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Archie’s expression didn’t change, but he nodded, as if pleased to hear that my unexpected little sister was no slouch in the academics department. Back in the day, before he was turned into a cat, he’d been a history teacher, and although he’d left that profession behind, I knew he still had very little use for ignorance.
Instead, his gaze shifted back toward me. “And you, Selena — why didn’t you ever go in search of your little sister?”
A valid enough question, but one I wished he’d asked in private. I honestly didn’t know how much Chloe’s father had said about the way he’d made it clear he wanted to live his own life, one that didn’t involve my mother…or the child he’d fathered after a single drunken night of passion.
“Oh, my bio-father didn’t want to have much to do with us,” I said lightly. “He paid child support, and that was it. Which is fine. It’s never a good idea to force people to have a life together just because of a single mistake they made.”
A golden-brown eyebrow lifted. “You see yourself as a mistake?”
“Of course not,” I returned at once, even as Chloe began to frown, as though annoyed on my behalf. “I just mean the hook-up that started the whole thing. It was my mother’s choice to keep me, and Jordan did the right thing by sending money. There wasn’t any need to make him do more than that.”
Although Archie had been living in the twenty-first century as a man for more than a year, he still had a hard time with our much more casual attitudes toward sex. In this particular case, though, it seemed he’d realized it wouldn’t be a very good idea to push me further on the topic.
“I understand,” he said, and even managed to smile. “Then I suppose it’s a very good thing that the two of you were able to meet as adults — and that Chloe is in a position to help with the shop.”
“I’m looking forward to it,” she said. “And I’m super glad that I got here at just the right time. The universe definitely guided me where I needed to be.”
Since that was exactly the sort of woo-woo statement I would have made in a similar situation, Archie’s expression turned sour. However, his tone was pleasant enough as he said, “Yes, it does seem as though you were a godsend. And if you ever need anything while Selena is out on leave, I’m just next door — and my wife Victoria is upstairs.”
“Oh, Victoria’s your wife?” Chloe asked, looking a little confused. True, they had different last names, and Victoria hadn’t mentioned anything about Archie, probably because she’d come down to say hi to Chloe in between client meetings and hadn’t had any real time to go into details.
“Yes,” he said, obviously proud to be able to claim such an accomplished woman as his partner in life. “She sometimes helps out with the studio when she has the time.” He paused there and gave Chloe a searching look. “I don’t suppose you dance.”
“What, like ballet?” she said, even more befuddled.
“Ballroom,” he explained patiently. “Waltz…tango…foxtrot. That sort of thing.”
Chloe let out a chuckle, then paused, as if she realized laughing in response to his comment might not have been the most polite thing to do. “Oh, no,” she said. “I’ve got two left feet.”
“That can be fixed,” he said, something in his tone telling me that my little sister was going to end up in one of his beginning ballroom classes whether she liked it or not. But then he glanced over at me and added, “At any rate, I’ll let you two get back to it. I’m sure you have a good deal to show Chloe before the big day arrives.”
“Oh, lots,” I said. “But we’ve still got some time.”
“Hopefully,” he said, his tone now ominous. His gaze moved to Chloe and he added, “It was very nice to meet you. Remember, I’m just next door if you need anything.”
And then he went out, moving past a couple of people who looked as though they’d taken a break during a hiking trip to come downtown and do some browsing, judging by their cargo shorts and sturdy boots.
Since they headed immediately for the book section, Chloe seemed to think it was safe to continue our conversation. “Are all your friends so…dramatic?”
I couldn’t help chuckling. “Well, Archie and Josie are definitely their own people. But you also met Hazel and Victoria. They’re pretty normal, right?”
Chloe shook her head. “They’re more low-key. But since Victoria looks like a movie star and Hazel is some kind of world-class artist, I’m not sure I’d use ‘normal’ to describe them.”
Fair enough. Still smiling, I said, “I guess Globe just isn’t a ‘normal’ kind of place.”
The rest of the day went smoothly, though, with Joyce Lewis also stopping by to meet Chloe — and to drop off a new batch of candles. I showed my sister how to log everything into the inventory system and where to store things in the stock room, and ended up thinking that this was all going to work out just perfectly. In fact, although I’d first thought I’d stay through the end of the week just to make sure she was on top of everything, I was now beginning to wonder whether I should take only another day to get her up to speed and then go home and spend the rest of the ten days or so until I was due with my feet up on the couch, the way an eight-months-plus pregnant woman should.
Chloe was good with the customers and quick to learn how I did inventory — probably not the most efficient system in the world, but it worked — and yet it seemed that whenever I tried to ask her about her life back in Southern California, she somehow managed to give a brief answer before turning the conversation to something more innocuous, like a question about how to place an order with my two biggest vendors, Llewellyn Press and Hay House.
I supposed it was possible that she didn’t want to talk about her life very much because her parents had admonished her not to divulge too much information about their family dynamics. Again, since I knew very little about Jordan Fairfield as a person, I had no idea whether he would have even laid down that sort of commandment, or whether he and his wife would have simply told Chloe to stay safe and left it at that. After all, even though she was still living at home, she was also an adult of twenty-one and paying rent to stay there. When you got right down to it, I didn’t think there was much her parents could have done to prevent their daughter from doing as she liked.
One question she asked did surprise me a little, though.
“Do you ever do readings here?” she inquired after the hikers left, books on cryptozoology stowed in their bags.
“Tarot readings?” I responded, and she nodded.
“I mean, that’s what you did when you lived in L.A., right?”
