“A ten? You told the paramedic earlier it was a three. It’s now gone up to a ten?” Taylor squeaks. Somethingisoff.
“I don’t know. It just hurts.”
Vivian writhes, squeezing her eyes so tightly it finally contorts her face. Her heart rate is climbing into a dangerous red zone now, and once more the monitor sounds. “Can you get me something? It hurts so much! Please!”
“Charlie, page the resident. Now!” Taylor commands, and Charlie nods as he scurries out the door.
“Vivian? Vivian?”
Taylor fumbles as she draws up a syringe of Dilaudid. Fuck, why didn’t she start that other IV already, instead of calculatingthe monetary value of Vivian’s items? Something is seriously wrong.
Vivian moves again in the bed, but this time she doesn’t stop. Over and over, her body rhythmically jerks—she’s seizing. It’s jarring to watch: this controlled, uncontrolled action that feels to Taylor as if the universe is stuttering.
Vivian
Three Weeks Earlier
Vivian is perched at her Beacon Hill store counter, her forearms leaning against the knotty wood desk surface.
It’s a few minutes past ten o’clock; she’s just opened the shop. An early February sleet is coming down heavily—probably the reason her left shoulder is a little sore. It began aching on the three-block walk over from her apartment. It’s an old fracture, but it likes to periodically remind her she’s over forty, lest she forget. She rubs it now and clicks on the computer, waiting for it to load. Her desk—a repurposed tall antique table—is positioned like an island in a sea of surrounding furniture for sale. There’s a bookshelf, a secretary, an end table, a coffee table. Another end table. Then glasses, vases, candlesticks, trays, lamps, mirrors, a full table setting. Athirdend table. A turquoise-painted carousel horse, recently returned from a repair and now tucked into the corner. On the display window are painted gold letters that appear backward from her standpoint but from the street readStoried Antiques.
As the computer whirs to life, Vivian holds her breath, allowing it to gather in her chest as if it will provide a wall of defense.She’s been awaiting a response from her accountant. Her phone vibrates, and when she sees the caller, she instantly silences it. It’s the nursing home, probably calling again to see if Vivian can bring the La Mer face cream her mother is crazily insisting she needs. Christ. They rang yesterday, too. Her mother’s proclivity for expensive moisturizer is part of the problem Vivian is currently facing.
Finally, the computer screen illuminates. With a trembling finger, she clicks open the email. The numbers come glaringly into focus, and the air whooshes out of her body.
It’s not good.
She feels like a part of her has just been hollowed out. It’s been only eighteen months since she opened a second store, in Chestnut Hill—the Boston suburb in which she’d grown up. And now, according to these figures, she’ll need to close it.
A customer who is browsing—the first of the day—picks up a mercury glass French coupe to examine it more closely, and it nearly slips out of her hand.
Christ.
Vivian can’t charge the sticker price if she doesn’t have a full, intact set. “Careful,” she barks.
“I’m sorry,” the woman says apologetically, and gently places the coupe back on the gold leaf bar cart. Then she makes haste for the door, clearly feeling unwelcome.
Vivian sighs; the last thing she should be doing right now is alienating a potential customer.
She can’t believe she’s in this position. During the pandemic, a few years earlier, her business flourished. When the country went into lockdown, an influencer posted about her store, and it went viral. Vivian supposed she hadn’tneededto open a second store, but expansion seemed like a logical step—and a new focus that she’d so desperately needed at the time. She alsoalways assumed she’d have the family money to fall back on if needed.
Funny how her mom can’t remember where the family fortune went but can recall the brand La Mer.
She winces, thinking of the hefty loan she took out to renovate the second store space.
Her computer blinks as another email appears. Vivian slips on her reading glasses to see who it’s from but immediately wishes she hadn’t. The sender is Locust Prep, the private school in Philadelphia that her goddaughter, Lucy, attends.
“Shit,” she mutters. It’s time to make another tuition payment. Vivian has been covering Lucy’s tuition since her mother—Vivian’s best friend from college—passed away from cancer. Lucy’s dad routinely sends Vivian snapshots of Lucy’s second-grade artwork, as if Vivian is the other parent in the relationship. Given Vivian’s lack of maternal instincts, she considers herself more like the well-intentioned but removed aunt.
Vivian feels like she might be sick. After what she’s had to recently front for her mother’s nursing home, will there even be enough money left over for Lucy’s tuition, let alone Vivian’s own expenses?
Her phone buzzes, interrupting her thoughts. It’s a text from her friend Rachel.
Did you find your mom’s La Mer cream lol?
The nursing home called again about it!
Seriously? What are you paying them for?
