New Uses For Old Boyfriends

by Beth Kendrick

Summer scoffed. “Meant to be friends who kiss like brother and sister.”

  “We don’t kiss like brother and sister.” Lila was outraged. “It’s been like thirteen years and we’re in public! He was being a gentleman!”

  “And you’re into that sort of thing?”

  “Absolutely.” Lila pounded the bar top. “When we finally do get together, it’s going to be hot. Scorching. The heat of our passion will burn this whole town to the ground.”

  “So we should be on the lookout for random acts of spontaneous combustion, is what you’re saying?”

  “That’s right,” Lila retorted. “But there won’t be anything random about it. Because it’s meant to be.”

  chapter 10

  The next morning, Lila put on jeans and a threadbare T-shirt from high school, pulled her hair up into a ponytail, and prepared to brave the attic. She grabbed a mug of coffee and an ancient portable radio as she passed through the kitchen, where her mother was slumped at the table in a yellow silk robe.

  “Mom? You okay?”

  “I’m fine.” Daphne stirred her tea with a dainty silver spoon. “Just tired. Overwhelmed. Missing your father.”

  Lila put one hand on the refrigerator door. “Can I get you anything?”

  “No, I just need to sit for a while.” Daphne kept stirring, her hand on autopilot, and Lila suspected that the tea had gone cold. “Where are you going looking so grubby?”

  “Time to tackle the attic. You heard what the Realtor said. What’s in all the boxes up there, anyway?”

  Daphne stared into her cup.

  “Want to come with me and find out?”

  “No.” Daphne sighed and stirred, sighed and stirred. “I can’t face all the memories.”

  Lila paused, then said very gently, “Maybe this will end up being a blessing. A new house, a new start.”

  Daphne snapped out of her daze and released the spoon with a clink. “Your father dying is not a blessing.”

  “Mom, no, I didn’t mean—”

  “I already told you: I’m not moving. This house is my life’s work, Lila. I chose every shutter, every rug, every quilt. This house is your birthright.”

  Lila touched her mother’s shoulder. “I know this is hard, but unless we win the lottery, we don’t have a choice.”

  “People are already talking, you know. Someone in that law office must have a big mouth, because everyone in this petty, provincial town is looking at me. They feel sorry for me now.” Daphne’s eyes flashed. “Me! Can you imagine? Ever since your father died, they won’t make eye contact when they see me in the store and they keep bringing over these”—she wrinkled her nose in disgust and gestured toward the freezer—“these casseroles. I ask you, Lila. Do I strike you as someone who might enjoy casseroles?”

  “No.”

  “Someone actually gave me a carton of wine over the holidays. It would be laughable if it weren’t so appalling. What on earth am I going to do with wine in a box?”

  “Drink it?” Lila suggested.

  Daphne shuddered.

  “Well, if you aren’t going to drink it, can I?”

  Daphne pointed at the doorway. “Get out of my sight.”

  Lila didn’t argue. She tucked the radio under her arm and headed upstairs.

  Twenty minutes later, while singing along at the top of her lungs to “Fancy” by Reba McEntire, she discovered the first Dior.

  She’d slit open an unlabeled carton, expecting to find moldering 1980s blouses with massive shoulder pads, but when she folded back the crisp layers of tissue, she discovered a pale pink shirtdress, along with a matching jacket and hat. The style looked like something from the 1960s.

  The surrounding boxes held similar pieces of vintage couture: brilliantly cut black cocktail dresses, a coffee-and-cream-colored spectator suit, and a showstopping gold Halston evening gown.

  She carried the gold gown down to her mother, who was still in the kitchen.

  “Is this yours?” Lila held up the Halston with both hands.

  Daphne reached out and embraced the dress. “Oh! I had no idea this was up there.”

  Lila pointed toward the ceiling. “There are boxes stacked to the rafters.”

  “This is one of my collector’s pieces from New York.” Her mother smiled a secret, faraway smile. “I thought it was in the storage unit.”

  “Storage unit?” Lila’s eyebrows shot up. “You mean there’s more?”

  “Pieces like this need to be kept away from moisture, sunlight, and extreme temperatures,” Daphne explained. “You wouldn’t catch the Louvre taping the Mona Lisa up on somebody’s kitchen refrigerator, would you?”

  Lila crossed her arms. “How many storage units?”

  “What?” Daphne, clearly stalling, pretended not to hear.

  Lila gave her a bad-cop stare. “How. Many.”

  “One. Okay, two.”

  “And what’s the monthly rental fee for the units?”

  “You can’t put a price on art, pumpkin.”

  “Where did you even get all this?” Lila asked. “A lot of it looks like it’s from the fifties and sixties.”

  “Well, I found some of it at vintage boutiques and flea markets in Paris and Milan.” Her mother’s smile turned mischievous. “And I might have liberated a few pieces from the runway and designer showrooms.”

  “You stole this stuff? I had no idea you were such a criminal.”

  “I was all kinds of things before I met your father.” Daphne suddenly looked about twenty years younger. “Before I got married and moved here and had you, I used to . . .”

  “You used to what?” Lila took a seat next to her mother, fascinated.

  Daphne caught herself and shook her head. “Nothing. It was a different time in my life, that’s all.” Her expression had gone carefully neutral.

  “Well, what do you think we should do with these clothes?” Lila thought about what the estate jeweler had suggested to the woman trying to sell the antique hair comb. She tried to figure out how to word this delicately, then decided it was best to be blunt. “We could put a few up for sale on eBay.”

  Daphne shook her head. “Pack everything up and put it back where you found it.”

  “But we need to—”

  “I said no, Lila.” Her mother’s tone sharpened. “It’s my life packed away up there, not some archaeological fashion dig. We’re not selling my heart and soul on eBay.”

  “Okay, okay.” Lila nodded, then pushed her chair away from the table. “Actually, you know what? It’s not okay.”

  Daphne gasped. “Excuse me?”

  “You can’t keep going like this.” Lila took a deep breath. “We can’t keep going like this.”

  “Speak for yourself, Lila Jane.”

  “Fine, I will. I, Lila Jane Alders, am broke. I’m scared. I have no idea what I’m going to do with the rest of my life. But the one thing I do know is that waiting for someone else to come along and bail me out isn’t working.”

  “Our situations are different.” Daphne pulled the lapels of her robe tighter. “Your husband left you. Mine died.”

  Lila paused to absorb the sting of this. She kept her voice low and calm. “Yes, Mom. He died. And now you have no money.”

  “I have money.” Daphne ducked her head. “It’s just a temporary cash flow problem—”

  “No money,” Lila repeated. “Wake up and smell the red ink.”

  At this, her mother’s bravado vanished.

  Lila leaned over, both hugging and shielding her mother. “I know you have no idea what to do next. Neither do I. But we have to help each other. We have to try.”

  Daphne relaxed into her daughter for a moment, then pulled away, sighing. “Designers used to make dresses with me in mind. There was a famous designer in the eighties named Cedric Jameson. You’ve
heard of him, of course.”

  Lila had no clue who Cedric Jameson was, but she nodded anyway.

  “Cedric loved me. He adored me. He used to beg me to go to the Maldives for a week with him. He called me his muse. I was a muse, do you hear me?”

  “Your ex-boyfriends are way cooler than mine,” Lila admitted.

  “I used to date designers and artists and musicians—two or three at a time. And now I’m old and anonymous and stuck in Delaware. I didn’t mind it when I was with your father; he loved this town so much. But now . . .” A few drops of tea sloshed out of Daphne’s mug as she gestured at the overcast gray horizon beyond the bay window. “Put yourself in my shoes, Lila. What would you do if you were me?”

  Lila saw her opening. “I would put my old clothes up for auction on eBay. There’s got to be some demand for vintage Halston in perfect condition.”

  “Here.” Daphne handed Lila the silver spoon with a dramatic flourish. “You might as well just use that to carve my heart out.”

  “Let’s not be hasty. No point in carving your heart out unless someone meets the reserve price.”

  “How can you joke about this? How can you laugh about selling my Halston?”

  “Fine, then pick something else. We could probably get a week’s worth of groceries for some old Gucci.”

  Daphne turned up her nose. “I’d rather go hungry.”

  “Spoken like a true model.” Lila hurried back up to the attic and returned to the kitchen with a cloth garment bag, out of which she pulled a gauzy white floor-length gown with a cluster of peach roses at the waist. “The label says Christian Dior. Is this authentic?”

  “Well, of course.” Daphne looked offended. “Do you think I’d pollute my wardrobe with knockoffs?”

  “When was this made?”

  “I’m not sure.” Daphne glanced at the silk roses. “Sometime in the mideighties. That was never one of my favorite pieces. It’s a little too sweet and froufrou for my tastes.”

  Lila smiled. “Great. Then you won’t care if I sell it.”

  Daphne’s complexion went ashen. “What? No!”

  “You just said it wasn’t one of your favorites.”

  “But it’s still special. It’s in perfect condition. It’s one of a kind!”

  “Great. Hopefully, it’ll fetch a nice price.” Lila zippered the gown back up. “Let me sell this one, as an experiment. Just to see what the market’s like. Take action, Mom. That’s our new motto.”

  Daphne stammered for a few seconds, then breathed a sigh of relief as a thought occurred. “But you can’t. Neither one of us has any idea how to use eBay.”

  “Maybe not currently. But if I can vanquish the lawn, I can figure out eBay. Talking people into impulse buys is what I do best, remember?”

  * * *

  The next day, Lila dropped by the real estate office on her way into Black Dog Bay’s blink-and-you’ll-miss-it downtown. Whitney finished up a phone call and waved her into an office.

  “Hey. I just wanted to give you an update,” Lila said. “We’re still planning to sell the house. I have to work on my mom a little, but eventually, she’ll break down and sign the broker contract. I just don’t want you to feel like we’re wasting your time.”

  Whitney sat back in her desk chair, and Lila noticed framed photos of a baby girl next to the computer. “You’re not wasting my time. Your mom’s been in that house for years, and she cares about what happens to it. That’s normal.”

  Lila peered more closely at the photographs. The baby was wearing a darling seersucker sailor dress. “Is that your daughter?”

  Whitney nodded and beamed with maternal pride. “Kyrie Rose. That picture’s a few months old. She just started walking—scratch that, she skipped walking and went straight to running.”

  Lila gazed at the photo with a physical pang of longing and regret for the marriage she’d lost and the children she’d planned to have. “I love that dress. I didn’t know they even made those little sailor suits for girls anymore.”

  “Isn’t it cute? It’s actually mine from when I was little. My mom kept some of my baby stuff and gave it to me when I got pregnant.”

  “That is so sweet. And she really took care of it—it looks brand-new.”

  “Well, actually, my—” Whitney broke off and clapped her hand over her mouth.

  “What?” Lila tilted her head, waiting.

  “Nothing. It’s just . . .” Whitney’s eyes darted from side to side and then she whispered, “My brother redid some of the stitching on the neckline and the sleeves.”

  Lila blinked, remembering the encounter she’d had with Malcolm outside the Whinery—that brute had hand-smocked a cute little nautical dress for his niece? With his strong, calloused, sweaty hands?

  “Please don’t tell him I told you. He’d die if anyone knew. He only did this for Kyrie’s birthday because I begged him.” Whitney gave Lila a little nudge. “He’s good, though, right?”

  “He’s amazing.” Lila picked up the photo and examined the ruffles and pin tucks. “But I thought you said he was off in the Marines doing supersecret, badass stuff?”

  “He was. Which is why you can never say one word about any of this to anyone. Seriously, I’ll disappear in the night and no one will ever find my body.”

  Lila continued to marvel over the craftsmanship. “Where did he learn to sew like that?”

  “Oh, well, our mom was a seamstress, you know.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “Yeah, before she married our stepdad. Anyway, the community theater hired her to make all their costumes. And she and my grandma would force Malcolm to help as soon as he was old enough to thread a needle.” Whitney smiled. “I’m not surprised he never told you. I’m sure he was very concerned with impressing you with his seventeen-year-old manliness. Once he started running track, he didn’t even look at a spool of thread for like twenty years.”

  Lila glanced up from the photo. “And you’re sure I went out with him?”

  “According to him.” Whitney paused, an impish grin on her face. “He only sews now if I guilt-trip the heck out of him. We’ll both be in trouble if he finds out that I blabbed.” She became pensive. “He probably could kill both of us with just his pinkie finger and a paper clip. He did do all that badass, supersecret Marine stuff.”

  “I’m the soul of discretion.” Lila exclaimed a few more times over how cute Kyrie was, then said good-bye to the Realtor and got back to her busy schedule of taking action—with maybe one little detour along the way.

  * * *

  The Ramones’ “I Wanna Be Sedated” was blasting on the Whinery’s sound system while Jenna wiped down the bar. Summer was sitting front and center, tapping away on her laptop.

  “Hey.” Summer lifted her glass of lemonade in greeting. “Working from my satellite office today.”

  “You look troubled.” Jenna poured a glass of ice water and slid it across the bar to Lila, Old West saloon–style. “Sit down and spill your guts.”

  “I need tech support.” Lila took a seat and positioned her stool so she wouldn’t be blinded by the afternoon sunlight reflecting off the crystal chandelier. “I want to sell one of my mother’s Diors on eBay, but my computer skills are pretty much limited to looking up my old classmates on Facebook and weeping bitter tears.”

  “I’ve been there.” Jenna blew out her breath. “Existential angst, red wine, and Facebook do not mix.”

  “Hold up.” Summer tapped her fingernail on the bar. “So these Diors—your mother has more than one?”

  “Her attic is crammed full of couture,” Lila said. “Plus the guest room, most of the closets, and at least two storage units that she’ll admit to.”

  “That’s a lot of fancy old clothes.”

  “Yes, it is. And everything must go, because she needs to downsize, like, yesterday
.”

  Summer kept tapping her nail. “Know what you should do? You should rent out a storefront for the summer season.”

  Lila seized on this idea and got all excited—for about three seconds, after which reality set in. “We don’t have the cash flow to open a business right now. In that we have no cash at all. That’s why we’re selling the Dior gown in the first place.”

  “You have to spend money to make money,” Summer declared with supreme authority. “Go big or go home—words to live by.”

  “I can’t even figure out how to put together an eBay listing,” Lila protested. “How am I supposed to open a retail business?”

  “You just do it,” Summer assured her. “It’s amazing how much shit you can get done when you don’t stop to think about the consequences.”

  “Everyone comes to Black Dog Bay for a reason,” Jenna said. “Maybe this is your reason.”

  Lila considered this for a moment, then shook her head. “You have to remember, I grew up here. This is the opposite of a fresh start. I’m up to my eyeballs in old mistakes and ex-boyfriends and unfinished business.” She paused to laugh. “That would be a good name for the vintage boutique: Unfinished Business. Appropriate on so many levels.”

  “That boutique is going to happen,” Summer predicted. “Mark my words.”

  “But how?” Lila turned up her palms. “I don’t have any money or business experience, and my mother will fight me on every single sale.”

  “Put it out to the universe and wait for a sign,” Jenna advised.

  “I’d need a pretty clear sign,” Lila said. “Like, flashing neon right in my face.”

  “Then throw that out there and see what comes back. In the meantime, let’s get you up and running on eBay.” Summer made a little moue with her lips as she reviewed their tech support options. “Let’s see, Dutch is in meetings all day; Ingrid could probably help, but she has science Olympiad after school. We need someone smart and reasonably computer literate, with too much free time on their hands.” She snapped her fingers and grabbed her cell phone. “I know just the guy.” She dialed the phone and held it to her ear. Instead of greeting the other party with “Hello,” she yelled, “Proof of life, Sorensen! Where the hell have you been? Did you die?”