Stay With Me (12 page)

“I take it back,” Missy said, making me blink several times to focus back on her.

“What?”

“All that bunk about fire and blowing up shit,” she said, gesturing with her arms. “None of that’s good for you.” She pointed to where Ian had left a smoking hole in the room. “He’s proof of that. Don’t knock slow. Fast fires burn out. Slow burns are forever.”

I grabbed my coffee and lifted the lid, sniffing. Vanilla latte. Damn, he remembered from the day before. Or Lily probably told him to make it and bring it over. Why the hell would she do that? She wanted me around Ian even less than everyone else.

“I think maybe none of it’s good,” I said. “It all burns you eventually.”

“Not necessarily,” Missy said. “But that one is guaranteed bad news.”

“So everyone keeps telling me,” I muttered. “Did you make it down to Jewel to check out that house?” I asked, changing the subject.

Missy’s eyes lit up. I recognized it. Mine did the same thing when I ran across something phenomenal. “I did,” she said. “And it’s like a damn who’s who of artifacts.”

“Cool,” I said, glad for a subject that wasn’t men. “Pictures?”

“I’ll email them to you,” she said, going through the motions of fixing a ponytail that never moved. I’d never seen it down. Not ever, in twenty years. “So you can print them out for Theo.”

I had to smirk at that. The lengths we went to to feed Dad’s old-school stubbornness. Missy wasn’t much younger, and she was more tech-savvy than I was.

“But you need to go see this house for yourself,” she said. “It’s all stone and old tile.”

I looked at her. “On—what was the address?”

“Vista Lane,” she said. “The windows are—”

“Stained glass,” I finished.

She tilted her head. “You’ve seen it?”

My throat tightened for a moment, and my first reaction was to look at my bowl of keys. One of them was from there.

I cleared my throat. “A long time ago.” Twenty-one years.

“Well, they’re putting it up for sale when the auction’s over, and—”

“Wait, what auction?” I said. “I thought they were selling their items free and clear.”

“They are,” Missy said in her talk-Savi-down-from-the-ledge voice. “Blaine’s guy was there, too. What’s left, they’re taking to auction.”

“Blaine’ll go for the sparklies,” I said. “Is there enough stuff after we pick over?”

“Yeah,” Missy said on a chuckle. “This house is something else, but there’s almost more stuff than house.”

I remembered. “Go with your instincts,” I said. “Get whatever you think.”

“You don’t want to look at them first?” she asked, looking surprised.

It wasn’t a normal tack for me, but I shook my head and pasted on a smile. I didn’t need to look at photos to know what was likely still there. And I didn’t need to look at photos of that house, period.

“I trust you, Missy.” I took a deep breath. “I’m gonna regret asking this, but who are they auctioning through?”

“That place with the show, I think they said.”

I groaned. “Antique Nation?”

“Yeah,” Missy said, pointing, and then frowned at my reaction. “Why?”

“Dad probably hasn’t mentioned his grand new idea to you, huh?” I said.

“Your dad avoids me,” she said.

“Don’t take it personally,” I said. “He’s just weird. He’s never understood your particular brand of awesome.”

“That’s for sure,” she said, wrapping her scarves around her.

I took a long sip of my coffee and willed all the important stuff to go to my brain.

“He wants to sell Old Tin Barnes to Antique Nation and let them run it while we all just pick,” I said. “For them.”

Missy sat back up, resting her elbows on her knees. “He wants to do what? That crazy old fool.”

“Pretty much what I said.”

“He can’t do that!”

“Actually, I can, thank you very much,” said Dad from the doorway, making us jump.

“Jesus, doesn’t anyone knock? Stomp? Cough?” I said. “Make some damn noise, why don’t you?”

Dad reached for something just out of my line of sight and came back with a cow bell, jiggling it halfheartedly and setting it on a nearby shelf. “There you go.”

Chapter Eight

“Theo Barnes, what’s this bullshit about selling?” Missy said.

Dad wore his usual look with her. Kind of like the one he’d get when Mom would drag him around the mall at Christmastime. Like
exhaustion
wasn’t a strong enough word.

“Do you ever think about talking like a lady?” he asked. “Just for one day?”

Missy scoffed and waved a hand at him. “How boring would that be?”

“I’ll never know,” he said, rubbing at his eyes.

“Oh, don’t be such a snob, Theo,” she said with a wink that he probably didn’t see, and if he did he pretended not to. “It’s not the Middle Ages anymore.”

“Don’t knock the Middle Ages,” he said. “Sometimes I think half the stuff we end up with comes from then.”

“Stuff
we
end up with,” I said, raising my hand like I was in school. “Key phrase. Stuff
we
sell. Don’t go throwing all this under the bus, Dad. If you’re tired of it, okay—”

“Retire!” Missy piped in, earning her a glare. “Buy a van, buy a travel trailer.”

“Buy a Winnebago!” I finished. “Travel if you want. Take Mrs. Sullivan on a—”

“Oh, good grief,” Dad said, hands on his hips. “Leave her out of this.”

“Please,” Missy muttered from the couch. “That’ll never work.”

Dad’s head swiveled back around. “Why is that? Because her moon is in the seventh phase? Or house? Or some such crap?”

Missy stared at him as if he’d sprouted antlers. “No, smartass, because you’re both Geminis. That’s insane.”

“Right.
That’s
the insane part of this conversation,” he said, shaking his head. “Savi?” he said, turning his back to her and focusing on me with a great show of thinning patience. “Just hear the lady out tomorrow, okay? Humor me? Can you do that?”

Hell no. “I will sit and listen,” I said. “For you. But it changes nothing.” I jabbed at my desk with my index finger. “This is
our
world. Not just yours.”

Dad looked at me and nodded. “Fair enough. Now, about this Spoon fellow.”

I blinked and grabbed my coffee. “Damn, there’s not enough caffeine in this whole town to cover this morning.”

“What do you know about him?”

“I thought you liked him!”

“I do,” he said. “What I’ve seen of him, anyway. But he wasn’t dating my daughter before, so I didn’t really make a case study out of it.”

“And let’s go with that, okay?” I said, smiling, ready to move on. Again.

“Well, have you Googled him?” he said, his face completely serious.

“Have I—” I stopped and shook my head. “Dad, how do you know about Google? You don’t even know about email.”

“I certainly do too,” he said, frowning. “I just think it’s silly.”

“And so what’s Google, then?” Missy asked, sitting with arms and legs crossed, a smug expression on her face.

Dad closed his eyes and his lips moved. I knew from experience that he was counting backward. From what number depended on his anxiety level.

“No, I haven’t Googled him,” I said, bringing the craziness to an end. “I don’t see a reason to.”

“Well, Mrs. Sulli—” He stopped and glanced sideways at Missy. “My friend told me that you should do that Google thing for anyone new in your life. See if there’s anything off-color.”

I needed a head and neck massage. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll get on that.”

Dad seemed mollified and he turned to go. “Anything new on the garbage situation?”

“You mean how I’m gonna sneak some of it across the street to Jim and Lily’s Dumpster later tonight?”

He gave a little chuckle. “I’m sure you wouldn’t have to sneak it. I could bring it over there later.”

“We do if we don’t want old Celia Burns calling Terrence to tell on me. He’d blacklist them too for helping.”

“Ridiculous,” he mumbled, staring out my door into the store. Or really into the horse stall, which was mostly my view from there. “I have half a mind to go down there.”

“Well, if you do,” I said, “bring a witness. So when your
home
garbage pickup stops, you have a case.

“Good Lord, it’s not the damn mafia,” Missy said. “Call his boss, call the mayor or something.”

There was a thought. “You have the job,” I said, pointing at her. “Go for it.”

“I’m a picker,” she said.

“Call it multitasking,” I said. “You live in Katyville, you’re out of the revenge zone.”

Dad pointed at me as if I’d just made a multimillion-dollar business deal. “There you go.”

He left and I looked at Missy. “Ten bucks says he thinks Google is some spy-level background checker.

Missy shrugged. “That’s what makes him so cute.”

• • •

Okay, I Googled him.

I was on the Internet already, posting some new items we’d obtained from a lucky curb raid of mine. Two old cedar side tables. At first glance they’d appeared to be junk, but my life was in junk. Something told me there was more to them, and under all the layers of dirt and grime and neglect there was indeed some beautiful wood.

Dad had made them worthy again, and they’d go faster online than they ever would in-house. He was always amazed at how things came and went sometimes the same day with no customers. The magic of
that Internet place.

That Internet place
with
the Google thing.

I’d Googled myself before, for kicks and to make sure it was attached to the business, but I’d never looked up anyone else. Or
checked up
on anyone else—because let’s be honest, that’s what I was really doing.

So I typed in Duncan’s name, did a neck roll out of guilt, and clicked the search button. The first few entries were about his affiliation with the Copper Falls Animal Clinic. A Yellow Pages listing. An obituary of an elderly man in Louisiana who died at the age of seventy-two. And various offers to look up records by paid services. That was it.

That was it?

Hey, no criminal record, no traffic violations, no prison time. That was good. Also, no Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn, high school or college alumni listings, or even a survived-by mention in a death notice. I thought all that cyber-junk was an automatic attachment.

“Wow, you’re squeaky clean, Duncan,” I said out loud, glancing up to be sure my dad wasn’t witnessing me doing what he suggested.

I clicked on
Images
and there was just the head shot that had come out in the paper when he joined the clinic, along with other unrelated “Duncan” references.

Back on the web search, I scanned again. Nothing. Not even a county clerk record. Had I ever asked him if he’d been married? Or had kids? Had I gone an entire date not even thinking of these things? We’d talked about Abby a bit, but nothing about Duncan’s family. Except for his brother.

Cole, he’d said. Funny how these things get your fingers all itchy, because now there I was looking up Cole Spoon. What a funky name. The only Cole Spoon listed was in Minnesota, was not in the military, and according to the photos was a country singer in a cover band.

So neither one of them had a paper trail? That was odd, right? I assumed it was, but I was no cyber-queen. That was a Missy area of expertise.

I glanced out my door and noticed it was getting dusky dark. Not that I could see out a window, but the light from the open front barn door reflected through the slats in the horse stall, into an old mirror that I could see from my desk. It showed me the lights from the far end of the courthouse grounds—the end in front of the park that fronted the river.

We were on the corner of Main and Terrell, and across the street to my left if I sidled that way was the butcher shop. I’d often wished for a window to see if Lily’s car was there or something, but no more so than right then. To be able to see if Ian was there, without walking out the front door to look and be obvious.

I really didn’t want to lug the garbage over there and possibly run into him. And our little makeshift kitchen area was starting to smell of way-too-ripe chicken salad garbage that had nowhere to go.

My fingers hovered on the keyboard and then typed in another name.

Ian McMasters exploded all over my screen.

“Jesus.”

Across the top were a whole line of images—all of them my Ian. I mean
not
my Ian. He definitely wasn’t
my
Ian, and I wanted to choke on that thought. Just unlike Duncan, all the results were the Ian I knew. Deep breath.