“I was asking you if you’ll talk to Aunt Sugar with me. You can explain all the carpentry stuff a lot better than I can, and besides, it might do both of you good to get to know each other. This wasn’t just her business. It was her lifetime home.” She took two bowls from the cabinet and set them on the table.
He got out two spoons and the ice cream scoop. “Sure. Be glad to do that.”
“Both Uncle Jasper and Aunt Sugar were so disappointed in Reuben that it’ll be positive for them to see that the inn is in good hands,” she said.
“You think they’re kind of mad at me for buying him out? If I hadn’t stepped up and got it the day after he put it on the market, he might have changed his mind,” Tucker said.
She pulled the cobbler from the microwave. “I doubt that, but it is what it is.”
He divided the cobbler into two portions and put them into bowls. She added the ice cream and carried hers to the table. He joined her and put the first bite of cobbler into his mouth. “This is better than it was yesterday.”
Before she could argue with him, there was a rap on the door and Dotty yelled, “Yoo-hoo, I’m comin’ in. If you ain’t decent, you better hide behind a chair.”
“I’m just glad I’m decent. I don’t think there’s a chair big enough to hide me,” Tucker said.
“Little egotistical there?” Jolene raised an eyebrow.
“I wasn’t talking about . . .” She hadn’t seen a man blush in years.
“Talkin’ about what?” Dotty draped her coat over a chair and sat down. “Got coffee made? If not, I’ll have tea. I’m going to an estate sale that starts at eleven. They’ve got an old jukebox I want for the bar. It actually plays real records and might defend us from that damn karaoke.”
Jolene cocked her head to one side. “Karaoke?”
“Thursday nights when you’re not there. Bruce started it against my wishes, and I didn’t know how to stop it once he was gone,” Dotty said. “Listenin’ to drunk people sing drives me crazy.”
Jolene remembered her mother staggering through the door singing some song that she’d performed on karaoke night at a bar. Elaine had a voice like a screech owl when she tried to sing. Jolene had thought at the time that she was so glad she hadn’t been there to see her mama make a fool out of herself on a stage.
“Y’all want to go with me?” Dotty asked.
“You go, Jolene. I should stay here and get some bedding and taping—” Tucker started.
Dotty reached across the table and patted him on the cheek. “You are your own boss now.”
Tucker smiled. “You’ve got my attention. Tell me more about how an auction works.”
Jolene poured a glass of tea and set it in front of Dotty.
“The first hour they’ll sell off the junk while everyone looks round at the good stuff. Then from twelve to one, the crowd will all go to the food wagon to get a barbecue sandwich.” Dotty took several long gulps of the tea. “It’ll be a profitable couple of hours whether we buy or not, because old Buster runs that food wagon and he makes the best barbecue in the county. Y’all can follow me. I’ve got the company truck, and it only seats two people.”
The auction was ten miles away, not far from Smithland, at a two-story house set back off the road in a copse of pine trees, not totally unlike the setting for the Magnolia Inn. A young guy directed the traffic to a pasture that was being used for parking, and Tucker pulled his truck in right beside Dotty’s.
“First thing we do is go get us a biddin’ number.” Dotty started talking as soon as she got out of her vehicle. “Then we’ll do a walk-through and see what they’ve got. Lucy said if I see something really nice to send her a picture and she’ll tell me whether to bid on it for her.”
They signed their names to the roster, and the lady sitting behind the table handed each of them a small booklet along with a piece of cardboard with a number written on it. “Everything is labeled in order that it will be sold, and the auctioneer will do the selling from the garage. So write down what you’re interested in. Once you buy, you come back to me to pay and claim your purchase.”