and that was just too damned cute. Was it even possible for her to be real? She was quick to follow up with, “I’m just not as young as I used to be. I don’t want to waste any more time.”
“I think family lunches are exempt from dating rules. And you’re not that old. You’re not even eighty.” I did a little quick mental calculation to be sure, but I was confident I was right. It wasn’t like she’d been born in the nineteenth century.
She paused, and then sighed into the phone. “No, I’m not, but if your father taught me one thing, it’s that spite won’t actually prolong a person’s life.”
And that was a bridge too far. I burst into laughter. “No, I guess not. My friend Beez said the cancer was probably from holding all that bitterness in all the time. Not that it works that way, Beez just hated him. Like, a lot.”
“She sounds like a smart girl. I’d like to meet her sometime, if—that is, if we get that far.” The longing in her voice made my stomach twist. How was it possible that this woman, who I’d only just met, cared so much about getting to know me?
“I think Beez would be thrilled to meet a member of my family who wants to talk to her.” I had the strange urge to keep talking, like a teenager who wanted to spend all night chatting with their friends, but from the look Gideon was giving me, it was time to get to work. Ugh. “Tomorrow will be fine. Do you want me to come over?”
“Oh no, that’s not necessary. There’s a lovely Italian restaurant just down the street from your shop. Wayne and I will come pick you up—” She stopped abruptly, as though the wind had been let out of her sails. “If that’s okay, that is.”
“That sounds great, Iris. I’m looking forward to it.”
Well hell. Now I felt bad for manipulating a sweet old lady who maybe just wanted to get to know me. I would do right by her, I decided. Even if the meeting was to find out about my mother, I owed Iris McKinley a genuine chance. Besides, she wasn’t the only one who loved the idea of having family she enjoyed spending time with.
“Ready to get to work?” Gideon asked as I hung up.
I turned to him with a sigh. “We can’t just call it a good night’s work and go read a book?” I flinched when I realized that if he agreed to reading, it would probably be one of the books in the collection from my father’s closet.
I needn’t have worried, though. He shook his head. “No. We’ve been putting it off long enough. You need to start learning how to touch the convergence.”
For once, I didn’t feel like laughing at the double entendre. I just sighed, nodded, and headed for the couch. If I was going to work, at least I could be comfortable while I did it.
Chapter Fifteen
Tuesday was sunny.
There weren’t a lot of new releases, so I only showed up an hour before the store opened to set them out on the new release rack, then move the older books down, and finally, the oldest few to a space on the regular shelves. It was boring work, but there was a certain mindlessness in it that was calming.
And calming, if I were being honest, was what I needed.
I wasn’t too worried about lunch with Iris—if anything, I was looking forward to that. No, I was worried about Dad.
I’d foolishly believed when he’d died that he would stop causing me stress. Then I’d opened the shop two days later only to find him there, waiting to berate me for “taking a day off,” during which time I’d arranged his funeral.
“Sentimental twaddle,” he’d called it.
Maybe it had been a waste, but it hadn’t been for him, after all. Funerals aren’t, at their most basic level. It had been for me.
Sure enough, he was back. I was just finishing moving things on the new-release rack when a throat cleared behind me, and there he was, arms folded over his chest and a face that could have been set in stone. “I presume that our argument is over?”
It was how he always reacted when we had a disagreement. It was always my job to acknowledge that yes, everything was fine, and my complaints were not important. Except my complaints on Saturday had been well-founded, and since then, they had