“Why won’t you tell me where you’re going this afternoon?” Mom insisted on shadowing me around the café. That’s what I got for offering to help her out, to make up for cutting out early on Sunday.
Though as far as I was concerned, I’d more than made up for that by fielding questions for an hour at her house during Book Club.
When it doubt, deflect with tales of baked goods. “Did I tell you I made excellent lemon bars over the weekend? I think they’d be a great addition to the spring menu.” I was already mentally calculating the number of lemons we’d need while carrying a pan of dirty mugs and plates to the kitchen.
Even the promise of tart-tangy-sweet bars kissed with powdered sugar did nothing to dissuade her, as she followed me straight to the sink. “Emma!”
“Mom!” I mimicked with a grin. “It’s not that important. I just need to leave around one-fifteen. That’s all. I have an appointment.”
“Oh, no.” She fell back, one hand over her chest. “You’re sick. That’s what you don’t want to tell me. There something wrong with you, and you’re trying to spare me.”
“Mom. I’m fine. There is absolutely nothing wrong with me, I’m in perfect health” Then, something even worse than being hounded over meeting with Robbie occurred to me. “Please, do not say a word about my being sick to anybody in the café. Promise?”
By the time I got home, there would be a candlelit prayer vigil taking place on the sidewalk outside the pizza shop. Maybe Mr. Angelo would see a nice boost in business from it, but he’d be the only one benefitting.
“So long as you promise you’re being honest with me about being healthy,” she sniffed.
The woman was mad as a hatter, but I loved her. I gave her a quick hug and a kiss on the cheek. “I promise. You have the wrong idea entirely.”
She followed me back out into the dining area, cornering me behind the counter. “So? Why won’t you share? What could possibly be so important that you couldn’t share it with your mother?”
My nerves were thin enough after a long night spent going over everything I wanted to ask my old friend, then fretting that he wouldn’t want to speak to me at all. This was not the time for my mother to be dancing the cha-cha on the last nerve I had left.
“Mom, no offense, but you have a tendency to blow things out of proportion,” I whispered as gently as I could.
She gasped like I had just insulted her double chocolate chip cookies. And I would never, ever, do such a terrible thing because they were iconic.
“Me? Blow things out of proportion?”
“I find it ironic that you’re practically swooning over this. Don’t you see the irony? Look at it from my perspective.” I chuckled to myself, turning my attention to rearranging the baked goods in the case so they look a little more attractive. The early morning rush had already come and gone, and now all that was left was cleaning up after the madness and settling in for the usual, steadily busy day ahead.
“I don’t think this is funny. You always want to laugh at me, or make me out to be silly or frivolous, but I truly worry about you.”
“Mom, there’s nothing to worry about!”
“That’s easy for you to say. After you were at an event last week where a murder took place.”
I looked across the café to one of the pastel tables currently occupied by a young mother and her two children. The kids hadn’t heard, but their mother had. And she did not look thrilled.
“Mom,” I whispered, nodding toward the trio.
Mom grimaced embarrassment, shrugging, mouthing her apologies.
Then she turned back to me, whispering now. “I don’t see how you can expect me to pretend everything’s all right when something terrible could’ve happened to you that night. You were in a room with a murderer.”
“I know. But nothing did happen to me, and nothing is going to.”
“It’s going to bother me terribly if you don’t at least hint at what you’re doing today. Wouldn’t you feel terrible if something happened while you weren’t here? What if I had an accident? What if the last thing you never did was upset me?”
“Oh, please. Can we not get into this right now? I’m not sure I can stand the guilt.” One of the timers went off in the kitchen, and I had never been so glad to have an excuse to go back there.
She followed me anyway, even if there were guests currently seated out in the dining room. “Since when do we keep secrets from each other?”
I paused in the act of removing two pans of blueberry muffins from the oven just long enough to roll my eyes. “That’s the problem, Mom. I tell you things, and you end up telling half the town. You should know better by now.”
“I do not!”
“No? For instance, you told Frankie Pierce that Deke was my gentleman friend. That’s not true. In fact, we’re not even friends in the platonic sense. We’re colleagues, nothing more. Now, everybody thinks I moved on from Landon too quickly, and I’m dating somebody else. Do you know how uncomfortable that makes me? I would think that after watching me being grilled on Tuesday, you’d have a sense of what you put me through. I know you don’t mean to do it, but it happens.”
Her eyelids fluttered. “Does this mean you won’t tell me anything anymore? Is that it?”
I gave her another hug. “Of course not. But you have to forgive me if certain things need to be kept private. I need to have some semblance of my own private life. It’s not easy, growing up in a town where everybody knows you.”
The bell jingled over the front door, and Mom made a hasty exit to greet a new customer. I was glad for a momentary reprieve, the chance to take a breath and remind myself that healthy boundaries were a good thing. I needed more of them in my life.
Starting with keeping certain parts of my life to myself. Clearly, reminding my mother not to spread my business around did nothing. No matter what I told her, she insisted on doing her own thing.
It didn’t help that the first person who came to mind was Joe Sullivan. Hadn’t he accused me of something like that on Tuesday? With that little crack he made about my being inebriated, and that maybe I would listen better under the influence since I didn’t when I was sober.
Now, I sounded just like him. It was almost enough to make me stress-eat a blueberry muffin. Good thing they were piping hot and would probably burn my mouth.
“Emma! There’s something out here for you.”
I poked my head out the swinging door to find Trixie Graham chatting with my mother. She was somewhere between the ages of thirty-five and sixty. I never could quite pin her down. She and my mother were thick as thieves, and along with my Auntie Nell were troublemakers, to put it mildly.
She waved a small, white envelope in the air, removing a big pair of sunglasses which she thought made her look like Jackie Onassis. They did not. “Yours is the pink Bug outside, isn’t it?”
I nodded, holding my hand out. “What, was that under the wiper?”
With her free hand, she tapped her forefinger to her nose. “I thought that was your car. I was afraid perhaps someone had dinged it on the way past and left their information, but I didn’t see any damage.” Yes, and knowing Trixie, she would’ve gone over it with a magnifying glass. She had a nose for news, a reputation she enjoyed as one of the senior reporters for the Times.
At least the envelope was sealed, telling me she hadn’t tampered with it. Not that I believed her to have anything but the best intentions, but she was the biggest snoop in town. Always trying to get the scoop. No doubt she had already grilled my mother outside my presence.
I turned my back, opening the envelope and unfolding the slip of paper inside. What did I expect to find? I hadn’t considered it.
Which was why I was completely unprepared for what was inside, written in block letters.
WATCH YOUR BACK
I took a glance over my shoulder, where my mom and Trixie were, of course, pretending not to be deathly curious over what I’d just opened. At least they weren’t reading along with me. “I have to make a phone call.”
Who was I going to call? I could call Dad, but he would just tell me this was one more reason to stay out of the investigation. Was it even related to the investigation, though? I didn’t know. Why else would I have to watch my back?
And why would anybody in Cape Hope care?
I had to tell somebody about this, though. I’d burst if I had to keep it to myself. Raina was on a flight to Barbados and wouldn’t be back until Monday.
“Don’t make me regret this, Deke,” I whispered as I waited for him to answer, huddled in the back corner of the kitchen. I had to position myself as far as I could from the swinging door and hope neither mom nor Trixie was listening from the alley. It was just the sort of thing they would do.
“Hello? Deke’s phone.”
Why did the sound of a woman’s voice startle me so badly? Because I’d expected it to be Deke, of course. That was all. Nothing more than that. “Um. Hi. Sorry. I was calling for Deke. Obviously. Sorry.” Great, and now whoever she was would think I was deeply disturbed and unable to express myself.
“He’s in the shower at the moment. Can I tell him who’s calling and have him call you back?”
Gosh darn it, why did my stomach clench and my chest tighten and my eyes water? What, did I expect him to be pining over me? Living a chaste life in hopes of winning my heart one day? Of course not! I didn’t even like him like that.
“Uh, sure. It’s Emma Harmon. It’s—I mean, I can tell him why I called when he calls back. But it’s not an emergency or anything.”
“Okay. I’ll tell him you called, Emma. Have a good one!” Whoever she was, she had perkiness down pat. I had a hard time seeing Deke with a perky girl, since he was about the furthest from perky of anybody I’d ever met.
But opposites did attract. Look at Dad and Holly, who were on opposite ends of the spectrum in every way and deeply in love.
I didn’t know if I was more stricken over the note or Miss Perky as I hugged myself in the corner of the kitchen, eyeing the blueberry muffins and rationalizing the eating of just one. One wouldn’t make a difference.
Someday, I’d have to learn healthy ways to deal with stress which didn’t involve baked goods. I wouldn’t always have a high metabolism.
No, a muffin wouldn’t help. I looked at the note again, wondering who could’ve left it. And exactly what I was supposed to be watching out for.