Chapter Twenty
Eight a.m. on estate sale day. And just as predicted, it was chaos.
“So much for no early birds,” Clark grumbled.
The lot had already been half full when Lana and I had arrived at quarter to seven. By the time the normal breakfast rush hit, enough cars were starting to line the curved road that Kasey had to go outside to direct traffic.
Clark grabbed some tickets from the spindle. “How’s the line?”
I waved at Cardoon, who was by it. He cupped a hand over his ear. “How many?” I called out.
“Five parties,” he reported. “Three more outside, but they’re all two-tops.”
“Where’s that bacon?” Lana asked, coming up beside me to stab two tickets on the spindle.
“Two minutes,” Ben told her.
When I’d walked in the door, he was already at the grill, readying for the morning rush.
It wasn’t until about an hour later, as I was scribbling an order at the counter for Raymond, the UPS driver, that we’d finally exchanged a glance.
Even then it was just a beat before he ran to the pantry for something.
Still, I was keenly aware that now we shared not just a workplace, but a secret.
The night before, I’d decided to go shortly after we woke Clark up. Ben offered to walk me home, but I shook my head. I had the moon, and it just felt right for us both to return the way we’d come.
“So, this should be the point when I’m all nonchalant and don’t mention that we should do this again,” he said before I started down the ramp.
No longer did this honesty catch me completely off guard. I’d almost expected it. Wanted it. “And I,” I replied, “would feel totally uncool and just go, wishing I’d said something too.”
Right then, there was a sudden buzzing. Not a hummingbird, but a fat insect with sticky wings. Which I felt as soon as it landed, literally on my forehead. So much for looking cool. The next thing I knew, I was flailing and about to hyperventilate.
“Whoa,” he said as I batted at my face. “Hey. Hey. It’s gone.”
I still couldn’t stop, though. Until he reached out, stilling my fingers. I could feel myself blinking, as well as every ensuing heartbeat. “Are you sure?”
He lifted a hand, then ran his thumb along my forehead. Feeling it—feeling him, even in the tiny way—I was still aware of my pulse. But for different reasons. He smoothed my hair back. “I’m sure.”
For all the intimate talk, until then we’d not even touched the entire time I’d been there. When we finally did now, it was for the most awkward of reasons. Really, it felt right on-brand for us.
All the walk home, I kept reaching up to put my own thumb on the same spot, remembering.
Now the phone rang and I grabbed it. “Egg, how can I help you?”
“Where the hell are we supposed to park?” a man’s voice demanded. “Your lot is full!”
The bell over the door sounded again. “I’m sorry, sir,” I told him, parroting what I’d heard Kasey say multiple times already. “We’re doing the very best we can.”
“Well, it’s not nearly—” he began, but then there was a crash. I looked up to see Ben, standing over a pile of pancakes and broken plates now on the rubber kitchen floormat. By the time I remembered I was on the phone, the man had hung up on me. Nice.
“Finley!” Lana called out. “Can you do a pass on the counter?”
“On it.” Grabbing a pitcher, I started to move down the row of seated customers, reaching around elbows, coffee mugs, and the mason jars of flowers at each setting. I’d just finished when Kasey returned, looking flustered.
“It’s madness out there,” she told us. “I put Cat in charge of managing the line. She’s the only one who scares them.”
Well, that tracks, I thought. Use that corporate steel for good.
Finally, at twelve on the dot, I shut off the OPEN sign, which was more ceremonial than anything, as several tables remained.
A few minutes later, Cardoon was rounding up his Tides people and herding them back onto the bus.
When Clark and Kasey went next door to take stock of the sale, Lana soon following, it was just me and Ben.
Plus the music, audible for the first time since we’d opened.
“Poor Dolly,” I said as I sorted silverware. He was wiping the flattop, his back to me. “Singing all morning and nobody can even hear her.”
“You could when business was down.” A scrape as he kept cleaning the grill. “She’s got a vast catalog. Even so, there were times I got a little sick of it.”
Above me the voice was high and sweet, a mandolin behind it. “So it’s just her, all the time? I thought maybe you guys were in a phase.”
“Nope.” He pulled up the fry basket, shaking it out. “Marshall was really superstitious, especially when it came to the business. Kasey was playing Dolly constantly here when they started to break even. Just to be safe, from then on he refused to put on anything else.”
“Wow,” I said.
“Now it’s a trademark. I don’t think we could change it even if we wanted to,” he added. “It’s also a way of honoring him, I guess. And his quirks.”
I smiled. “He sounds like he was awesome.”
“He was,” he replied. “Loved to fish. Always wore shorts, even when it was snowing. Also, exceedingly chill. Never spoke bad about anyone, even my dad after he literally took the money and ran.”
I wiped down the counter, making sure to get the sides. “Are you in touch with your dad much?”
“Only when I have to be,” he replied. “Another big reason not to have a phone.”
“Mine can only reach me on the landline at the Woods right now,” I said. “I like talking to him, though.”
“What’s he like?”
Ben was out of sight as he said this, bending down to the bottom of the oven. “Great,” I replied, meaning it. “Dependable. Then again, I guess he had to be as a single parent.”
He popped back up. “How long was it just you two? Before he remarried?”
“Only a couple of years,” I replied. “And I don’t remember much about them. Just that he was the known quantity. Like a constant in math.”
“Whereas mine was like the value of X,” he said, turning to throw the rag in his hand at the linen box. He missed. “Always different depending on what was around him.”
The door opened. It was Liz, today in capris and a bright orange blouse with an embroidered neckline. Behind her, more cars were pulling into the lot. “Can we get some coffee for Cat?”
“Sure,” I said, filling a cup with the last of the pot. “How’s it going?”
“Crazy.” She did look frazzled, her hair sticking up, face flushed. “And emotional. Watching people bargain for our history…”
She trailed off, just as the door opened again. Kasey. “Someone’s interested in the entire living room set but at a discount,” she said. “Are we doing that?”
“What did Cat say?”
“Couldn’t get her attention. She’s busy mediating a dispute about the saving-places policy of the line to get into the sale.”
“It’s that long?”
“Yep. We’re staggering, only letting ten people in at a time. Otherwise it’s a madhouse.”
Liz’s phone rang. “Hey, Trav,” she said, putting it to her ear. “Awful, thanks for asking.”
The door opened and Clark backed in, carrying one end of the piano bench, Lana on the other. A SOLD Post-it fluttered from one leg. “I can’t believe you bought this,” he said.
“I had to get something!” One of the legs clanked against a counter stool. “And this was a steal. Five bucks!”
Clark squinted at the tag. “This says seventy-five.”
“I’m a good haggler.” She sat down on the bench. “Also, I know the sellers.”
I stepped around her, pushing the door open.
Outside, my mom was to the left, patrolling the line of people snaking around the side of the building waiting to get into the sale.
On the right, Kasey and Angela stood by a makeshift register in the doorway of the space where all the furniture had been hauled days earlier.
PAY HERE said a sign above them. A balding man in a tracksuit was leaving with the bike I’d cataloged, wheeling it on one wobbly tire.
I walked down the line until I was able to get my mom’s attention. “Hey,” I called out, holding up the mug in my hand. “Coffee?”
“Yes,” she said, so emphatically, I wished I’d come out earlier. “Please.”
I went over, handing it to her. “You need anything else?”
“Can you find Liz? Someone had a question about the breakfront.”
Back inside I went, passing two women who’d just purchased a shoebox of teacups and saucers. Things were going fast.
“My mom’s looking for you,” I told Liz, who was pressing a glass of ice water to one temple. “Breakfront issue.”
She put it down on the counter, taking a steadying breath. “If it’s that woman with the fanny pack, the price is firm. I don’t care how many times she asks.”
With that, she went back out, still grumbling to herself. She had to stop momentarily to let a couple with a rusted bedframe hoisted between them get by.
“Come take a load off,” Lana said to me, patting the bench. “Feel the history.”
I sat. It was not exactly comfortable. “Where are you going to put this?”
“Not sure yet.” She drew her legs up, crisscross applesauce. “I think it will be my signature piece in my new place. Maybe I’ll build everything around it.”
“The next logical step would be a piano,” Ben pointed out.
“Or not,” she said, pointing at him. “Make people think.”
A half hour later, once all the customers were gone, I finally had a chance to go into the space to check out the sale myself.
The contents were split into sections: BOOKS, KITCHEN, FURNITURE, HOUSEHOLD, and VARIOUS.
To one side was a folding table holding a few items marked SOLD with a Post-it indicating the buyer.
There had clearly been second thoughts about some of the green stickers.
I saw Liz’s name on a small wooden box with some kind of white stone inlay.
A stack of gardening books and a set of mixing bowls were marked KASEY.
“Finley!” I looked up: Anne had just come in from outside, a heavily tanned woman in a chic linen dress beside her. “This is insane!”
I nodded. “It’s been like this the whole day.”
“This is my cousin Finley,” she said to the woman, who smiled. She had very straight teeth, white, and perfect lipstick. A diamond bracelet dangled from one wrist. “Finley, Kathy. My soon-to-be mother-in-law. Oh! That sounds so weird!”
“Nice to meet you,” I said.
Kathy’s hand was cool as we shook. “What a production! So all of this here belonged to your family, Anne?”
“There was a lot more before,” Anne told her. She pointed. “See that chest over there? It was made for my grandmother for her wedding linens. I actually thought about keeping it, maybe for a—”
“You’re getting linens from Nana,” Kathy said, cutting her off. “She’s got a trunk all ready for you and Jonathan.”
“Right,” Anne said. “But—”
“You don’t want doubles,” Kathy added as two guys who looked like they’d come straight from the lake, hair and shirts damp, carried past a love seat piled with boxes. “Your place has so little storage space as it is.”
Anne looked like she might counter this, but instead bit her lip, giving me an inexplicably apologetic look. It made me want to take the chest and give it to her out of spite.
“Oh, honey, we should go.” Kathy glanced at her slim, gold watch. “I told the wedding planner we’d be at the dress shop at one sharp.”
“Patricia’s coming to the fitting?” Anne asked. “I thought it was going to be us.”
“It’s just one more person,” Kathy assured her. “And this way, if we do make a change, she can be ready to help us implement it.”
Just then, I heard footsteps, hurrying down the path between the boxes. A beat later, Kasey was hollering to Angela’s partner, Janine. “Quick, can I get a water? Cat passed out.”
Passed out?
“What happened?” Anne said.
“I don’t know. She just went down.” Janine was digging into a nearby cooler, pulling out a dripping bottle. I grabbed it from her as Kasey turned and headed back outside. I followed.
Everyone in line was rubbernecking at my mom, who was now flat on her back, Liz crouched beside her. I could hear a siren, getting closer, closer.
“Where’s that water?” someone yelled, and then I realized I’d frozen where I was. Somehow, I made myself move, across the sidewalk. When I got to her, my mom was trying to sit up. I thrust the water at Liz, who unscrewed the top.
“Drink,” she instructed.
“Slowly,” Kasey added.
“What happened?” I asked.
“It’s the heat,” Liz said, gesturing for my mom to sip the water again. “And I don’t think she ate anything this morning.”
“I don’t need an ambulance,” my mom said. But her voice was wavery, and I suddenly felt scared. “I’m fine.”
Still, she did not protest moments later, when a paramedic arrived and affixed a blood pressure cuff to her arm. “You’ve given blood lately?” he asked, nodding at the Band-Aids on her inner elbow.
“Preop,” she replied. “I’m having surgery next month.”
“For what?” He was fiddling with the gauge.
“Breast cancer.”
“Got it.”
My mom took another sip, then looked over at me.
Once again I was with her in uncharted territory, everything new.
I realized now that at graduation, and all my life since she’d left, her mystery had been in some ways a comfort.
No longer. Another side of knowing a person, it turns out, can be knowing too much.