Jenny’s lip curled back, and I could practically see the acid response forming, but she bit her lip and exhaled loudly through her nose. “This is a nice place,” she conceded. “Good light, nicely arranged. Probably not a color scheme I would have chosen.”
“I’m sure.” My teeth were grinding as I led her to the counter. I didn’t offer her coffee or a scone, despite the fact that they were arranged temptingly under a nearby glass dome. This was not a social visit. This was business. OK, fine, fine, Jenny had been making me feel unwelcome for years, and now I was having a tiny bit of revenge.
She smiled sweetly, or what passed for sweetly when you’ve had enough Botox to paralyze an elephant. “Mr. Wainwright must have been fond of you to have left you all this.”
“Here we go,” I muttered.
Jenny shrugged, her eyes wide and not-quite-convincingly guileless. “I’m just saying, it must be awfully nice—”
“You think I like the fact that Mr. Wainwright died?” I asked coldly. “Do you think I wouldn’t rather he was here right now?”
Technically, he was there at the moment, hovering over his favorite copy of From Fangs to Fairy Folk: Unusual Creatures of Midwestern North America . But I wasn’t about to tell Jenny that.
“I think I’ll pop out to see how your aunt Jettie’s doing,” Mr. Wainwright whispered.
“Coward,” I muttered. I turned back to my sister. “Why did you come here, Jenny?”
Jenny tried, and failed, to look surprised by my line of questioning. “Courtney told you. We have to go over our collection plan before the meeting. I wanted to talk to you about getting some of the car dealerships in town to offer some detailing packages. I think I might have an in with the owner of Nelson Ford.”
I searched Jenny’s face. I even thought about peeking into her thoughts, but past experience with Grandma Ruthie had shown me that only prolonged the argument, it didn’t help me win it. Fortunately, I’d known my sister long enough to discern the acquisitive, gleeful look in her eye when she was bordering on social triumph. And if she was really going to forge some sort of tenuous connection with the largest auto dealership in town, she would have been dancing some uptight little jig.
My eyes narrowed. “No you didn’t. We could have handled this whole thing by e-mail. That’s how we’ve done it so far, why change now?”
“Fine. I want to talk to you about the house,” Jenny said, sighing.
“No!” I threw up my hands. “My lawyer said I’m not supposed to talk to you about the house or its contents without him being present. That’s why we’ve been handling this frustrating yet not at all rewarding task over e-mail!”
“Jane, I think we can settle this without the lawyers.”
“How do you figure?”
Jenny actually had the good grace to look slightly timid, twisting her wedding band around her finger as she said, “Well, your situation has changed. You need to stay close to town now that you’re running the shop. And besides, you don’t need that big old place, all by yourself—”
“If you finish that sentence, I’m going to punch you in the head.”
“Don’t you threaten me,” she said, shoving my shoulder.
“Don’t you tell me what I need,” I said, shoving her back, sending her chair scooting across the floor.
“Jane, you have so much stuff! I don’t understand why you need everything the family’s handed down! You’re all alone. No one even sees all those beautiful things. They won’t be appreciated in your house like they would be in mine.”
“I’m not having this discussion with you again,” I told her, pushing back from the table. “Let’s just get through this carnival from hell, I’ll find a way to fake my death and escape from the chamber, and you can fight Head Courtney to the death for her position as queen of the evil hive. And then we never have to see each other again. You can pretend I died or something.”
“You did die,” Jenny said, rolling her eyes.
“So it should be easy for you.”
“Why can’t you just discuss this with me like a rational adult?” she demanded.
“Why? Are you going to behave like a rational adult?” I shot back.
She grunted and tossed her folder of chamber materials across the bar at me. “I can’t talk to you when you’re like this, which is all the time . I’m going.” She huffed and puffed while she slung her purse over her shoulder. “But this isn’t over, Jane. You’re going to have to deal with this sooner or later.”
Jenny blew back out of the shop like a bitchy hurricane, leaving a trail of scattered prize committee papers in her wake. And when she’d tossed her folder at me, she’d knocked a huge stack of mail off the counter.
Perfect.
I ran around the shop, picking up sheets of paper detailing Jenny’s campaign to wheedle free floral arrangements and colonics out of the Hollow’s business community. I also cursed a rather impressive blue streak that eventually began to rhyme and was soon coming out in iambic pentameter.