Free Wherever Grace Is Needed by Elizabeth Bass Page B

tensing up every time she heard a noise outside. She kept thinking it would be those mysterious people Jordan was expecting. But the first time she heard a car door shut and stood up to peek through the curtains, it was just that lady from next door, bringing Professor Oliver back. He had cut off the leg of one of his pairs of khakis at midthigh, just past where his cast began.
    When the doorbell rang, Lily jumped up, forgetting she wasn’t going to answer the door. She reached it the same time as Dominic, who was running full tilt from the dining room. The two came inches away from colliding like cops in an old silent movie. As Lily opened the door, she expected to find a teenager on the other side of the threshold, but instead there was a scruffy guy who had to be at least sixty. He had on baggy jeans and wore his scraggly gray hair in a ponytail. Behind him stood a younger guy—younger, as in forty-five or so.
    “I’m here about the dresser,” the scraggly one announced.
    “The what? ” Dominic exclaimed.
    Maybe dresser was code for “I’m here to sell drugs.” She debated calling her dad. Or the police.
    Then she heard Jordan call out from the staircase, “Hey! The stuff’s up here.” She gestured with a roll of her shoulder and headed back up, with the scruffy men trailing.
    As Lily and Dominic exchanged confused glances, a paneled van pulled into their drive. Another middle-aged guy popped out and came loping up the stairs. “This is the sale, right?” he asked as he shouldered past them.
    “Sale?” Lily repeated.
    Dominic ran upstairs and came racing down again a few minutes later as more people trickled in. This time there were women too. An invasion had begun.
    “She’s selling everything!” Dominic announced excitedly.
    “What do you mean, everything?”
    “I mean everything. All the furniture, and clothes, and books and CDs. She told me she put an ad on Craigslist.”
    “Is she selling Nina’s stuff?”
    Dominic nodded.
    “She can’t do that!”
    Lily ran to the staircase but couldn’t get up it because the first two guys were now carrying down Nina and Jordan’s old dresser. Quivering with impatience, she flattened herself against the wall. When they were finally out of her way, she took the stairs two at a time, nearly knocking over someone on his way down with a boxful of loot.
    She stopped short at Nina and Jordan’s door. The room was filled with people dragging open drawers and holding up articles for inspection. Stuff was strewn everywhere—all of Nina’s clothes and books and purses. Everything. The vultures were picking through it. They were looking at Jordan’s things too, but Lily didn’t care about that.
    “You’re selling everything!” she yelled at Jordan.
    Jordan tossed her an annoyed look. “Brilliant detective work there, Lils.”
    “But you can’t!”
    “But I am.”
    A lady picked up Nina’s tennis racket, and Lily felt a pain shoot through her heart. She turned on her heel and raced back downstairs to the phone. When her father answered on the second ring, she didn’t waste time with niceties.
    “Dad, you have to come home. Now. ”
    Tension crackled over the line—that palpable fear disaster had struck again. “What’s wrong?”
    “Jordan’s selling everything in her and Nina’s room!”
    There was a slight pause before her dad answered, but when he did, it was with exasperation. Aimed at her. “For Pete’s sake, Lily. You scared me half to death.”
    “They’re taking away all the furniture, and Nina’s tennis racket!” she said, trying to convey the extreme urgency of the situation.
    “Well, just see they don’t start hauling away things from the rest of the house.”
    “But—”
    “I need you to keep your eyes open, Lily. Make sure all the other doors are shut and watch to make sure no one makes off with the family silver. Can you do that?”
    “But Dad— ”
    “I have to go now,” he said, cutting her off. “I’m supposed to