Page 11 of Murder Will Out
She was pulled out of her sugar trance by a little chuffing sounda few feet away. She opened her eyes to see a sturdy, loaf-shaped corgi, its brown-and-white coat splashed with patches of black and gray, sitting on the ground next to her. His pointed ears stood at full attention as he gazed up at her longingly; one eye was blue and the other brown, but both intently followed her fork from plate to mouth and back to the plate again, as though willing the utensil to tilt just enough on its journey to let the morsel slip off.
“Look,” Willow said firmly. “You are super cute and undeniably appealing. But this is tres leches cake. This is Diana Reyes’s grandmother’s tres leches cake. I am told it is legendary—and having tasted it now, I can verify it deserves every bit of its status.”
One drop of drool fell from the dog’s white muzzle down to the grass. Either he lacked the grace to appear embarrassed at his social faux pas or he was concentrating too hard on the movement of the fork; the heterochromatic eyes followed her fork up and down, and Willow could have sworn the dog was deliberately sucking his cheeks in to give an impression of underfed emaciation.
As one-sided as the conversation was, Willow realized this was probably the most satisfying company she had found since arriving on the island. That was worth something, wasn’t it?
At some point, a good-size dollop of cake, graced by a neat slice of strawberry, fell off the plate. It did not make it to the ground; the dog caught it halfway down.
They both pretended it was an accident.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Willow drew out her dessert for as long as she could. She hoped she could drop off her empty plate and sneak away, but Diana caught her eye the moment she slipped back into the restaurant, pointedly gesturing in the direction of the kitchen with her chin.
Willow gritted her teeth; once again, she was caught, and there was no escape. As she entered the kitchen, the women helping with the food passed around knowing looks. The word had gone around:Diana says Rina and the girl from Sue’s past need to have it out.Within seconds, each found a tray for the restaurant or a bag of trash that needed carrying out.
Rina was silently arranging delicate cookies on a tray: a row of glazed butter cookies with rainbow sprinkles around the edge, next to another row of chocolate thumbprints with raspberry jam, for contrast.
The silence grew long, then longer; finally, Willow broke it. “I never knew,” she said, all in a rush. “She disappeared from my life fifteen years ago, and I never heard a single word from her again. My parents told me she didn’t want to be part of our lives—mylife—anymore. I thought it was my fault, something I’d done, but I never knew why, and now…”
Her voice trailed off. Rina calmly continued arranging the tray as if she had not spoken, a row of bumpy golden pignoli cookies inside the chocolate row.
Finally, Willow said, “Anyway… I wanted to thank you. For being there for her. And to say how sorry I am for your loss.”
More silence. Willow awkwardly turned for the door.
Rina spoke at last. “And you believed them? After all the years, all the love she gave you—you believed that load of crap?”
“I was thirteen. I thought everyone hated me,” Willow answered. “Besides—what else was I supposed to think? She was just… gone.”
Rina slammed the tray down; the cookies jostled, their carefully laid concentric circles threatening to dissolve into a wild jumble. “That’s crap too. You ignored her, the one person in her whole intolerant past life she thought she could count on. You never answered her calls, you blocked her emails, you returned her letters unopened, you gave up on her.”
Willow shook her head, still confused. “That’s what Mac said—but I never got any letters. I never heard a single thing from her.”
“Oh,please!” Rina exclaimed, banging her fist on the counter for emphasis; the cookies shifted again, a few of them breaking in half. “She told me all of it. Every week for months, until your parents threatened legal action for harassment if she didn’t stop. And even then, every birthday, every Christmas, shestillwrote. And every letter returned unopened—every single one. Sheneverforgot you, and she never stopped trying! Howdareyou blame one bit of this on her!”
Willow felt lightheaded as the carefully ordered pattern of her memories moved from order to chaos, shifting and crumbling like the cookies on the tray.
Sue had written? To her?
She groped back through the past to the surly self-absorbed teenager she had been. Surely her parents wouldn’t have—
In a painful flash, Willow realized they would. And they had.I was a naive idiot, she realized.It never occurred to me to even suspect.
Willow was starting to shake. “Rina—” she said, but all the words were gone. There was nothing to say, not a single sound or syllable in the universe that would undo the past.
Rina was done listening. She picked up the tray of cookies with a jerk, not caring that her careful rows were shifting dangerously or that she had not finished filling it; she needed to get away from the face of the girl whose big, wounded eyes threatened to suck the wind out of her righteous rage.
“It’s too late. It’s over. You lost your chance. She’s dead.She is dead.” And in a single fluid movement, Rina swept through the swinging door and out of the kitchen.
Until, with a thud, she tripped over Geralt Talbot’s cane, which he was waving around from where he stood behind the door. She fell, banging her left knee hard, sending cookies and crumbs skittering across the floor.
All sound in the room ceased. From her undignified position on the floor, knee throbbing and elbows planted in cookie fragments, Rina saw eyes opened in shock, frozen faces and open mouths.
When the silence broke, it was to the sound of Geralt Talbot cackling gleefully at her misfortune.
No, Rina realized, her rage still hadplentyof wind behind it.
