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Leslie let out a noise that was half gasp, half victory crow.

I opened my mouth to agree, then stopped.

I did the math again. Slowly this time.

Sixteen-eighty to Pop-Pop. Minus up to fifteen hundred in hard costs. Which left the man possibly—possibly—walking away with a hundred and eighty dollars. On a piece that could have taken him a hundred and fifty hours to carve, sand, polish, wire, base-build, and fuss over until his wife lost her mind about the garage.

"No," I said.

Ernie blinked. "No?"

"Run it again. Forty-five hundred retail. Seventy-thirty split in Pop-Pop's favor."

Ernie was quiet for a moment. I could practically hear the calculator running behind his eyes. "Pop-Pop gets thirty-one-fifty. We get thirteen-fifty."

"And after worst-case materials, he nets somewhere around sixteen hundred dollars." I looked at the sculpture. The slow rotation. The arms reaching. "That's still not minimum wage for the hours he put in, but it's not an insult either."

"We just cut our own take by almost three hundred dollars," Ernie said.

"Yep."

"On a piece we haven't sold yet."

"Yep."

He was quiet for a beat. "...Fine."

Leslie was grinning so wide I thought her face might split. "So let me get this straight," she said, doing her best Ernie impression, which was terrible. "We do the right thing and we still make thirteen hundred and fifty dollars on one sculpture?"

"Nobody asked you," Ernie muttered.

"Call Alex," I told Leslie. "Tell her we want to meet Pop-Pop. I want to see the full inventory before we commit to anything, but tell her we're very interested." I looked back at the shell, at the river stone pearl resting in its hollow like it had always belonged there. "And nobody breathes near that alabaster piece until it's in a crate."

"On it." Leslie was already reaching for her phone.

Ernie let out a long, put-upon sigh. "I'll start measuring the window."

"Got it." Leslie was already reaching for her phone, then stopped, practically vibrating. "Oh! Oh, this reminds me. We're getting low on the rugs."

I looked up from the shell. "How low?"

"Down to three. I sold two this week alone." She was already pulling up something on her phone. "I need to make a run up the mountain and see Judy and Janice. See what they've got ready."

"Take them some of those good batteries they like," I said. "And check if they need anything from town before you make the trip."

"Already on my list of things to do." She was typing as she talked. "I also want to swing by Bertha's."

Ernie looked up from whatever he was pretending to be busy with. "Is this a supply run or a social call?"

"With Bertha it's always both," Leslie said serenely. "Besides, we're almost out of the preserves, and I think we can talk her into letting us carry the chutney too. The strawberry rhubarb moved faster than anything we put on that shelf last fall."

"She still doesn't want to label them properly," Ernie said.

"She's coming around." Leslie pointed at him. "She let us put the little cards with her name on them last time, which for Bertha is basically a press release."

I smiled despite myself. Bertha Conners had taken approximately four months of gentle, persistent Leslie-style persuasion before she'd agreed to let us sell her preserves at all. The woman was eighty years old, had lived alone on that mountain since her husband Brian passed thirty years ago, and was deeply suspicious of anything that smelled like commerce. But her strawberry rhubarb preserves had a waiting list, and her hot and spicy apple chutney—made with extra vinegar for ornery people, according to Bertha herself—had sold out in a week.

"Bring her something good from town," I said. "Not as a transaction. Just because."