Chapter 12

CHAPTER TWELVE

"Define ‘quirky,'" Hudson said as he got out of his car at Dorothy Burrows' property to find Lori already waiting outside the front door. The property looked as beautiful as he remembered it, although Lori's exhausted posture suggested she was in no mood to appreciate it.

Indeed, she seemed too tired to get his reference. She frowned.

"Uh, well ‘quirky' means like offbeat or unusual—"

He interrupted her with a chuckle, although he did feel a twinge of unease to see Lori looking so deflated and unlike her usual determined self.

"I meant more like define what you meant about what Dorothy wants," he said, waving the phone to indicate that he was discussing the text message she'd sent him asking for his help.

She made an oh, duh face.

"I wish I could provide more context," she said as he approached where she stood next to the front door. Despite the weariness evident in her pose, he couldn't help but note that she was still looking rather pretty in her simple working outfit of a ponytail, t-shirt, and jeans. Then he blinked the thought away. He was here as a professional, maybe as a friend. He should be focusing on the work.

Lori continued talking. "All I know is that I got an email from Dorothy explaining that she wanted a video tour of the property and that it was to be ‘one of those fun, quirky ones,' not one of the ‘boring, usual type.'"

" Is there a ‘usual type?'" he asked as they went inside.

Lori merely gave him a helpless shrug that told him, better than any words could have done, that Dorothy had not gotten any easier to work with since their last conversation. He resolved to be as supportive as possible, not only today, but through the rest of this challenging process. He wanted Lori to get her spark back, even though he wasn't quite sure why he felt so strongly about it.

"Well," he said, hefting the large case in his hand, "I've got the camera, so as soon as we figure out what we're actually doing in here, I've got the technical aspects covered."

"My hero," she said with a playful grin and darn, Hudson really didn't need to think about how good it felt to hear that.

Lori showed him into a corner of the kitchen that she'd clearly set up as her base of operations. While the rest of the house was showroom-ready, this one part of the breakfast nook was covered with papers, notes, her laptop, and half a bagel that looked like it had been abandoned after only a few bites. He took in the sight.

"Okay," he said firmly, using a voice he thought he'd retired when Claire had left her difficult teenage years behind. "First things first. You sit down and finish your breakfast and let me look at what we've got set up so far. It'll help me come up with ideas."

This wasn't untrue, but it wasn't his primary motivation in taking a step away from the kitchen for a moment. Lori just had the distinct air of a person who needed a minute and a bit more food in her system. He wasn't a vindictive man by any means, but Hudson had felt, looking at her drawn features, a stab of dislike for Dorothy Burrows. He was pretty sure the woman was more careless than malevolent, likely a little entitled, given her wealth.

But couldn't she see that she was running poor Lori ragged?

His irritated thoughts gave way to professional admiration as he moved through the rooms of the house. The styles from room to room were all different, as Lori had lamented during their previous discussions, but she'd somehow imbued an unmistakable sense of cohesion to the place despite the varying schools of design. He couldn't put his finger on how she'd done it… but he could feel it.

He was very impressed. It couldn't have been easy.

When he returned to the kitchen, he was pleased to see that Lori's bagel was gone and that the woman herself looked a little less peaked.

"Okay," she said briskly, all business as she picked up her cell phone. "So even though I can't give you a better definition of ‘quirky,' my thought is that Dorothy seems to think that everything young people do is the best way to sell a house. It isn't the tactic I would take but, hey, it's not my house." She shrugged as she scrolled through her phone. Hudson was glad to see her playful side, even if it was only a brief flicker. He hoped it meant she was feeling better.

"Anyway," she continued, "I asked Marty what the young people like these days and she reminded me that she's married and in her thirties but sent me to this app where the kids make videos." She clicked on an icon and loud, upbeat music blared to life. She flicked and a different sound started playing. Another flick and someone was showing them how to get honey from a beehive. Another flick and the first music played again, although the person on screen was different.

"So," she said, flicking a glance at Hudson. "You can see it's a lot of high energy, short bursts of video. I watched a bunch last night and it gave me a little bit of a headache, but I can admit some of these people are really talented. But I think the idea is putting unexpected things together and then… adding sound?"

Hudson nodded, thinking. He gestured toward her phone. "May I?" She handed the device over and he copied her flicking motion for a few minutes, taking in the overall energy of the videos. When he felt like he'd gotten a decent sense of it, he handed the phone back. Lori immediately closed the app and Hudson's instinctive relief at the cessation of the constant barrage of sound made him feel every one of his sixty-five years.

"Well," he said consideringly. "It's the opposite of what I would do if I were trying to make a tour video… but maybe that's the point?"

Lori's laughter was genuine. "I kind of think it is," she agreed. "I know Dorothy is older than we are… but is she telling us we're old?"

"Speak for yourself, Lori," he said with a playful sniff, echoing her words at the park. She laughed again. It was a nice sound.

Once they had established that their plan was to do the opposite of whatever we think is right , they delved into more details, plotting an unexpected route through the house that would highlight some of its more unique features. They assembled plenty of footage and wrote out a detailed explanation of their vision for the video before sending it all off to Lori's administrative assistant, who was apparently talented with technology. When that was done, they settled in for a breather in the Adirondack chairs that faced out over the water.

"I know this has been a nightmare listing for you," Hudson said after they'd taken a few breaths of refreshing ocean breeze, "but I actually kind of had fun today."

"You know what?" she said with a wry grin. "Me too. Part of me kind of gets why people make those videos."

"Going to become one of those—oh, what do they call them? Influencers?"

She laughed. She'd laughed a lot today. "Oh goodness, no. No, I'm going to delete that crazy app from my phone immediately. But it still wasn't a bad day, overall. It reminded me of—" She broke off and turned from the water to look directly at Hudson. "You didn't ever meet Craig, did you? My husband?"

He shook his head. He knew Lori had lost her spouse, just like he had, but he had met her after the fact.

"Never got the chance, I'm sorry to say."

She gave a small, sad smile, but the expression was fleeting. He recognized that look. It was the look of someone who had suffered a dreadful loss long ago, the look of someone who would always be sad about that loss but who had learned how to pursue a happy life, anyway.

"Well," she said, "Craig was a goof. And he loved new things. He never met a trend he wasn't willing to give a try." She grinned, but her eyes were back on the water and Hudson recognized that she was lost in memories. "I am totally dating myself here, but when we were in college, it was the early 80s, and Craig got this perm —" She broke off, a burst of laughter leaving her. Hudson found himself grinning too. "It looked awful. I mean awful . He considered shaving it off, but I convinced him that being bald would look worse, so he had to wait forever for this terrible style to grow out."

"Did you ever follow his example?" Hudson asked.

She shook her head. "Nah, I was all about the crimped hair. I used to spend hours doing it." She turned back to him. "Anyway, Craig would have enjoyed today. He would have had fun with all this young person stuff, no matter how old he got."

Her expression turned wistful, and Hudson found himself nodding along.

"It's weird, isn't it," he observed, "how you can lose someone you love and eventually get to this point where memories of them can make you more happy than sad? Seeing Claire in her shop always sends me to that place. Stella would have loved Claire's shop."

Lori furrowed her brow in concentration. "Now, I think I did meet Stella a few times."

He laughed. "Oh, you absolutely did. Because I had been complaining up and down about this rival real estate agent in town who was stealing all my listings, and then we went to some industry event or other, although I can't remember which one. Stella chatted with you for a while and then scolded me the whole way home." He changed the pitch of his voice to indicate he was quoting Stella. "'Hudson Boone, what is wrong with you? That woman was perfectly lovely! I don't know what you have been even thinking .'" He shook his head. "I was so mad that you had charmed my own wife!"

Lori slapped her knee as she remembered. "Yes! We bonded over how hard it is to match colors when you have red hair. I remember her. She was beautiful and so kind. Claire looks just like her."

"Yeah, she was amazing," Hudson said with a fond smile. "When she died, I felt like I'd never feel good again. But I had Claire, and I knew I had to show her how to go on even when it seemed impossible."

Silently, Lori reached out and gave his hand a squeeze, just a fleeting moment of contact before she let go.

"It is impossible," she said softly. "Having your heart broken like that, trying to keep going for yourself, for your kids, trying to raise them to be good people who believe in love even when they know how painful loss can be? It's impossible. But we do it anyway. And we end up—we ended up with these amazing, gorgeous, wonderful women."

"We sure did," he said, a smile breaking out across his face despite their sad recollections. When he glanced over at Lori, she wore the same expression. They exchanged a look that had him noting with more surprise than was probably warranted that he could really relate to Lori. He should have expected it, perhaps. They worked in the same field and had gone through a lot of the same tough experiences. They were both parents who loved their kids more than anything. But somewhere along the line he'd gotten so wrapped up in seeing her as a rival that he'd neglected to see her as a potential ally. He felt a little embarrassed to face his own willful obliviousness.

"You know, Lori," he said, feeling almost shy as he made the offer, "if you ever need to talk about this kind of stuff, get anything off your chest that could use a sympathetic ear… well, I've got two of ‘em."

She smiled in gratitude for a moment, then that smile got a playful edge to it.

"You better stop being so nice to me, Hudson Boone," she warned, "or else I'm going to start thinking we could actually be friends."

Why did that idea sound so good? To cover up that the idea made him feel a little flustered, he joked back. "Aw, would that be so bad?"

Was he fooling himself to think that her smile looked happy with the idea too?

"I guess not," she said, turning back to face the water so he couldn't see the whole of her expression. But he could hear her little chuckle perfectly well. "No, I guess it wouldn't."

They sat for a stretch, the gentle crashing of waves providing a soundtrack to their summer idyll.

Then Lori sat up with a gasp. "Oh my gosh, I almost forgot!" Her eyes gleamed with excitement. "Don't you want to hear what the teacup appraiser said?"

He couldn't believe that he'd almost forgotten. "Yes!"

She stood, beckoning him. "Come on, I'll tell you while I show you the priceless teacup collection. Because nothing I say is going to make you believe how many styles of teacups one person can own."