Page 33 of Chasing Forever
I circle around to find a middle-aged woman with purple-rimmed glasses eyeing every surface. I straighten, my protective instincts on alert as Lottie stops when the woman picks up one of her mugs off a shelf.
“This is it!”
“Excuse me?” Lottie steps closer, and I stay right on her heels. She stops, and my chest bumps into her back. She looks over her shoulder at me. “She’s not going to murder me.”
“It’s always the ones you least expect,” I whisper.
“We’re in Willowbrook.”
“You think crime doesn’t happen here? What do you think I do all day?”
She spins around, but I keep my eye on the woman who is now punching out a message on her phone screen.
“From what I hear, you eat doughnuts, drink coffee, and let other people sit in your squad car. Shouldn’t that be illegal by the way?”
“Do you want to sit in my squad car, Lottie?”
“I’m not five.” She scowls.
“I can turn on the lights for you.”
“Your lights don’t do it for me.”
“Siren?”
“I don’t want to be in your squad car.”
“Well, you sounded a little jealous.” I shrug.
“Oh. My. God. Stop saying I’m jealous.”
She whips around, and the lady is now on a FaceTime call, holding up the mug. “I found them! They have the same daisy!”
Lottie glances at me and mouths, “What the hell?”
The mugs aren’t even for sale. Lottie puts them up as decorations to hold up books or to put flowers in. She always sticks a plush bunny in one during Easter and a turkey on Thanksgiving.
“Can I help you?” Lottie approaches the woman, but she’s completely enthralled, talking to someone on the phone as though she’s found a lost Van Gogh at the flea market.
“I’ll take a dozen. Do you have more?” Her dark hair flips as she scours the shelves. “Oh, I like this one.” She takes the honey sticks out of the green one and picks it up.
Lottie gently takes the mugs from her. “I’m sorry, these aren’t for sale.”
The woman’s lips turn down. “Why not?” Her tone’s got the same whine Wren uses when I tell her I won’t lock her in a jail cell so she can see what it’s like.
“We don’t sell them.”
“How did you know about them?” I interrupt.
Lottie gives me one of her pissed-off expressions.
Clearly, Lottie doesn’t care how the woman found them, because she’s going through the store and picking them up as if they’re her babies and this woman wants to steal them.
“My friend found two at a secondhand store in Lincoln. We just love them. It’s been like a scavenger hunt. There’s a group of us who have been trying to figure out where they came from. They’re so charming.”
Her eyes widen at something behind me. I assume she’s watching Lottie collect every piece of her pottery off the shelves.
“Why don’t you sell them? They’re so beautiful. You should share them.” The woman walks by me to Lottie. “I’ve looked at so many shops for ones like these. It was just by chance I saw this friend-of-a-friend’s social media post, and it was in the background. She was talking about your goat cheese or something.” She waves her hand as if the woman was nuts for focusing on cheese with this art sitting right there.
