She and Daniel carried the painting outside while I held the front door open, and then the three of us... well, it wasn’t running exactly. More like quick shuffling. All the way down the dock, until we got to her car. I dug Aunt Mona’s keys out of the glittery handbag threaded on her arm and popped open the back of her Jeep.
“It won’t fit!” I said.
“Back seat down,” she said breathlessly. “It’ll fit. I put it in here when I took it to the gallery.”
“Mona!” a voice bellowed from on high.
We all looked up to find Sharkovsky leaning over his glass roof railing, kimono billowing in the wind.
“Bring it back, Mona!” he yelled.
“Fuck you, you crook!” she yelled back. “I’m telling every artist in Seattle what a lying snake you are, and then I’m suing you for the rest of the money you owe me!”
Several people were watching us: a guy on a bike, an elderly man from his window, and a woman who appeared to be Sharkovsky’s masseur, getting out of a nearby car. They were all so embarrassed by the scene, no one would look us in the face. That seemed about right.
I flipped the back seat down and helped Daniel and Mona shove the enormous painting into the Jeep. A good foot or so stuck out the back.
“Don’t panic!” she told us. Being an experienced hauler of big artwork, she quickly bungee-corded the back hatch down with Daniel’s help, and after realizing we’d just eliminated Daniel’s seat for the ride home, we all piled into the front in a panicked flurry—Aunt Mona driving and me on Daniel’s lap.
One minute I was trying to make myself small and unobtrusive while balancing on his legs, and the next, Aunt Mona was tearing out of the parking space and Daniel was pulling me back against him.
“Snake!” Aunt Mona yelled out the window at Sharkovsky as he limped across the dock, shouting obscenities at her. She turned out of the drive like a bat out of hell, and the last thing I saw was his graying hair blowing erratically in the breeze.
Aunt Mona raised both her hands. “Vengeance is mine!”
“I can’t believe we just did that,” I mumbled.
Daniel high-fived her, and for a moment the car was feral with wild emotions. Most of Mona’s were centered on victory and revenge; most of mine were anger and embarrassment. I’d told her about the conversation I’d had with Daniel in the hotel van last night—she knew I was taking baby steps with him. This all felt selfish and outrageous, and I couldn’t believe she was acting like this was a super-fun way to spend an afternoon. She was too old for this kind of stunt. It was humiliating.
But I didn’t say any of that. Not in front of Daniel. To be honest, I was a little peeved at him, too, because he seemed perfectly happy to be her partner in crime.
This wasnothow I wanted things to go today.
By the time we got back to the diner, all the adrenaline in the car had worn off. Aunt Mona made a weak attempt at apologizing to both of us, but Daniel wouldn’t accept it. He said it was “fun.” And while she parked at the curb and called another fellow artist to brag about what happened, I exited the car with Daniel and talked to him on the sidewalk.
“I’m so sorry,” I told him after shutting the door and making sure Mona couldn’t hear us.
“Don’t be sorry. Seriously. That was unexpected, and your godmother is a trip.”
“She’s something, all right,” I muttered.
He chuckled and gave me a gentle smile. “It’s fine. Seriously.”
“I’m just... I don’t know. This didn’t turn out like I wanted. I’m sorry I gave you the wrong impression about her tagging along, and I’m sorry about her nutty shenanigans. To top it all off, we didn’t even learn much about the spreadsheet.”
“Stop apologizing. It’s all good,” he said, lightly brushing the back of my fingers with his.
“Are you sure?”
“Positive. And at least we got some info about the spreadsheet. We got the initials of the Ukrainian company, and we know Ivanov’s title.”
“What about the address that Sharkie translated when we were on the roof? I saw you pulling it up on your phone when he read it off.”
“Doesn’t exist,” he said, shaking his head. “I’ll text it to you, and I’ll try it again later, but the map is just defaulting to the city.”
“Maybe it’s like a black-market thing.”
He nodded and absently scratched his arm, glancing at Mona through the car window. “So, hey. About what I said earlier... You want to meet me for dinner tomorrow before work?”
