Page 282 of A Merry Mountain Christmas

“What?” she squawked out, dropping a bowl to the bottom of the sink. One of their new rescues, a hound dog, started howling. “Can it, Ruby,” she called out fondly.

“It’s just…you still have the same furniture in there you’ve had since you were a teenager. You have adouble bed, Maisie. Don’t you want an adult set?”

She refrained from saying the obvious—if she’d wanted it, she would have bought it—because then Mary would make some stuffy sort of comment along the lines ofsaving dogs never made anyone rich, Maisie, and you don’t have to pretend otherwise.And sure, no one would call her rich, but she wasn’t some destitute pauper in a Charles Dickens novel, wearing rags and eating gruel. She sent her sisters rent checks for God’s sake, to pay out their portions of the house, and she was never late. And okay, Mary had never once cashed one of the checks, but Molly needed the money and took it. As far as the shelter building went…they’d worked it out so it could be hers, fair and square. Molly and Mary had both gotten significantly larger portions of the life insurance money.

“How’d you even pick it out?” she asked. As a question, it was beside the point, but she was honestly curious. Mary’s house looked like the love child of a hotel room and a museum, and she so did not share the same aesthetic.

“Molly did,” Mary said, and if that wasn’t a knife in the back… “Maisie, we’re not telling you to get rid of the rest of the stuff, but there’s nothing wrong with having a nice, updated room for yourself.”

She wanted to argue. She’d opened her mouth to argue, but then she had a flash of that dish that had broken at Thanksgiving, and how good it had felt to hand it over to Adalia. Then another flash, of Jack’s feet hanging off the end of her bed. Maybe they were right. Maybe it was time.

“Okay,” she said.

“Okay?”

She could practically hear Mary’s excitement, so she shut it down fast. “Only a bedroom set. And thank you. I guess.”

“What are you going to do about getting it inside and getting the other furniture out?” Mary asked worriedly. “Do you think River and Finn would help?”

Yeah, she was pretty sure they would. But the last thing she wanted was for River to move a bed into her room. She might be feeling pretty good, pretty over things, but there was no point in pushing it.

“I’ll figure it out,” she said.

“Great!” Mary said. “Um. How are things going otherwise?”

Her voice sounded strained, though, and Maisie knew she was likely looking at the clock. Thinking about how she was really supposed to be working for another five minutes.

“It’s okay, you can go,” she said. “Love you.”

Mary released a sigh of relief. “Thanks. Love you too.”

As soon as Maisie signed off, she texted Finn:Help a bro out? Some surprise furniture arrived at my house, and while Einstein is good at many things, he is no pack mule. There’s a beer in it for you.

He responded almost immediately:Surprise furniture? I have so many questions. Unfortunately, no can do. In Charlotte for a meeting. River?

“Ughhhh,” she said out loud.

But it was almost five, and she wanted to see how Iris had fared with Beatrice today, so she gave Ruby some pets to stop her baying, then washed her hands and headed down to Beatrice’s office.

She knocked on the door, surprised when Iris was the one who said “come in.”

Both of them sat at their computers, Beatrice at her monitor, Iris pulled up to a laptop with an intent look on her face.

“Oh, is it time already?” Iris asked.

Which wasn’t what Maisie would say if someone asked her to do accounting, but hey, she was happy for people who enjoyed that sort of thing. They made her work possible.

“Yup,” Maisie said. “And knowing your brother, he’s probably been out in the lot for five minutes already.”

He’d gotten here early on Tuesday, at least. But he hadn’t come in. He’d texted Iris to come out to him. Maybe he was offended by what she’d said to him at the restaurant. The stuff about Iris, at least. But if he were so easily offended, he surely wasn’t a match for her, so she’d tried to shake off any hurt feelings.

“You got that right,” Iris said with a sigh, shutting the computer and stuffing it into her bag.

“How’d it go in here?”

“I wish we could get rid of Dustin and keep her, that’s how it went,” Beatrice said with a smile.

Iris beamed back at her, and goodness, she hadn’t known the girl had a look like that stuffed away.

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