The Pleasure Chest
"LOOK!" Tanya Taylor blew dust from an old canvas, then sneezed.
"Bless you," called May. The proprietress of Finders Keepers clambered toward Tanya. "What did you unearth, honey?"
"A painting." Propping it on a player piano, beside an oil lamp and brass candlesticks, Tanya stepped back to admire it. "It's of a duel!" she exclaimed, a delighted shiver zipping down her spine.
In a shadowy, grassy clearing, golden, orange and red leaves burst like suns over stately trees. The air looked strange, somehow. "Haunted," she said as May sidled closer. "Mystical." As if a spell had been cast on a fairy glen.
May tugged down a blouse calculated to hide her girth, and as she surveyed the work, she removed a pin from a russet chignon, then stabbed it in again. "If memory serves me, I found it leaning against a trash bin outside a brown-stone on Bank Street." She thought a moment. "Yes...it was about forty years ago, around the time I moved to Sag Harbor to open the shop."
"Why would someone throw away a picture that's so..." Tanya searched for a word, as she took in the gilded chipped frame, "...captivating." Everything about it drew her ... read full excerpt from: The Pleasure Chest ebook
