty thousand for the piece we went in with, not half of the potential half-million dollars for the whole enchilada.”

  “Well, crap on a cracker.” Granddad grunted, his enthusiasm deflating as he slumped back and chewed. “But surely this sweet-smelling, pretty girl who owns the other half could find a use for two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand dollars, too, couldn’t she?”

  Gabe frowned at the memory of her flat refusal. “Not one she’d thought of when we talked about it. She said the money might be fun. She thought it might be, and I quote, a nice little bonus.”

  Exasperated, Granddad held up his hands in question of Molly’s judgment, then prodded Gabe’s arm with his finger. “Well, talk to her again.”

  “Sh
e’s intrigued, but unwilling to commit to a sale.” Gabe hesitated about telling the old man more, but the Sleeping Lotus rightfully belonged to him. This whole thing was his deal. He deserved the truth. “And she’s superstitious. Apparently there’s a curse.”

  “A curse? What kind of curse?”

  Gabe shrugged, sliding a second piece of pizza onto his plate. “Unknown at this time, but Molly seems to put plenty of stock in the notion. She doesn’t want to”—He did the air-quote thing with his fingers—“‘make fate mad’ by selling it, until she knows more.”

  Even though they both knew Sierra was out of the house, Granddad looked around nervously, as if uncertain he could prevent her from hearing him. He lowered his voice in a conspiratorial whisper. “Good God, keep that part quiet, won’t you? Don’t tell Sierra about any curse.”

  “I don’t intend to.” Gabe had never understood how anyone with his sister’s intelligence could get so taken in by theories that couldn’t be proven. Personally, he didn’t believe in anything that couldn’t be seen, touched, and put in its proper place.

  “Find out enough about the curse to discredit it, and then sweet talk this young woman,” Granddad urged. “Turn on the Shaw charm. After that last gambling foray of Harold’s, we need that money.”

  “Don’t remind me.” The idea of talking to Molly again appealed to Gabe on multiple levels. He rubbed the back of his neck, remembering her body plastered against his.

  He sure didn’t believe that bunk James had whispered about the sexually stimulating qualities attributed to the conjoined Sleeping Lotus, even if it did explain the wham-bam slam of lust that had twined around him and Molly earlier. She sure hadn’t shown any signs of undeniable, uncontrollable lust for him before that—or after.

  And while he’d found her attractive, surely he could have kept his hands off her if she hadn’t thrown herself at him. And if she hadn’t smelled so good.

  And if the Sleeping Lotus hadn’t been urging him on, a little voice said in his ear.