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Lyra, Reed, Pop, and a few of her parents’ mutual friends had built it out and added ductwork for the HVAC a year or so after the divorce, after Mom bought this little house and a few weeks later lost her job when the real estate brokerage she’d been an agent with had been brought down in a scandal having to do with home inspections. She’d hated being a real estate agent anyway, and with the reek of the scandal strong enough to curtail interest in her from any other brokerages—though it had been the broker, not the agents, in cahoots with inspectors—Mom had decided to follow her bliss and open the shop she’d dreamed of.
Following her bliss had been Mom’s prime directive since the divorce. She avoided every kind of strife or negativity she possibly could.
Desert Song was an eclectic little shop that suited her mother’s personality perfectly. It had a distinctly southwest vibe but wasn’t quite the usual squash-blossom chic you could find everywhere in this part of the world, in Native-owned shops where squash blossoms had legitimate history and culture and in strip malls where they were appropriated and had become merely ostentatious accessories.
Not that there weren’t squash blossom pendants and a motherlode of turquoise and silver in the jewelry case that served as the sales desk. But Mom was originally from San Diego, her aesthetic was as much urban hippie as it was desert wild child, and she’d curated a shop that balanced neatly between both impulses.
Here at Desert Song, the silver and turquoise jewelry, the beadwork pieces, and the Native fabrics were on consignment from the Mojave women who’d made them. The crystals and candles, the flouncy skirts and dresses, all the more generic hippie stuff was regular stock.
The pencil sketches and watercolor paintings hanging on every bare piece of wall were Lyra Haddon originals. Over the five years or so that Mom had been showcasing Lyra’s artwork, a handful of them had sold. It was extremely unlikely that any actual art gallery would ever do a Lyra Haddon show, but she did get a rush when somebody paid fifty bucks for one of her paintings.
The vintage door chimes jingled above Lyra’s head as she came into the air-conditioned shop. The day was typically bright and the shop typically dim; Lyra stood just inside the door and blinked until she could see. As the interior became visible, she saw Mom flouncing down the short steps from the kitchen door.
Flouncedwas really the only word to describe the way Mom moved. In her long ... flouncy ... skirts and ballet flats, her scarves, her layers of jewelry, her long false eyelashes, she always looked like a Thirties movie star making an entrance. She was a beautiful woman, for her age or any other, still slim, her hair still dark—though chemicals handled that now—her legs, arms, and neck all tan and long and lithe. Anna Pavlova and Gloria Swanson blended together and repackaged as a Nevada hippie chick.
“Hi, honey!” Mom said as she descended into the store.
“Hi, Mom.” Lyra met her in the middle of the shop and shared a quick hug. “Quiet today?”
With a dismissive flap of her hand, Mom said, “Oh, you know. A little quieter than usual, but it’s fine. We won’t be distracted while we work!”
Lyra helped out at the shop every so often; it worked out to maybe ten hours a month. Not because she needed the money or Mom needed the help, but because it was regular time they could spend together, a little something she could do so Mom didn’t fret that Lyra was all Pop’s.
“I had a ship in yesterday and another already this morning, and I’m expecting one more later today!” Mom said, sounding like a little kid talking about what Santa left her—and that wasn’t too far off. New shipments were Mom’s favorite days.
Today, they were remerchandising; it was time to shift the shop from summer to fall.
This neighborhood was one of the closest residential areas to the Strip, and it had mixed-use zoning, which was why Mom could run a shop from her converted garage without hassle, and why she had any chance of making a go of it—and she did okay, well enough to keep her bills paid. She also had the nest egg from when Pop had bought her out of the cleaning business.
As a part owner of the cleaning business herself now, Lyra had access to the books. She knew how much Pop had paid to buy Mom out. It was a tidy sum but not a fortune. Low six figures.
Mom looked like an aging flower child, and with her bubbly positivity and breathy voice she gave a strong impression of flightiness. But truly, she was as conservative about money as a little old church lady. She could probably live on that nest egg for the rest of her life, even if she reached the age where local news feature reporters came by to ask her secret for a long life.
Unless somebody else fucked with that money.
That thought brought Wade’s image to mind. With that came the problem Lyra had yet to mention to her mother. Lyra had no idea if Wade would try to rob Mom blind at some point, but she had it on excellent authority—her own—that he wasn’t faithful, or at least didn’t necessarily want to be. Making a hard pass at his girlfriend’s daughter put everything about him into question, didn’t it?
Mom had been dating Wade since the spring, and she was, by all indications, really invested and happy with him. By all indications but one, he felt the same. They weren’t living together or anything like that, and Mom was responsible with money, so she probably wouldn’t be handing over her passwords and account numbers anytime soon, but still, Lyra felt a new wrinkle in the Wade problem.
While they worked, rearranging the racks, unpacking boxes of new fall stock, steaming the clothes and hanging them, and pulling older stock to be marked down, Lyra stewed about the Wade problem. It was developing capital letters in her head, like a title: The Wade Problem.
She had to tell her mom what had happened. She knew this. She’dknownthis since it had happened. But it would hurt her badly, and whether or not Lyra was at fault for the hurt, she would be the one delivering the blow.
And on this particular point? Maybe Lyra was overthinking it, but The Wade Problem felt too close to the divorce stuff somehow. Lyra had really hurt her mom when she’d decided to stay with Pop, and this felt like it rubbed against that wound in some way.
Around their occasional discussions about where to put what, Mom kept up a fairly steady stream of chatter, mostly about the new stock. Like that kid at Christmas, she lifted out every new piece andoohedandaahed, stopping regularly to flounce to one of the standing mirrors and hold a piece up to herself and ask what Lyra thought.
Lyra thought she’d been doing a decent job keeping up with her role in the chatter, at least making some kind of positive noise when Mom asked for her opinion, but her attention was definitely wavering. About the eighth or tenth time Mom flounced to the mirror and held up a new piece of clothing against her body—this was a paisley rayon tunic with bell sleeves—and asked “What do you think?” Lyra barely managed to drag her eyes over that way and didn’t bother to try to focus. It was flouncy, like everything else in the shop.
“Nice,” she said and went back to steaming the hippie skirts.
Mom huffed and said, “Okay, Lyra. What’s wrong?”
“Huh? What do you mean?”
Dropping her silver-encrusted hands onto her slim hips, Mom gave Lyra a sharply maternal frown. “Don’t dodge. Something’s obviously on your mind. Are you in some kind of trouble? Is Reed? Or your dad?”
“No, Mom. Everybody’s fine.” Though she did wonder what Mom would think about Pop and Reed maybe joining an MC. Pop had been wearing a patch when they’d met, and she’d thought it was hot at first—the word she used when she told the story wasfoxy—but she’d ended up hating the club. A lot. If the thing with the Bulls happened, Mom would probably lose her mind when she found out her son was wearing a patch now, too.
