Uncle Tony was exactly the kind of man you’d want to win the lottery. He did so much good with his winnings over the years. He left his house to me on the hunch that I’d need a safe escape and specified in his will that, while I got Wit’s End and all physical possessions in and on it, every last dime in his bank account was to be split among his favorite various charities around the country.
“Do you think he ever wanted to date?” My throat’s starting to clog, and I can barely get the words out.
“Hard to believe in love when it’s used as a weapon,” Flint mutters in response.
God.
No wonder they were tight.
Mom always told me Uncle Tony was the black sheep of the family because he was a carefree hippie who didn’t put in the hard work. That if a man’s crowning achievement was winning the lottery, he wasn’t the best role model.
I’m slowly realizing just how lucky I was that she was willing to send me out here for a few weeks those summers I was in high school, because I’mcertainmy grandparents shunned him for entirely different reasons.
I know he grew up in different times, my grandparents, too, but that doesn’t make me any less sad for him. If anything, it makes me more sad.
I clear my throat and gesture around us, desperate to not wallow in how much being thrown out of his family must’ve hurt my uncle. “This reminds me of a secret room I wasn’t supposed to find when we took down the wrong wall in a house in Indianapolis during season two. The husband regularly hosted swinger parties when his wife was out of town.”
Flint’s lips part, and he shifts a glance at me that suggests he thinks I’m making it up.
“You wouldn’t have seen that episode. It never aired. Even if the producers hadn’t nixed it on the spot for the fact that we were a family-friendly show, the husband had a total shit fit, like it wasourfault he was keeping a secret from his wife, and threatened to sue us if we didn’t get off his property immediately. No idea if they ever finished that reno, but I know she got the kid in their divorce.”
He stares at me.
I shrug. “I’ve seen things. Also, the best part of being considered the ditzy, airheaded, stupid comic relief on a dumb reality TV show is that no one ever suspects it was you who secretly paid for her private investigator who got the pictures of theotherthings he was into that werenotokay. Secret sex room? Whatever. Have your fetishes. Digging up the hundred-thousand-dollar gambling debt he’d racked up in questionable crowds so that she’d have cause togetthe kid in the divorce? You hear that? That’s the sound of justice, and I fuckingloveit.”
He gapes at me for another second. Then he cracks a grin, andoh my God, is he adorable.
No, Maisey. No.He’s a pompous ass who thinks he’s the hottest thing since a forest fire and who also thinks he knows everything. He is not adorable.
“You ever tell Tony that?” he asks.
“I have never spoken those words aloud. Congratulations. You caught me in a caffeine deficit and now know my biggest secret. Tellanyone and I’ll go justice onyourass too. Don’t test me.I will find all the things.”
He shakes his head, still grinning, and lifts a particularly colorful butt plug. “Like this?”
“Like that. Which would be an absolute piece of art if I didn’t know exactly what it was.”
He chuckles. “About five years ago, he caused a massive fuss in town. Gertie at the general store got a load of these. Thought they were lamp pulls missing their chains. Tony bought the whole box, and not five minutes after he departed with the lot of them, someone told Gertie what they actually were. Spread likewildfirethat Tony bought the whole box. About the time they started debating if anybody was gonna tell him, I noped out of the whole conversation.”
“They thought he was an innocent old man who had never heard of sex before and didn’t want to tell him?” I feel like Junie, rolling my eyes now.
“Town was split. Half of ’em thought he was going to use them as lamp pulls or, like you said, art. Other half thought he was sparing Gertie the embarrassment of having these on her shelves for anyone passing through town to find.”
“Could’ve been both,” I murmur.
“Everyone kept angling to get an invitation to his house for dinner so they could see if he’d hung them on his lamps.”
“That’s a warning, right? Buy my sex toys online in discreet packaging?”
“Jesus Christ,” he mutters.
“I’m not used to small-town life. I need to know these things.”
He turns his back to me, but his neck has gone even redder than it was before. “Cece Jones used to wait tables at the diner. Not long after Tony bought his box of, ah, lamp pulls, Cece got caught sleeping with a married minister two towns over, and everyone forgot about Tony.”
I wince.
“She wiped her social media accounts, quit her job, and hightailed it out of the county. Everyone got more tied up in guessing where she went than with worrying over Tony’s lamps.” He shakes his head and tosses the blown glass butt plug into his box. “This town’s great in so many ways. You need someone to come clear out your root cellar, all you have to do is put out a call on one of the town’s social pages. But you want to keep a secret ...”
