And One Last Thing... Part 20

"I'm sorry, Em. I do appreciate what you do for me. Maybe I just need a little less of it. I'll be in the car in five minutes," I said, squeezing his hand.

"Take seven," he said, patting my leg as he pushed up from the bed.

"I'm wearing the sweats!" I called, flopping back on the bed. "I do not know who won that argument."

A cold strawberry Pop-Tart and a colder c.o.ke later, I was sitting at the computer at Emmett's desk, cataloging a set of milk gla.s.s pitchers.

"I do not know how you drink that stuff so early." Emmett shuddered as I took a long pull from the frosty red can. "It can't be good for you."

"Says the man drinking three hits of espresso mixed with overheated milk and four sugars," I said, searching through the tangle of spreadsheets on his hard drive for the appropriate tracking number.

"It's low-fat milk," he said.

I shook my head and ignored him. Emmett's office! storeroom was a sort of cross between Au Baba's cave and Grandma's creepy attic, filled with old bicycles, old framed movie posters, kitschy cookie jars, and the odd antique wooden dressmaker's form. Emmett had a special case to protect the books, magazines, and comic books from humidity and dust. There were dozens of china dolls lined up on Lucite cases on the shelves, like an imprisoned evil doll army. I had a hard time turning my back on them.

Emmett had remodeled the former Faber's Hardware Store so that the storeroom took up the majority of the real estate. He'd walled off the reception area to create a cozy s.p.a.ce where he could greet clients at a refurbished Queen Anne table, appraise their valuables for a reserve bid, determine a commission, and sign their paperwork.

While Emmett was willing to sell online for anyone, there was also a small showroom for the items Emmett had gleaned from estate sales and auctions. Emmett sold direct to select, discerning clients who drove hundreds of miles for the privilege of picking through his private collection of antique gla.s.s and furniture.

It was that special collection that was giving me fits at the moment. My brother might have been obsessively protective of the condition of the items entrusted to his care, but he sucked at tracking where they ended up. It was some sort of miracle that he managed to s.h.i.+p the items to the buyers. I guessed the "in the now" quality of eBay sales helped him stay on top of those items, but anything that stayed in the store long-term was in danger of being lost in the shuffle. There were half-finished address spreadsheets, spreadsheets that used abbreviations that might have been Sanskrit, and a list of names Emmett had just t.i.tled "Nuh-uh."

"Hey, Em, what does 'dep. R. dais. 4-set,' mean?" I asked, thumbing the so-called inventory book while I walked into the reception area. Tansy Moffitt, our pastor's first cousin, was sitting at Emmett's desk while he looked over a collection of old National Geographic magazines.

"Oh, sorry, I didn't realize you had a customer," I said, backing away.

Suddenly I wished that I'd shut the h.e.l.l up and put on Emmett's stylish sweater and jeans ensemble.

"We're just finished," Emmett said, smirking. Tansy Moffitt had the biggest mouth in four counties. The minute she left the store, she would activate a phone tree that would bring every busybody reachable by Ma Bell to Emmett's door.

"Lacey!" Tansy cried, springing up from the chair. "I didn't realize you were here! How have you been? We haven't seen you in such a long time. Let me get a look at you. Oh, I just love that new haircut. It's so ... interesting! Now, I know that things are hard for you right now, but I'd really like to see you in church this Sunday. Your church family misses you, shug!"

"I think that would be sort of awkward, with Mike's whole family being there," I told her. "But thank you."

"Oh, honey, I think you all just need to put this whole thing behind you. You know, the reverend is preaching a whole series on forgiveness this month and I couldn't help but think last Sunday how much it would help you and Mike to just let the past be the past. You just set it before the Lord and forget it."

"You set it, and forget it," Emmett said, grinning at me, daring me to laugh at his inappropriately Jesus-based Ron Popeil-Rotisserie joke.

"I appreciate the thought, Tansy," I told her, trying to tug my hand out of hers, but she just wouldn't let go. The woman had a grip like a teamster. "I just need some time."

"Oh, sure, shug," she said. "You give me a call if you need anything at all. And I'll see you this Sunday, right?"

"Still too soon, Tansy."

"Well, I'm not going to give up, I'll be stopping by every week until we see you there," she said cheerfully, waving to Emmett as she walked out the door.

Through tight, smiling lips, I said, "I believe you."

"I think I know someone who's going home at lunch to ch-a-ange," Emmett sang.

"Yes, okay?" I cried, burying my face in my hands. "I will submit to your Machiavellian fas.h.i.+on machinations. Clearly, I was wrong to choose this particular area to make my stand."

He snickered. "Come on, you have to face your public at some point; consider this a safe s.p.a.ce."

"Hmmph," I snorted. "My public face aside, could you please explain your organization system, which I suspect isn't so much a system as a series of brain games designed to drive me insane a la Jigaw the serial killer?"

He frowned and I showed him the entry marked "dep. R. dais. 4-set."

"That means depression-era daisy gla.s.s, four-piece set. It's in a red box on the third shelf from the bottom in the special collection."

"Well, it's supposed to be on a FedEx truck on its way to Augusta, Georgia. You promised delivery by Friday, which is in two days. You put a reminder on a Post-it note that somehow ended up on the bottom of my shoe. How has eBay not put some sort of skull-and-crossbones disclaimer on your sales profile?"

He sniffed. "There have been a few missteps along the way, but I always manage to keep the customers happy."

"Well, those missteps are costing you a fortune in overhead, like the overnight s.h.i.+pping fees you're going to have to cough up to get the daisy gla.s.s to Augusta," I said.

"Since when did you become little miss office manager?"

"If there's anything I learned from serving as an unappreciated part-time serf at Mike's office, it was compulsive, a.n.a.l-retentive control over paperwork flow. Your books are a mess. Just this morning I found a dozen payments missing on items you s.h.i.+pped months ago. You're charging just enough to make an itty-bitty profit after s.h.i.+pping, the mortgage on the store, and overhead. And from what I could see, most of that comes from your direct antique sales to special clients."

"You couldn't have seen all that in one morning - okay, fine, it's a mess. So, you think I should start charging more?"

"No, I think you should start keeping your books in order and cut some of your waste. Like the overnight fees, which I should mention, you probably want to run over to FedEx now if you want to make the afternoon delivery run."

"Be my unappreciated part-time serf and run it over for me?" he implored. "There's a s.h.i.+ny nickel in it for you."

"No, you procrastinated your way into this bed, buck-o, you handle the s.h.i.+pping," I told him. "But I will go through the rest of your quote - unquote files to make sure you don't have any customer approval rating bombs waiting to go off."

"You're going to reorganize the whole thing, aren't you?" he said, his voice fearful and small.

I thought about it and found that I sort of liked the idea of having somewhere to go every day, at least for a while, somewhere I could forget about Mike and Monroe and just devote myself to someone else's mess. "Yes, I am."

"But I won't be able to find anything," he whined.

"Do you know the alphabet?" I asked. He nodded. "Can you use basic reasoning skills?" He nodded again. "I think you'll be okay"

"Lacey!" Vanessa Whitlock, a friend of our mother's, came through the door, lugging what looked like a standard Black and Decker bread machine. She must have whipped it off the counter in her rush to get out of her house and to the source of fresh gossip. "It's so good to see you!"

"Maybe I will go to the FedEx office for you," I said quietly, peering down.

"Oh, no," Emmett said. "I have to learn my lesson. You can mind the store for a while. Oh, look, more ladies coming into the store. It looks like they're forming a line."

"I hate you," I muttered.

"You love me," he said, turning on his heel to the storeroom. "New client paperwork is in the top drawer on the left. It's called tough love, Lace. I'm ditching you because I care."

"Emmett!"

But he'd left me, with a pack of gossipmongers gathering in the waiting room. And I was still wearing the d.a.m.n yoga pants.

26 * Hidden Piercings.

Emmett had thrown me in the deep end of the pool. And that pool was filled with sharks.

The Great Whites came in the form of church ladies, my mother's bridge club friends, and wives of Mike's clients. And they weren't after my blood, just delicious bits of information about my appearance and overall mental state. They were all on my side, they a.s.sured me, and just came by to lend their support during my "trying time." My mother's golf partner, Mimi Becket, just couldn't believe Mike was bringing "that awful woman" to country club events and expecting everyone to just accept her like one of their own. Jenna Upwell swore she and her husband only went out to dinner with Mike and Beebee to be polite, and that she was thinking of me the whole time. I emerged from this gauntlet of strained social interaction exhausted, with very little to add to the stock but a bunch of gently used kitchen appliances.

After ducking home to change into Emmett-approved office attire, I avenged myself in many, many ways, starting with a complete overhaul of Emmett's "filing system." I dumped his banker's box of invoices onto the floor and used a hand-carved ivory walking stick to shuffle them around. Emmett was both incensed and horrified by my abuse of the stock.

By the time we closed, I'd almost gotten the invoices near some sort of order. Mama came barreling into the shop, clutching her handbag like a Spartan s.h.i.+eld.

"Oh, c.r.a.p," Emmett muttered.

"Would you like to tell me why I had to hear from Betty Vogel that you're back in town?" she demanded, stopping to give Emmett a quick kiss before continuing her tirade. "And why the whole of the Ladies Auxiliary seems to think you have a tattoo of a snake around your waist?"

Emmett snickered.

"Mama, I don't have a tattoo," I said, the picture of innocence. "But Emmett does."

Emmett gasped right along with Mama. "How could you?" he spat, unconsciously rubbing at the little yin-yang symbol he'd had put on his hip in a drunken spring break debacle. "I swore you to secrecy!"

"You will never leave me in charge of reception again," I told him.

"Agreed," he ground out.

Mama exclaimed, "What is wrong with the two of you? Emmett, I didn't spend fifteen hours in labor, pa.s.sing your pumpkin of a head, for you to do that to your body! And Lacey, how could you move back to town without telling me?"

"I haven't moved back, Mama, I'm just staying with Emmett for a few days while I figure some things out. Emmett, on the other hand, was drunk, and an art student from Atlanta convinced him it would seal their love."

"Shut it," Emmett warned. "Or I bring up the public yoga pants."

I shuddered. "Agreed."

"I thought you went to the lake to figure some things out," Mama said, running her fingers through my hair, fluffing it up.

"Her problems followed her," Emmett said. "Lacey is now dodging phone calls from men in two counties."

"Monroe called?" I asked, my brow furrowed.

"Who's Monroe?" Mama asked.

"Your voice mail was full, so he starting calling my cell," Emmett said. "I a.s.sumed that since you let your voice mail fill up, you didn't want to talk to him. I told him I didn't know where you were."

I pulled my cell phone out of my purse and saw that the battery was completely dead, which happens when you don't charge it for three days. Monroe had called. And when he couldn't reach me, he tracked down my brother. He cared enough to find me, which was more than I could say for Mike in the last days of our marriage. I didn't know whether to be happy or annoyed. I settled for ambiguous and confused, with a teeny little spark of hope wriggling the weight loose from my chest.

"Oh, that's good," I muttered.

Mama took my face in her hands and forced me to focus on her question. "Who's Monroe?"

"The man Lacey owes a big apology," Emmett said.

"Oh, honey, you didn't write something about him, did you?" Mama asked, shaking her head and clucking her tongue.

"No," I mumbled. "It's a normal relations.h.i.+p apology."

"Relations.h.i.+p!" Mama exclaimed. "When did you have time to start a relations.h.i.+p? And how did you meet someone? You've been living in the middle of nowhere."

"Well, she didn't have to look far," Emmett said, smirking.

"Hidden piercings," I said in a warning tone.

"Shutting up now," promised Emmett.

"I'll never understand the two of you," Mama sighed. "Well, Emmers, it's sweet that you put your sister up, but it would be best if she came on home. It would give her more time to tell me about this Monroe character." She gave me a pointed look.

"Mama, I can't come back to your house. I'm not staying at Emmett's place permanently either. I'm just there for a few days and then, I don't know what. I'll figure something out."

"Lace," Emmett protested. "There's no need to -"

Mama sighed, "But if you would just -"

"No," I repeated. "You two can't keep pa.s.sing me back and forth like I'm some emotionally handicapped tennis ball. I love you guys, but I've managed to dress myself, and feed myself, and live on my own for the last several months without withering away and dying. I know I came down here looking for help, but sometimes that means 'Just listen to me while I vent,' not 'Please take over my whole life.' Now, I'd like to keep working here, Emmett, if it's okay with you, but I think we can agree I need my own place, whether it's up at the lake or here in town. Mama, don't argue. I need my own s.p.a.ce, and my own things, and room to make the huge mistakes I know you're going to try to protect me from." Emmett frowned, but seemed mollified when I added, "But I am keeping the clothes, though, because they're really cute."

"Will you at least let me make you an appointment with Dorie, honey, because this needs work," Mama said, gesturing to my head.

"Hey, I did that!" Emmett explained.

"Oh..." Mama said. "It's lovely, really."

"In Emmett's defense, it's grown out a little since he cut it,,, said. "And I didn't put much effort into grooming this morning."

Emmett cleared his throat.

"Fine, this week."

My head ached dully at the thought of going to a salon, a public place, filled with women who would have dissected and discussed every little detail of my divorce. Face-to-face, they'd put on sweet smiles and make polite small talk and act like nothing had happened. The minute my back was turned, the whispering would start. But I'd put off dealing with this for long enough. I was going to have to deal with it eventually. Better to jump headlong into the icy pool than slide back into Singletree's social circle one toe at a time.

I told Mama, "Please make an appointment with Dorie. Not because either of you told me I need it, but because I'd actually like to have some input into my haircut and not just wake up with a new one." I scowled at my brother, who seemed more miffed than ever.

Mama smiled triumphantly and whipped out her cell phone. Our shared stylist's number was on speed dial, between Daddy and poison control. "Dorie, hi, honey, it's Deb. I've got a bit of a hair emergency here. Lacey's in town and she could use a cut if you have a spot open." Mama's grin faltered a bit. "Oh, I see."

Emmett shot me a confused look. I shrugged.

"Well, I suppose that will be fine," Mama said, somewhat stiffly. "I understand that you're booked up. Yes, that will be fine." She hung up the phone. "Dorie says you can come by tomorrow at four."

"Okay," I said. "You seem a little upset about that."