Page 30 of Justice & Liberty

Fuck me sideways, I didn’t even remember where I’d put the damn papers. Kitchen table? I looked around behind the counter there in the shop and didn’t find them. I was pretty sure I’d taken them with me when I had left the store, so...“I’m working on it, Mr. Hayes. I’ll get them back to you as soon as I possibly can.”

He heaved a great, put-upon sigh, but seemed to resign himself to the fact that I wasn’t going to rush over to his office to hand the paperwork over right that moment. “Well when you drop them off, the office takes checks. We don’t accept credit cards or cash.”

My first thought was that was ridiculous, because it wasn’t nineteen-fifty, no matter what some people wished. No one in actual business today refused to take credit cards. They’d go out of business.

Second was...wait, I owed this man money? I’d never hired him for anything, and never intended to. Why would I owe him anything at all?

“Understood,” was all I said, before hanging up without even telling him to have a nice day.

How very un-Midwestern of me.

Maybe somehow, Mom hadn’t had any remaining money, and I needed to pay him to handle the will. Was that a thing? It seemed somehow wrong, the notion that I could owe anything based on actions not my own, justbecause I was the “beneficiary” of an estate that was in the red.

Except that clearly, Mom’s was not. There was the house and the shop, and Mom had never been one to live beyond her means, so I couldn’t imagine a universe where she’d died in debt.

And yet, he’d implied as much, hadn’t he?

I should have called him back, demanded answers. Or at least hunted down where I had put the paperwork he’d left for me to go through.

Instead, I was once again inundated with customers, and didn’t have time to do anything but help people.

By the time five rolled around and I could flip off the open sign, I’d sold so much tea that I was worried about running out of things the next day, and the lawyer was nowhere near my top priority.

First was starting an order of the ingredients to make more of the most popular teas, because I wasn’t out of stock, or even close to it, but if things kept going the way they had, I would be out of everything in under a week.

So I spent an hour closing things down, running end of day reports, and then making new teas in place of ones that had run out during the course of the day. I kept with the pattern I’d used on the first two, making a batch, using Mom’s...spells...and then cutting the stuff with as much non-magical tea on top.

Fortunately, a few of the popular ones didn’t even require magic—just dried peaches and ginger, or lavender and bergamot oil.

After that, sprawled out in a chair in the office—so no one would see me inside and knock to be let in even though the shop was clearly closed, as three people had tried to do so far—I pulled out my phone and dialed Gabby.

“Hey J,” she answered on the second ring. “I...reallyhope you’re not calling me hoping for good news on the job front.”

I winced, even though I honestly hadn’t been sure why I was calling her. Just because I wanted to talk to her, I thought. “That bad, huh?”

“You’ve seen how things are, I’m sure. There are actually people out there—people in power—arguing that education is a terrible thing, and leaving everyone ignorant and gullible is the way to go.” She let out a sigh, and a chair squeaked in the background. “Not that I wouldn’t love to work with you, but we’re having to justify our existence as a department right now. And it doesn’t help that too damn many of my colleagues are taking it as some sophist bullshit challenge and acting like if only we’re clever enough, we’ll convince people of facts they’re denying.”

Ouch. Well, I couldn’t say I wasn’t well familiar with the type, having gone through an entire degree in philosophy myself. “Have you reminded them that the Greeks executed Socrates?”

She burst into laughter at that, so mission accomplished. “I miss you, girl. We should have dinner.”

“Tonight? I just finished up in the shop for the day. I’ll bring you some tea, and we can meet halfway between us, at that great Indian place by the mall.” I had to go to the store anyway, so I could do both with one trip into the city that way.

“That sounds amazing, yes please. I need naan like I need oxygen. Meet you there around six-thirty?”

“Done,” I agreed. “I even promise not to bother you about a job for the rest of the night. I think...I think maybe I was trying to decide whether I need to hire someone to work in the shop, like, right away, because it turns out Mom’s place is hopping.”

We chatted some more as I cleaned up the office, and thenhung up as I headed out, stopping only a moment to package up some of Mom’s relaxation tea, since it sounded like Gabby could use it.

I would put a “now hiring” sign in the window the next day, I decided. I didn’t know about hiring anyone in South Liberty, but well, my choices were limited. I wasn’t going to be able to handle that many more days like today on my own, which was both good and bad at once. I could make a living this way for sure, but also...well, it was exhausting.

I didn’t want to live my whole life on willow bark tea, no matter how well it worked.

16

I hadto run back to the house, if for no other reason than to drop the cats off, since as much as I was willing to take them anywhere, they weren’t welcome in restaurants.

“But you’ll bring me rice pudding,” Bee was demanding as we headed home and I told them my plans. “I want the rice pudding.”

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