The Unquiet - J. D. Robb [103]
“I am?” Aunt Kit widened her bright blue eyes, laughed her big laugh. Her fair Irish skin was etched with delicate lines that deepened when she smiled, which was often. At seventyfive, she looked—Molly studied her in the harsh morning sun—ten years younger. At least. Hope I got those genes, she thought, far from the first time.
Why did they hold foreclosure auctions outside? What if it rained? What if it snowed? She’d always thought “on the courthouse steps” was just a saying, a metaphor, a verbal holdover from the Middle Ages—but look, there they were, about thirty people milling around in a sort of courtyard area under the portico of the extremely ugly gray stone county courthouse. “Still have that good feeling?” she thought of asking Aunt Kit, but anything out of her mouth for the next twenty minutes or so was going to be snarky and mean. She vowed to shut up. Just get through this, then you can go home.
Except she couldn’t.
Somebody’s house was up for sale right now. A man in shirtsleeves and a tie was auctioning it off like a—a rug at an estate sale. “Three ninety, three ninety, do I hear three ninety-one, ninety-one, ninety-one, do I hear ninety-one?” Long pause. “Sold for three hundred ninety thousand dollars.” Barbaric, thought Molly, looking around for the poor owner. Nobody was weeping, nobody looked heartbroken. Well, they wouldn’t come, of course; they wouldn’t have a crazy great-aunt who dragged them here to be eyewitnesses to the death of their dreams. They wouldn’t have a sadistic . . .
Oh God!
She let go of Aunt Kit’s arm to dodge behind the nearest column, pressing her back flat against it to stay upright. “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.”
“What, honey?” her aunt asked mildly, looking around. “He just announced your house. I think it’s starting.”
“This can’t be, it can’t be. This is a bad dream.” Except for her ex-husband, there was no one in the world Molly less wanted to meet at this moment than Oliver Worth. And still her stupid heart skipped that stupid beat, just to see him. She peeped around the column, helpless not to look. He was wearing a suit and carrying a briefcase. Charlie was with him! Did they have a foreclosed house? Surely not. Were they buying a foreclosed house? Not Charlie—but she wouldn’t put it past Oliver. He’d probably enjoy profiting from someone else’s misfortune. The next best thing to scenic mountaintop removal.
Aunt Kit was gazing about, trying to see what Molly was seeing. All at once, everything about her went still. Her face froze. Her mouth dropped.
“Stop, don’t look!” Molly hissed. “They’ll see us!”
“Who?”
“Oliver! Oliver Worth. And Charlie. I can’t believe they’re here! God, this is my absolute worst nightmare.”
“That’s Charlie?” And she started walking toward him.
“What are you doing? Don’t go over there! Aunt Kit—” Molly made a grab for her shoulder, but her aunt shrugged her off like an annoying child and marched straight over to Charlie.
Molly looked up at the sooty concrete ceiling, thinking, I’ll kill her. And then, Well, this is as low as it’s ever going to go, which was a kind of comfort, and followed.
“Charlie,” she heard her aunt say, but in the strangest voice, low and wondering. Charlie turned toward her and said—nothing ; he seemed struck dumb. He just stared until Aunt Kit said, “I’m Kit.” And then he echoed it, “Kit,” like “Lord” or “Messiah.” “I’m Charlie,” he said. Then they just looked at each other.
Oliver, who had been attending to the auction, saw Molly and did an actual double take. She was grateful for the halfminute’s warning she’d had; otherwise her face would look like his: gob-smacked.
“What are you doing here?” she said, taking the offensive.
“What are you doing here?”
“Did you come to gloat? You probably didn’t think I had the guts, but I came to see it to the end.” With a little armtwisting from her aunt.
His struck-by-lightning look