Kernel of Truth (3 page)

“Thanks.” I knew I should be more excited. I'd been toying with the recipes for a couple of weeks. I'd been planning on running them by Coco next week if they finally turned out how I wanted. Somehow I didn't have it in me to get enthusiastic now. “I'm not sure what the point is. I'm not sure how I'm going to keep going forward without Coco.”

Annie sat up straight in her chair. “What is that supposed to mean?”

I gestured around the kitchen. “This. I don't know how I'm going to make this all work without her.”

“You're already making it work. The only reason the shop isn't packed with customers right now is because you didn't open,” Annie said.

I shook my head. “You know there's more to it than that. She was my guiding light. She was the one who was helping me see how to rebuild my life into something worthwhile.”

Annie rolled her eyes. “As if your life wasn't already successful. You have your own business. You have family
and friends who love you. What more do you need to feel successful?”

I had a lot of potential answers to that one, but my phone beeped again. I'd forgotten all about the text earlier. Now there were two, both from the same number.

The first one read:
How are you today, gorgeous?

The second one:
U ok?

And he would keep texting until I answered. “Sorry,” I said to Annie as I texted back that I was fine, but busy.

“Antoine?” Annie asked, one eyebrow raised.

I nodded.

“What does he say?” She leaned forward and licked her lips.

I set the phone on the table and shoved it across so she could read it for herself. She shook her head, making the knot of hair come loose and fall around her shoulders, then she laughed. “Do you know how many women in America would get their crème brûlées in a bunch to get a text like that from Antoine Belanger?”

I did know. I knew it all too well. My ex was the hot chef of the moment all across America, and by hot I don't just mean popular. I also knew exactly what it meant to be with Antoine. The Belanger Bunnies, as his legions of fans were known, had clearly never had his Hasenpfeffer. They'd have another think coming if they had.

If I were being brutally honest with myself (which is a terrible thing to do but something I was prone to in the way moths are prone to flying into porch lights on summer evenings), I'd have to admit it still got my crème brûlée in a bunch when Antoine said things like that to me. He was handsome as all get-out. Eyes as blue as the Mediterranean Sea. Hair the honey-kissed blond of waving wheat fields, with the slightest kiss of gray at the temples. Broad shoulders. Strong chin. And those
hands. Those strong square fingers that could make a pastry so light it practically floated. He had charisma so powerful it sucked all the air out of the room. I'd seen women actually faint when he walked into a room. Actually literally faint. Then he had that French accent. His words flowed around you, soft and warm and sweet as the first bite of a freshly baked brioche. I didn't leave him because I didn't find him attractive anymore. When I heard his voice or remembered the feel of his hands on my skin, sometimes I wondered why I did leave him.

Annie finished off the chocolate popcorn ball with one last bite and brushed off her hands. “Do you have plans for tonight? I don't think you should be alone.”

“I'm supposed to have dinner at my sister's. I'm going to bring those for dessert.” I nodded my head toward the popcorn balls.

“Good.” She stood up and dusted off her hands over the sink. “I'm going to go open Blooms. Call me if you need anything, okay?”

I nodded.

If Coco was the one who got me to move back to Grand Lake, Annie was one of the main reasons I stayed. We'd gotten to be friends. It was nice to have someone to hang out with besides my sister, nephew, and brother-in-law. Annie was ten years older than me and ten years farther down the path of getting divorced and starting her own business, and possibly ten years lonelier than I was, which could be pretty darn lonely. Unfortunately, I was also all too well aware of how lonely someone could be even when she was in a relationship.

I was lucky to have Annie around. Our shops kept us busy. Our friendship kept us
sane.

I eventually opened
POPS around noon despite my misgivings. Serving popcorn to ghouls was better than staring at the walls. Besides, Friday afternoons were my busiest time and I had dozens of special orders to get ready. Thank goodness Susanna would be in by three thirty. I was in no shape to smile and make nice with the public as they came by to pick up their variety packs for movie nights and parties and whatever other fun things they had planned that Coco would never be able to attend again.

Susanna Villanueva was seventeen and a bit of a bombshell. Luckily, she was too much of a jock to know it. Tall and willowy with jet-black hair as straight as a board, she didn't just turn heads walking down the street. She caused traffic accidents. She also worked damn hard at everything she did. She'd started with me this summer and I honestly didn't know how I would have gotten POPS off the ground without her help. She was playing in a fall lacrosse league, so I'd lost her
help for some afternoons but still had her every Friday. It would be worse in spring when her season got serious. For now, however, I was grateful to have her help whenever I could get it.

She breezed into the shop at half past three, her usual bubbly demeanor significantly dampened. “I heard,” she said as I looked up, trying to figure out how to break the news of Coco's death to her.

“How?”

She shrugged. “The usual way. Someone at school saw it on the Internet and posted it on Facebook. Are you okay?”

So that was the usual way now. I shook my head. I wasn't okay. I didn't see any point in lying about it. It was going to be a long time before I was okay.

“Miss Jessica must be devastated.” Susanna grabbed an apron and wrapped it around her waist.

A vision of Jessica's white face and red-rimmed eyes swam before me and the sound of her screams echoed in my ears. “She is. They had to take her to the doctor to get something to calm her down.”

Susanna smoothed her hair back into a ponytail. “I can see that. She's kind of jumpy in the first place. You should have seen her last night at the Make Your Own Sundae Bar at the church.”

“I'm betting we'll all be a little jumpy until Dan figures out who did this.” I headed toward the kitchen. “I'm going to start packaging up the special orders. Can you cover the front?”

“You got it, Ms. Rebecca.” Susanna nodded and turned to face the front of the shop like a soldier facing a firing squad.

I stayed in the back, focusing on presentation and
packaging, and the afternoon flew by. I closed up at about five thirty. I sent Susanna home and took the trash out back to the Dumpsters like I did every night. Like I had the night before. Like I'd probably do the next night. I stood for a second staring at the backs of the shops. Blooms, POPS, Coco's Cocoas, and then Betty's Boutique and Lake Erie Collectables next to that. I shuddered thinking about some stranger lurking back here, deciding which store to break into. What had made Coco's the target of whoever had bashed in that window and then bashed in Coco's sweet little white-haired head? What incredibly craptastic piece of luck had led the rat bastard to pick the chocolate shop over all the other empty shops to break into? Annie and I had both been gone. Betty probably had been, too, and the collectables shop closed earlier than all of us. It didn't make any sense. None. At least none from where I stood out by the Dumpster. There was nothing to distinguish Coco's back porch from mine or Annie's.

In fact, why break into any of the shops on our block at all? If I were a thief, I'd have chosen the diner two blocks down. They did way more of a cash business than any of the little shops on this block. As Dan often pointed out, though, most criminals commit crimes because they're too stupid to figure out how to earn a living doing something legal. Very few of them are Lex Luthor.

I shook myself out of it, and Sprocket and I walked home a few minutes later. Sometimes I still couldn't believe I was walking these same tree-lined sidewalks again. I felt like I knew every inch of their cracked and humped-up surfaces. When I'd left here after high school graduation, I would have as soon taken a sledgehammer to them than move back and walk to work over them every day. Then I thought of Grand
Lake as a prison I was breaking out of. Now it seemed like a safe harbor. I was as surprised as anyone else by it.

Then again, life is full of surprises, few of them good. Haley and I had learned that when the police officers showed up at our door to tell us our parents had been in an accident. I'd been sixteen. Haley had been eighteen. I don't think I've enjoyed a surprise since. I doubt Haley has either.

I waved to Mr. and Mrs. Winthrop as I walked past their house. They were sitting on their front porch sipping lemonade. That was the kind of town Grand Lake was. Sprocket stopped to sniff the edge of their property. I tugged on Sprocket's leash to keep him from relieving himself on their white picket fence while they watched. Mr. Winthrop lumbered down off the porch, his legs as bandy as if he'd been a cowpoke instead of a dock master at the marina for thirty-five years. He had to be in his seventies now. There were about two hairs on his head and they were both coming out of his ears. His pants were belted low under his substantial paunch, which strained at his plaid shirt.

“I heard about Coco,” he said, leaning down to give Sprocket a pat. “Terrible shame.”

I nodded. I decided to only award Mr. Winthrop with the Understatement of the Week Award in my head. I'd learned that Mr. Winthrop didn't get sarcasm when I was a teenager and got caught trying to steal a motorboat at the marina for a joyride. The man had zero sense of humor. Zero.

“Any word on who's responsible?” he asked.

This was also the kind of town Grand Lake was. The kind of town that ran on gossip.

I shook my head. Coco's death might end up being fodder for a million late-night conversations at Winnie's Tavern and Bob's Diner, but the information swapped wasn't going to come from me.

“I heard it looked like someone might have broken in,” Mr. Winthrop said, pulling out the last syllable as if it might get me to jump into the conversation.

I couldn't stand being mute anymore. “I don't know what happened, Mr. Winthrop. I just know that someone dear to me is gone too soon. Again.” I pulled Sprocket's leash and we walked away.

I heard him say, “Those Anderson girls are mighty touchy,” to his wife as he lumbered back up his porch.

Whatever. “I'd rather be touchy than be a big fat loudmouth who can't get a joke,” I said under my breath to Sprocket. Sprocket stopped, cocked his head and gave me a look. “Okay, fine,” I said. “He's not fat.” Sprocket snorted and we walked on.

We turned right on Tulip Lane and followed it until we hit the river, then turned left on Marina Road and continued on until we got to the Grand Lake Lighthouse. Sunset was hours away yet, but the sun was lowering and the light turned golden as it hit the water. The lighthouse glowed white against the still blue sky. Olive Hicks carried a package into the lighthouse. It must be time for the meeting of the historical preservation society. Sprocket sat, leaning against my leg, his fur golden in the raking light. I took in a deep lungful of air, briny and sharp. I'm not sure how long we would have stood there staring if a big black SUV hadn't roared up Marina Road, making both Sprocket and me jump.

“Whoever that was was in a hurry,” I observed as we turned and started walking toward home.

Sprocket harrumphed in response.

I lived in the granny flat over the garage of the house I grew up in. If this sounded pathetic, there was a reason. It was pathetic. When I left Antoine and moved back to Grand Lake, I hadn't wanted to take any of Antoine's money. I
hadn't wanted anything of Antoine's at all. Not even a wooden spoon. I still didn't. He occasionally sent me checks anyway, which I then ripped up into little tiny pieces and sent back to him. At any rate, I didn't exactly have a lot of cash to spend and what I did have needed to go into POPS. Haley had been using the rooms above the garage for storage. She offered them to me rent-free. She felt a little guilty about living in the two-story Craftsman bungalow we'd grown up in for all these years. She shouldn't have. I couldn't wait to get out of it when I left Grand Lake at eighteen and I really didn't want to move back into it now. Somehow the granny flat seemed different enough from moving back into the room I had as a child to only be a small plate of pathetic and not an entire entrée of loserdom. Not that I would have been able to have that room even if I had wanted it.

My room was now Evan's room. The very Evan who was driving his Big Wheel in a wild figure-eight pattern around a toy fire truck and a stack of blocks in the driveway as Sprocket and I walked up. He paused for a second to give a tip of the batting helmet he was wearing to us, then took off again as fast as he could, Batman cape sailing behind him. He was also wearing galoshes. He was three and about the most glorious three-year-old on the planet. I was his aunt and I was completely unbiased on the topic.

I cut across the lawn and sat down on the front steps to the wide front porch next to Haley, who was shucking peas into a bowl balanced precariously on the very tips of her knees, pushed there by her very pregnant belly. I leaned against her and she slipped an arm around me. “You okay, Bec?”

“Not so much, Leelee. Not so much.” Sprocket sat down on the lower step and laid his head in my lap. It was the first time all day that I felt completely warm.

“Dan told me,” she said into my hair as she kissed the top of my head.

That was good. At least I didn't have to explain anything to her. I didn't trust myself to say some of the words out loud without crying, and I was afraid if I started crying, I wouldn't be able to stop.

“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked.

I straightened up and stretched. “Not yet.” Maybe not ever. Tears pricked at the back of my eyes as I thought about talking about Coco being gone and the hole it would leave in my life.

“I'm here if you change your mind.” Haley smiled at me. She is two years older than me and we spent our whole lives being “the girls” until our parents died. We were like a unit. Then Mom and Dad had the bad luck of having a tire blow out on Interstate 80 when they were next to a semi. In an instant, we were no longer “the girls.” Haley became the grown-up and I became one of the more rebellious teenagers Grand Lake had ever seen.

Sitting next to each other now, the significance of that two-year age difference had pretty much disappeared. We were both tall and thin like our mom. We had both inherited our father's dirty-blond curly hair. Our chins were a little too sharp. Our shoulders were a little too narrow. Otherwise, we weren't bad. Not movie star material, but not bad, and almost interchangeable except for that whole pregnancy thing.

I wiped my eyes on my sleeve and asked, “When's dinner?”

Haley glanced at her watch. “About seven. I'm going to feed my little superhero there first and see if I can get him to fall asleep while the grown-ups eat.”

“I don't mind eating with Evan; you know that.” Three-year-olds were not the world's best dining companions, and Evan
was no exception. I also happened to know that he hated peas, so there was likely to be a Battle Royale if he was eating what we were eating tonight. Still, he was cute as a bug and while I liked the Friday-night dinner tradition my sister had started when I moved back to town, it would be more than okay with me if it wasn't formal.

“I know you don't mind, but Dan called a few minutes ago and said he was bringing Garrett. I don't think Garrett's recovered from the green bean episode yet.” Haley giggled.

Evan hated green beans more than peas and the last time Garrett was over, Evan had tried so hard to spit out the somewhat mushy green bean my sister insisted he try that he managed somehow to suck it up and blow it out through his nose. I think we would all always remember it, but Garrett had turned greener than the bean in question and had to go lie down.

“He's not really used to kids,” I observed. Garrett was Dan's best friend from college. He'd moved to Grand Lake a few months before I had. He'd gotten tired of big-city life and wanted a change, according to him. Dan had talked about Grand Lake as if it were Nirvana on Lake Erie when they were both at school. Garrett didn't really have any family of his own, which left him free to live wherever he chose, but also left him without nieces or nephews to spew spit-up down his back or blow snot onto his shirt or any of the other things that Evan had done to toughen me up.

Haley snorted. “Neither are you, but you handled it. I think you handled it better than Dan.”

“Well, I didn't think a phone call to the urgent care nurse was necessary, although it did put all our minds to rest. Besides, Evan's my nephew. I'm programmed to think all his bodily fluids are cute.”

“Hold on to that thought.” She handed me the bowl of
peas and stood up using the banister of the porch to lever herself up. “You can give him a bath.”

I glanced at my watch. “I'd love to, but I need to run to the store first. Can I do it after that?”

“Why do you need to go to the store?” she asked a little more sharply than seemed necessary.

“I'm out of half-and-half for my coffee in the morning.” There was a possibility that we were living too close to each other if Haley had to know why I was going to the store.

Haley rubbed her lower back. “We have half-and-half. Take ours.”

“Then what will you and Dan put in your coffee?” Something was not right here.

“Milk. Or nothing. I don't need the extra calories anyway. I'm huge as it is,” Haley said.

Something strange was definitely going on. “You're pregnant, not fat, and I don't want your used half-and-half. I want my own.”

She pressed her lips together. “Fine. I'll ask Dan to pick some up for you on the way home.”