“Pearl, how did your interview go?” Mom asked, rearranging a bunch of fishing poles.
“Great. I start next week. They’re happy to work with my school so I can get credit for the placement.”
“Oh good. I didn’t have any doubt they would.” Mom picked up some boxes of fishing lures and dusted under them before setting the boxes back down.
Pearl was always amused by her mother’s incessant need to clean Finn’s shop.
It wasn’t dirty at all.
Finn was a stickler for things being neat and tidy, but her mother just couldn’t seem to sit still.
“Mom, I’m sure the counter is clean.”
“Now it is,” Mom remarked, wiping down another section. “It smelled like fish in here when I walked in this morning.”
Pearl chuckled softly. “It is a fishing shop.”
“We don’t sell the fish here though. Speaking of fish, what would you like for dinner tonight? I do have some fresh trout.”
“I don’t need dinner tonight. I’m going out to Coat.”
“I thought it wasn’t open yet?” Mom asked, continuing her unnecessary cleaning.
“It’s not, but we met someone who knows the owner.”
“We?”
“Yes.”
Mom paused her cleaning, a smile tugging at the corner of her lips. “You’re going out to dinner? May I ask with whom?”
“Phineas.”
Her mother’s eyes lit up. “That’s wonderful.”
“It’s not a date,” Pearl said quickly.
Not yet, anyways. She kept that thought to herself. If she gave any inkling to her mother that she and Phineas would have a date in the near future, her mother wouldn’t stop planning it.
“Well, if it’s not a date then what is it?”
“A friendly dinner?”
Mom frowned and crossed her arms. “I don’t believe that. I can read you like a book, Pearl, and I know you can’t lie, so tell me.”
“There’s nothing to tell. It’s a friendly dinner?—”
“A bistro, new in town, not open, and you both know someone who knows the owner? It seems suspicious.”
“It’s not.” Pearl sighed in defeat. “Phineas needs my help.”
“With what?” Mom asked, that motherly concern Pearl was so familiar with lacing her voice. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing is wrong, it’s just…there’s another gill man in town and he’s claiming to be Phineas’ brother.”
It all came out. There was no point in hiding it from her mother, who was a witch and could draw out the truth.
Mom’s face paled and she sat down on the little stool that Finn kept behind the counter at the bait shop. “I see.”
