49
Celeste practically floated her way over to Lidia’s house. The diamond was gone! Sold.
The Pavlin curse was no more.
Fans whirred inside but seemed to do little more than move around hot air. Celeste wiped her brow with the back of her hand.
“Great party last night,” Celeste said, accepting Lidia’s hug.
“Should I turn on the air conditioner?”
“No, not on my account. I have to get back to the store.”
Lidia poured two glasses of iced tea and they sat at the table.
She leaned closer to Celeste with a conspiratorial smile on her face.
“I’m glad you stopped by. Here’s the burning question of the day: Do you think your sister and Tito are . . . involved?”
Celeste recalled the moment last night when Tito brought Elodie a drink—the way they looked at each other. She’d given her sister a teasing wink about it but had only been joking.
“Do you?”
Lidia shrugged. “I don’t know. They do spend a lot of time together. Maybe I’m just being my usual hopeless romantic self.”
Celeste suspected that was most likely the case. As far as she knew, her sister hadn’t had a relationship in decades. Not that she was privy to any details about her personal life. Maybe Elodie had tons of love affairs. It was sad how little she knew of her only remaining sister.
But she wasn’t there to talk about Elodie.
“Lidia, I need help planning the wedding. Jack is really eager to get things going.”
“Thought you’d never ask! You could do it here on the water. Or, I was thinking the garden—”
The lights went off and the fans stopped whirring. Lidia walked to the foot of the hallway stairs.
“Manny?”
“Blackout,” he responded from somewhere deep in the house.
“Can you get the generator on?” Lidia yelled back.
Celeste gulped her iced tea. She heard Manny thump down the stairs. He waved his phone at Lidia.
“I got a text from the power company. Apparently, the blackout is due to ‘animal contact.’ They’re estimating about an hour or so.”
“Well, Marco’s oysters can’t wait an hour, so you’d better get moving.”
Celeste’s heart beat faster. This was a sign. Even with the ring gone, there she was, in the middle of talking about the wedding, and the universe interrupted.
“I should get going,” she said.
“Don’t you want to finish—”
The conversation? No. She didn’t.
Gemma dealt with the bad news about the diamond ring the way she dealt with most things: She got to work. Celeste had given her the go-ahead to sell her pieces in the store, and now she needed to create a display.
“Try using this for the chains,” Jack said, setting up a Lucite “arm” he’d found in the back. “And then the charms can go on a tray in front.”
“Yeah, that could work,” Gemma said. She took a breath, telling herself to focus on the task in front of her. Still, her thoughts kept looping back to the Electric Rose. She didn’t believe Elodie’s explanation that the sale had been purely a business decision. It seemed like an act of spite—the same spite that made her aunt reject her. Maybe it even had something to do with why the family had cast her aside.
Suddenly, the lights went out. The fans stopped whirring. Jack’s phone pinged with a text.
“The power’s out,” he said. “Animal contact.”
“What does that mean?”
“Sometimes an osprey builds a nest near the power lines or something else and then we just have to wait for it to be fixed. It’s pretty routine this time of year.” He propped open the front doors and walked out back to get the generator going.
Gemma set her necklace chains on the arm, grouping them by metal: silver, gold-plated brass, and gold-plated silver. She put out two of each to leave room for the bracelets. Just a few minutes without the fans and already the shop was uncomfortably hot.
“Gemma. Hey.”
She turned to find Sanjay.
“What are you doing here?” she said.
“I got to town two days ago.”
She nodded, looking back at her necklaces. “Yes. I’m aware. I saw you at the parade. Both of you.” With her back to him, she put down the chain, took a breath, and said, “I don’t get it. Is bringing her here some kind of payback?”
“What? No. I came to take more photographs. You mentioning me in the Times . . . I appreciate it. I really do. And I wanted to say hi to you before I leave tomorrow.”
She turned around.
“Okay, well—hi. Is that it?”
“Gemma, don’t be like that. We agreed to be friends, right?”
Friends. Right.
He walked closer, looking at the display. “You’re selling your work here? That’s a great idea.”
“How long have you been with Monica?”
“Gemma—”
“I want to know. I want to know how long I’ve been needlessly blaming myself, feeling like an awful person, when you’ve already moved on.”
She thought, fleetingly, of Connor. But that didn’t count. She didn’t have real feelings for him. She hadn’t even slept with him.
Sanjay sighed. “It’s pretty recent.”
Two women walked in, both wearing patterned wrap dresses and strappy sandals, one blonde, one brunette, both with short haircuts and big sunglasses.
“We saw on Instagram that the GEMMA jewelry is being sold here,” the brunette said.
“Are you the designer?” the blonde said, pushing her sunglasses atop her head.
“I am,” she said. Then she turned to Sanjay. “Excuse me. I have work to do.”