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Not the news you hoped for, is it?
Then again, I hadn’t given her the kind of news she wanted for years now.
“Is she smart, then?” She sniffled, trying to muster some enthusiasm. “What does she do in life?”
“Don’t know.”
“Well, what are her degrees in?”
“Not sure she has any kind of formal higher education.”
I adjusted a carved wooden figurine of Shou Xing on my shelf. The God of Longevity. A lot of that missing in the Sun household.
I moved on to the next shelf. “Frankly, I doubt it.”
Octi appeared too feral to sit through four years of tertiary education.
Something peculiar caught my eye.
Mother gasped. “How much do you know about her?” She raked her fingers through her hair, ruining her new blowout. She snapped her fingers at Celeste Ayi. “We need a credit check, criminal record, and extensive psychological profile before you can publicly be seen with her.”
My thoughts drowned out her voice.
The littleshit.
Octi had tried to steal my jade pendants. The his-and-hers. Dad’s final acquisition.
A deep, crescent hole hugged the lock. She hadn’t lied. Shehadcome here for the art.
Only she’d failed to mention she came to fucking steal it.
I did not get along well with humans.
I got along even worse with thieves.
“Zach? Zachary?” Behind me, Mom started pacing, her steps thumping on the hardwood despite her negligible weight. “Are you listening? What of the fact that people said her dress was completely inappropriate? Would you at least consider sending her to my personal shopper? I’ll pick up the bill.”
But why would my mystery guest be fascinated with this particular art piece when I had hundreds more pricey and less secure lying around the house?
She could’ve picked the figurine right next to it. Unlocked. Unguarded. In plain sight. It would go for double the price, too.
The pendants must’ve meant something to her.
Or, at the very least, one of them did.
“…come to terms with the fact that she is blonde, but I won’t accept an unschooled harlot for a daughter-in-law.” Mother droned on in the background. “In fact, I won’t make promises to accept her at all. Oh, this is horrible. Why couldn’t you have taste?”
“Because then he’d be fun.” Celeste Ayi, who’d long advanced to her third drink, slammed a bottle down at the whiskey cart, guzzling another glass like it was water. She squinted out the window with the tumbler burrowed into her chest. “It’s just my luck to have the most boring nephew possible. A fortune-teller told me so when I went to Hawaii for that bachelorette party. You know the one. She said he’d be nothing but a headache. And you know what? I do blame him for my Advil addiction.”
Neither Mom nor I paid attention to her.
I sifted through mental images of all the art I’d purchased this year until I reached the pendant. Sotheby’s. Newly widowed housewife.
I’d contacted the seller privately and offered far more than the evaluation before the auction even began, refusing to entertain a bidding war.
Not when Dad had wanted to complete the his-and-hers collection.
I remembered the seller. Fifties. Stocky. Bleached hair. Too much plastic in her face for anything that wasn’t a cheap garden chair.
