The Restoration of Celia Fairchild - Marie Bostwick Page 0,46
more quickly after that. We cleared the whole bottom flight of stairs in less than two hours. As long as the junk I had to sort through really was junk, stuff I could banish to the dumpster with barely a thought, it was easy. But when we got to the second floor, things got trickier.
A box filled with fairly nice picture frames had to be sorted through one by one so I could put aside those that contained family photos before putting the others into the box earmarked for charity donations. Several other boxes contained china dishes, mostly mismatched and none that I recognized as belonging to the family, but still perfectly usable. These went into the charity collection as well.
“Maybe you should have a tag sale,” Caroline said.
“No. Put them on eBay,” Priscilla suggested. She picked up a salad plate decorated with a delicate garland of pink roses and turned it over. “Right now, somebody is on the Internet looking for this exact pattern to replace a plate in the set their great-grandmother left them. You’ll get money if you can reach an audience of people who are already searching for what you’ve got.”
“Maybe. But all that takes time,” I said. “I mean, look how long it took me just to sort through this one box.”
“Well . . . ,” Pris said slowly, as if the idea had just come to her. “Why not hire me? I could help you sort through the stuff, throw out the trash, and put the treasure up online.”
Hiring a helper would definitely make things go more quickly, but . . .
“I thought you were going to work for your mom this summer.”
Priscilla wrinkled her nose and shook her head. “I don’t really see that working out, do you? Besides, she was only going to pay me minimum wage.”
“I see. And what would I be paying you?”
“Minimum wage plus a forty percent cut of the eBay profits.”
Hmm. Obviously, this idea had not just come to her. Pris responded so quickly and with such definite ideas about her rates that I knew she’d thought everything through beforehand.
“It’s a better deal for both of us,” she said. “You’ll cover what you pay me and still make money.”
Would I? It was hard to imagine people would be willing to pay much for a bunch of old dishes. But Pris was right about one thing: I definitely needed help.
“Fine,” I said. “Minimum wage plus forty percent of any eBay profits.”
“And one more thing,” Pris said. “Ten hours of professional consultation on my blog. Deal?”
Pris stuck out her hand. With chutzpah like that, I doubted she needed business advice from me, but Pris was easy to like and it would be nice to have an extra pair of hands.
“You’re hired.”
“Really? That’s great!” Pris exclaimed, her face lighting up like a kid with a new puppy. She started toward me and for a second I thought she might hug me. But before she could, Heath’s head appeared over the banister.
“Celia? You’d better come up here.”
In my experience, “You’d better come up here” almost never precedes good news. I frowned and felt my stomach clench again.
“Why? What’s wrong?”
“Just come,” Heath said, beckoning me with a hand. “You’re not going to believe this.”
Chapter Fifteen
So? What was it?
A thinking emoji appeared next to Calvin’s text, the one where the little happy face guy is kind of gazing sideways and holding the fingers of his white-gloved hand to his cheek and chin.
OMG! It was a DEAD CAT, wasn’t it?!
I started tapping in my response but another panicked text came in before I could finish.
Or a ROOM FULL OF DEAD CATS!!!
See? I told you! There’s always a dead cat. Always!
Stop! NO. Don’t be ridiculous. No dead cats!
Calvin’s imagination was getting the best of me. Thanks to him, my heart pounded with the discovery of each new box or bag, and I leaned backward as if preparing for something to jump out, turning my head sideways and looking out of one squinty eye, the way I did whenever I watched horror movies. I started texting again but the phone rang before I could hit send.
“So? If it wasn’t a dead cat, what was it?”
“I was just getting to that part.”
Calvin groaned. “I can’t wait that long. The suspense is killing me and you are the slowest texter on the planet. Besides, I haven’t talked to you in two whole days. I was beginning to think you’d lost my number.”