LITMIR.BIZ

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a good cup of tea,” he informed her.

      She lifted her eyebrows at that, glancing around the expansive foyer with its golden marble, red mahogany, sweeping staircase and...

      “Oh, my. Will you look at that.” The ceiling had been painted in sunny shades of blue and yellow and white, a vision of billowing clouds and wafting feathers. “As if ducks have just collided out of sight.”

      “Ducks colliding?” Leland asked, looking up. “That’s what you see?”

      “Well, ducks are white,” she pointed out lamely. “Some ducks.” She had a comical picture of two clumsy ducks crashing together just out of sight and feathers fluttering down.

      The doctor shook his head.

      Chester cleared his throat. “May I take your, um, wraps, miss?”

      “Miss. Oooh. I like it. Miss and young lady all in one day.” She folded her shawls tight. “No, thank you. I think I’ll hang on to these. In case I have to make a quick getaway.”

      Chester’s eyebrows leaped all the way up to his nonexistent hairline. Sighing, the doctor clamped a hand around her elbow and tugged her toward a wide doorway.

      “We’ll show ourselves in, Chester. Give my love to Hilda.”

      The balding head nodded. Leland towed her into a large room filled with antiques and flowers. Eva glanced around. “Wow. It’s like a museum in here.”

      “I’m afraid that includes the occupants, as well,” said an amused, cultured voice.

      Eva turned her smile on the speaker, a silver-haired woman peering around the wing of a high-backed, gold-striped chair. The doctor rushed to make the introductions.

      “Ladies and gentleman, allow me to present Eva Belle Russell. Eva, Miss Hypatia Kay Chatam.”

      “Silk and pearls,” Eva said, nodding at the dignified lady with the silver chignon and sensible pumps.

      “Miss Magnolia Faye Chatam,” Leland went on.

      “Cardigans and penny loafers,” Eva announced, grinning at the wiry woman, her steel gray braid hanging over her shoulder.

      “And this is their sister, Odelia May, or more properly, Mrs. Kent Monroe.”

      Eva laughed aloud, taking in the flamboyant woman’s purple turban, fluffy white curls winging out beneath it, the carved parrots swinging from her earlobes and the colorful caftan that clashed so violently with the gold brocade of the love seat where she sat.

      “Kindred spirit!” Eva exclaimed, whipping off her shawls and pointing at Odelia, who clapped and stood, holding out both arms to show off the caftan, which had been painted to look like a parrot’s chest and wings. “Turn around! Turn around!” Eva urged. Odelia did so, and sure enough, there was the parrot’s tail painted onto the silk. “I love it.”

      Odelia and her husband laughed approvingly. He lumbered to his feet, showing off his pale yellow shirt, turquoise vest and dark purple suit. Beside her Brooks Leland pinched his temples between the thumb and pinky of one hand before saying, “And this, of course, is Mr. Kent Monroe.”

      “Do me. Describe me,” urged Kent. “You’re very perspicacious. What do you see?”

      Eva swept him with her gaze. Dared she say it? Of course she did. “An Easter egg in a suit.”

      He and his wife gasped at each other then collapsed with laughter. “Very good! I almost wore a robin’s egg blue shirt with this, but as the darling wife pointed out, robins are not parrots.”

      “And Easter eggs are?” Eva asked, puzzled.

      “No, but they’re more colorful,” the missus said.

      “So they are,” Eva agreed, winking. “Clever.”

      “My word, there are two of them now,” observed Penny Loafers dryly from the armchair at the end of the low, oblong table before the love seat.

      “Would you like a cup of tea, Miss Russell?” asked Silk-and-Pearls.

      “Sure, why not?” she replied, taking a seat in one of a pair of armless chairs placed at the opposite end of the tea table from...Magnolia?

      Silk-and-Pearls reached for the heavy silver teapot. “Brooks, dear?”

      “Please,” he said, taking the chair beside Eva, “and thank you, Hypatia. I seem to have missed my dinner.”

      “Hypatia,” Eva mused, “wasn’t she a Greek mathematician?”

      “Why, yes,” the current Hypatia said, passing Eva a cup of tea, “as well as a philosopher and astronomer, though very few people seem to know it. How is it that you know about her?”

      “Couldn’t tell you,” Eva admitted. “I remember some things and forget others.” She helped herself to several spoonfuls of sugar and looked to the wiry one. “Magnolia is self-explanatory, but I find that names often portend personality and outcomes, so what’s your story?”

      “Oh, Magnolia grows things,” the flamboyant one supplied. “Flowers especially.”

      “Really?” She waved a spoon at the large, colorful arrangement standing on a small table in the center of the room. “Did you do that?”

      Magnolia inclined her head. “I do all the flowers around here.”

      “Excellent balance and composition. I’m sort of an artist, I know these things.”

      “Why, thank you.”

      Eva sipped her tea, made a face and looked to the third sister. “Odelia means wealthy.”

      “It does,” said Odelia, beaming wide enough to set the parrots swinging from her earlobes.

      “And are you? Wealthy, I mean.”

      Odelia glanced around helplessly for a moment, but then she blinked and said, “I think we’re all wealthy, really.”

      Eva wagged a finger. “But you’re the real deal, aren’t you? You’re all quite comfortable, I imagine, but you...” She lifted an eyebrow at Kent. “You married deep pockets there, didn’t you? Eh? Mr. Money Bags?”

      Hypatia and her sister gaped at the Easter egg, who flushed a deep red, cleared his throat and said, “I’ve made no secret of the fact that I’ve done quite well. I paid for the wedding, the remodeling of the upstairs, the pool...” He patted Odelia’s hand, where an enormous diamond rested. “Whatever my darling desires.”

      Odelia giggled like a girl.

      “Awww,” Eva crooned, “that’s so sweet. At your ages people are usually sick of the sight of each other.”

      Beside her, Dr. Leland choked on a swallow of his own tea. “Tell them,” he croaked.

      “What?”

      “Tell them or I will.”

      “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

      “Eva has a medical condition,” Leland said, “and if she’s going to stay here you need to know about it.”

      Hypatia handed cups to her sisters. “We assumed that was the case.”

      “Duh,” muttered Eva. “The doctor calls—someone’s sick.” Brooks sent her a stern, almost sullen glare. “Just saying.”

      “One of the symptoms of her condition seems to be a lack of an internal monitor.”

      “That’s a nasty thing to say!” Eva squawked. “It’s not like I blurt inappropriate words or things that don’t make sense. I’m just honest. What’s wrong with that?”

      “Not all honesty is socially acceptable,” he snapped. “If you were thinking normally, you would recognize that fact.”

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