Page 1 of The Sound of Harmony

ChapterOne

Emma Gibson loved harmony.

She hated war, oppression, inequality, interpersonal conflict, road construction, and mismatched socks. She couldn’t do much about war, oppression, or inequality. And she avoided interpersonal conflict and road construction at all costs.

The socks? She could handle the socks.

She also knew what to do with drawers full of junk mail, basements full of sporting equipment, and unpaired mittens. Art supplies from long-abandoned hobbies. File cabinets overflowing with paper. Shoeboxes full of photographs. Kitchen cupboards bursting with plastic containers missing their lids and lids missing their containers.

Floppy freaking disks.

Emma didn’t know the most efficient way to wash dishes or what color to paint your walls. She left cleaning and interior design to other people. But she was great at organizing. The entire world was a mess, but at least she could handle her own small part of it. She knew every sorting system, every storage hack, and how to utilize every last inch of space.

The longer a mess had been in place, the better. There was nothing a professional organizer liked more than a house where lots of objects had piled up over the years. The kind of job that took weeks to excavate and ended with a tidy home, satisfied clients, and glowing reviews.

A fat paycheck would be nice too, but she couldn’t have it all. And some things were more important than money. Things like working for herself, helping people, and bringing a little more order into the world, one well-labeled file folder at a time.

Emma patted the new manila folders that sat beside her on the seat of her truck as she turned onto Cricket Lane. Six Queen Anne houses sat on the far end of the street, three on each side. Maple trees threw a canopy over manicured plots of lilies and roses in the yards. The flowers mirrored the bright colors of the houses themselves. They’d stood for over a century and Emma always imagined them in conversation, sharing long-held secrets.

She parked in front of the middle house on the right side, home to Maude and Murray Zelinski. Emma had been working with them every day for two weeks, and usually pulled into the driveway. Today, her parking spot was taken by a white Nissan sedan with the small decal of a car rental company on the back bumper.

She grabbed the file folders off the seat as well as her bag of sticky notes, tape, and other tools of the trade. As she closed the door, her vinyl sign slipped out of its holder and fell onto the pavement. She picked it up and slid it back into place for what felt like the hundredth time.

The sign said “The Clutter Whisperer” in cute pink script. She would have preferred some nice black lettering, Helvetica font maybe, painted properly on her truck, instead of a slab of vinyl that never stayed put. But her sister had given her the sign as a show of support for her business, and Emma was determined to make use of it.

A man stood next to the Nissan, his arms folded. He was about fifty, with graying hair and harsh lines around his mouth. He was dressed like he was going to work, in khaki pants, a white dress shirt, and a blue sport coat.

“About time you got here,” he said. “I’ve been waiting all morning.”

Emma flinched. She checked the time on her phone. She wasn’t late and she’d never seen this man before. Was he expecting someone else? She planted herself at the foot of the driveway. “I’m Emma Gibson?” she said, hating how it came out as a question. “I’m doing a job for Mr. and Mrs. Zelinski.”

“I know who you are,” the man said. “You should be ashamed of yourself.”

He charged forward and Emma backed up, putting herself on the other side of the truck. If he wanted to talk to her, he could do it over the bed of her pickup.

“When my parents told me what you were doing, I booked the next flight. I can’t believe I had to fly all the way out here from California to put a stop to this.”

Ah. So this was Luke Zelinski. Maude and Murray had talked of their son often, sad that he’d moved so far from Cannondale, but proud of the work he did in the financial department of an insurance company. She took a second look and recognized features. He had Murray’s eyes and Maude’s chin, although Emma had never seen either of them frown so deeply or squint so disapprovingly.

“My parents are old,” he said. “They’re in their last years of living independently. How can you take advantage of them like this?”

All of Emma’s words caught in her throat. The Zelinskis weren’t feeble. Far from it. They were perfectly capable of making their own decisions.

Luke put a hand on her truck, as if he would push it away. “Enough. You won’t get another dime from us.”

Emma didn’t argue. In her experience, arguing with an angry man never ended well. But she couldn’t leave. Her clients were expecting her. She scrolled through her contacts, intending to call them.

“Hey, I’m still talking to you,” Luke snarled. “You can put the phone away.”

“I’d like to speak to your parents, please.”

“No. No way. Listen, you have this cute little business or whatever, and you think you know what you’re doing, but I’ll take over from here. I got a book. If any of their crap doesn’t spark joy, out it goes. Which means most of it.”

Emma stared at Luke in horror. She’d been in situations where organizing a house or an office was supposed to be a substitute for marriage counseling, or for therapy, or to stave off some kind of HR disaster. It never worked. But the Zelinskis were different. They were completely in tune with each other. They’d gifted each other a whole-house organization for their fiftieth anniversary, and they were tackling the project with gusto, fully in support of each other’s choices. They’d already finished the kitchen and bedrooms, and had planned on starting the home office today.

“They said you started two weeks ago,” Luke said. “Have you thrown out anything?”

“Things tend to settle into place after fifty years,” Emma said. “It takes a little while to find a home for everything.” She’d already made two trips to the landfill and brought six truckloads of stuff to the Salvation Army donation center. She’d bought supplies from the office supply store, the hardware store, and the dollar store. She’d had one memorable outing to IKEA with the Zelinskis and two better visits without them.