32
A week without progress. How much more time could she waste in the middle of nowhere, waiting for Celeste to sign the papers? The answer: not much. Elodie had to push things along. But how?
The early morning sun cast a pink glow on the bay. All was quiet except for a chorus of birds, including an owl hooting somewhere nearby. On the dock, two men wearing high rubber boots climbed into a small boat.
Still wearing her pajamas and robe, she carried Pearl down the deck stairs to the street level. Pearl had made such a fuss upstairs that Elodie worried she didn’t have time to dress or she’d risk an accident in the room.
Elodie had never understood people’s complaints about how much work it was to have a dog. She now realized that was because she hadn’t done most of that work.
At Commercial, she bent down and fastened Pearl’s leash. Then she tugged her along toward the beach but hadn’t gotten half a block before Pearl stopped to do her business. While she waited for her, she spotted Tito heading up the street with Bart in tow.
“You’re out early,” she said.
“I could say the same to you,” he said. “I’d have waited if I knew you’d be on the crack-of-dawn shift.”
Elodie smiled. “This is unusual. I’m going to try to get her back on a later schedule. In the city I have a dog walker, so it’s enough of an adjustment without starting at this ungodly hour.”
“A dog walker?” he said. “You mean, when you’re away on a vacation?”
“No,” she said. “Every day.”
He laughed. “You’re pulling my leg.”
“No,” she said slowly, suddenly self-conscious. “Why would you think that?”
“You pay someone, every day, to walk your own dog?”
“Well . . . yes.”
He laughed harder.
“I don’t see what’s so funny.” She crossed her arms.
“It just seems like a waste,” he said.
“I can afford it.”
“No. I mean, it’s a waste to have a dog but not really care for it. These morning walks with Bart are my favorite time of the day. I wouldn’t miss them for the world.”
“Well, I find it to be a chore,” she said. “And that has nothing to do with my love for Pearl. It’s just grunt work.”
“So you’re one of those people who paid someone to diaper your kids,” he said.
“I don’t have children,” she said.
“No? Me neither,” he said. “I was too busy working.”
“Me too,” she said, and smiled. “But I thought women were the only ones who had to choose between parenthood and career. At least, that was the prevailing wisdom when I was growing up.”
The truth was, work had nothing to do with her childless lifestyle. She had no desire to be a single mother and had simply never found a romantic partner, at least not one that stuck. There had been a few dalliances with men who ran in her circles, people she could call when she needed someone on her arm for this benefit or that, and people who called on her for the same. But it had rarely gone beyond that, and if it did, she always pulled herself back from the edge of developing any real feelings.
“The sea is a demanding mistress,” Tito said.
Her phone rang. Sloan Pierce. Again. She sent it to voicemail.
“Well, who needs kids and marriage? We have our four-legged children.”
“True. But I gotta admit I think about it sometimes. You don’t?”
“No,” she said quickly. “Never. I’m devoted to my work. Relationships have always seemed a messy distraction to me.”
Tito seemed to consider that. Pearl sniffed around Bart and began straining on the leash. “I should get going. She needs exercise.”
Tito gave her a small salute and began walking toward the house. But then he turned and called out to her. “I have a thought, just an idea to make walking her less of a . . . chore. What if we meet up in the morning and keep each other company?”
Well, why not? She missed seeing her usual people in the city. The doormen. Her dry cleaner. The woman at Eli’s who made her cappuccino. It might be nice to have a Provincetown routine.
“I like that idea,” she said. “Just not the crack-of-dawn shift.”
“If you have any questions, just ask. And don’t feel intimidated: Most customers walking into the store during the summer know less about all this stuff than you do,” Jack said.
He was so kind, and a seemingly endless font of information. Gemma followed him around the store, listening more than talking and feeling, happily, like she was back in school.
She picked up a colorful glass bowl. It was floral on the outside and deep pink on the inside and the waffled edges were gilt.
“That’s called a bride’s basket,” Jack said. “It’s colored Victorian glass. That edge there? It’s quatrefoil.”
“How old is it?” she asked.
“That piece is circa 1885.”
She checked the price tag: seventy-two dollars.
“Is this missing a zero?” she asked. He told her no, that was the price. When she said surely they could get more for it, he explained, “The market for Victorian glass is soft right now. It’s selling for half the price it was just eight years ago.”
“Why?” By her logic, eight extra years added that much more to its pedigree as an antique.
“That’s the way things are in this business. There’s no absolute value. It’s mostly perception, and supply and demand.”
Interesting. Very different from dealing in gold and other precious metals.
“So did you get into the antiques business first or did Celeste?”
He smiled. “This was all Celeste’s idea. I’m just along for the ride. But I did get on board quickly to impress her. I guess I did my homework.”
His unabashed affection for her aunt was really very sweet.
“Speaking of Celeste, have you seen her this morning?” he said. Gemma shook her head.
A customer walked in, and Jack moved behind the counter to give her the space to spread her wings. Gemma approached the man perusing a display of candlesticks and cut-glass vases.
“Let me know if I can be any help,” Gemma said.
He turned to her and she recognized him as the guy from the art gallery. He was even more handsome than she remembered, with long eyelashes and flecks of gold in his blue eyes.
“I need a gift for my mother,” he said.
“Great. Um, birthday?”
“No. It’s an apology gift.”
“Oh. Okay. Well, those two candlesticks you’re looking at are both brass. But the one with the wider base is more valuable. It’s from Spain, late 1500s.”
“Do you know the provenance of every piece in this store?” he said, looking at her closely. He seemed amused. Or impressed. She couldn’t decipher his expression except to say it was one of interest.
“Not yet,” she said. “I just started working here. It’s my aunt’s store.”
He smiled and held out his hand. “Connor Harrison,” he said. “I believe we met at my gallery the other day.”
“Gemma Maybrook,” she said. He held her hand just a beat longer than it took to shake.
“I’ll take the Spanish candlesticks,” he said. “And . . . your number?” He grinned in a way that was almost irresistible.
Almost.
“I think we should keep our relationship professional,” she said. “But if you irritate any more of your relatives, you know where to find me.”
Maud could only fit her in first thing in the morning, before she started her day at the restaurant, where Alvie was already doing prep.
“So what seems to be the emergency?” she asked as Celeste settled into her lawn chair, swatting away a bee.
“Your last reading was spot on,” she said. “My sister showed up for the first time since I’ve lived here. And then my niece, whom I haven’t seen in fifteen years. And then, Jack’s proposal.”
“All good things,” Maud said.
“Well, on the surface. But you know how I feel about marriage.”
“Because of the curse,” Maud said, her eyes soft with empathy.
“I can’t tell him that. But . . . yes.”
Maud was the only person aside from Lidia she’d confided in about the whispers of a curse in her family. They’d parsed the idea endlessly, the way a person might examine their early childhood with a psychiatrist. They compared the history of the Electric Rose to other cursed diamonds, the most famous being the rare, blue, forty-five-carat Hope Diamond.
Four centuries ago, the Hope was stolen from a Sita idol in India, and the thief was soon after killed by dogs. Every subsequent owner suffered financial ruin or premature death. Then there was the Black Orlov, originally 195 carats, which was set as one of the eyes in a statue of the Hindu god Brahma. It was also stolen from India; a diamond dealer brought it to the U.S. in 1932, before jumping out of the window of a Manhattan skyscraper. The Russian princesses who later acquired the diamond also leapt to their deaths.
“A curse starts with a transgression,” Maud told her years ago. “The notoriously cursed diamonds were all stolen. Your family was the first and only owner of the Electric Rose.”
She had a point. And yet, the minute her father brought the diamond into the family, bad luck started. Elodie lost her first love when Paulina was summoned home for publicity, her parents became embattled for the remainder of their marriage, and ultimately Paulina and her husband were killed in a freak accident, leaving their daughter orphaned. Even The New York Times mentioned the curse in Paulina’s obituary. She believed her relationship with Jack had remained unscathed only because they never tempted fate by getting engaged.
“Celeste, I’ve known you and Jack a long time. Speaking as your friend here, I don’t want you to let this get in the way of your happiness.”
She looked at her incredulously. “What’s that supposed to mean? You suddenly don’t believe in these things now that you’re happy with Alvie?” She hated herself for lashing out, but Maud’s new skepticism felt like a betrayal when she needed an ally the most.
Maud didn’t flinch.
“I believe it takes a lot of factors for bad luck to dominate a situation. You have to look at the entire picture. I would never want to see a client act or not act based on one reading, or one element in the overall universe.”
Celeste pulled a rubber band from her wrist and gathered her hair into a knot. “Well, let’s see what the cards have to say.”
With the deck in her hands, she felt steadier than she had since the moment she set eyes on the engagement ring. The familiar motion of shuffling was like a big exhale.
Maud turned her first card over. The Tower.
“How’s that for the entire picture?” she said, heart pounding. The Tower indicated danger. Crisis. Destruction.
“You still have to pull two more cards,” Maud said. “We don’t know what it means yet.”
Celeste stood up, her legs shaky. “I’m afraid I know everything I need to know.”