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Unless she was vegan, in which case I’d just have to throw together a salad for her or something.
Anyway, I’d texted Calvin that my half-sister had shown up in Globe and that I’d be bringing her home for dinner, and although his return text had been startled, he would never have told me that wasn’t a very good idea. The Standingbears were very big on family, even when they showed up on your doorstep with no warning.
“How was downtown?” I asked her as she approached the counter. I’d told Olivia I would lock up, knowing that I needed to keep the front door open for a few minutes past five. In fact, I got out the key even as Chloe was replying to my question.
“Good,” she said. “I got some iced tea at Olamendi’s like you suggested, and then I kind of wandered. That Sundowner Gallery place has some nice stuff. I especially liked the paintings by an artist named Hazel Marr.”
I allowed myself a smile. “Hazel is an amazing artist,” I agreed as I carefully lowered myself from the stool where I’d been sitting. “She’s my friend who owns the Airbnb.”
“Wow, she is?” Chloe responded, looking impressed. “Does she have any of her art at the house?”
“No,” I said, and my half-sister’s expression fell a bit. “She decided to take out the original paintings because she didn’t know whether it was a good idea to keep such valuable pieces hanging there when she didn’t know how people would treat them.”
Chloe pursed her lips. “I suppose I can understand that. But it’s still cool that I’ll be able to stay at her place.”
“I think you’ll like it.” By then, I was able to make my way to the front door so I could lock up — good thing, because I’d spied a couple who looked like they were probably in their middle forties beginning to make their leisurely way down the sidewalk toward the store. Under other circumstances, I might have been fine with waiting and closing up shop until they’d had a chance to browse, but today I only wanted to make sure Chloe and I were able to get out of there on time.
Once the door was settled, I went back to the cash register and stowed the key in its spot under the cash drawer. I had a duplicate on the key ring I carried with me at all times, but I kept this one here in case of emergency, since I could always count on my friend Victoria to open the shop if necessary, thanks to the way the same key unlocked the door that opened on the rear lobby and the one to her studio upstairs as well.
“You’ll need to follow me,” I said. “Are you parked out back?”
“Yep,” Chloe replied cheerfully. “I wasn’t sure about the street parking, so I thought it would be safer to use the parking lot. There were lots of spaces.”
Something that might have been a marvel to a person from overcrowded Southern California but was par for the course around here. A lot of people liked to park out on Bridge Street, so there were many days when it was only my white Jeep Renegade and Victoria’s bright red Mercedes SUV holding court out back.
Today, though, a metallic gray Volkswagen Beetle was parked a couple of spaces away from my Jeep, and an odd little pang went through me. I’d driven a similar car for years, although mine had been the Denim edition convertible, and this one wasn’t quite so fancy, although meticulously maintained. A while back, I’d given up my Beetle because it just wasn’t suited to driving on the rough road out to the house every day, but even though I loved the Jeep and had been glad of its four-wheel drive on more than one occasion, I still found myself missing my VW from time to time.
“Your car?” I asked with a nod toward the little gray Beetle, and Chloe nodded.
“Yeah, I had to put in a lot of hours at Chipotle to pay for it.”
She still wore a small smile, so I guessed she didn’t have too much of a problem with having to earn her way toward vehicle ownership. It made sense, I supposed; a high school music teacher probably didn’t earn enough to be buying cars for his kids, even if he’d held the same position for a long time and was at the top of his pay scale. I could relate, since I’d had to work hard to afford my own car in high school, a beat-up Sentra with nearly a quarter-million miles on the odometer by the time I traded it in for my brand-new Beetle.
“They’re great cars,” I said. “I had one of my own up until a year or so ago. But it just wasn’t up to dealing with country roads on a regular basis.”
“You live out in the country?” Chloe asked.
“Sort of,” I replied. “Our house is on the east side of town, a couple of miles off the highway.” Although the day had been sunny enough, I could feel the wind starting to pick up, and the air was cooling noticeably as the sun slipped toward the horizon. “But let’s get you over to the Airbnb.”
She seemed amenable to that suggestion and headed toward her VW while I laboriously clambered behind the wheel of the Jeep. Each day, that particular task got more and more difficult, but I stubbornly continued to drive myself to work even though I’d had offers from several people to play chauffeur.
No, I wanted to hold on to that small piece of freedom while I still could.
I drove slowly so Chloe wouldn’t have any trouble keeping up. Since it was a drive of only a half mile or so, it didn’t take too long for us to reach Hazel’s Airbnb, a cute little cottage of only a bit more than a thousand square feet. She’d clearly been preparing for spring, because I noted several new annuals blooming in the flowerbeds out front, even as the daffodils and irises had already begun to make their yearly appearance.
There was a garage, but Hazel kept that for storing supplies and spare furniture. I parked out front and hoped Chloe would get the hint that it was okay to pull into the driveway, even if the garage was off-limits. She seemed to understand, because rather than parking behind me, she turned into the drive and then shut off the engine.
“It’s adorable!” she exclaimed as I clambered out of my Renegade’s driver’s seat and closed the door behind me. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen houses like this in the Valley.”
Probably not, since the vast majority of my old stomping grounds had been built after World War 2, and the houses tended to be stucco, not little bungalows with yellow-painted siding and cheerful green shutters.
“No,” I said. “There are places like this in the older parts of L.A., but I remember the Valley being pretty much ranchers and McMansions as far as the eye can see.”
Chloe chuckled. “It is pretty vanilla. This place seems to have a lot more character.”
Well, that it did. While some parts of Globe still looked kind of rough, the street where Hazel’s Airbnb was located was lined with ’20s-vintage houses that had also been restored, so the overall effect was pretty much postcard-perfect.
“Let’s go inside,” I said. “I think you’ll like the decor, too.”
