The House on Honeysuckle Lane by Mary McDonough

Author:Mary McDonough [McDonough, Mary]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 2016-07-26T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 38

By nine fifteen the following morning Emma was driving through downtown Lawrenceville, her destination Style Revisited. She had been to the shop before and knew that it offered both a consignment option and accepted donations; a good portion of the money earned by the donated clothing went to a food bank run by one of the local churches. The proprietors of the shop were particularly strict about the sort of clothing they would accept. Not only did the clothing need to be in pristine condition, it had to meet certain standards of style and quality. You would find no slogan T-shirts from Old Navy or pink sweatpants from Victoria’s Secret at Style Revisited. Some of the best clothing for sale—like fur or leather coats—was wired to a rack against theft. An appropriate place for Mom’s treasured wardrobe to find itself, Emma thought.

She parked as close as she could to the store and wondered for a moment why she hadn’t thought to bring a hand truck or a dolly with her. The boxes filled with her mother’s clothing were heavy; Daniel had come by the house early that morning to help her load them into her car. Oh, well, Emma thought, wrangling the first box from the backseat and then the other from the trunk. This is my exercise for the day.

The woman at the receiving desk was impeccably if simply dressed in a classic blue pinstriped Oxford shirt, tucked into a pair of navy pants. Her accessories were few and all gold. Emma knew a bit about jewelry—she had built a decent jewelry wardrobe over the years—and guessed the earrings and chain and rings on her fingers were eighteen karat. They had that rich, warm color not usually found in a lower karat gold.

“How may I help you?” the woman asked.

“I’ve brought in some clothes for donation,” Emma told her, indicating the two large boxes she had lugged into the store and left near the entrance. “They were my mother’s. She died last year.” Then, she laughed. “I don’t know why I told you that last bit. It’s not as if you need to know.”

The woman smiled kindly and asked if Emma would like a receipt.

“Yes,” she said, “for the estate taxes.” Emma handed her the descriptive list she had made of each item.

The woman glanced at the list. “A very nice collection,” she said approvingly. “We should be able to sell these easily. Sarah?” she called to a much younger and fairly strapping-looking woman straightening a rack of blouses. “Will you bring those boxes up to the desk?”

Sarah did so, and the woman behind the desk unfolded the flaps of the first box. Carefully she lifted out the top few items. “Oh, yes,” she said. “These will spend hardly any time in the store. And just look at this jacket. This is really lovely.”

Emma swallowed hard. The woman was holding a boxy tweed jacket with gold buttons, reminiscent of the classic Chanel style. Her mother had bought it

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