Chapter 17
Jenna knocked on the door with more trepidation than she’d expected. She’d found the place and wanted to check it out. It wasn’t a bad idea, was it? It didn’t matter, she’d already knocked. Though she wasn’t sure anyone was coming.
The sign said open, but it seemed such an odd hour. It also mentioned that the warehouse would open for a sale the next day and listed hours into the evening. She was trying to figure out what that meant when she heard the deadbolt slide, then the door swung wide.
Annalise stood in the space, open enough for Jenna to push her way through if she’d been an unsavory figure.
Looking around, she checked for the camera or peephole, but for the life of her, she couldn’t find one.
Her cousin shouldn’t be opening her shop door when she didn’t know who it was.
Not like that. But instead, she breathed out a hi, soft and—she hoped—full of apology.
“Did I leave the sign on the door?” Annalise asked, the resignation in her voice.
“It says open.” Jenna hoped she wasn’t intruding, but there were so many questions, so many things she wanted to ask. Maybe she should have gone to Story, but her genetic grandmother seemed busy with important work, and she’d not stepped up and volunteered information the way Annalise had.
“Let me get that.” Annalise flipped the sign to closed, and for a moment Jenna wondered if she would say thank you and simply shut the door in her face.
But she didn’t. She stepped back, quickly motioning her new cousin to come in.
As she crossed the threshold, the air shifted as if this was a place she was welcome and she shouldn’t have worried.
It was only then that she saw Annalise was still in her pajamas, a pink flannel set with little black poodles.
They were whimsical, as professional as pajamas could get, and somehow just a little sexy.
She’d have to ask where Annalise had gotten them.
The single room hosted tufted velvet and leather furniture, a grand old mahogany desk that gleamed with years of use and recent care.
An old sideboard sat to one edge of the reasonably large office, smack up against the dark wood paneling and matching handrail.
It held a variety of smaller pieces, each tagged.
The only thing out of place was the blanket carelessly tossed onto the couch and the book that still sat on the desk, open to a page in the middle.
“Did you sleep here?” Jenna regretted the question as soon as it was out of her mouth. It wasn’t her business.
Annalise nodded. “It’s my office. The couch is comfortable, and it’s not the first time I’ve worked late into the night and—” She waved back behind her. Though the room was light and airy, it was painted a color that Jenna now wondered if the tone itself was an antique. “You found me out.”
“A is for Antiques,” Jenna quoted the name of the store. “and A is for Annalise. It wasn’t hard.”
There was an odd look in her cousin’s eyes as she turned, closed the door, and bolted it behind them. “I’ve got coffee and tea if you want. I usually bring in breakfast croissants, but I didn’t get any yet this morning.”
Jenna shook off the offer, pointing to a huge oak door in the back. “Where does that go?” She wasn’t used to offices having a back exit into the warehouse.
“Want to see?” Even though Jenna hadn’t answered yet, Annalise was pushing her feet into soft slippers as if she knew it would be yes.
It was. Twenty minutes later, Jenna had oohed and aahed over the pieces, touching each of them with permission and imagining she could see the stories they carried—a little boy in an outfit of white short pants, running through a long hallway; a Tiffany lamp and a fight where the two had turned it off and on and off and on; an armoire and generations of children opening it, several of whom had thought it might take them to Narnia.
She was deep in the illusion when Annelise startled her.
“You see it, don’t you?”
“What do you mean?” Jenna turned, closing the closet doors before she could check the back to see if it was false.
“The kids who played with it.”
She startled. “It’s just my imagination.”
“Maybe not,” was all Annalise said as she turned away.
What an odd thing to tell her.
“This is amazing!” Jenna added, letting the conversation shift.
She told herself Annalise was full of cryptic terms and odd cut-offs, so she’d simply decided not to say anything.
Though, if there were family secrets, didn’t she deserve to know them?
Instead, she stayed on topic. “You curated all of it?”
Annalise nodded. “Some things I just appraise, but everything in the warehouse here I purchased. Then Alice and I fix it, clean it, whatever it needs, and resell it.”
“Sounds like a pretty good business,” Jenna added.
“You left a job and a life behind to come here,” Annalise told her as if she knew those things for a fact. Then she frowned, “But you still have a job?”
Jenna nodded once again, thinking how odd it was that Annalise was always right about all the little things. Sure, they weren’t hard to guess. Still, Annelise should have gotten one or two details wrong. But she hadn’t.
“What did you do, and why do I smell coffee?”
“I run a coffee shop outside of Houston. Actually, I ran four, and yes, I am currently between promotions,” Jenna said, and she couldn’t help but offer a curtsy.
“There’s a regional position opening up in about four months, so I trained my replacement, told management I wanted to take a four-month sabbatical, and when I go back I will move into the management position. ”
“That’s a nice deal,” Annalise said.
Jenna agreed, but she didn’t want to say where it was.
“If you hadn’t found us,” Annalise asked, “or if I’d been horrible, what would you have done with the time off?”
Jenna couldn’t help but laugh. “I would have traveled. Spent the same money but seen some new places.”
“We could still be horrible,” Annalise reminded her with a grin. Then she motioned them back toward the front office. “The warehouse can get stuffy, and I know not everybody has my penchant for antiques.”
“Oh, it’s wonderful!” Jenna sighed. She may have come up through the ranks as a coffee shop manager, but she knew a lot about turning profits and keeping books, and no matter what the business was, that was required.
A is for Antiques had been here for almost a decade, and there was part of her that wanted to tell Annalise her new promotion was to a regional marketing team because despite her lack of degrees, she buried herself in online classes and learned everything she could.
She’d turned the first shop she’d been in charge of into the most profitable one in the region.
When they’d given her more shops to look over, she’d done it three more times.
So she was just a coffee shop manager, but she was pretty proud of it.
“This place is fabulous,” she told Annalise. “You know, if you want me to volunteer for the sale—”
Annalise started to laugh but then realized Jenna was serious. “Hey, Alice and I can always use more hands. We’re expecting a big turnout tomorrow. You’d have to learn some of the pieces and terms first.”
“I can do it.” Jenna shrugged. “I’d love to help.” It sounded wonderful. It sounded like connecting with a family member in a way that went beyond what she had dared to hope.
“And we’ll pay you,” Annalise said as she headed back into the office. “I just realized I offered you coffee and tea, and you probably don’t want to have anything to do with what I can make here.”
“Yeah, I usually make mine on professional machines.”
Annalise’s eyes widened and she smiled. “Do you have one at home?”
“I do. Should we go out for coffee and breakfast?”
“Where should we go?”
“I know exactly the place,” Jenna told her, thinking how she wanted to drop in on her friend Luisa, introduce her to the cousin she’d found.
“I should change,” Annalise announced as if she’d just realized she was still in jammies. Then she pointed to a door Jenna hadn’t noticed. Like in old houses, it was just a seam in the wall, like a secret passageway.
“Oh, that’s cool!” Jenna said. “Can you just leave though?”
“I’m not even open. I set my own hours.” With that, Annalise disappeared, and the faint sound of running water caught her ears.
Left alone, Jenna inspected the office. On the desk sat the single open book, ready for a person to pull out the chair, sit down, and read.
She had a moment of thinking she shouldn’t be touching it—not with human hands.
Though she didn’t see white gloves laying next to it, she imagined Annalise doing exactly that, maybe peering at it with a large magnifying glass.
But as she leaned over and started reading, she was sucked into the story.
She didn’t quite see it, not the way she did when she touched something and her imagination ran wild, but at the bottom of the page, in script so old it was almost impossible to read, she saw the signature. Jenna squinted at it.
“Right,” Annelise said behind her, startling her to the point where she jumped, and she was just grateful she hadn’t mistakenly touched the book.
“Velasco, like the family at the top of the hill?”
Something in Annalise’s jaw tightened at the phrase, and Jenna told herself not to use it again, even if she didn’t quite know why.
She thought again about her cousin telling her the abandoned home four doors down had once belonged to them and how she thought that it seemed like a massive social shift for the brothers.
“I think it’s like their five or six greats-grandmother.” Annalise shrugged. The irritation that had marred her near-perfect features fled as fast as it arrived, as if she knew to put it away.
“Ford’s ancestor?” Jenna asked.
She saw the moment Annalise took to translate, and she knew then: Annalise did not think of the Velascos in terms of the younger, blonder Ford, but more in the terms of the older, darker-skinned, darker-haired Rowan. Interesting.
“Oh,” Jenna said before realizing that once again maybe she’d said something she shouldn’t have spoken out loud.
But even as she uttered the single sound, Annalise had replied with a grin. “Ford, huh?”