The Next Best Thing (Gideon's Cove #2)(108)

“That was very prescient of you, Rose,” my mother says, hiding a grin. “Five down. Nine letters, having foresight.”

“What about you, Iris?” I ask.

She cocks her head and looks thoughtfully over at the Hobart mixer. “Well, sure. Everyone has secrets, right?” She turns her attention back to the sweet pastry dough, her hands deft and quick. “Pete had that little room in the cellar, you know? His tool room?” Mom and Rose nod, and I seem to recall it, too, a tidy little room with an oiled worktable and tools hanging on a pegboard. “So I’m going through it one day after he died, and I come across this locked box.”

“What was in it?” Rose asks.

“I’m getting to that,” Iris growls, glaring at her sister. “So I say to myself, ‘Why would Pete lock something away?’ Maybe it’s flammable, I don’t know. Some chemicals he used to strip furniture. Figure I better open it.” The baking sheet is now filled with empty pastries, and Rose slides over the container of chocolate filling. Iris takes out the scoop, and with the skill acquired from decades of repetition, fills each pastry with chocolate as she continues her story. “Finally I find the key, taped to the under-side of a drawer. Lucy, honey, shove these on the rack for me, and Rose, would you pass me the raspberry?”

Rose and I obey promptly, and Iris starts on another batch of pastries. “So I open the box. Guess what was in there?”

“A human skull,” Mom suggests, making me wonder what secrets she herself might have.

“Not a skull. It was about a hundred copies of Penthouse.” Iris jams her fists into her ample h*ps and snorts. “He’d been getting the  p**n o.”

“The  p**n o!” Rose and Mom cluck in unison.

“That’s right. Had a separate post office box in Kingstown, if you can believe it, so I wouldn’t know about his dirty magazines.”

“How’d that make you feel?” I ask, rubbing my gritty eyes.

“Well, crappy, of course! It wasn’t just the na**d pictures. It was the secrecy. He spent hours down in the basement when I thought he was fixing things, and instead he was doing God knows what.” She pauses. “Though he always was pretty, um…amorous when he came up.”

“I bet,” Mom mutters, filling in another clue.

“You always talk about them like they were perfect,” I say, swallowing. The pebble’s bigger than ever.

“Well, what are we supposed to do? Spit on their graves?” Iris snorts, then reaches out and pats my shoulder. “So you found something out about Jimmy. So what. Doesn’t mean he didn’t love you.”

“Of course not,” Rose murmurs, giving me a hug.

“What about you, Mom?” I ask my mother. “Did you ever find out something about Daddy?”

My mom doesn’t even look up from her puzzle. “No, honey. Your father was damn near perfect.”

I wonder if it’s true. Then again, I only had eight years with him, and if Mom’s hiding something, it’s kind of wonderful of her not to tell me, to let me keep that little girl’s adoration.

“What did you find out, Lucy?” Rose asks.

“It wasn’t anything that big,” I lie.

And maybe it wasn’t. Maybe Jimmy steamrolled Ethan a little, but it wasn’t like Ethan and I were an item. We were pals, no more. Him saying he’s been in love with me since we met…I wonder. He never acted that way. Not before I met Jimmy, not after. In fact, he couldn’t have been more…enthusiastic about us getting married. And then after Jimmy died…no. I don’t want to have to look back at all the years I’ve known Ethan and reinterpret everything. He never acted like a man in love…well, maybe a little, recently. But he never said a word. He’d always been simply a friend. My best friend. He loved me, sure. In love for years? No.

My eleven and a half minutes are up, so I take the bread rack out—sourdough boules on the bottom, Italian on the top—and slide them off the pans to cool. On a whim, I stick a boule in a paper bag and tuck it under my arm, its warmth as comforting as a puppy.

“I’ll be back in about half an hour,” I announce.

“Bye,” the Black Widows chorus. As I head out the back door, I glance at them—Iris, strong and broad, Rose, smaller and plump, my mother, elegant and cool. Rose says something I can’t quite hear, and the other two laugh.

They’re happy, the Black Widows. Life threw them sucker punches, and they got over it. Their hearts were shredded on the cheese grater of life, just like mine was, and look at them now. Laughing, happy, watching Showtime and bickering with each other. I can do that, too. Be happy, I mean.

The smell of coffee is rich and dark in Starbucks. A few mothers sit around one table, babies on their laps, strollers against one wall. From over the speakers come the mournful voices of Sting and Sheryl Crow in a bittersweet duet.

Perry Wheatley is behind the counter, wiping down the cappuccino machine. I used to babysit her when I was in high school. Her parents always left brownies for me, as well as a video. They lived in a sweet house on the water, and I’d pretend it was mine, that I was a famous pastry chef, that I’d just been featured on the cover of Bon Appetit…

“Hi, Lucy! What can I get you?” Perry asks, her face lighting up at the sight of me.