Brenna, Brat (Detroit ABCs)

Chapter 4

I f we had ever been curious, now we knew what happened to chewing gum statues/commentaries on urban life when the heat went on too high and stayed that way over a weekend.

“Fucking hell!” Dion breathed. His eyes were huge and I was sure that mine were, too, as we surveyed the damage. “I better get Alecta to come in.”

Yes, our boss needed to see this, the result of her ignoring my repeated requests to have someone fix the out-of-whack HVAC system, or to talk to the landlord (her mother) and ask her to get it done. “It’s set at sixty-eight,” I said, looking at the ancient thermostat. I had removed my coat and was holding my hair up and off the back of my neck as I fanned my face with my hand.

Dion had taken off both his coat and his shirt, thus revealing a skinny body that was already glistening with sweat. “Sixty-eight? More like a hundred-eight.” He went to the front door and opened it, letting in some cold air. “I’ll do the windows upstairs, too.”

He was motivated by personal comfort and not a sense of responsibility to his job, but I was glad that—what? I stared. “Dion, what’s on your back?” I asked.

“Huh?” He stopped and turned his head, trying to see what I was talking about. “What’s wrong with my back?”

Unless he had the neck flexibility of an owl, he wouldn’t have been able to read it. “Look,” I said, and took a picture.

“Fuck you whore,” he read from my screen. There was a smiley face, too. “That looks like permanent marker.”

“How did this happen?” I asked, and he shrugged.

“I’m a heavy sleeper.”

“Where have you been sleeping?” I wondered, but he made a dismissive sound and waved his hands before he disappeared upstairs. I ventured to the door to the basement, and the rush of heat that emerged when I opened it nearly knocked me over. I also removed my shirt, deciding that the tank top I’d worn as a base layer was appropriate when my workplace approached the temperature of Death Valley at noon in the middle of July. I bent and took off my boots, too, the leather Schone pair that Campbell had given me.

Since we’d gone to dinner, I’d heard from him. I’d been surprised by it, given how he’d dismissed me at the end of the evening, but then he’d texted. It was only to say something dumb, though.

Ok, it had been something funny, something about seeing a piece of gum stuck to a street sign and how he considered it to be a commentary on urban life, making him reflect on the loneliness and absurdity of human existence in this city. I wasn’t going to fall for overtures like that as easily as I’d fallen on the ice at the rink. I didn’t exist as a friendship challenge for him to feel good about his abundant charm, so I hadn’t answered. I had looked at that text a lot, though, and smiled. The gum statues had been pretty absurd, and they were worse now that they were sticky puddles.

Our boss made it to the gallery a few hours later, by which time we’d managed to get the temperature back to a normal level so that Dion had put on his shirt and I’d returned to wearing all my clothing. We’d left the melted gum, though, which now served as a commentary on the heating failures in our building.

Alecta parked illegally in the loading zone, right behind her nephew’s car, and then breezed through the front door. “What’s the disaster?” she called. I had disconnected the scream since it had scared me so much when Campbell had last been here, but I had made sure that it was working again for our boss’s arrival today because I didn’t feel like arguing about it. She smiled when she heard it, then she opened the door again to repeat the noise. “Hilarious,” she chuckled. “You guys, look! I got a new tattoo on my arm.” She pulled up her sleeve and showed off a design that looked like a child had drawn on her in the dark.

“Aunt Alecta!” Dion said, making a sweeping gesture toward the multicolored streams of goo on the white display pedestals. “The art is gone!”

She finally noticed. “Did I get robbed? What is that stuff?”

It took a while to make clear that the temperature in the gallery had been so high that the sculptures had melted, and it took another while to convince her that she was going to have to call the artist to explain the situation. I also tried to impress upon her that she or Chic, her mother, would have to talk to the insurance company and it was going to be a big problem. Very big, and very hard to clean off the wood floors. Those were original to this 1912 building and they needed to be refinished anyway, since (like everything else) no one had bothered to keep them in good repair.

“So, old gum was running all over the gallery,” my sister Sophie summed up later that day. All of us Currans were at our parents’ house for dinner, something that our mother forced upon us fairly regularly.

“It was melted gum that had been chewed by thousands of strangers, mixing it with their bacteria and spit,” I said, and Juliet looked like she felt sick. “So much saliva,” I said with relish, and she got up and left the table. We had all come without spouses/significant others tonight, so her fiancé Beckett wasn’t here, and neither were Addie’s, Sophie’s, and Nicola’s husbands. My mom had requested it because she said she had an important announcement to make, which was unusual for her. No, not the announcement part—she loved to cause scenes with dramatic declarations at our family get-togethers, and that was what I didn’t understand. Usually, she wanted the biggest audience possible, so why would she have excluded my sisters’ partners?

She was always good in front of a crowd because she commanded everyone’s attention, and that was a hard thing to do in our family. I found myself talking louder and making stories bigger to get them to notice what I was saying, to notice me, but Mom didn’t have that problem. She had an innate sense of spectacle.

Anyway, the dinner had been pretty good, because my mom was also a competent cook. She had been very quiet throughout the meal and again, that wasn’t like her. My siblings were rarely quiet themselves and they’d had a lot to talk about. They had focused on their children (as always) but we had also discussed Juliet’s wedding a little bit, without anyone mentioning that we were worried about her fiancé. I’d brought up some problems at work—with Dion, specifically, and his extreme laziness. But yes, mostly the topic was kids, kids, and more kids. I’d had to pinch myself awake and Nicola told me not to be rude, because I’d done it very obviously.

“That was bland,” Grace said to me as we got up to clear the table.

Sometimes she hit the nail right on the head. “You’re right, dinner was so boring,” I said, nodding in agreement. “I wish they would talk about normal things again.”

“I meant how Mom forgot to put salt in the mashed potatoes. Something’s wrong,” she explained, and then drifted off toward the back yard. I watched her and thought about what she’d said, and now I agreed that the side dishes had been a little tasteless. That had been unusual, also.

After the clean-up was done, our mother carried in a large platter to where we had regrouped in the living room, all seven of us Curran children and Dad in his usual chair. “Dessert,” she announced.

“Yum, cupcakes,” Juliet said. She had always been able to eat her weight without gaining any more, something else to hold against her.

“No.”

We turned to look at our dad.

“No,” he repeated. “I don’t want to be a part of this.” He suddenly stood and walked out of the room.

We watched him go, not understanding. “Mom, what’s happening?” Nicola asked, because if anyone was going to take charge, it was her.

“Here,” our mother answered, and put down the platter. “This explains it. One letter each, please.”

“Chocolate,” I heard Grace murmur, and I also looked at the display. There were seven cupcakes, one for each of us and each with a letter as Mom had mentioned. E, I, C…

“I’ll take the D,” Patrick said, and grabbed it. He was always interested in being first, and had always been treated by our mother as if he deserved that spot in the family hierarchy. Sophie took the O, Juliet had the V, Addie had the R.

“Hold on!” I barked. Couldn’t anyone else here spell? “Are these cupcakes sending a message? Patrick, give me that D.” I took the rest of them, too, and rearranged them on the platter to form a word: D-I-V-O-R-C-E. “Divorce?” I asked.

“Holy Mary,” Juliet said, expressing the shock that we all felt.

“Mom, what? Is this about you? Does this mean that you and Dad splitting up?” Patrick asked, and she burst into tears.

We stared at each other and at the dessert for another moment, stunned, and she ran upstairs to her yoga studio. After a while, we gave up on trying to coax her out or on getting her to answer any of our questions. Dad also refused to talk very much, although he did relay some information; his rendition was a lot less tearful and without any chocolate frosting. The problems were between him and Mom, he told us, and were not our business. Basically, they were no longer compatible, and he would be moving out next weekend.

Then he closed his office door. The seven of us siblings, now kids from a broken home, looked at each other and decided that we needed to go to a bar. That was where we headed en masse, and we secured a table where we sat, still stunned, but now with drinks in front of us. A few of those were non-alcoholic, but not mine. I had been really thrown for a loop by the message on those cupcakes, and I had turned to vodka. It seemed silly to care so much—I was old, and I didn’t even live at home. I shouldn’t have felt so upset, I reminded myself, and then swallowed half of the contents of my glass.

“This is just…” Addie stopped speaking, threw up her hands, and shook her head.

“I never thought it would happen,” Nicola agreed.

“Poor Mom,” Juliet said, since the two of them had always been extra tight.

“‘Poor Mom?’” Sophie repeated. “Are you kidding, after everything that Dad has had to put up with for all these years?” They started to argue about which of our parents was the worst.

“Is this my fault?” Patrick asked us when there was a break in their spat. “Is this something else that’s my fault, I mean? I was the one who brought Esme to live in their house last winter, and I know that was a problem between them.”

Sophie turned to scolding him instead. “Your daughter isn’t a problem,” she said.

“Your arrival was a stressor, though. Babies are, even though we love them,” Nicola continued to us all, and then looked over at him again. “Also, you were acting like a jerk.”

“Great. Now I caused my parents’ divorce,” my brother muttered.

“No, I’m not saying that,” she disagreed.

“You’re so self-centered, Patrick,” I told him. “Not everything is about you and your stupid kid.”

“Esme isn’t stupid, either!” Sophie said angrily. “She’s extraordinarily brilliant.”

“You know, if you guys hadn’t focused entirely on your own lives for the past few months, you would have seen that something was wrong,” I returned. “But it’s all about this baby, that engagement, this wedding, and on, and on.”

“Knock it off, Brat. Something was wrong from the day that our parents met,” Nicola said. “They were totally incompatible and they still have nothing in common, besides the seven of us. He was bowled over by how beautiful she is and she liked how he goes along with all her crazy ideas.”

“Not anymore. Now they’re getting divorced,” Juliet concluded, and she looked like she was going to cry again.

I felt shaky too, and fortified myself with more cranberry juice and vodka. Four of my sisters got busy texting, probably relaying information to their missing partners, and Patrick went to find Grace. She’d been in the ladies’ room for much too long, which probably meant she was locked in there again. It happened more frequently than it should have.

I, not having a guy to text, looked around at the other patrons. And across the bar from us, I spotted someone…no way.

“No way,” I said out loud. “Detroit is too big for this.” Why wasn’t he out in the suburbs where he belonged? I stared at the woman with him and drank in the details even faster than I had downed my cocktail. She had to have been his regular Friday night girl. I understood why she’d possess that place of honor, because she was beautiful although her highlights appeared slightly brassy due to the golden undertones in her skin. But it could have been the poor lighting in here, and even with that hair…she was really something.

“No way,” Sophie said. I turned to her, and she was staring across the room, too. “That must be her new boyfriend.”

“Who are you looking at?” I asked, and being Sophie, she immediately pointed, waving her hand around and acting so obvious that I wanted to smack her.

“That’s Carrington!” she told me. “That’s Danny’s old girlfriend.”

“That woman, there?” Now I was pointing, too, because we had to have been talking about different people. “She’s the one who used to go out with your husband?”

“She wanted to marry him but fortunately, he came to his senses,” Soph snarled.

“That’s Carrington? Is she Carrington Bates ?” I asked incredulously.

“How in the heck do you know her name?” my sister asked.

“Because I know her brother,” I said. “Campbell Bates is standing next to her.”

“What’s going on?” Nicola asked, lifting her eyes from her screen just as Campbell moved his gaze from his sister and looked around the room.

He saw me. I had to hide, immediately, there was no time—

“Who’s that man?” Juliet wondered, because he was now walking toward us.

“I have no idea. What’s going on?” Nicola repeated, and Patrick and Grace (in a different shirt, for some reason) joined us just as Campbell did with his pretty sister right behind him.

“Hi, Brenna,” he greeted me. “How have you been?”

“I’m good,” I said and his sister spoke, too.

“How do you know her?” she snapped, and joined in the pointing. Her index finger singled out my older sister, Sophie.

“Carrington,” Sophie spat at the same time, because she had never liked her husband’s ex and had talked about her to all of us. And that, of course, was how I’d heard that distinctive name before, and why it had sounded familiar to me when Campbell had mentioned it when he’d bought her birthday gift.

“You must be Nicola,” Campbell said to my oldest sister. “Brenna described you all very well.” He went around the table and said hello to each of them by name, and they stared at him as he did. He paused at Sophie. “When Brenna talked about you, it reminded me of something, but I didn’t get it at the time. There’s more than one Sophie in the Detroit area.” He glanced at his sister, who was glaring back at him.

“More than one Sophie, but not too many Carringtons,” I mentioned. I swallowed the rest of my drink and slid out of my chair. “I’m leaving,” I told my siblings and the Bates siblings, too.

“How do you know these people?” I heard Carrington asking her brother, but he was focused on me.

“Nice size seven boots. Be careful that someone doesn’t try to make off with another pair of your Schones,” he said.

“There’s no way that she wears a size seven,” Carrington scoffed, and Sophie told her that oh, I absolutely did, and how dare she say anything different? She needed to keep her stupid opinions about my feet to herself. My other sisters chimed in to agree, although I was sure that none of them had any idea what we were talking about. I nodded thanks and left.

“We’re going,” I heard Campbell say, and then I realized that both he and Carrington were right behind me. We were all leaving the bar, it seemed, and all of us moved pretty fast.

Just outside the door, she yanked her arm away from his hand and told him to leave her the hell alone. “Don’t do your big brother bullshit with me!” she hissed.

“You don’t want to be in a bar fight,” he said. “It would have been seven on two and I’m bigger, but it’s a numbers game. Think of how a mugshot would look on your social media.”

“I’ll do anything I want,” she informed him. “I hate that bitch.”

I could call my sister names, but this person? No.

I spun around. “You better not be talking about Sophia Curran right now, because—”

“Carrington, go,” he told her, stepping between us—and what the heck? I was staring up at his face and I could see that he was trying not to laugh.

“You find this funny?” I asked him.

Campbell engaged in a little additional conversation with Carrington instead of answering. It was mostly her swearing and him saying to scram, and then she took his advice. He watched her stomp to her car and speed off before he looked down at me, and yes, he still seemed amused. “That could have been a lot worse,” he commented. “My sister runs her mouth but she never fought down and dirty before. I bet you girls could show her a few things.”

I thought of how I’d given Juliet a black eye last summer. I’d been studying martial arts at the time and had been feeling aggressive—since then, I’d been following a yoga workout that my mom had devised, which was more calming. “We don’t run around getting into fights in bars,” I informed him. Other places, sure. It happened.

“It’s good to see you. Why didn’t you ever text me back?” he asked. “I thought we had a nice time at dinner. You smiled like you were having fun.”

“I did have fun,” I said. He waited, but I didn’t need to explain any further.

“I did, too. Tonight, however, wasn’t so good for me,” he mentioned. “Carrington and I just came from my mom’s house where we met her new boyfriend. He’s younger than I am and I had to watch them French kiss.” He tilted his head as I recoiled. “Are you going to throw up right now, or can you hold it in?”

“I’m ok.”

“That’s one of the reasons that my sister’s on edge,” Campbell continued. “She also really doesn’t like Sophie. I’ve heard a lot about her.”

“Soph couldn’t help that Danny didn’t love your sister like he loves her,” I stated. “They’re married now and they’re going to have a baby.”

“Wow.” He raised his eyebrows. “Good thing Carrington didn’t hear that, or she would have gone for blood for sure. It’s that kind of night.”

“I guess it is,” I heard myself say. “We went to dinner at our parents’ house and found out that they’re getting divorced. My mom spelled it out in cupcakes, one letter on each.”

“A divorce message on cupcakes?” He seemed stunned. “I don’t know, you may win this one.”

“Are we in a competition for who’s having the worst time?” I asked.

“Not anymore. Now we’ll work together to make it better,” he explained. “I’m going to forget about the guy who talked about his philosophy major and then sucked on my mother’s neck, and you’re going to forget about the cupcakes. Ready?”

“Where do you want to go?”

He pointed across the street at a place that looked, in generous terms, like a dump. “That seems fine to me. Watch that puddle.”

I jumped over it so that my boots wouldn’t be damaged, because I’d gone along with this plan. Why not? I had no desire to return to the former bar, to explain how I knew Campbell, and to get involved in another teary discussion about my parents’ split. Nicola had picked me up and was supposed to drive me home, so I quickly texted and said that I would get a ride.

“Do you want the same thing to drink?” he asked as we entered the next place. “What did you have, vodka and cranberry juice?” I nodded, thinking that he was observant. I watched him go to the bar as I squeezed myself into a chair at a small table, and I saw two women seated on stools give him a big once-over and whisper to each other, too. Popularity followed him everywhere, and it helped him to get his order from the bartender quickly as well. That guy smiled and added a wink.

“Here we are,” Campbell said, and placed my drink in front of me. He also squeezed into a chair but had a harder time than I did, since he was significantly larger. I had, out of boredom while at the gallery, looked him up, and I’d seen his player profile from college. Six-four, two-fifteen, D for defenseman, hometown of Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. I’d also seen that he wasn’t at all like his sister on social media, because she posted her entire life and his (one, singular) account was private. I’d seen a bunch of pictures of him playing hockey, though, and in team photos through the years. I’d had to admit that he was a very, very adorable little boy and he’d grown into…he wasn’t too bad.

“Cheers,” he said, and held up his own glass before clinking it to mine.

I drank a huge swallow. “Cheers. Thank you for this.”

“The world owes you after the cupcake message,” he answered. “That’s crazy.”

“That’s my mom,” I corrected. “For thirty-five years, my dad went along with it. Why is he done with their marriage now?”

“You think the divorce was his idea?”

I hesitated, considering before I nodded. “I do think so,” I finally answered. “She’s a mess about it, but he’s very calm. Of course, that’s how they usually are too, but it seems like she’s in shock.” I drank again. “When did your parents break up?”

“I was twelve. I remember it perfectly, because my dad had Mom served with papers while she was throwing a dinner party and I heard her screaming from my room, which was two floors above.”

“That was mean.”

“It was a douche move,” Campbell agreed. “It was because she’d been cheating on him and he was getting back at her. The cheating had gone both ways, though, so she was still able to get a good supply of alimony.”

“You found out all that when you were twelve?”

“She liked to drink a few glasses of wine at night and when she did, she liked to talk. If I wasn’t at a rink, I was there, so I ended up having to listen. Later, I asked my dad about it and he gave me all the divorce documents to read. I got the full story that way. She wasn’t quite as angelic as she had painted herself but he didn’t come off cleanly, either. They’d treated each other like shit.”

“I hope my parents’ divorce isn’t like that. I hope they can do things somewhat amicably.” But considering my mother, I was sure that there would also be a lot of dramatic scenes involved, and I sighed.

“You want another?”

I studied my empty glass. “Sure.”

He fought his way out of his chair to get that for me, and I took things slower and sipped delicately rather than guzzling. “Thank you,” I said again. “My drink is pretty good, which surprises me. This bar is dirty.”

“It wouldn’t be my pick, normally,” he conceded. “I just wanted to break up what I thought was going to turn into a brawl. I’m a pacifist.”

“Are you? I saw you fight,” I said. I was taking things slower, but the vodka had loosened my tongue a little. “I saw a video of you pounding on a guy at center ice.”

“That’s still online? Things there never die,” he said. “He was dirty and he went after our best player. But I didn’t make a habit of that and I’ve never hit someone outside of hockey.” He made a fist and looked at it, before turning to study me. “Why were you watching old videos of my games?”

“I wasn’t,” I said quickly. “Well, I was, but by mistake.” I searched for what that mistake might have been and was hit with a bolt of inspiration. “I was looking for your address to add to our preferred customer mailing list,” I stated.

“I thought I’d opted out of that list,” he said. “Aren’t there laws in this state against consumer harassment?” When I only stared, he laughed. “So you were looking me up. Why didn’t you text me back?”

“I’ve been busy.”

“With what?”

“Well…the gum sculptures melted,” I commented, and then he wanted all the details and to look at the pictures I’d taken of the mess.

“This is horrific,” he said, scrolling. “How are you going to clean it?”

“I’m trying to stay away from that and let my boss handle it.”

Campbell looked at me. “I thought you did everything around there, but I still don’t understand why. If you hate your boss and your coworker is an idiot, why not quit?”

Here came the vodka-tongue. “It’s because of Alecta’s mom,” I said. “Her mom is Chic.”

“That means stylish, right? So what if she is?”

“No, I meant that Alecta’s mom is Chic with a capital C, like I’m the Brat with a capital B.” He still didn’t understand. “In the eighties, her mom was an important local fashion designer, Chic Cathay. She made custom clothes for all the Detroit celebrities and sports stars, and she was fairly famous herself around the Midwest.” There were so many pictures and clips online of her dressed to the nines, glamorous and glowing.

“I never heard of her,” he stated.

“Have you spent a lot of time studying fashion icons from before you were born?” I asked, and didn’t wait for him to say no. “She had her atelier in the rooms upstairs from the gallery until she quit the business pretty abruptly. I think her sales had been falling off for years,” I explained. “Taste and styles changed, and she had a very definite aesthetic. But she did really well for a while, so she probably doesn’t even have to work now. And she owns real estate, too. She owns the building that houses the gallery.”

“What does that woman’s life have to do with you?”

“That’s what I want to do,” I answered. “I want to be a designer. I went to fashion school in New York but I hated it there. I felt so lonely and far away from everyone. I came back home and I’m trying to get my career going and I thought a connection with Chic would help. I want her advice and her contacts. Yes, she was popular a long time ago, but she must still know people. And I’m a fan,” I admitted. “I wanted to meet her and I thought maybe we’d become friends or something, Brenna and Chic.”

“Chic,” he repeated. “That can’t be real.”

“She’s actually Shyril Stanke,” I said, nodding. “But doesn’t it sound cool that she was known by a single name? She only needed that the one word, and I would love that.” I considered. “It would depend on the word. I don’t like it when they call me Brat.”

“Who calls you that?”

“My family, when they think I’m acting that way,” I explained. “Do you have a nickname besides ‘Enforcer?’”

He laughed. “I was not, not in any sense, a hockey enforcer. So, did it work? Did taking the job at the gallery get you in with Chic, the eighties icon?”

“No, not yet,” I said. “I found out that she and her daughter aren’t very close. I tried to get Alecta to introduce us, but she ignored me.” Just as she’d disregarded my request to fix the toilet that ran constantly but didn’t flush well, she’d also paid scant attention to when I’d said that I wanted to meet her mother. “Chic has only come to the gallery once since I’ve been there, and she didn’t want to talk to me at all. She ignored my questions—she ignored me in general. I emailed her, too, but she didn’t respond.”

“Maybe she’s not the mentor type.”

I shrugged. “Who needs a mentor? My job is fine. I spend most of my time there sketching and planning instead of working. Dion’s on his phone for hours, and he doesn’t care what I’m doing. Nobody cares what I’m doing.”

“That must be a relief.”

I detected a little envy in his tone, and I imagined how his days went. “Is your dad all over you? Does he micromanage?”

“It’s his company, his very successful company,” Campbell answered. “He has to keep an eye on everything.”

I assumed he meant that the answer was yes, his father was watching each step and misstep that his son took. “Why did you want to work for him?”

“I mean, why wouldn’t I?” he asked me back. “It’s a great opportunity. He expected it, too. He expected Carrington and me to work there and then to take things over. He keeps saying that he wants to retire so that he can enjoy life, because his own dad died young. He has a girlfriend and he wants to travel with her. She’s closer to his age than mine,” he explained, “so don’t get that nauseated face again. My mom is just having fun.”

“But…”

“I don’t like it either,” he said. “Now, let’s return to the most important topic, and you explain why you didn’t text me.”

“I thought we had settled that. I was busy.”

“With the melted gum,” he noted, and I nodded. “I need to know details. That’s not enough information to help with my approach.”

“So that the next woman you meet will answer you?” I asked, irritated.

“So that you will, Brenna.” He sat back and bumped into another guy. “Sorry,” he said, and scooted closer to me.

Was he really interested? I looked at him, trying to figure out what was going on. It had to be the whole challenge thing, that I presented an obstacle to him being the best-liked person in the world who never struck out with women. It couldn’t be real, because I certainly hadn’t done much to garner his interest. I hadn’t acted nice, as Addie would have, or mysteriously weird, like Grace. I wasn’t successful like Sophie, who had managed her own business, and I wasn’t take-charge, do-it-all Nicola. I certainly wasn’t anything like Juliet.

“I don’t mind this kind of thing,” I said grudgingly.

“What do you mean? You enjoy drinking in dirty bars?”

“I enjoy…you know. I enjoy hanging out,” I answered, irritated that I’d had to admit it. “This is nice.”

“Good to know this is all it takes,” he said, nodding. “I had a flower delivery set up, but I’ll cancel it.” He laughed, so I knew that he wasn’t serious. But I did like this kind of thing, us talking, and we continued to do it for a while.

The next day, I explained my absence to my sister. “I understand that you drove me, but I didn’t need a ride home from you. I got one from a friend,” I told Nicola. I had texted her that information the night before but she wasn’t satisfied with my reasoning.

“Which friend? That man whose sister was trying to steal Sophie’s husband?”

“Sophie wasn’t married to him at the time,” I pointed out. “Carrington and Danny were dating and then they broke up before he and Soph…never mind.” I had no idea why I would have defended that woman.

“Are you seeing her brother?”

“No,” I scoffed. “Hold on, someone’s buzzing my apartment.” I looked out the window at a delivery person and forced up the sash. “You can leave it there,” I called to him. “I’ll be right down.”

“How’d you two meet?” my sister asked as I locked my apartment door and then descended the stairs.

“Campbell came into the gallery and bought a sculpture. I got my boss to pay me a commission on it, too.” I had done that by refusing to find the contact information for the insurance agent until she agreed to fork it over, and until I had the actual money in my hand. I opened the front door of my building. “Holy Mary.”

“What?” Nicola asked. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” It was strange, that was all. There was a huge vase, all full of flowers.