She pulled a box cutter from the hip pocket of her jeans and asked, “What do you want opened first?”
“You got a concealed carry permit for that weapon?” Teena started piling clothing on the bed.
“Yep.” Sally nodded as she sliced through the tape on the nearest box. “It’s called a business license to sell antiques.”
Lily got to her feet. “Thank you both for being here.”
“Hey, that’s what friends are for,” Teena said. “I’ll take the clothes off the hangers and fold them. Sally, you can hang up Lily’s stuff and repack the boxes. Lily, you start going through the dresser drawers.”
“Yes, ma’am, Miss Bossy Britches,” Lily teased.
“I’m the organizer, remember?” Teena wrapped her arms around the last load of clothing from the rack and put it on the bed. “Do you want to keep anything from all this?”
Lily shook her head. “I’ve got lots of memories. I don’t need a shirt or a dress to remind me of her. Anything in there you can sell at Yesterday’s Treasures?”
“It’s not old enough to be vintage,” Sally said, “but if she’s still got that pair of cat-eye glasses she wore stuffed in a drawer, I’ll pay you top dollar for them.” Sally was already busy putting Lily’s clothes on hangers and taking them across the room to the rack. “I get two or three requests for those every week.”
“If they show up, you can sure have them.” Lily opened the top dresser drawer and fought back the tears welling up in her brown eyes. The faint aroma of the little floral sachet in with her mother’s nightgowns brought back memories of all the times her mama had tucked her in at night, right up until she was in junior high school. The rose scent that her mother loved had lingered behind in Lily’s bedroom a long time after Vera had left the room every evening.
Teena sniffed the air. “I smell roses.”
“Mama’s sachet.” Lily held it up. “You’d think it would have lost all of its scent after five years.”
“Probably no one has even opened the drawer in all this time.” Sally pushed an empty box over to her. “We could give the nightgowns and underwear to Granny Hayes if you don’t mind. She’d be glad to get them.”
“That’s fine,” Lily agreed.
It was common knowledge in Comfort that Granny Hayes only came to town on Sunday morning. She lived five miles west, way out in the sticks, and rode Dusty, her trusty old mule, to church. She sat in the back pew and was usually the first one to shake the preacher’s hand and leave. Sometimes she stopped at the grocery store to pick up a few items, but usually she just rode back to her shack out west of town. She hitched the mule to a wagon about twice a year to come into Comfort for supplies, but other than that, she remained a hermit.
“I’d forgotten about her. She’s about the same size Mama was. Are you sure that she’d want such personal things?” Lily carefully took them out of the drawer and packed them into a box. “Does she still have that ‘No Trespassing’ sign up on her fence? She might shoot first and ask questions later if you enter her property without permission.”
“She likes me,” Sally said. “I’ll take them out to her this evening.”
“Well, she sure don’t like me.” Teena started stacking shoes under the clothes rack.
“She’s just a lonely old woman,” Lily said. “I wonder what her story is. We always thought her place was haunted and she kept ghosts in that old log cabin.”
“That’s why she doesn’t like me,” Teena said. “I asked her about the ghosts when I was a little girl. She glared at me and told me to leave her alone.”
“Y’all ever known anyone to go inside her place?” Lily asked.
“She lets me come up on her porch, but not inside the cabin,” Sally said. “That’s probably because I buy some of her craft items for the store.”
“I can’t imagine living like that.” Teena opened the last box, saw that it was underwear, and slid it across the floor toward Lily. “You’re on your own with this stuff, and now I’ve got to get going. I’ve got a two o’clock appointment to show a house.”
“And my long lunch hour is over, so I’m going, too.” Sally stepped out into the hallway. “Hey, you two beautiful kids. Come out of your rooms and give me a hug.”