Софи Райан: The Fast Аnd Тhe Furriest

Our stock came from a lot of different places: flea markets, yard sales, people looking to downsize. I bought fairly regularly from a couple of trash pickers. Several times in the past year that the store had been open, we’d been hired to go through and handle the sale of the contents of someone’s home—usually someone who was going from a house to an apartment. This time we were going to clean out the property of Edison Hall. He had died over the winter and clearing out the house had turned out to be too much for his son and his sister.

Calling the old man a pack rat was putting it nicely. Rose and Mac were going with me to get started on the house, along with Elvis, because I’d heard rustling in several of the rooms in the old place and I was certain it wasn’t the wind in the eaves.

“Why don’t I just come with you?” Rose said. “That will save you having to come back and get me.”

“All right,” I said, picking up a piece of the muffin and wishing I had coffee. “Does half an hour give you enough time?”

She smiled at me. “It does.”

I put down my fork to walk her to the door, but she waved one hand at me. “Eat,” she ordered, already heading for the living room. “I can see myself out.”

I stuffed the bite of muffin in my mouth and waved over my shoulder as the door closed behind her.

I finished my breakfast, sharing another bite of the scrambled eggs with Elvis. He followed me into the bathroom, washing his face while I brushed my teeth. When we came out of the apartment, Rose was just coming out of hers.

“Perfect timing,” she said, bustling over to us, as usual carrying one of her oversize tote bags.

Ever since I’d seen the movie Mary Poppins , I’d thought that Rose’s bags were like the magical nanny’s carpetbag. You just never knew what was going to be inside. This one looked as if it had been made from the same blue-striped canvas as a train engineer’s hat.

“I have coffee just in case we’re out,” Rose said, patting the side of the carryall with one hand.

“Just coffee?” I asked as I picked up the canvas tote at my own feet. Mine was filled with a stack of thrift store sweaters that I’d brought home and felted for my friend Jess.

“And some tea bags.” Rose held the door so Elvis could go out first.

I looked at her, raising one eyebrow.

“And a coffee cake.” She followed Elvis outside. “Don’t make that face, Sarah. We all work better after a cup of tea and a little taste of something.”

“If I keep on having a ‘little taste of something,’ I’m going to turn into a big something,” I said, pulling out my keys and pushing the button to unlock the SUV.

“Nonsense,” Rose said, making a dismissive gesture with one hand. “All that running you do, you’d be skin and bones if I didn’t feed you.” She set her bag on the floor of the passenger side of the vehicle and climbed inside. Elvis had already jumped in and settled himself in the middle of the backseat. I set my bag and my briefcase next to him.

“Are those more tablecloths?” Rose asked, half turning in her seat and pointing at the canvas tote.

I slammed the passenger door and slid in behind the wheel. “No. It’s a bunch of sweaters I felted for Jess.”

Rose’s gray eyes lit up. “Is she going to make more slippers?”

I nodded as I stuck the key in the ignition.

Jess was a master at recycling and upcycling clothes. Her latest project was making slippers out of felted wool sweaters. We were going to sell them at Second Chance. She’d made me a red pair of slipper “boots” that I’d worn at the shop most of the winter. So many customers had asked about them that Jess and I had scoured area thrift stores over the weekend looking for sweaters that would felt well. I had done the actual process in my washer and dryer, and Jess was coming by the store to pick up the soft, shrunken sweaters.

“Do you think she’d make a pair for me?” Rose asked. “And for Alfred? They’d be lovely to wear around the apartment.”

“I’m sure she would,” I said. I concentrated on backing out of the driveway and tried to push away the image of Alfred Peterson, who generally wore his pants up under his armpits, in a pair of bright felted boots halfway up his calves.

Second Chance was in a brick building from the late eighteen hundreds located on Mill Street, where it curved and began to climb uphill. We were about twenty minutes by foot from the downtown, and easily accessed from the highway—the best of both worlds for catching the tourists. We had a decent side parking lot and an old garage, which we were working on turning into work and storage space.

Tourists came to North Harbor during the spring and summer for the beautiful Maine seacoast. In the fall and winter it was the nearby hills with the autumn colors and skiing that drew them in.

I parked close to the back door because we’d need to load some empty boxes and garbage bags in the back of the SUV. I’d already arranged to have a Dumpster for the garbage and a bin for everything that could be recycled delivered to Edison Hall’s house.

It looked as though spring was going to be a busy time for us between the influx of tourists eager to get away from the city after a cold winter that had stretched all the way from the Atlantic Canadian provinces down to Virginia, and the work I was planning on the old garage. I wouldn’t have said yes to clearing out Edison Hall’s house if it hadn’t been for my grandmother. She’d known Edison’s sister, Stella, since they were, as she put it, captains of opposing Red Rover teams on the playground.

“Please, do this for me,” Gram had asked when she called from South Carolina. She and her new husband, John, were working their way back to Maine after almost nine months of an extended honeymoon traveling around the country and working on several housing projects for the charity Home for Good. “I know what I’m asking, believe me. I was in that house a couple of years ago and it could only have gotten worse.”

I’d pictured her shaking her head, lips pressed together.

“I’ll call Stella,” I’d told Gram. I couldn’t say no to her, which was why both Rose and Charlotte were working for me. And how bad could Edison Hall’s old house really be? I’d reasoned. Very bad, I’d discovered. The man was a pack rat.

I followed Rose and Elvis into the workroom at the back of the store. I could smell coffee. The morning was getting better and better. I set the bag of felted sweaters on the workbench that ran along one wall of the work space and headed into the shop. Mac had just come downstairs. He was carrying a heavy pottery mug and he held it out to me. His title, on paper at least, was store manager, but he was a lot more than that. He was my colleague, a second set of eyes and sometimes the voice of reason I needed to hear. And more and more he was the person I turned to when I needed someone to talk to. It had started the past winter when I was almost killed in my own house. It was Mac I’d called, Mac who I’d shared with how scared I’d really been. Our friendship had only deepened in the following months.

“You read my mind,” I said, dropping my briefcase at my feet and taking the cup from him. “Thank you.”

As good as Rose’s breakfast had been, this was one of those mornings when I needed a nudge of caffeine.

Mac smiled. “You’re welcome.”

This past winter the building where he had rented an apartment had been sold. So we’d renovated part of the second-floor space above the shop and now Mac had a small self-contained apartment up there and I worried a lot less about security for the store. Not to mention that most mornings the coffee was on when I arrived. It seemed to be working out well for both of us.