As a kid, Gretchen had always been full of advice when the families got together—“Posey, you should let your hair grow so people can tell you’re a girl. Posey, if you eat more cheese, you might get boobs.” As they got older, she’d simply ignore Posey—unless the adults were watching, when she’d be saccharine-sweet and utterly fake.
Then, horribly, Aunt Ruth and Uncle Ralphie had died in a car accident. Gretchen and Posey had been seventeen, and Gretchen came to live with the Osterhagens. All through senior year, Posey had tried to be kind, trying to include Gretchen in her own meager social life, telling her she looked pretty in a certain shirt or sweater. But Gretchen had been too good for all that. She loved Stacia—her mother’s twin, after all—and Max, and was pleasant toward Henry on the rare weekends he came home from medical school, but as for Posey, she had nothing but veiled insults and fake affection.
“Should I, like…hate her now?” Elise asked.
“Yes,” Jon and Kate answered.
“No!” Posey said. “She’s…you know. She’s fine. It’ll be nice for my parents to have the help. And who knows? Business might pick up a little.”
“Why is she leaving her show?” Elise asked. “No offense to your parents, right? But it’s kind of a step down? Was that rude to say?”
“Probably ratings,” Kate said. “Up against Rachael Ray? Please.” Kate was a veteran of food and cooking shows, owned literally hundreds of cookbooks and knew every celebrity chef out there. Not that she cooked—another thing Posey and she had in common.
“Not according to her,” Jon said. At Posey’s questioning look, he added, “She sent Henry an email last week. Oh, is that the new model you’re working on?” He got up and went over to Posey’s work area, where a half-constructed model of a Colonial home was underway.
“Yep,” Posey answered. “That’s the Austin house. Mac and I took it apart last fall, remember?”
“Right, right,” Jon murmured. “We should have you come into class sometime. Well, maybe the art department should have you. This is gorgeous, Pose.”
Before Posey had gotten into salvage, she’d been a model-maker for an architect. The tiny details, the precision of the work, the lovely, warm idea that she could condense something so big…it was addicting. When she opened Irreplaceable Artifacts, she’d kept it up. Now, instead of creating a replica of a building that would someday be built, she made models of buildings that would soon be demolished…her gift to the owners, and a way of preserving the past.
“James!” Kate called. “Hey, bud, can you run out to the car and see if I have any tampons?”
“Mom, no. I have boundaries. I’m fourteen. Get your own tampons.”
Jon snorted. “Kate. Be kind to your boy.”
“What? We’re very close, that’s all. Right, James?”
“Not that close.”
Brianna was wheezing with laughter, and James gave her a look, then smiled.
“So, guys, guess what?” Posey said, lowering her voice. “I’m having a talk with Dante tonight.”
This brought Jon back to the counter. “And what are we saying?”
“Are you gonna propose? Because that would so romantic? Oh, my gosh. Wow,” Elise said.
“No, no. No proposals. Just…you know. Time to take things to the next level.”
Jon and Kate exchanged a look. “Best of luck with that,” her brother-in-law said.
“What? You don’t like him?”
“How could I say? I’ve never met him, except when I ate there, and if you tell Stacia that Henry and I went, I’ll murder you in your sleep. No, Posey, it’s just…I think he’s using you, that’s all.”
“For sex. He’s using you for sex,” Kate clarified.
Posey glanced over at the kids, who were fortunately immersed in birth-family horror stories, snorting with laughter. “Oh, I don’t think so. It’s just early days, that’s all.”
“Well, if he only calls you after 9:00 p.m. and only wants you to come to his house for a shag, has never introduced you to his friends or family, has no interest in meeting yours, I’d say Kate’s spot on,” Jon said, raising an eyebrow.
“We have a date tonight,” Posey protested.
“What time and where?” Jon asked.
She hesitated. “Nine-thirty. His place.”
“Call me after,” Jon said. “I have to go. Believe it or not, home-ec teachers have papers to grade. Ciao, bellissimas! Oh, and Posey, just in case things don’t work out with Dante, I’m teaching a singles cooking class for the adult-ed program. You’re welcome, too, Kate.”
When she closed up shop later that day, Posey came upon James’s book about finding birth parents in the cushion of the sofa. She’d never looked for her birth family. Max and Stacia were her parents, the end. Well, that wasn’t exactly true. Of course she’d wondered. Conjured the typical fantasies as a child. To say that Max and Stacia—especially Stacia—were overprotective was an understatement. Every time Posey wasn’t allowed to go to the public pool with her friends (“The pool? The pool? That’s where people get kidnapped!”) or was whisked to the E.R. to rule out concussion (“But she bumped her head, Doctor! She has a lump! You think it might be a tumor?”), she’d imagine more mellow parents, parents who didn’t view sauerkraut as a daily necessity for a healthy diet, parents who were—forgive her—cooler, younger, more hip.
But aside from that, no. Max and Stacia were wonderful, and she’d never been inspired to find her roots. She tucked the book in her backpack to make sure she got it back to James, then went home to get ready for her date. If it was a date. Jon and Kate had a point.
In eight weeks, she’d seen Dante six times. That seemed like dating…sort of. The truth was, Posey’s record with men was a little sporadic. Ron the Gay had been pretty great, the whole “we both like boys” thing aside. You’d think a woman with a gay brother would sense a tremor in the Force, but no. One night, as they were curled up in front of CNN, Posey had admitted to wanting just one hour alone and naked with Anderson Cooper. “Who wouldn’t?” Ron had murmured appreciatively. Then they’d looked at each other, realization dawning for both of them. Ron later wrote an article for GQ magazine: “How Anderson Cooper Helped Me Out of the Closet.” He still sent Posey Christmas cards.
Then there’d been Jake—perfectly nice, a carpenter she’d hired as a subcontractor for a job in Maine. It was his suggestion that she get breast implants that ended their thing. Kind of hard to overlook that. A few first dates here and there, sometimes a second or third date, once in a great while a fourth…but no. Posey hadn’t been in a real relationship for quite a while.
So Dante needed to pony up, Posey thought as she held the truck door for Shilo, who gazed at her beseechingly until she hefted him in. She wanted a real boyfriend. Even if she had a great dog and three cats. And especially—this was a little hard to admit—but especially because Liam Murphy was back in town. Having a boyfriend would just put him to rest, that was all. Make her feel a little safer.