I shake my head. “But it’s been years. What took them so long?”
“I don’t know.” Lizzy rubs her thumb over the sewing calluses on the tips of her fingers. “But it’s a lot of money.”
“How much?” I ask, doing my best to remain calm. I don’t have much in savings at the moment, but I’m fully booked with campers for the rest of the summer. My bank account will look a lot healthier come August.
“One hundred thousand dollars,” Lizzy says, shattering my calm like a chandelier crashing into the middle of the dinner table, a thing that’s ruined a meal more than once in our crumbling home.
“One hundred thousand dollars?” I screech.
She winces. “One hundred thousand dollars,” she confirms, cutting me off with a hand in the air before I can freak out anymore. “But I have a plan. If I land the contract for the spring collection, I’ll get twenty thousand up front, and another twenty thousand when the patterns go into production.”
“That’s still sixty-thousand dollars left to pay, Lizzy,” I say, chewing on my bottom lip. “And there’s no guarantee you’ll get the gig. You’re the one who said they want to keep you on Panty Patrol.”
“I’m done with Panty Patrol,” she announces, steel in her voice I haven’t heard before. “I’m going to design the spring collection, and that forty thousand, combined with our savings and the end-of-summer money from the campers, will get us over halfway there.”
“And the rest of the way?”
“I’ll ask my new husband for a small loan,” she says softly. “A baby loan won’t be a big deal.”
My heart shrivels. “No, Lizzy. I won’t let you do this. You’re not selling yourself to Prince Shit-gibbon to bail us out. If we lose the estate, we lose the estate.”
“This land has been in our family for almost a thousand years,” Lizzy says, her pained blue eyes meeting mine. “And how will you support everyone without the land? The campers need somewhere to camp.”
“I’ll figure something out. And Zan is doing better now that her divorce is final, so she might be able to help.”
“Allegedly doing better,” Lizzy says with an arch of her brow that makes it clear Zan hasn’t been any more forthcoming with Lizzy about her work in Zurich than she’s been with me.
Our younger sibling has always been fiercely private, so much so that we didn’t know she’d been married until she announced she was getting a divorce last year and wouldn’t be able to send money home until her ex stopped fighting her for control of their assets.
Zan is a mystery wrapped in a secretive burrito, but she’s a good person, and she loves Lizzy as much as I do.
“She’ll help,” I insist. “And if they have to, Mama and Papa can look for work.”
Lizzy breaks into breathy laughter that makes my jaw clench even though I know she’s right. My parents are more likely to sprout wings and fly than suddenly become the kind of people who are gainfully employed in their sixties. They have no marketable skills, and our mother hasn’t been out of her pajamas in nearly a decade. She’s taken my father’s penchant for dressing up to the opposite extreme. Yes, they’re silk pajamas, and she looks very glamorous drifting up and down the mountain in her seafoam pant and kimono set, but still…
“Then I’ll get a second job waiting tables or tending bar in town,” I say. “Tourism is up and—”
“No, Beebee,” Lizzy says, using the nickname from our baby years, when “Sabrina” was too hard for her to say. The old endearment makes the back of my nose burn. “I’m going to marry Andrew. This is my path. I realized that a long time ago, and I’m okay with it. I truly am. But I need your help to go into this marriage with my head held high. I can’t ask my brand-new husband, who I barely know, for a hundred-thousand-dollar loan just days after the wedding. It would be mortifying and start off the rest of my life on the wrong foot.”
“Lizzy, please, there has to be another way,” I say, but she pushes on.
“A forty-thousand-dollar loan isn’t nearly as bad. And if the spring catalog gig leads to a promotion within the company, I’ll earn enough to pay back the loan in six or seven months.” She takes my hand, pressing it between her much cooler palms. “I just need a little help from my best friend.”
“You’ll always be my best friend,” I say, my voice thick with emotion. “I love you so much, Lizzy. I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry,” she says, before adding in a teasing voice, “be cooperative. You can do this, Bree. You’re great with people. Heck, you might even have fun at all the engagement stuff. You’re a blast at parties, and you always know what to say. Not like me with my anxiety and stupid stutter.”