Once Upon a Lie (12 page)

That’s not who I am, she thought as she imagined the next time they would meet.

Or maybe it was.

CHAPTER 15

The woman kept looking from Maeve to the cake on the counter and back at Maeve.

“This is a Batman cake,” the woman said, pointing at the giant cake, enough to feed a hundred people, a perfect replica of the Caped Crusader down to the fondant codpiece.

Maeve nodded. “Right. A Batman cake.”

The woman inhaled, exhaled, and then let it fly. “I ordered a fucking baptism cake.”

Behind Maeve, Jo let out a little snort and then, under her breath, a contrite “Sorry.”

Maeve looked down at the Batman cake, the one that she had spent two laborious days creating from a photograph. She herself had taken the order, and when she looked at her handwriting, the description so clear, she almost started to cry. She looked back at the woman, who looked on the verge of tears herself. “When is your event?”

“In two hours.”

Maeve grabbed an order pad and a pen. “Give me your address. I’ll have a cake to you in two hours that will serve a hundred people. It will be a rectangular, standard sheet. Are you okay with that?”

The stress of the party for a hundred, coupled with her child’s christening, pushed the woman over the edge and she started to bawl. “I wanted a cake in the shape of a goddamned cross!”

“I’ll never be able to make that in two hours,” Maeve admitted, feeling sick. “But I’ll create a cross to put on top.”

The woman looked at Maeve and then at Jo, who was nodding vigorously as if letting the woman know what she should do. Finally, the woman let out a long breath and looked up at the ceiling. “Fine.”

Maeve grabbed a few napkins from the holder on the counter and pushed them into the woman’s hands. “It’s on me. And I’m terribly sorry.” She turned to Jo, standing silently next to the coffeemaker. “Jo, get all of the necessary information while I start baking.”

Maeve was halfway through mixing the batter for a full sheet when Jo walked into the kitchen. “‘A fucking baptism cake’?” she asked, bursting into hysterical laughter. “Isn’t it kind of not really Christian to curse the sacrament your kid is about to receive?” She was doubled over, laughing now that the woman had left the store and a new cake was taking shape. “I know I’m a Jew, but seriously?” She adopted a Yiddish accent. “Hello, Moishe, Sadie. We’re so happy you could come to little Chaim’s fucking bris. Now pass the goddamned gefilte fish.”

“Could you hand me that sugar?” Maeve asked, pointing to the metal shelf by the door. “You’re delivering the new cake, so pull yourself together.”

Jo was still laughing as she approached the shelves. “Batman?” she wheezed.

Maeve took her attention from the mixer. “I’ve been a little preoccupied.” And exhausted. And burning the candle at both ends. And constantly monitoring the movements of a very angry, very violent man. It had been three days since she had seen him at the dam, and between working and taking care of the girls, she had done a few nocturnal reconnaissance missions, not sure why, but feeling as if it were her calling, her hobby. Mainly, she just drove past his house, something, when she thought about it during daylight hours, that seemed like something a crazy person would do.

Oh, and let’s not forget trying to keep track of an aging, senile lothario who thought he was the resident Rock Hudson of Buena del Sol. In Jack’s mind, Rock was still alive, straight, and quite the ladies’ man.

Jo stood on her tiptoes and reached for the sugar, on the top shelf next to Maeve’s purse, the one that Jo said looked as if it had previously belonged to a tranny hooker working Twelfth Avenue. That’s a pretty specific insult, Maeve recalled telling her, but Jo did have a point in addition to pretty accurate fashion sense. Maeve had remembered to staple the bottom of the bag shut, and it was holding for now. What she hadn’t been able to do was take the gun that was inside and find a new hiding place for it. There really was no good place to put it. She had had it at home but was terrified that one of the girls would find it, despite the fact that they didn’t know how to find the vacuum or clean towels when they needed them. She couldn’t keep it at the store. Chances were Jo would unearth it and raise all kinds of alarms regarding a firearm in their midst. And giving it back to Jack? Well, that was out of the question, for obvious reasons.

So, it stayed where it had been for close to six months already, poking a hole through the cheap lining of her tranny hooker purse. The only comfort she got was that if someone wanted to hold her up, there was a possibility the bag would be close enough for her to get the gun and she could shoot him.

Who was she kidding? That sort of serendipity never existed in real life.

She was moving fast, scraping the sides of the bowl to get all of the batter into the pan while figuring out if she had enough icing to cover a double sheet. While she was muttering to herself, she heard a little sound escape from Jo’s lips, a small protest. It was as if she knew what was coming and was helpless stop it. It all happened in slow motion: Jo reaching high for the sugar, Jo moving the purse, the purse crashing down on Jo’s head and opening a cut so quickly and so deeply that they both fell silent after the initial shock of the injury. Jo looked at Maeve, her eyes wide, the blood draining from her face as quickly as it was leaking from the top of her head. Maeve felt her own skin go clammy at the sight of thick, dark blood mingling with the waves of Jo’s cropped black hair.

“I forgot,” Jo said, just before passing out on the floor, “you’re not a blood person.”

She was right: Maeve wasn’t a blood person, much preferring to deal with stomach issues with her kids than injuries. Maeve turned the mixer off and dialed 911. While waiting for the police and an ambulance to arrive, she knelt beside Jo, blood leaking from the horrible-looking wound on the top of her head, and pressed a clean towel to it. As the towel soaked up the blood, she grabbed the purse and threw it into a cabinet under the counter. She didn’t know if Jo knew what happened to her or would even remember, but in Maeve’s mind, she wasn’t going to blame it on the weight of her purse. Rather, she thought as she pulled the metal shelf away from the wall, she was going to blame it on the imaginary contractor who hadn’t secured the shelf to the wall. It came down with a crash, sugar, flour, and an assortment of other items that she couldn’t afford to lose all scattering across the tile floor.

Jo was coming to, trying to sit up as the sounds of sirens filled the back parking lot. Maeve pushed her down gently. “Stay down, Jo. The ambulance is here.”

“Ambulance?” she asked. She touched the top of her head, feeling the wet towel and her soggy hair. “Why do I need an ambulance? Is that blood?” she asked, waggling her fingers in Maeve’s face.

Maeve pointed to the shelf. “The shelf came down and hit you in the head. You may need a couple of stitches.” Or a couple of dozen, she thought.

Jo looked at Maeve, her eyes glassy and unfocused. “Stitches? Oh, I hate needles.”

Two police officers came in through the back door, three local EMTs behind them. The officers hoisted the shelf up to make way for the stretcher, kicking the broken bags of sugar and flour to the side.

She moved to the side of the stretcher and touched Jo’s arm. “I’ll meet you at the emergency room,” she said.

Jo pointed over her shoulder at the mixer, picking the perfect time to become cogent. “Keep baking. You’ll never make the delivery if you don’t get that cake made.” She smiled at Maeve. “Remember: baptism. Not Batman.”

Maeve recognized one of the cops; he did crowd control at the big soccer tournament every fall. “Can you wait for her and drive her home when she’s done?”

His look said it all, but he added, “Do we look like a taxi service?”

“No,” Maeve said, “but I have to get this cake done and delivered in the next two hours. How long do you think it will take for her to get stitched?”

“Lady,” he started, “I don’t know what you thought you were getting when you called 911, but in addition to not being a taxi service, we are also not prognosticators. I know you pay a lot of taxes to live in this town, but seriously?”

Someone’s jockey shorts were too tight. “Fine,” she said, turning back to Jo. “Listen, I’ll get the cake done and head straight to the hospital. Wait for me, okay?”

Jo was resting on the stretcher, the blood seeping through the makeshift bandage that one of the EMTs had placed on top of it. “I’ll call a cab.”

Maeve grabbed her chin and pulled it gently so that Jo was looking at her. “No, you won’t. I’ll be there in a little over two hours. You may not even be done yet, but I’ll wait for you in the waiting room.” Maeve had been in that emergency room enough times to know exactly how it was laid out. She also had been there enough to know that the staff at the admitting desk wasn’t the most agreeable, sort of like the cop who was using precious time to tell her what wasn’t part of his job description.

Jo lifted her hand and put it on Maeve’s shoulder. “Fine. I’ll wait for you.” One of the EMTs put the sides up on the stretcher and prepared to roll Jo out into the ambulance. “Hey,” she said, grabbing Maeve’s arm. “What do you have in your purse, anyway? That thing weighs a ton.”

CHAPTER 16

The icing barely had time to set, the cake was still warm, but Maeve made it work and managed to get it into the car and over to the baptism lady’s house in under two hours. The woman had softened a little bit, but not as much as Maeve would have hoped.

“On the house,” Maeve reminded her, feeling as if she were glued to the front porch of the beautiful Colonial, not moving forward to hand it to the woman, unable to take a step back and get away from the woman’s stink-eye glare. Cars lined the driveway, and out of the corner of her eye, she could see a tent in the side yard, the party well under way. When the woman made no move to take the cake from her hands, Maeve rested it on a wicker table next to the door and lifted the lid. “Take a look. I hope you like it.”

In spite of the circumstances surrounding her creation of the cake, Maeve thought it had come out pretty well. And if the woman didn’t think so, well, there were three dozen cupcakes to sweeten the deal; that box was already on the chair next to the table. The woman peered into the box, and even she had to admit that it was pretty damned good given the amount of time Maeve had had to make it happen.

“It’s beautiful,” the woman said. “Listen, I’m sorry…”

Maeve held up a hand to stop her. “No apologies necessary. My fault entirely. I hope you’ll come back to The Comfort Zone soon so I can continue to make this up to you.” She resisted an urge to look at her watch, her only thoughts with Jo, hopefully still at the hospital and not in a cab on her way back to Farringville. “Enjoy the rest of your party,” she said to the woman, now smiling, before scurrying down the porch steps and walking to her car as fast as she could without breaking into an all-out sprint.

The hospital was twenty minutes away on a stretch of road with too many stoplights, all of which were red when Maeve hit them. She had texted Jo at one of them, taking care to make sure there weren’t any pesky cops in the vicinity, and instructed her to “WAIT.” She tapped the steering wheel impatiently at the third light, unable to think of anything but her friend, blood pouring out of her head, and the gun that was starting to cause too many problems despite its lack of use. Where to put it? That was something she was going to have to mull over when she had more time on her hands and fewer details in her head. When she thought about it that way, she had to laugh. The day she had more time on her hands and less to think about was a mythical day far in the future and probably would never come to pass.

Jo was still getting stitched up when Maeve arrived, lying on her side on a stretcher in one of the ER bays, her face as white as the sheet covering half her face and the right side of her body, doing her best to look brave. She wasn’t successful. She looked terrified. Maeve knew that Jo hated being in the hospital; something like this brought out her darkest fears even though it had nothing to do with cancer. Jo had kept a gallbladder filled with stones rather than go through elective laparoscopic surgery, so getting her head sewn up had to be unearthing some of the feelings that she tried to bury under a thick layer of sarcasm and black humor.

Maeve ignored the doctor sitting behind Jo, even though he was youngish, cute, and exactly Jo’s type. She grabbed her friend’s hand instead. “Hanging in there?”

Jo looked up at her miserably. “I think he’s sewing my entire head back on.”

The doctor pulled a long thread away from a bald patch on Jo’s head. “Almost done,” he said. Maeve didn’t think it would be the appropriate time to ask Jo to tell the guy something about herself, something related to her gymnastics background or her amazing pot roast. Jo treated every situation as a potential for a hookup, but even this scenario had its limits in that regard.

“That’s what you said fourteen stitches ago,” Jo said. “Yes, I’ve been counting.” Whatever painkiller they may have given Jo had done nothing to quell her ire over being hit in the head with the world’s ugliest purse. “And seriously? What the hell did you have in your bag?” she asked.

Maeve didn’t answer, preferring instead to put a hand on Jo’s sweaty brow. “Stay still and be quiet. You’ll get out of here faster.”

The doctor fiddled around at the back of Jo’s head. When he was done, Jo looked like one of those Revolutionary War reenactors, the one who had to wear a bandage wrapped around his head while playing “Yankee Doodle” on a flute, marching with a pronounced limp. “And we’re done!” the doctor said, helping Jo into a sitting position. “I’ll go write you a prescription for Percocet so you can get through the next few days. You should come back and see me in a week just so we can check on how we’re progressing and get your stitches out.”

“We?” Jo said. “Why? Are you going to get stitches in your head in the next few hours? Because otherwise, this is all about me. We are not in this together.”