Rocky Start

CHAPTER 45

M ax’s questions to Pike about how much could be hidden in the house upset my stomach. I wasn’t sure why, but it took some of the joy of Coral’s baking away. Not Max’s fault. I’d spent so long being used to being on the edge of broke that the thought of thousands of dollars hidden in the shop brought up a lot of conflicting emotions. The amount in Poppy’s bank book from Ozzie had overjoyed me but also staggered me with the reality of that much money so readily available. Poppy had an edge up on life that I had only dreamed of, courtesy of Ozzie. The possibility of me getting anything like that was so unbelievable that a part of me didn’t want to look.

But a bigger part of me wanted to. It was a treasure hunt. At home. And then there was the idea of adventure, which Ozzie had known would intrigue me. “Go fetch, kid.” So I grabbed a cup of coffee to go and some blitzkuchen and a biscuit for Maggs and went back to the shop. Coral gave me a wink when I left, which was better than bitching at me for not getting naked with anybody. I was firmly in the “getting naked with Max” category now. And Maggs greeted me as I came in the shop door, tail wagging, which made me smile for real as I scratched her behind the ears and then gave her the dog cookie with permission to eat it. It was going to be almost as hard letting go of Maggs as it would be letting go of Max.

I put the coffee and cake on the shop counter, turned the OPEN sign out (old habits die hard), and surveyed the North Carolina side of the shop. Tall, dusty, miscellaneous bookcases that Ozzie had picked up along the way. Old dining room tables that he’d found in people’s barns, side tables jammed in between them. Baskets and boxes shoved under tables. It was going to take months to inventory all of this and get it arranged into displays.