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My friend Claire stayed until four thirty this afternoon. I was so upset after my encounter with Pike Morgan that I cleaned the entire house from top to bottom, my shirt soaked through with sweat by the time I finished. I was able to get a quick turnaround on grocery delivery, and now I’m grating cheese for the broccoli cheese soup that’s Rue’s favorite.
“Try it now, Mommy,” Nolan says, passing me the teacup again.
I take a pretend sip and say, “Delish! Now can you make me a big sandwich to go with it? I don’t think I can wait until this soup is done cooking.”
“Cheese sammich?” Nolan asks, walking back over to his little play table in the corner of Rue’s kitchen.
“I want cheese and ham and pickles and tomatoes. And some honey mustard. You’ll have to mix up lots of ingredients for that, but your mama is worth it.”
It should take him a solid five minutes to make that pretend honey mustard—enough time for me to finish grating the cheese.
I feel like I’m about to drop. I haven’t eaten a bite of food all day and I cleaned like crazy. I was so worked up after my argument with Pike that I was shaking. The three Diet Dr Peppers I downed today definitely didn’t help, either.
What an asshole. He could have at least offered to check one more time. Maybe he didn’t have the ring, but his dismissive attitude hadn’t helped.
I’d started to doubt myself as I walked away from the arena. What if the middleman, the guy who brokered the sale, saw the ring and took it before giving the ball to Pike? I hadn’t even considered that until after I’d lost my shit on him.
What the hell had come over me earlier? It wasn’t like me to be so rude or aggressive. My words had spilled out from some deep place inside me that assumed Pike was lying.
Because Dean had lied. To my face. He said good night to Nolan and me, like everything was fine, knowing he’d drained our bank accounts right before the end of the business day. He knew he planned to drive away in the middle of the night, leaving nothing behind but a note with a half-assed explanation.
“Hey,” Rue calls, walking through the garage door that led from her garage into the kitchen.
“Hey. Sounds like it’s been a day.”
She closes the door behind her and sighs heavily. “I was in court all day. And I needed to be in the office all day. This trial is going to take a lot longer than we thought, and I’m just falling further and further behind on other work.”
As she opens the refrigerator door, I approach her and offer up a generously full glass of her favorite wine.
“You read my mind,” she says, taking the glass. “Thank you.”
“Anwoo!” Nolan calls, running into the kitchen in nothing but a Pull-Up and throwing his arms around her legs. His mispronunciation of “Aunt Rue” when he was younger stuck even when he got old enough to pronounce it right.
“Where are your clothes?” I ask him.
“On da floor.”
As quick as he came in, he’s gone again. I shake my head, not feeling the energy to pursue it further.
“I take his clothes off when you’re gone sometimes,” Rue says. “It makes potty training easier. The other day I sat him on his potty and put his little table over it and we did puzzles. He peed, but he didn’t even realize it.”
“Still counts.”
“Mmm, is that broccoli cheese soup?”
“Yes.”
“It smells divine. I’m starving.”
“I just need to turn the heat back on and melt the cheese, and bake the loaf of bread I got, and we’ll be ready to eat.”
Rue sits down at the kitchen table and slides her heels off. “I need an assistant.”
“A legal assistant needs an assistant?”
“Yes. I’d settle for an intern. Anything.”
Her mention of the word intern reminds me of what happened earlier at the arena.
“Oh.” I turn to face her. “You aren’t going to believe this.”
“This better not have anything to do with you having sympathy for or taking you-know-who back,” Rue warns. “I don’t care if he used the money from your bank account to inoculate orphans; you’re done with him.”
“It’s not about him.”
Rue sets her wineglass down. “Okay then, let’s hear it.”
She’s going to feel guilty when I tell her she accidentally gave away our grandma’s ring. But I can’t think of any way to soften the blow.
“I know you didn’t realize this, but Grandma’s sapphire ring was in the display case of the baseball you gave to the Vegas Sports Collectors guy.”
“Of course I realized it. I took it out and put it in a little dish for you. It’s on the shelf in my bathroom.”
My jaw drops. I just stare at my sister for a stunned second before I finally say, “No.”
