11
For Celeste, antiquing was never about the object itself. It was the thrill of the hunt.
It had taken a few seasons for her to get to know the sweet spot of her Provincetown clientele. They had impeccable taste and plenty of disposable income, but they didn’t come to her for million-dollar paintings or rare Chinese porcelain. They wanted things that spoke to them: a great piece of pressed glass, a wooden medicine cabinet from the early 1900s, a Baccarat paperweight. At this point, she could spot something at an estate sale and purchase it with a specific client in mind. She’d text that client from the road and they’d be at the store first thing in the morning. Sometimes that client was herself. Just last week she’d found a Federal-style mahogany sideboard for their bedroom. Of course, this sort of impulse buying was an occupational hazard—one that drove Jack crazy. Just that morning, as she headed out for the sale, he’d said, “Remember, you’re looking for the store only.”
They both knew it was likely she wouldn’t find anything even just for the store. Queen Anne’s Revenge had become so well-known on the Cape that they fielded dozens of calls a week to come visit estate sales. More often than not, Celeste had the unenviable task of disappointing them—either declining to attend or showing up only to leave empty-handed.
Today, the seller was the daughter of a recently deceased author of several acclaimed bird-watching guides. The family was fifth-generation Cape Cod, a promising pedigree for estate-hunting. Sure enough, just a half hour into her perusal of the tagged items throughout the Craftsman house, she found some unusual Bakelite buttons, a goose-necked copper kettle from the 1800s, and a gold-topped wooden walking stick. The walking stick was just the type of thing her customer Clifford Henry, the town Realtor, had been asking for. This particular piece was beautiful but needed a little restoration. She’d ask Jack for help with that.
On her way out to her car, she thanked the seller and noticed the woman was teary-eyed as she looked at the walking stick. Celeste didn’t understand the intense sentimentality people felt toward objects. She didn’t understand their attachment to their families in general. How could she?
She’d carefully arranged her entire life to make sure she had nothing to do with her own.
The drive to Provincetown seemed to take forever.
Elodie sat nestled in the back seat of the Lincoln Town Car, Pearl on her lap. Once they reached the Cape, she thought, Finally. But then, another hour to the godforsaken town her sister called home.
Elodie’s driver pulled up in front of the building with Celeste’s address. It was a Queen Anne house with a storefront on the lower level.
“You can just let me off here and find a place to park,” she said to her driver. “I’ll text you when I’m ready to leave.”
She adjusted Pearl’s leash and lifted her out of the car. The only wrinkle in her trip was her inability to find a hotel room on such short notice. The entire town was booked; apparently, according to the third hotel receptionist she spoke to, she was arriving in the middle of something called CabaretFest, and her options were limited. Some of these places didn’t even have turndown service! And while most places were pet-friendly, the few left available did not.
She decided she wouldn’t even stay the night. She would get Celeste’s sign-off on the auction contract and turn right back around for Manhattan. Then she’d worry about that niece of hers.
Inside, the store looked like a bohemian marketplace, with textiles and clocks and objets d’art. It took her a few seconds to spot Celeste’s longtime partner, Jack, behind a checkout counter to her right. He looked as scruffy and rakishly handsome as she remembered, with olive skin, silver hair in need of a trim, and white stubble along his square jaw. His small but expressive dark eyes widened when he saw her. She couldn’t blame him for being surprised; in the quarter of a century that her sister had lived on Cape Cod, she’d never once visited.
Pearl tugged on her leash and Elodie relinquished hold of it so she could meander over to a water bowl set near the counter.
“Elodie?” he said.
“Hello, Jack. You’re looking well. Is my sister around?”
“I’ll be darned. She didn’t even mention you were coming.”
“I wanted to surprise her,” said Elodie, mustering a smile that suggested whimsy and affection, not impatience and business necessity.
“She’s at an estate sale. You’re welcome to wait—”
Her sister breezed in the door, carrying an armload of items and talking a mile a minute.
“You wouldn’t believe the crowd,” she said, focused so completely on Jack she didn’t notice that someone else was there. “I thought today was the preview but I almost got my hand bitten off by some of these people who clearly have no sense of etiquette. And we’re not putting this tea tray onto the floor. I’m going to call—”
“Elise and Fern. Great thinking,” Jack said. He cleared his throat. “And . . . you have a visitor.”
Celeste turned, taking a few beats to register that it was her sister standing in front of her.
“Good lord—what are you doing here?” Celeste said.
“Hello to you, too,” Elodie said, shrugging off her cardigan.
Celeste’s hair was loose and a bit stringy and she was dressed in some sort of embroidered caftan.
“Elodie, seriously. What’s going on?”
Pearl strained at her leash. She needed to be walked. Elodie mustered a smile for her sister.
“Can we, perhaps, talk outside?”