Cursed by Love (4 page)

Accepting the twinge of uneasiness about
Gabe and Spock as fair warning to get home, she opened her car door wider. “I’d
better be going.”

“I didn’t mean to offend you,” Gabe
rushed to say. “With what I said before. If that’s why you’re leaving. I’d
really like to continue our conversation about the Sleeping Lotus.”

“Sure.” She maintained a careful
distance. “Let’s see what we can find out about provenance first.”

The muscles in his jaw rippled as he
clenched his back teeth, but he accepted the suggestion with a stiff nod. “I’ll
call you after I talk to Granddad.”

“Perfect.” Placing a foot inside the
car, she was ready to slide behind the wheel. Ready to get away from Gabe, away
from the spooky garage, and away from Spock who still hovered nearby.

“As soon as we discover its history, we
can start making plans.” Gabe’s eagerness stopped her, in an awkward half-in,
half-out-of-the-car pose.

She froze, processing the words, then
pivoted with one foot on the ground, one on the floor mat. “Plans to do what?”

“To sell the Sleeping Lotus, of course.”

She blinked, then blinked again. “
Sell
it?
Oh, I don’t plan to
sell
the Sleeping Lotus. At least, not yet.”

Gabe’s mouth dropped open. He couldn’t
have looked more shocked if she’d slapped him. “You’ve got to.” The lines of
his face tightened. His volume hovered on the verge of escalating again. His
hands gripped her shoulders. “I need that money. Didn’t you hear what it was
worth?”

Narrowing her eyes, she pointedly
removed his hands from her shoulders. He stepped away, reluctantly.

“Well, yes.” She spoke slowly,
cautiously, the way she talked to overly excitable eight-year-olds all day
long. “And that will be a nice little bonus to play with or save for a rainy
day, but money isn’t everything. There’s a lot more at stake than that, you
know.”

Apparently, he didn’t know. He couldn’t
think of anything more important than the money the Lotus would bring. “What
else?”

“There’s art, there’s history, there’s
tradition,” she began, but she immediately recognized his intention to object,
and of course, those weren’t her immediate concerns. “There’s the curse. I want
to find out more about the curse, okay? You don’t want to do anything to tempt
fate, do you? Tempt it, or worse, flaunt it, or make it really mad?”

She’d never seen anyone look more
appalled.

Sell the Sleeping Lotus!

Mumbling to herself, Molly entered the back
door of her mother’s’ house, cradling the precious
objet d’art
in both
hands.
Nonna
had kept the jade tucked away all these
years. She must have had a reason for keeping it.

Maybe they could exhibit it in a museum
eventually, or even sell it after they knew more about it, but hawk the
Sleeping Lotus immediately to the highest bidder for profit? It just didn’t
seem right to make money on something so esthetically pure, so rare, so
beautiful.

Something that carried a curse.

They needed to consider all aspects of
the treasure before they unwittingly tempted fate into unleashing some
mysterious repercussions.

Besides, the Lotus petals weren’t hers
to sell. Technically, the jade belonged to her mother. But she was certain her
mother would strongly agree with Molly. Well, maybe not strongly. Her mother
hadn’t felt strongly about anything for a while now. But at the very least, she
would back up Molly’s opinion. Probably.

Penny, the family’s ancient golden
retriever padded in to greet her with a wagging tail and a lick of the hand.
Molly filled the dog’s water and food bowls, tickling her under her chin, all
the while wondering about Mom’s whereabouts.

With a shake of her head, Molly drew a
frownie
face and a question mark in the layer of dust
coating the granite counter. No delicious-smelling dinner simmered on the
stove. No school reports lay on the planning desk. No fresh flowers decorated
the table. But worst of all was the stillness that suffocated the life out of
the room, out of the house.

Except for the slurping dog, silence
reigned. Even the hands of the battery-powered wall clock swept soundlessly
through the seconds and minutes. Only the silver SUV parked in the driveway
indicated her mother’s presence in the house.

“Where’s Mom, Penny?” Molly rubbed the
dog’s head. “Where’s Mom?” Penny barked and turned tail to lead Molly to the
family room.

“Mom?” Molly moved from the kitchen into
the dark shadows of the family room where the drapes were drawn. Here, too, a
weary neglect contradicted the welcome of the once cheery French country décor.

“Hello, dear.” Her mother’s flat tone
carried the strain of exhaustion. Under-eye bags attested to sleepless nights.
She sat in a wingback chair that seemed forlorn next to her father’s matching
vacant one. Penny trotted over and parked at Mom’s feet.

Guilt pulled at Molly’s conscience when
she noticed new lines bracketing her mother’s mouth and gray undertones marring
her normally creamy complexion. Hours from bedtime, her once-inexhaustible mother
wore a chenille robe over a flannel nightgown. A magazine lay open in her lap,
but none of the lamps had been lit. Muted images flickered on the flat
television screen.

“I wasn’t expecting you, sweetie. How
was your day?”

“Great.” Disappointed that her mother
had not only backed out of joining her on
Your Grandma’s Attic
, but had
also forgotten it, Molly switched on first one lamp and then another,
dispelling the gloom. “How was yours?”

“Long, but fine.” Her mother blinked
against the sudden light and tucked a loose curl behind her ear. The gesture
hardly mattered in the riot exploding from a
scrunchy
at the base of her neck.

Molly boldly moved to her dad’s seat.
She reached out and touched the chenille-covered arm, pulling her mother’s
attention away from
Wheel of Fortune
. “I went to the taping of
Your
Grandma’s Attic
today, to have
Nonna’s
pink jade
appraised, remember?”

Her mother massaged her temples, as if
attempting to jumpstart her memory. Still, the expression in her eyes came up
blank. “Was that today?”

“Yes, and guess what?” Molly leaned
forward, hoping to generate a spark of enthusiasm. Ever since her father had
moved out of the house, her mother’s interest had been about as easy to engage
as a coma patient’s. Penny sat up and rested her head on her favorite human’s
knee, as if joining Molly in her bid to grab Mom’s attention.

“I don’t know.”

Molly unwrapped the jade from its
dishtowel cocoon and handed it over, relating the tale about the emperor’s
carver, the matching base, the rubies, the sexual nature of the piece, and the
Sleeping Lotus’s estimated value. She employed her best storytelling abilities.
The effort paid off as a glimmer of interest stirred deep in her mother’s
sterling blue eyes.

“Five-hundred-thousand dollars!” Mom
leaned back and held the lotus blossom at arm’s length, as if searching for an
explanation of the object’s value. Her mouth dropped open as she switched her
gaze from the jade to Molly. “For a piece of erotica? Whatever could Mama have
been doing with such a thing? That’s worth more than her house. It’s worth a
hundred times more than that Spode china she was so proud of.” Her eyes
twinkled. “Was it embarrassing to discuss such an intimate topic with the
appraiser and the other owner?”

“Well,
yes!
” Molly clapped her
hands over her burning cheeks and chuckled. The details of the kiss flashed
front and center in her mind. “I kept having to remind myself we were looking
at a masterpiece of Asian art, not X-rated porn.”

“What was the young man like, dear?”

Molly ignored the flare of heat in the
pit of her stomach and omitted her reaction to Gabe’s voice, his smile, his
physical presence, his
kiss.
She
focused on his less savory
characteristics instead.

“When I first saw him, everything about
him said he’d be Type A in that too-tight-around-the-collar, hyper-intensive
way. But then I noticed his Goofy socks.”

Her mom quirked an eyebrow. “How goofy
can a pair of socks be?”

“
Goofy
like the Disney dog, not
silly. I thought they might be a glimpse into his real personality. You know,
that he might be a free spirit hiding behind all that control. But then he
yelled
at someone on the phone, and I thought,
no thanks
.” She shuddered at the
memory.

Penny curled up on the floor. Mom kicked
off a slipper to rub the dog’s back with her toes. “How did he react to the
value on the exotica erotica?”

“Blown away, just like I was. We had a
nice conversation, and I thought we were starting to connect.” She swelled with
indignation all over again. “But as I was leaving, he said—” Molly stopped to
increase the drama of her bombshell “—he wants to
sell
the Sleeping
Lotus.”

Her mother pursed her lips. “That
doesn’t seem so unreasonable. Maybe he needs the money.”

“But there are other things to consider!
And selling something as unusual as the Lotus isn’t going to happen overnight.
The appraiser warned us to establish provenance before we do anything else. And
it wasn’t just Gabe’s response that bothered me. I didn’t like the way other
people reacted. Just on the basis of the jade’s supposed monetary value, like
the thing had taken on a life of its own.”

Mom shrugged. “I suppose people find the
novelty intriguing. Everyone likes the idea of hitting the jackpot, getting
something for nothing."

“I guess, but I’m like the winner of the
lottery who keeps quiet about it for a few months. I want to hang onto this
jackpot while I mull over the options. And possible repercussions.” Molly stood
and stretched. “Meanwhile, I plan to go through the rest of
Nonna’s
stuff, looking for provenance. Want to help?”

And faster than a snap of the fingers,
her mother’s interest vanished. She set the jade aside as casually as a
crumpled paper towel and returned her foot to her slipper. “I think I’ll stay
here and read.”

Molly hesitated, fingering the charms on
her bracelet. In recent months, she’d teetered between waiting for her mother
to break out of her despondency on her own and intervening to talk some sense
into her. After the breakthrough they’d shared in the last few minutes, Molly
favored some plain speaking.

“Mom, you weren’t reading. There wasn’t
even a light on when I got here.”

Her mother twisted her platinum wedding
ring round and round on her finger. “I stopped for a minute to mull over an
interesting article in
The Education Journal
. The sun must have set
while I was lost in thought.” She picked up the magazine, adjusted her reading
glasses, and focused on the open page.

“Must have.” Molly pressed her lips
together to contain her disappointment and turned on her heel.

Penny pushed herself up to see if Molly
was heading off to do anything interesting. But as she crossed the room, her
gaze caught on the family pictures resting on the piano that no one had played
in months. She picked up her brother Steve’s wedding photo from the year
before. The last picture of the family before Steve had moved to St. Louis with
a new wife and a new job. Before
Nonna
had died.
Before Dad had taken leave of his senses and dumped his beautiful wife of
thirty-two years.

Seeing their smiling faces and
remembering the closeness they’d shared kicked up the feelings of guilt and
loss that Molly felt about her parent’s separation. It wasn’t her fault. She
knew that, rationally and logically. But she couldn’t forget the argument she’d
overheard them having, the day before Dad had packed up and moved out.

Frowning, Molly turned back toward her
mother and noted the cell phone on the table beside her, as if she were
expecting a call. “Have you talked to Dad today?”

“No.” Her mother turned a page. “But he
might call.”

“Mo-
om
... He
won’t. He’s at the ballgame.” Molly placed the photograph back on the piano and
moved to her mother’s side. Penny resumed her reclining position, tongue
lolling out the side of her mouth. “I love him, too, but I hate to see you
sitting here night after night waiting for him to call. You need to get busy,
to take an interest in something besides his possible return.”

“I
do
take an interest in
things.” Under Molly’s steady gaze, her mother waffled. “I mean, I will,
sweetie, I promise. But not tonight. I’m exhausted, and I want to relax.”

Her woebegone look tugged at Molly’s
heart. “Tough day at school?”

“No tougher than most.” Mother pulled
off her reading glasses to rub her eyes. “Sometimes I wonder why I quit
teaching math to become a paper-pusher. Math makes so much sense. A formula
works or it doesn’t. The answer is right or it’s wrong. The students get it or
they don’t. They pass or they fail. It’s about statistics and percentages and
finite answers. There’s no gray area, nothing illogical about it. In my job as
a principal, there are no set answers. Nothing ever gets resolved. Everyone
wants to decide by committee, but no one agrees on what needs to be done.”

Molly shook her head, dismayed by her
mother’s outburst. “You aren’t seriously thinking of resigning as Elmwood’s
principal and going back into the classroom, are you?”

“Thinking about it, yes.
Seriously
thinking about it?” She hesitated. “I’m not sure.”

“Mom, you were a fabulous teacher, but I
know what an impact you make from the principal’s office of that school every
day of the year. I wish the principal at my school was half as effective as you
are at yours.” Frustrated by her mom’s collapsed self-confidence, Molly spoke
frankly. “Maybe you feel uncertain about yourself right now and want to go back
to the way things were, but taking a backward step in your career won’t bring
Dad home.”

Her mother twisted the wedding ring some
more. “Is that what you think I’m doing?”

“Possibly.”

Mom rejected the suggestion with an
emphatic shake of her head. “No, it isn’t.”

“If you say so.” Having planted the
seed, Molly left it to germinate. She stood up again and headed toward the
door. This time, the dog stayed with her mom. “Have you eaten yet?” she asked
over her shoulder. “Suddenly, I’m craving Chinese. Why don’t you order
something from Peking Garden while I start picking through those cartons?”

“All right.” Her mother reached for the
phone. “After we eat, I’ll come downstairs and help you.”

“Good.” Molly left the room, humming a
happy tune, but inwardly cursing her father.