Boss of Me

“We need to price them and put them out.” She digs farther into the box.

“How do we do that?”

“Here.” She hands me a sheet. “These are their suggested prices. If you think they’re right, go with it. Or price it whatever you think will sell.”

“Me?” My jaw drops. “I don’t know how to price original art.”

“Then just go with what they suggest. Unless you think it’s too low… We can always run a sale.” She reaches for my gun. “Give me this.”

I slant my eyes at her, and she laughs. “It’s my turn!”

For several minutes we work in silence. I neatly write the prices on the tiny tags attached to the art.

After a while, I feel Renée watching me and glance up. “Am I doing it wrong?”

She only smiles. “I was just thinking how nice it’s been having you here. I’m going to miss you when you go back to Nashville.”

Blinking down to the list, I know what she’s doing. She’s letting me know it’s time to tell her what happened. Am I ready? I suppose I have to be.

“I’ll head back tomorrow, I guess.” Just saying it flushes me with nerves.

“You can stay as long as you want. The only possible conflict is if the house rents, but we can figure that out.”

“Thanks, but I can’t hide forever.”

She scans a few more bar codes, and I make a few more price tags.

Her voice is gentle when she asks, “Why are you hiding?”

I take a vibrant orange and yellow vase from the box and stare at it, feeling the pain fresh as ever. “I didn’t protect my chin.”

Her eyes soften. “He got you on the ropes?”

“I went all the way down.”

She’s around the box, pulling me into a hug at once. We stay that way several minutes while I do my best to calm my breathing, not to cry.

I can feel her stroking the back of my hair. “You know, those wrestlers always got back up and started fighting again. Even when they spun around like a top.”

She catches my eye and winks.

I do my best to smile back. “It was all fake. You don’t get up so fast from a real knockout.”

Picking up the gun again, she returns to the shelves of stock. “I was afraid this might happen when you said you’d slept with him.” She starts scanning bar codes. “I’ve never met anyone as dark as Patton Fletcher in my life.”

I think about him cooking me hot chicken, holding me back from seeing the secret recipe. I think about that crazy place where we got pancakes in the mountains. “He wasn’t all dark. He could be really funny sometimes.”

“That’s something I can’t imagine.” She digs on a bottom shelf and pulls out a stack of starfish clocks. “The Patton Fletcher I knew never laughed. Nothing mattered to him except closing the deal.”

Chewing my lip, I think about it. “Marley mattered to him…” My voice trails off as I remember the mountains… His mom mattered. I think I mattered…

“I don’t know. I walked away and never went back.” She keeps scanning.

I’m almost to the bottom of my box. I pull out a blown-glass Christmas ornament and study the red and green lines.

“That’s my problem. How can I work for a man who treated you like he did? You’re my sister.”

Her brow furrows, and she stops scanning. “Is that why you’re here? You’re thinking of quitting your job?”