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Aspen rolls her eyes. “Yes, Ms. Know It All, but I didn’t exactly have a ton of cash laying around to buy a car when my life burned to the ground. Literally.”
Lilac flinches. “Sorry, Aspen. I didn’t mean …” She clears her throat. “Anyway, I assume Basil will be removing this eyesore from the driveway.”
“Geez, Lilac. Have some compassion.” Ashlyn bumps her shoulder as she passes her to open the passenger door of Aspen’s car.
Waffles jumps out of the car, dashes to the lawn, does three circles, and promptly lifts his leg to have a wee. He barks when he notices a squirrel on the lawn and rushes after it. Except he’s still peeing. Pee streams out of him, splashing his legs and paws, as he runs.
The squirrel scurries up a tree, and Waffles paws at the tree while barking up a storm at the poor squirrel. At least, he’s finally done peeing.
“I got him,” Juniper – the animal lover of us – yells. “You unload the car.”
She holds out a treat to Waffles and his attention swivels away from the tree toward her. She keeps the treat out in front of her as she backs into the house with Aspen’s dog eagerly following her. I wish she’d wash him before allowing him in the house.
“Is this everything?” Dad asks from where he’s peering into Aspen’s trunk.
“Yeah,” Aspen sighs.
I wrap my arm around her. “It could have been worse.” Judging by her scowl, she doesn’t believe me. I squeeze her shoulder. “You’re alive. You’re young and you can rebuild.”
“Easy for you to say. You have a successful business. I have nothing.”
“Yeah, well, owning a B&B is not all it’s cracked up to be,” I mutter under my breath. Especially not when guests talk down to the cleaner. There is absolutely nothing wrong with cleaning for a living. And why wouldn’t a cleaner be informed about what’s happening in town? Stupid, gorgeous jerk.
Once Aspen’s car – referring to the decrepit thing as a car is pushing it – is empty and all her things have been placed in her childhood bedroom, we gather at the dining room table where Mom has an apple pie waiting for us. Mom thinks apple pie heals all wounds. Her pie kind of does.
“What happened?” Ashlynn asks. “Why did your bookstore and apartment burn down?”
Typical baby sister. She blurts out whatever she’s thinking without considering a person’s feelings first.
I squeeze Aspen’s hand. “You don’t have to answer her.”
“It’s fine,” she claims but swallows as if it’s painful. She wasn’t hurt, was she? “Waffles woke me up in the middle of the night because he needed to go out. When we returned, flames were shooting out of the café and bookstore downstairs. I rushed upstairs and managed to throw some clothes and jewelry in a suitcase and put some of my photo albums and books in a few boxes.”
“You went into a burning building?” Dad roars.
“Only the ground floor was actually burning. There weren’t any flames in my apartment above.”
“You could have been killed.”
At his words, Aspen draws the sleeves of her t-shirt down over her hands. Before I have a chance to ask what happened, Mom shackles her wrist and carefully draws the material up her arm.
Mom’s bottom lip trembles and there are tears in her eyes when she notices the bandages covering Aspen’s lower arms. “You didn’t tell us you were injured.”
“It’s fine. They’re barely second-degree burns.”
“Second-degree burns can cause scarring,” Lilac offers. When everyone at the table glares at her, her eyes round. “What? It’s a fact. You can’t get mad at me for stating facts.” She’s an environmental engineer, not a doctor, but her brain is full of all kinds of random facts. Great for when she’s on your pub quiz team, less great when she forgets the word tact exists in the dictionary.
Aspen sighs. “I’m not mad at you, Lilac Bean.”
Except she used Lilac’s middle name. The West sisters only refer to each other by our middle names if we’re annoyed with each other. Not one of us likes our hippie middle name. It’s bad enough our first names are all trees.
Mom stands. “Let me phone Dr. Blue. I’m certain we can get you an appointment right away.”
“There’s no need. I’ve seen a doctor. He gave me antibiotics. Everything’s fine.”
Mom looks to Lilac for confirmation. At her nod, Mom returns to the table. “But you need to promise to tell me if you’re in pain.”
“I promise.”
“Now,” my dad says once the pie is demolished, “tell me why your insurance company won’t pay out your claim.”
Dad may appear to be a laidback hippie most of the time, but he’s also the town’s attorney. And he doesn’t let anyone mess with his girls.
Aspen shrugs. “Since the cause of the fire is unclear, they need to conduct an arson investigation and eliminate me as a suspect before they’ll pay my claim.”
“Are they out of their minds?” Dad bellows.
Mom pats his arm. “Now, now, Daniel. Getting your heart rate up will not help the situation.” “Besides,” she smirks at Aspen, “our baby girl is home until the insurance company pays the claim.”
I frown at Mom. She wasn’t supposed to tell Aspen we’re planning to convince her to stay in town, but she practically announced it from the rooftops with her smirk. Dang it. It’s going to be hard enough persuading my big sister to stay. And now Mom’s gone and made it harder.
