Andie loved her job. She’d always been enthralled with the past, and as an antiques collector, restorer, and appraiser, she had the privilege of handling unique pieces of history that were hundreds of years old. She was good at her job too. Her expertise and passion were what had granted her a senior position at Christie’s. Her drive and her willingness to put in long hours had been what had made her boss, Doug, look at her in an entirely different light.
Hermarriedboss. Surely she wasn’t out of line for pushing him to get that divorce he had claimed for months he was on the cusp of delivering to his wife? They were estranged. They were unhappy. Doug had been happy with Andie these past seven months.
Or so he said. Yet ever since she’d brought the divorce up a week ago, Doug had found more and more reasons not to be in the office. And now he wasn’t even returning her texts.
Andie looked away from the phone and concentrated on the ivory-inlaid box she’d been inspecting. Everything would work out fine. Doug was probably just busy. The box, with its intricate design and sterling silver interior, was in perfect condition. She noted so in her documentation before glancing at her phone again. Nothing from Doug or Jane.
“Andrea, how would you catalogue this?”
Susie Thornburg, the fresh-out-of-college new hire was looking at her expectantly with her wide brown eyes. Andie supposed that Susie was a good kid, and she did seem to have a love for antiques and a good work ethic. But Andie wasn’t the most patient person, and being tasked with training an overly eager apprentice almost thirty years her junior really wasn’t her cup of tea.
She looked at the item in question and very slowly, very patiently pointed out, “I just catalogued that. It’s under metalware. See here?” She pointed to the entry in the computer, a few lines above in the Recent Entries column.
Susie laughed brightly. “Oh. I guess I’m still on vacation time.”
They each returned to their work, but the silence didn’t last long. It was just as well. If Andie didn’t find some distraction, she was going to set the world record for most number of times a woman has checked her phone for messages and found none.
Susie asked in a chipper tone, “So, what’s up with Doug? Shouldn’t he have checked on us by now? He usually does.”
Susie didn’t know about Andie’s affair with their boss. No one did. At first, Andie had accepted Doug’s reasoning for keeping their affair secret. After all, it had started so fast, crossing the line from innocent to a deeper connection almost before she knew what was happening.
Neither of them wanted it to be a problem at work. Even though the company didn’t have any rules against people dating, Doug had recently been separated from his wife, and it was awkward. Andie didn’t want her coworkers to think she was getting the good jobs because of her relationship with Doug, even though everyone knew she’d earned those jobs with years of dedication and hard work and had been awarded them before the relationship started.
But as time went on, she should have picked up on the fact that Doug never really wanted to go to any parties or out in public. He didn’t introduce her to any of his friends. She should have realized that meant that he wasn’t asseparatedfrom his wife as he’d led her to believe.
She steered Susie to safer waters. “Who knows? So, how was your trip down to Florida to see your mom?”
If nothing else, Susie was always happy to chatter about her own life. Andie didn’t mind so much. The girl’s enthusiasm was contagious, and she had a nice manner about her. Maybe if Andie was younger, they might have been friends that went out for drinks together after work. Maybe they would now, even though Andie was probably Susie’s mother’s age.
As Susie talked about her visit home, Andie felt a weird pang of homesickness. She didn’t often miss her hometown, and even though she never cared to visit there, it had a lot of things going for it. The sugar-sand beaches, the smell of the ocean. The fresh lobster. But it was a small town, and Andie had always wanted more. That was one reason why she’d left and never looked back—and why she’d treated the boy she’d been head over heels for so terribly. She’d been scared she’d be stuck in Lobster Bay waiting for him to come home from the navy. Or never come home at all. But that had been decades ago now, and it was all water under the bridge.
Stifling a sigh, Andie finished cataloguing the box and moved on to the next piece, a jade figurine of an elephant with a raised trunk. She put on her bifocals to inspect it more closely. Not everything in this room was rare or old. The appraisers sometimes bid on estate sales and had to wade through them to find the chunks of gold hidden amid the manure. But whenever she did discover a rare find, it always gave Andie a little thrill.
When she’d left for college, she’d wanted to be an archaeologist. But experience had soon taught her that she was not the outdoorsy type. Nevertheless, history fascinated her, and she always dreamed of making that one big discovery. A document from the founding of the country hidden behind a painting, a long-lost diary, an important piece of jewelry lost by a queen whose government had been overthrown. Maybe it was a fantasy to hope for something so big, but it was a buzz that had gotten inside Andie’s stomach and never left. It filled her with breathless anticipation every time she picked up a new piece.
But this figurine wasn’t it. By her estimate, given its style and the wear of the grooves carved into it, it was from the early 1900s. She needed to consult her reference book to be sure.
As she moved toward the book, Susie’s chipper voice washed over her again, piercing her sense of calm.
“No fair.”
Andie frowned, looking up. She pulled her bifocals off her nose and perched them on top of her head again. “What isn’t fair?”
“The way Doug is playing favorites.”
Andie drew herself up. Was she referring to Andie? She couldn’t possibly know about their affair.
Susie continued, “She’s been here for less time than me!”
Andie turned to face her associate head-on. “Pardon me?”
“Elise,” Susie answered with a dismissive wave of her hand. “I have a funny feeling about her, with her bright smile and chirpy attitude and supermodel figure. She might be getting special treatment. She just got a big appraisal job.”
“She’s getting prime jobs? Already?” Andie wondered if Susie was exaggerating. “That can’t be right. I’m due to fly out for the next one.”
Andie couldn’t be losing her prestige to a new appraiser. She had clawed her way up to get to where she was. She worked long hours, even weekends. In the back of her mind, she had always feared that as soon as she passed fifty, she would start to get overlooked despite her expertise. But it hadn’t happened. And now…
Susie patted Andie’s arm. “Don’t worry about it. I’m sure she’ll choke and get pulled off the next run. I mean, sure, she has a good eye for antiques, but it’s nothing compared to yours.”
