I wasn’t sure what to make of that, but decided I’d already put myself out there enough for one night.
Michael: I’ll talk to you tomorrow.
Addie: Good night.
I did talk to the contractors the following day, and learned that we could be in the house again after the floors had a full four days to dry and set. I texted Addie to let her know we could move back in on Friday.
I spent the week at the store, sneaking back to my workshop when I could. I was building a few things for the house, things I probably shouldn’t have bothered with. But Addie was on my mind, and while maybe I needed to avoid thinking of her in the attractive-woman-I-had-interest-in kind of way, I could think of her in the friend-I-wanted-to-do-something-nice-for kind of way. No harm in that, right?
On Thursday, I arrived at work to find Emmet and Virgil behind the counter, and the whole place scented like a bath and body shop and not a farm supply store. This stunk, and not just of lavender. My cousins were up to something.
“What’s going on?” I asked them.
They exchanged a guilty look, and then faced me with matching blank expressions. “Whatddya mean, ‘cuz?” Virgil said.
My suspicions rose even higher. “The smell in here? Did you light candles or something?”
“There’s no smell.”
“Virge, you can deny a lot of things, but there is definitely a smell. Is it lilac?”
“You can identify the scent of lilacs?” he asked me skeptically.
“I don’t know, actually. Probably not. It’s like gardenia or something. Floral. Ovewhelmingish.”
The brothers exchanged a look. “I told you we didn’t get it off,” Virgil said, punching his brother in the chest.
“What is it?” I asked, incredibly curious now, despite my better judgement.
“Something happened,” Emmett said, dropping his eyes to the floor.
“We got hit,” Virgil said.
“Hit?” They’d been pranked. “By what? A bath bomb?”
They exchanged a glance and then Virgil’s ruddy face darkened. “Tanners.”
Here we went again. “Tanners made you smell like a garden party full of old ladies?”
They nodded. “It’s in our apartment,” Virgil said. “The smell is literally everywhere. Like a potpourri bomb exploded in there or something. We’ve been doing laundry all night, and we both took a bunch of showers with super manly soap, but nothing helps.”
That was a mental image I didn’t need. “Did you try tomato juice? Supposed to help with skunk smell.”
“This isn’t skunk, Mike. It’s worse,” Virgil said, looking embarrassed about his womanly scent.
“Lavender,” said a woman approaching the counter with a large bag of dog food in her arms. “It’s nice,” she said, clearly believing we had decided the store needed to upgrade its scent. I doubted the bulk of my customers—who wore work jeans and boots and chewed tobacco would feel similarly.
“Thanks,” I said, ringing her up. “Come again.”
She smiled and headed out, and I turned back to my cousins. “You guys reek.”
“The Tanners will pay for this,” Virgil said.
“Or how about if they don’t?” I asked, Addie’s big dark eyes flashing into my mind. “What if we just let it die here on this very flowery smelling hill? The ball’s in the Tucker court. Let’s just drop it.”
“You’re just saying that because you’re in bed with a Tanner now,” Virgil said, poking a chubby finger into my chest.
I thought for a split second about being in bed with Addie. I’d thought about it back when I was in high school too, I remembered her vaguely from that time—the distant older sister of the two Tanner girls who were closer to my age. She’d been tall and beautiful back then. Way out of my league. But now . . . the thought of it was distracting. But still impossible.
“I am not sleeping with Addie.”
“Addie, is it?” Virgil asked, his tone mocking.
“That is her name.” This was getting old. I didn’t like justifying myself to these guys, but I didn’t need them spreading rumors about us, either. Shelly was already fired up, though I was pretty sure she knew there was nothing going on. If she had some reason to think there really was, I’d never hear the end of it.
“Addie is a very fond nickname, I’d think,” he said.
“Guys, lay off, okay? There’s nothing going on with me and Addie. I just think this feud has run its course. Let’s end it.”
The brothers exchanged a look and then Virgil nodded. “We’ll end it, all right.”
Shit.
20
Lottie’s Learnings
Addison
Mom had begun coming home each day with new tidbits of information about the age-old Tanner-Tucker feud.
“Did you know that house was built in 1828 by a Tucker?” She asked me as we sat in matching recliners in her living room watching a rerun of Charmed.
I swiveled my head to regard her. “Is that right?” I was interested in the history of the house. But if Mom was suddenly interested in it, there was a good chance she was up to no good.
“It is.” She kept her eyes on me, despite the fact that the Charmed sisters were in a very sticky situation with a warlock and a possessed schoolteacher.
“Is there something else you wanted to tell me about the house?” I asked.
She nodded. “The reason it is very interesting that the house was built in 1828 by a Tucker is because there are records of that land being purchased in 1827 by a Tanner.”
I felt a bit dense. Like maybe I needed Mom to connect the dots a bit more. “Okay, so they sold the land to the Tuckers?”
“No record of that at all.” Mom didn’t even have to say that she was extremely interested in this information. Her tone said it all.
“Okay, so what, Mom?”
“So the Tuckers clearly stole the land from us.”
I sincerely hoped my mother wasn’t considering some kind of legal action over something that had happened hundreds of years ago. I didn’t need the extra hassle. I needed her to give up the dumb feud, let me fix up the house, and sell it. “From us? Really? It’s ‘us’ now?”
“The Tanners. Us.” She gave a fierce nod to make her point.
“I’m sure there’s some other record somewhere that explains what happened next.”
“Maybe.” She narrowed her eyes at me. “That old Tucker fart has been down poking around in those records too.”
“Down where? And which fart?”
“City Hall in the archives where I’ve been digging. I saw him in there today.”
“Who, Mom?”
“Victor Tucker. Your boyfriend’s uncle.”
A little thrill shot through me at the idea of Michael as my boyfriend, but it was so far from reality I needed to put this to rest immediately. “Michael Tucker is not my boyfriend, Mom.”
“You’re living together,” she pointed out.
“No. I mean, we are, but . . . God, Mom, what’s your point?”