Stay With Me by Sharla Lovelace

tomorrow,” he said, like he was commenting on the weather.

    I tilted my head and blinked, giving him a look. “What?”

    “What’s Antique Nation?” Lily asked, picking up one of my keys and using it to stir the others. “Sounds like a tribe.”

    “Why?” I asked, ignoring Lily’s question. “Why would they come here? They filming us picking or something?”

    “No, no,” Dad said, waving that off. “Although that would be interesting, wouldn’t it? Maybe we could ask.”

    “Dad?” I asked.

    “She’s just coming to talk,” he said, making all the little hairs on my body stand up and wave.

    Lily put the key down then and looked back and forth between us. “Who’s coming to talk? What’s Antique Nation?”

    “Our own portal to hell,” I said.

    Dad scoffed. “Oh, it is not.”

    “Yes, it is,” I said. “It’s a sellout and an insult to what we do.”

    “What we do is sell junk, Savi,” he said. “So do they. We’re all in the same business.” He held out his hands. “And they have the means to take a big chunk of work off our hands.”

    “I don’t want any chunks taken away,” I said. “I like my chunks.”

    “Somebody please dumb it down,” Lily said, hands on her hips.

    I rubbed my temples, trying to remember just a few minutes before when I thought I was stressed. “Antique Nation does those auctions on TV,” I said.

    “And they want to auction some of this?” Lily said. “Wouldn’t that be a good thing?”

    “For them,” I said. “Whatever they auction belongs to them.”

    “So they’d buy it first,” Lily said.

    I met her eyes. “No, they’d buy us.”

    She flinched. “Buy—buy the barn? The business?” She looked at Dad with concern. “Dad, why would you want to do that?”

    I folded my hands. “Yes, Dad, do tell.”

    I was kind of impressed that Lily was that interested, but that was probably a little unfair of me. She had helped as a kid—we hadn’t had much choice in the matter. We were raised to participate, even if that was just helping to haul things from the side of the road, spraying down muddy merchandise, or sweeping the floor. It was a family business. Once we grew up, however, Lily invested more of her interest in her husband’s business. Which was fine. She just never loved it like I did.

    For me, the smell of old, the dirt, the rust, the feel of something that had a use in another time, or the rush of finding a hidden treasure—it was the best job in the world. I couldn’t imagine doing anything else.

    Dad sighed as if we were small children tugging on his sleeve. “Y’all make this out to be a much bigger deal than it would be,” he said.

    “They buy businesses like ours and auction off the merchandise,” I said. “That’s kind of a big deal.”

    “They also will keep the owners on as pickers if they want, or to manage the local presence if we didn’t want completely out,” he said.

    “Local presence?” Lily said. “Who the heck’s been feeding you lines like that?”

    “I’ll bet it’s whoever’s coming to talk,” I said.

    “You want to be a picker in your own company?” Lily asked.

    “Oh, geez,” Dad muttered, raking fingers through his hair.

    “And I don’t want out at all!” I said, grabbing a key. I needed the cool metal to fill me with something. Something calming. I made a note on a Post-it and Dad leaned over my desk.

    “What are you writing?” he asked.

    “A note to buy double ice cream for tonight,” I said. “One for when I get home. I’m gonna need it.”

    “Assuming you’ll go home,” Lily said with a smirk.

    I blew out a breath and shook my head at her. “Don’t stress me out.”

    “Home from where?” Dad asked.

    “I have a date,” I said.

    “I thought that was this morning,” he said, his brow wrinkling.

    “It was,” I said. “You know it was; you talked to him. Don’t play. I have another one tonight.”

    “Same guy?” he