Trish was still talking. “They’re moving.” When she saw Maeve’s blank expression, she figured it was because Maeve had lost the thread of the conversation, not that she was thinking still about that night at the dam, Lorenzo falling onto the riverbank below, his body twisted and awkwardly posed, the life draining from him as she watched. “The Lorenzos.”
“Right,” Maeve said, taking a cookie from a tray and popping it into her mouth before thinking. Too much nutmeg. Always a sign of a bad baker. Less is more, especially with certain flavors, nutmeg being one of them. “Yes. I remember.” She needed out of this conversation, and fast.
“I’m cobbling stuff together,” Trish said, pleading her case. “I clean houses, something I swore that I would never do again. Almost killed me and I was young back when I first started. But people are cutting back. I need to add something to make ends meet.”
Maeve didn’t consider herself a soft touch; far from it. She was a single mother, for all intents and purposes, but one who had support, both financial and sometimes emotional, from her ex. She looked the woman over, taking stock, thinking about Taylor’s father, his reluctance to pony up for her tuition. Did she have to add a new person to her list, the one she kept in her head, of people who needed to be eradicated from the world? She tried not to let it show on her face when thoughts like that went through her mind. “Ten dollars an hour. I’ll need you to do deliveries, some counter work. If you’re interested in baking, I’ll train you on some items.” She picked up a napkin and, pretending to wipe her mouth, surreptitiously got most of the cookie out and wadded up the paper.
“Off the books?” Trish asked.
“Most definitely on,” Maeve said. The last thing she needed was a run-in with the IRS. She was dating a cop and had slept with her ex. She needed to keep her nose clean in at least one area of her life.
Trish was disappointed, something she unsuccessfully tried to hide. “Okay. When do I start?” she asked.
“Tomorrow. Seven?” Maeve said. “We’ll basically be a two-man operation, so the days are long, but I’m now closed on Mondays, so it’s Tuesday through Sunday.”
“That’s great, Maeve.” Trish leaned in and gave Maeve an awkward hug. “Thank you.”
Maeve watched her go, a trace of cigarette-smoke smell in her wake. That was the shortest job interview in history. She hoped she hadn’t made a mistake.
CHAPTER 3
The Fitzpatrick twins were being christened on Saturday, and Donna Fitzpatrick had been in no fewer than four times making sure that Maeve had gotten the pink icing for their cake the correct shade. Maeve pulled a piece of bakery paper from the stack underneath the counter and grabbed her piping bag, the one she had at the ready, knowing that Donna would come in exactly at twelve-twenty after dropping her older son off at preschool to see if the color had changed, even the slightest, since the day before.
Maeve squirted a little squiggle of icing onto the paper. “See? Same as we discussed when you placed the order. It’s a cross between salmon and Thulian.” The latter, Maeve had had to look up. What the hell is a Thulian? she remembered asking herself as she sat in bed with her laptop. She still wasn’t sure she knew, but she had figured out how to create the color, and Donna almost seemed to be pleased, despite the curl of her lip indicating that maybe it wasn’t exactly the shade it had been the day before or the one she wanted. “Yes? Good?” Maeve asked, Donna’s ability to speak seeming to have left her.
“Yes,” Donna said. “Just like that,” she said, pointing to the farthest end of the paper, where a little dollop had hit the air and already discolored.
Maeve’s sister, Evelyn, a few years older and developmentally challenged, was wiping down the café tables in the front of the store, quietly eavesdropping on the drama at the counter. Maeve prayed that she wouldn’t say anything to Donna Fitzpatrick—she had a tendency to be a “truth bomb,” as the girls called her—but she just kept wiping the same table over and over, humming to herself. Maeve recognized it as her favorite Kelly Clarkson song. Evelyn had a job in another part of the county but loved being with Maeve; Maeve brought her up every couple of weeks to spend the day in the store since that was where she herself spent most of her time. Evelyn, as it turned out, was helpful on busy days, doing the things that Maeve’s former employee and best friend, Jo, had never done with any regularity.
Maeve was relieved to hear the phone ring so she could excuse herself from Donna’s observation of all things fondant and pink. “The Comfort Zone. Can I help you?”
“Maeve? It’s Judy Wilkerson.”
The school nurse. This day just kept getting better and better. Behind Donna, the bell over the door trilled, and in walked a crowd of Maeve’s regulars, six guys from the railroad who had discovered that at $7.95, Maeve’s lunch special of a healthy slice of quiche accompanied by a small salad and a drink was one of the best deals in town. They clustered around the drink case, loud the way men in groups can be, particularly men who had just left the deafening machine shop at the station, where one had to scream to be heard.
“Judy, hi,” Maeve said. She walked into the kitchen with the phone to get some privacy. “Heather, right? She was complaining of a sore throat this morning when she left. But she also had a history test, so I didn’t make much of it.”
“No, not Heather,” the nurse said. “It’s Taylor Dvorak. Is Trish available? I tried her cell, but she’s not picking up.”
“No, she’s out on a delivery,” Maeve said, picking up a dirty knife and putting it in the sink, which was now overflowing with dishes.
“Okay, well, you can give permission.”
“For what?” Maeve asked.
“To send Taylor home. Her mother put you down as her emergency contact when she started working for you last week.”
News to Maeve. That would have been good information to have. “Oh. I wasn’t aware of that.”
“You and every other person in town who either has their own business or works from home. I have one gal who works from home who has no fewer than thirty kids that she’s emergency contact for. The last five—all of whom got the stomach flu at the same time—were kids she barely knew.” Judy let out a chuckle. “Anyway, I have Taylor here, and she said she has a nasty headache. She gets migraines and wants to go home before it gets any worse.”
Maeve walked back to the front of the store, where Donna Fitzpatrick was hitting the bell on the counter, impatiently awaiting Maeve’s input on the pink frosting. The railroad guys were also making noise, and Maeve could see the front door opening and closing, a steady stream of customers entering. “Do I need to come get her?”
After a quick conference with her patient, Judy returned to the call. “She’s walking distance from school, and she said she’s going to go straight home to bed. Just let me know if that’s okay, and let her mother know as well, if you don’t mind?”
“Are you sure? Do you think it’s okay to let her leave? Trish should be back shortly,” Maeve said.
Judy laughed. “She’s almost eighteen, Maeve. I could keep her here, but then she’d have to sleep in the office all day. She’s almost technically an adult. I think it’s okay.”
Maeve mulled that over, wondering what she should do, what someone else might do if the situation were reversed and it was Heather. Would she be comfortable letting Heather go home on her own? Last year, definitely not. This year? Probably. “I guess it’s okay,” Maeve said, going back into the front of the store. It was filled with both happy and unhappy customers, Donna Fitzpatrick leading the charge on the latter. “Yes, go ahead and send her home.”
“You’ll let Trish know?”
“I’ll let Trish know,” Maeve said before hanging up. She needed more help than just Trish could offer and was relieved when Jo came out of the kitchen, a cup of coffee in one hand, her toddler on her hip. Maeve pulled an apron out of the box beneath the counter and handed it to Jo. “You’re a sight for sore eyes. Can you give me fifteen minutes until we g
et done with the rush?”
Jo looked at the coffee in her hand, the squirming baby in her arms. “You’re kidding, right?” She readjusted the baby, hoisting him higher on her slim waist. “This was a social call.”
“Not kidding. Can you put him in the stroller and give me a hand? Fifteen minutes. I promise.” Before Jo could protest, Maeve pushed her gently through the swinging doors and started waiting on one hungry customer at a time. Jo joined her, and even with Donna Fitzpatrick quizzing Jo on the various shades of pink and testing her on salmon versus hot pink, they managed to empty the store in less than fifteen minutes with two minutes to spare.
The baby, despite the noise and raucous laughter of the railroad guys, had fallen asleep in his stroller, his thumb hanging limply between his lips. He was named after Maeve’s father, a secret she had to keep; Jo’s devoutly Jewish mother thought that he had been named after a deceased relative.
After they cleared the store of customers, Maeve and Jo took seats across from each other at one of the café tables where customers sat who wanted to eat in. Jo lifted the lid from her coffee cup and took a long sip. “Oh, hiya, Evelyn,” Jo said, noticing Maeve’s sister behind the quiche case. She was shorter than Maeve by a few inches, a tiny sprite of a woman.
“Hi, Jo,” Evelyn said. “I love your baby,” she said, as she did every time she saw Jo and her son.
“Thanks,” Jo said. “How are things at home?”
Maeve appreciated that Jo treated Evelyn like anyone else, not falling into the trap of speaking loudly and slowly to the woman. She was challenged, yes, but not deaf. Evelyn smiled, happy to be part of the conversation. “My friend Debbie is going to a wedding this weekend! She’s wearing a sparkly dress!”
“That’s fantastic!” Jo said, keeping up the conversation until it was clear that Evelyn was done talking about Debbie and her dress.
Maeve took in the dark circles under her friend’s eyes. “Baby not sleeping again?” she asked.
“It’s been a rough week,” Jo said. “Just when it seems like we’ll get a solid eight hours, he starts with the feeding-every-hour bullshit.” She clapped her hands over her mouth when Evelyn admonished her for cursing.
“You know what I say, right?” Maeve asked.
“Yes. Let him cry.” Jo had heard Maeve’s thoughts on getting a baby to sleep a thousand times, or so it seemed. “I just can’t do it.”
Maeve understood. She had been much more agreeable about feeding Rebecca all night, her first, than Heather, her second. Maybe that was why Heather was such a crab all the time. Too much crying and not enough breastfeeding as a baby. Maeve knew one thing: It was always the mother’s fault, no matter what happened, no matter that Cal had been the biggest “let her cry” proponent in the house. No one would ever know that because to the outside world, he was a doting father, along with being a cheating husband, two things that hadn’t changed.
Jo looked over at the baby. “He’s a good baby, though. Don’t get the wrong idea.”
“I know he is, Jo,” Maeve said. She hoped she could get a few minutes with Jo; between the baby taking up all of Jo’s time and the business taking up all of hers, they rarely had more than a few minutes to catch up.
Evelyn asked Maeve if she could have a muffin. “Sure, honey. Eat it in the kitchen, okay?” she said. She watched her sister go into the kitchen and then turned back to Jo. “So, what’s going on? Besides Jack, the sleepless wonder over there?”
Jo had dirt. Gossip. The straight skinny. Maeve could tell by the way her face brightened at the thought of spilling some juicy tidbit about someone in Farringville, most likely someone Maeve didn’t know, knew tangentially, or didn’t care about at all. Still, it gave Jo a thrill to be in possession of village intel, and Maeve was happy to hear it, if only to offer a diversion from the occasional drudgery of the bakery.
“Want to hear this one?” Jo asked, amping up the drama. “This is a good one. Better than you’ll hear from anyone else.”
Maeve hadn’t seen Jo this excited about a juicy, gossipy morsel in a long time. And who didn’t love a good piece of gossip? Maeve had to admit that she did and felt just the slightest pang of guilt over it, barely enough to notice. “Sure. What is it?” Maeve asked, looking at the clock over the counter. Trish had been gone for over an hour, and the delivery was only on the other side of town. Maeve wondered where she was and, again, if this precipitous hire had been a mistake, a few days into it.
“Cal.”
“Cal Callahan?” Maeve asked. The hair on the back of her neck prickled at the thought that the gossip she so eagerly awaited was about her and her ex.
“One and only. Your ex-husband. The father of your children. Cad-about-town Cal Callahan.”
“What about him?” Maeve asked. They had been careful. He’d had every reason to be at her house that night. He had walked in without hiding and left the same way. There was no way that anyone could know that they had had a tryst, if that’s even what you called sleeping with your ex-husband, the one who had run away from you only to come running back like a dog that finds his home after being lost for years.
“Affair.”
Maeve was nothing if not a good liar with a great poker face. Those two things had served her well. “Really? Any idea who it might be?”
Jo narrowed her eyes, studying Maeve’s face. “That’s it? That’s all you’ve got? I thought you’d be thrilled to hear this news, or at least disgusted. One or the other.”
Maeve shrugged. “He’s a big boy. He can do what he wants. And I don’t really care.” She shrugged again for good measure. Clearly she was losing her touch, not having the proper reaction to the situation.
“That’s it? ‘He’s a big boy’?” Jo narrowed her eyes. “What gives?”
“Nothing gives. I don’t care.”
“You don’t care.”
“Nope.”
“Not even a little schadenfreude? Some satisfaction in the fact that he’s cheating on Miss Gorgeous? The Brazilian knockout?”
Maeve started to sweat. She didn’t want to have this conversation. Jo needed to drop it.
It took her a few seconds, but Jo eventually figured it out, standing and knocking over her bar stool, the metal clanging when it hit the floor and jarring the baby awake. “J’accuse!” Jo said, pointing her finger at Maeve, a smile spreading across her face. “It’s you.” Jo leaned over and picked up the chair, replacing it gently in front of the table while glancing over at the baby, who was asleep again. “Well, I’ll be damned.”
“No,” Maeve said. “I will.” And I think I’m okay with that, she thought.
“You are the worst liar,” Jo said.
No, I’m not, Maeve thought. If you knew some of the things I’ve done and lied about, we wouldn’t be friends.
Through the small window in the door that separated the kitchen from the front of the store, Maeve saw Trish standing by the door, then turning quickly to talk to Evelyn when she saw her boss. Maeve stood. “Listen, it was one time. It was a mistake.” She held one finger up, letting Trish know she’d be right in. “I’d hardly call it an affair.”
“You don’t seem terribly guilty about this.”
“I’m not,” Maeve said, feeling the same way she had when it was over: satisfied. Content. A little reckless.
Happy? The score had been settled, one that had remained one-sided since Gabriela had upended her life all those years ago.
“We’re not done,” Jo said, following her into the kitchen.
Maeve turned. “Yes. We are.”
Trish was peeling off a wad of bills and counting them. “A hundred and sixty, right, Maeve?” she asked, putting the money in a stack beside a mixing bowl. “Artun says that the banana bread was dry last week.”
“Everyone’s a critic,” Jo said. “And a word to the wise, Trish: Try to soften the blow before you deliver news like that. This one here,” she said, jerking a thumb in Maeve’s direction, “will be up all night recalculatin
g the ingredients, and you won’t get a moment of peace until she gets it right.”
Trish nodded. “Got it.”
Maeve put the money in her apron pocket. “Trish, Judy Wilkerson from the high school called and said Taylor wasn’t feeling well. She went home.”
Trish pulled an apron on over her head. “Home?”
“Yes. Home. I wasn’t aware that I was your emergency contact, but Judy said that if I gave my permission, Taylor could go home. She wanted to get some rest because she had a migraine.” Maeve grabbed the mixing bowl from the counter and threw that in the sink along with the growing collection of pots and pans.
“She’s not there,” Trish said. “That’s why I’m a few minutes late. I stopped by the house to feed my dog. Taylor’s not there.”
Maeve looked at the clock. It had been over a half hour since Judy had called. Trish lived within a five-minute walk of the high school; a lot of kids in Farringville did, since the high school was in a central location. “Maybe she stopped to get lunch on the way?”
Trish punched some numbers into her phone. “Straight to voice mail,” she said. She tried another number. “There’s no one home, either.” She looked at Maeve, a look of panic on her face. “She’s not there. She’s not home.”
CHAPTER 4
In Farringville, everyone in the village knew that the lead detective and the bakery owner were dating. Both Maeve and Chris Larsson had tried to keep it under wraps, but now that it was out there, it was a bit of a relief. Still, they attempted to keep it strictly professional and aboveboard when they were in her place of business. Neither ever expected that his business would intersect with hers, though. Maeve sat at the high counter in the kitchen and relayed her conversation with Judy Wilkerson again.
“She said that Taylor had a migraine and would walk home.”
Chris wrote a few notes in his little notepad. “And that was what time?”
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