Sugared

by Gina LaManna

  “Shh!” Nora hushed me. “I want to listen. It happens once every ten years or so. You know, like the phoenix bursting into flames.”

  “Do they really do that? I thought that was just in Harry Potter.”

  Nora closed her eyes. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”

  Sounded to me more like Carlos was choking a little bit, but I made some noises of agreement anyway. He was probably so rusty at this laughing business that was the only way he knew how to do it.

  “Oh, no!” Nora mumbled. “He’s coming, get away from—”

  She wasn’t able to complete her sentence before footsteps pounded down the Hall of Infamy, and the swinging door flew wide open. I just barely managed to pull Nora out of the way before we both ended up concussed and facedown in a plate of croissants.

  “I think—” Carlos was saying, but stopped abruptly at the sight of me and my grandmother standing in front of the stove.

  We probably looked as guilty as bank robbers with ink sprayed all over us, and neither of us did much to hide it.

  “Hello, dear,” Nora said. “Would you like some breakfast?”

  Carlos moved his gaze, slow as cement, down to the empty spoon Nora proffered him. Then he moved his line of sight over to me, noting the slight dusting of white that’d probably settled on the front of my clothes from the powdered sugar. He finally returned his gaze back to his wife.

  “I’m full,” he said, eyes returning to their normal shade of angry.

  For a second there, he’d almost looked amused. Light-hearted. It had felt weird.

  “Alessandra,” I said, looking past my grandfather. “Hi! How was your date?”

  She shifted uncomfortably and barely moved her lips. “Fine.”

  “Oh.” I shrunk back in horror; I should’ve been more careful. I’d just never assumed a date with Alessandra could be anything but exhilarating—after all, even Carlos loved her. “Didn’t mean to put you on the spot. Want some breakfast?”

  “Let’s give these girls some time to talk about the wedding,” Nora said, thankfully catching on and looping her arm around her husband’s. “You don’t want to hear about dresses and underwear and makeup, do you?”

  Carlos looked like his eyes had been burned with acid at the notion, and he allowed his wife to march him back down the hallway where he could do more manly things like not laugh ever again, and focus his intimidation efforts elsewhere.

  “So, you and Carlos, huh?” I said. “I’ve never seen him get on so well.”

  Alessandra set her purse on the table, then helped herself to a chocolate croissant. Lucky thing I hadn’t polished off the last one. She sat down at the picnic table, her arms folded before her. “Yeah, he’s nice.”

  “Nice?” I choked on my coffee. “Good one.”

  She seemed vacant, however, and now that both grandparents had gone, she slumped forward onto the table. A hand came up, and she rested her head against the butt of her palm. “I’m so stupid.”

  “Hey, what’s wrong?”

  She didn’t answer right away, and I sensed she needed some time. So, I stalled by refilling my cup of coffee. Then I gave my stomach a fruitless pep talk that it was full and tried to stop staring at the only chocolate croissant left, which was on Alessandra’s plate.

  “I’m so stupid,” she repeated. “And I’m sorry, but you’ll have to rearrange your seating chart again.”

  I cringed. “Date didn’t go well?”

  “Didn’t really go at all,” she said, looking back at me. “I met up at the bar where we’d agreed and waited. And waited. And waited.”

  My mouth opened in surprise. “How could anyone stand you up? I mean, look at you. Even Carlos can’t find a thing wrong with you—and he could get angry at a saint.”

  She shook her head. “I think I misinterpreted how serious we were.”

  “How long had it been?”

  She threw her head back in thought. “Well, I suppose sometime after I met you because I was single in Italy, so we’d have been coming up on a year here in September.”

  “Is he from Minnesota?”

  “He travels for his job. When he told me he’d be here for work this week, I figured it was as good an opportunity as any to move my flight a few days to see him. Last time I had to fly halfway around the world so we could get dinner.”

  “I’m sorry. Really. But I mean it when I say he’s an idiot; I’m not just making that up.”

  “Thanks.” She flashed me a hollow smile. “I really appreciate that.”

  “I know it doesn’t help, but—”

  “No plus one,” she said. “I’m sorry if I ruined your seating chart.”

  I waved a hand. “I never had a seating chart to begin with. I’m thinking it’ll be a free for all, and we’ll just pray nobody gets murdered.”

  “Amen.” She pushed her plate toward the center of the table and stood. “I think I’ll do some retail therapy today. I’ll catch up with you later.”

  “Do you need company?”

  “No, I think it’ll be best if I just spend some time thinking.”

  “Oh, okay. Is there anything I can do? Anything I can help with?”

  “I’m not going to eat this,” she said, sliding her plate toward me. “It’s yours.”

  “Was I that obvious?”

  She gave a noncommittal shrug that meant I’d probably stared at the thing like a hawk.

  “Thanks,” I said, my cheeks turning red.

  “I’m not very hungry. Sort of lost my appetite.”

  “Gee, I have no idea what that feels like,” I said honestly. “Are you sure you’ll be okay? I don’t think I’ve ever lost my appetite. That sounds serious.”

  “Yeah. I’m here to watch you get married first and foremost, anyway,” she said. “The guy was just extra. Doesn’t matter.”

  “Sure it does,” I began, but Alessandra had already begun moving toward the door. I waved instead, feeling helpless as she issued a flicker of a smile, and then disappeared, the door whisking shut behind her.

  I convinced myself that I was doing my part to help by ensuring this croissant didn’t go to waste, so I topped off my cup of coffee and set to work polishing the plate clean.

  When I finished, I guiltily glanced up and pretended not to look for more. It wasn’t unusual for me to be hungry, but this was just ridiculous. I could safely say I’d discovered that black holes were real things, and they lived in my stomach.

  Then, in my noble quest for more croissants, I spotted something. Something that needed my attention.

  “Alessandra!” I called, grasping her pretty blue purse that she’d left on the table. I stood, then hightailed it down the hallway when she didn’t respond. I flew past Carlos, then Nora, and out the front door. I just barely caught the rear of her taillights as she pulled out of the estate. “Alessandra, wait!”

  It was no use; she was gone. But I didn’t give up hope, especially seeing as I didn’t have much to do today. I definitely didn’t want to work on the seating charts, so I was desperate for a distraction. It just so happened that a distraction arrived then and there in the form of Meg and her clunky new car.

  “What’re you doing standing out here waving your purse around?” she called through her window. “You trying to get mugged?”

  “Alessandra’s off for a day of retail therapy, and she forgot her purse.”

  “Ah, hop in. We’ll rescue her.”

  “I’m not sure where she’s headed.”

  “Call her,” she said. “In the meantime, we’ll chase her down. It’ll be more fun that way, and she won’t have to backtrack. We all win.”

  I hopped in the car as Meg took off, and we made it through the gates in record time. Apparently, the guards were more scared of Meg than she was of them, and we caught sight of Alessandra’s borrowed car just as it turned right at the stoplight ahead.

  “Carlos let her borrow a car?” Meg said. “I thought he didn’t let anyone touch his Bentleys.”

 
“He doesn’t,” I said, trying my best not to sound grumpy. “But apparently they’re BFF’s.”

  “Nah, they ain’t,” Meg said. “I’m Carlos’s BFF. Never forget that.”

  “Right,” I said. “Turn right, I mean. Onto the highway. Looks like she’s headed to the city.”

  “This works out well,” Meg said. “I had business over here to attend to, and I have a surprise for you.”

  “Oh, that’s okay. I’m off surprises for now.”

  “I know, but this is an exception. And, you’re welcome in advance. Just hold onto your shorts, girly. It’s best if Alessandra’s there for the surprise, too.”

  ***

  As I’d expected, Alessandra had been headed toward St. Paul. As I hadn’t expected, she had turned her phone off and was ignoring my calls.

  “She still won’t answer.” I called again, but no luck. “Do you think she’s ignoring us?”

  “I’ll try and catch up to her and see,” Meg said, weaving around a semi-truck on Highway 94. “We can wave, and maybe that’ll guilt her into picking up the phone.”

  “No, wait,” I said, resting a hand on Meg’s arm and praying she eased up on the gas before we went over a rock and sailed over the median. “Think about it for a minute. She said she’s going shopping, but then she forgets her purse. We call to remind her, but she’s sending us straight through to voicemail.”

  “I’m thinking,” Meg said. “I can feel it working. I have a thought just trying to get out.”

  “What if she was lying?”

  “About which part?”

  “I don’t think she ever intended to go shopping.”

  “Then where’s she going?”

  I shrugged. “To confront this guy? Maybe she knows where he’s staying.”

  “That’s a bad idea,” Meg warned. “I can think of a million ways that could go wrong, and only nineteen ways it could go right.”

  “Nineteen? Why nineteen?”

  “Because that’s all I can think of at the moment. I told you, I can feel my brain working.” She held up a finger like she had a light bulb moment. “Whoops! There comes another. Twenty. I have twenty ways this can go right.”

  “But still a million that it can go wrong,” I repeated. “Let’s not catch up to her. Just hang back a little bit and let’s see where she’s headed.”

  “You want to spy on your husband’s sister? Should I start calling Days of our Lives to report this storyline?”

  “No, I just want to make sure she’s safe,” I said. “What if this guy is dangerous, and she confronts him, and things go wrong?”

  “You’re just nosy.”

  “That, too,” I admitted. Then I held up her purse. “But we do have this, so we should drop it off while we’re here.”

  “You’re crazy. But she’s exiting now—do you want me to follow her?”

  I made a snap judgement. “Yes.”

  We jerked across several lanes of traffic, keeping well enough behind Alessandra that I couldn’t imagine she’d spotted us, despite Meg’s racecar driver skills. We weaved through the city, through downtown, until Alessandra’s path spit us out into an older area of the city. If I wasn’t mistaken, she’d taken us on a roundabout way here, as if she didn’t want to be followed.

  Curious. Quite curious.

  We trailed a few blocks behind, losing her every now and again, then finding her once we sped back up. We wound between Grand and Summit, two of the most gorgeous, most historical streets in the city.

  The area was quiet this time of day, late morning to early afternoon, with only the bustling of early lunchtime goers or mothers out for walks with strollers. A few people in yoga gear hopped between the quaint, kitschy stores holding cappuccinos and fancy little gift bags.

  Alessandra turned to a quieter alley which made it difficult to follow her without appearing obvious. So, we stopped and waited for her to pass, meanwhile admiring colorful doors and cute little gardens. Almost as if a little bit of the Cotswolds had been transported into the city.

  Once she’d cleared the alley, we pressed on and caught up to her on the other side. She pulled the Bentley into another alleyway and, before we could stop, a car approached behind us and honked. It honked again and again until we had no choice but to plow ahead after Alessandra or risk an ugly road rage incident.

  “What do you want me to do?” Meg asked. “I can’t disguise this car; she’ll recognize us. It would be awkward being trapped in the same alley as her.”

  “Yeah, slow down. Park in here.”

  A little offshoot of a driveway provided a sense of privacy for our vehicle as Meg pulled off to the side. We sat still in the car, whispering, as if she could possibly hear us from the other end of the street.

  “Where is she going?” Meg asked. “It’s a dead end up there.”

  I shook my head. “No clue.”

  “Should we go after her?”

  “I’ve been calling her this whole time; no answer. Her phone is not in the purse, I checked. I bet she doesn’t want to be bothered.”

  “So, remind me why we’re bothering her?”

  I held up her purse.

  “Oh, right,” Meg said with an eyeroll. “Because you’re nosy.”

  “Hold on a second, where did she go?”

  “Nowhere. I just said it’s a dead end...” Meg stopped talking as she turned to stare out the windshield. Then, she broke her Lent resolution, and swore. “How’d she do that?”

  “She disappeared!”

  “What in the world?!”

  Meg pulled out from our hiding spot and pushed on down the alley. Just as it’d looked from afar, there were no outlets. A house sat smack dab at the end of the road with no possible route through. The only way out of this alley was to reverse and go back the way we came.

  Which is what we did, after sitting there stumped for at least twenty minutes.

  “Are you sure she didn’t drive past us?” Meg asked.

  “Positive. I was watching the whole time. It’s like she vanished.”

  “Do you believe in ghosts?”

  “I don’t know, why?”

  “Just curious,” Meg said.

  I blinked, still trying to puzzle my way through everything.

  “I’ve got it,” Meg said. “She’s a witch. Magic, I tell you!”

  “No, sorry.”

  “But—”

  “There’s got to be a reasonable explanation.”

  “Right, and do you have one?”

  “Well, no, but—”

  “At least my answer is logical,” Meg huffed. “I’ll bet she attended Hogwarts. We don’t know all that much about her, after all.”

  I looked behind me, completely mystified. I hated to admit that Meg’s answer was the most logical one I could come up with at the moment. There’s no way Alessandra could’ve driven through the house at the end of the block, and the rest of the alleyway was lined with fences and big, ugly cement garages. It was a cage.

  Yet somehow, she’d escaped.

  “Well, I don’t think she ever intended to go shopping,” I told Meg. “But where in the world was she headed?”

  My phone rang, sparing Meg some continued strange magical explanation for Alessandra’s extraordinarily advanced evasion maneuvers. My heart pounded hard for a moment, wondering if it was Alessandra calling to say she’d made us miles ago and had just been playing a game with us.

  “Huh, unmarked number,” I said quietly. “Hello?”

  “Miss Luzzi?” a clipped, hoity-toity sounding voice said on the other end.

  “That’s me.”

  “I’m just calling to confirm your cake tasting for today.”

  “Cake tasting?”

  “I’m with Grand Designs bakery—you’ve a wedding coming up this weekend, yes?”

  “Yes, but we’ve already had a tasting with you and picked the cakes. Like, ten of them.”

  “I have a comprehensive tasting menu for you today. It’s been paid in full
and scheduled already.”

  “Paid in full?” I shook my head and glanced at Meg. “I’m sorry, you must have me confused with someone else.”

  “Are you Lacey Luzzi of St. Paul, Minnesota, marrying Anthony on this coming Saturday?”

  “Well, gee, it’s hard to argue with that.”

  “We’re expecting you at two o’clock this afternoon”

  “But—”

  “Will we see you then?”

  I put a hand to my forehead, massaging away the confusion. “I’m so confused.”

  “Just show up here at 2 p.m., ma’am. I assure you everything else has been prepared. We have some exquisite samples for you today.”

  “Oh, uh...can I bring a friend?”

  “Yes, of course. The table is set for two.”

  “And if I don’t come, what will you do with all the cake you’ve prepared?”

  “Well, I suppose we’ll have to dispose of it. We make all of our cakes fresh.”

  I sucked in a sharp breath. Everyone knew it was a sin to dispose of perfectly good cake. “We’re on our way.”

  “Very well, Miss Luzzi. We look forward to seeing you.”

  “Feel like explaining?” Meg asked.

  “We have a cake tasting at 2 p.m. at the fanciest, most expensive bakery in all of the Cities.”

  “Did you set this up?”

  “No, it just appeared out of the blue. I’m still working through it. I don’t know what’s happening.”

  “Okay, Lace,” Meg said, lowering her gaze to mine. “But you’ve gotta admit I’m right.”

  “About?”

  “A cake tasting appears ready and paid for out of the blue?” She chortled for a moment, shaking her head with amusement. “And you don’t believe in magic.”

  Chapter 8

  We didn’t have far to go for our next appointment.

  Located on Grand Avenue, the cake shop fit its name well. The location itself was tucked among a stretch of homes that’d been converted to cute little shops. We pulled into a parking lot across the street, my stomach growling as we made our way toward the building which looked like a gingerbread house in itself.

  White trim lined the exterior while pretty pink shutters gave the building a sense of fun. A pop of pastel yellow on the door marked the very familiar entrance.