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“It’s taken care of.”

Sure, it was. “Right.”

She smiled in a way that reminded me of Harlan. “More icing?”

I took the second spatula. There was no reason to be rude, but I now had more questions than I did when I walked in the annex. I needed answers and I had less than two weeks to find them.

Time for a new strategy.

Chapter Seven

It took another day and a cupcake emergency to do the one thing that might silence the warning bell that had been bonging in my head since I arrived back home. A big thank-you to Mrs. Phillips for forgetting to buy a fancy decorated cake for her granddaughter’s surprise sixth-birthday party tomorrow and to her furious daughter-in-law for demanding the older womanfix it! Gram and Celia rushed in to help their friend and frequent lunch companion. It was an all-out sugarfest in the baking annex right now.

The controlled chaos provided an open lane for me to slip into Gram’s office. It was a privacy violation. Absolutely. Not cool at all. Not something I’d do under any other circumstance, but they’d accidentally taught me that they hid terrible news. Asking questions and trying to weasel the details out of them hadn’t worked. That left me with one choice. A search.

If it turned out my father had filed another motion I would drive to the prison and take him apart. That was the vow. He would not hurt Gram again.

I opened the door nice and slow to Gram’s office. Her sacred place. A loudthis is not your businesswarning chimed in my ear. Funny how the judgy voice sounded a lot like Jackson’s.

The room hadn’t changed in twenty years yet still managed to look crisp and new. Maybe the style had gone out then comeback in again and Gram had perfect timing. Not my thing, so I didn’t know except to say I found the green walls soothing. Beadboard on the bottom that ended at a chair rail and wallpaper on top. All in the same green.

The shade was tough to nail down. It wasn’t dark green or light green or even mint. Celia described it as fern. Whatever shade, the wallpaper on the top had long vines with birds and feathers in shades of blue highlighted by big pink flowers. The result was both dramatic and colorful in a Gram sort of way.

My favorite part of the room was the small sofa that fit in the corner across from Gram’s desk. Like, exactly in the corner. The piece formed a perfect ninety-degree angle. I’d never seen another one like it. The plush velvet fabric was a soft greenish blue. I’d spent hours as a kid, sitting there reading and making up stories while Gram worked.

The temptation to sit pulled at me now, but I went to the desk instead. Marveled that Gram hadn’t replaced the oversized leather chair that carried the creases and marks of a life that seesawed between days of tremendous joy and days of crushing pain.

Behind the desk stacked with papers was a wall of photographs collected and cherished through the years. The most telling picture was the one I didn’t see. Not a single photo of her husband, my deceased grandfather. Stratton Nottingham. A man I never knew because he died right after I was born. We didn’t talk about him or honor him at holidays or on his birthday. Father’s Day was just another Sunday at our house.

Gram told me she hadn’t spent a second mourning her husband because he didn’t deserve a single one of her tears. Most people agreed he’d been a nasty bully, but no one talked abouthis unsavory traits in public. Gram explained that’s how abuse was handled back then. It stayed inside the house walls, seeping out only in whispers passed around as church gossip.

A heart attack took him before he reached fifty-five. Then Gram saved herself by starting over, only to lose my mom less than six years later. Through the pain Gram had needed a lifeline. For the bulk of her struggles, Celia filled that role. They’d met in church and bonded over talk of broken marriages. Celia’s husband hadn’t been hateful and abusive, but he hadn’t been great either. He bounced from one get-rich-quick scheme to another, hiding all of it from Celia, then left her broke and vulnerable when he died.

For years, Gram shooed away anyone trying to take her picture, but she smiled in the pictures with Celia. The one of them on a picnic with the sun shining through the trees. Them baking in an older version of the kitchen. The two of them standing with me, so proud, at my college graduation.

Gram referred to Celia as herdear friend. I realized early that meantlove of my life. I would fight anyone who tried to come between them or shame them. I didn’t believe in much, but I believed in them.

The other photos, the ones that felt like they belonged to another family in another life, were of my mother. I remembered her in blurry bits and pieces. An image crafted more out of what I was told about her than a real memory. The few family photos that survived the fire my father started showed Mom smiling and me on her lap or holding her hand during some outside excursion. I strained to recall her touch—anything—but when my father killed her, he stole that from me, too.

The first thing you lose is the sound of their voice.

Gram told me that once. At first Mom’s voice rang in Gram’s head as a constant clanging reminder of her loss. She said she blocked the noise, devastating and brutal, for the sake of her sanity. Lost in the senselessness of it all, she clung to her anger. Fury and guilt drove her, forced her to keep going as she raised me. The months then years passed, and the grief eased enough for Gram to breathe again, but when she reached for the sound of Mom’s voice it was gone.

I didn’t have the memories or her voice.

The same hollowed-out, empty sensation that had chased me my whole life caught up to me again. Just for a second it surrounded and suffocated me. Most days I could forget all I’d lost because I never remembered having it in the first place. Gram and Celia filled in the holes. But standing here, looking at my mom’s smiling face, knowing that her ending had been so tragic, highlighted the unfairness of it all.

I fell into Gram’s big chair and closed my eyes. Waited for the haunting loss to pass but knowing it would likely wrap around me for a few hours. Mourning someone I didn’t know and ached to remember stole a lot of energy.

When I opened my eyes again I saw Gram’s dark computer screen. Without thinking through where this could lead, I tapped the space bar and saw a page of what looked like a list of orders. After a few minutes of debating how uncool this snooping was versus the memory of Gram in that hospital bed, I scrolled through the document. More like, I scrolled while peeking at the closed door every two seconds to make sure Gram hadn’t launched a sneak attack.

I recognized some of the names and most of the businesses. There were addresses for locals, for people out of town and out of the state. Some neighbors. Some people from church. Some bigwigs, like the mayor and a senator.

This spreadsheet covered items already delivered. Every entry noted the person, general information, and the item sent. Coconut cream pie. Buttermilk pecan and strawberry rhubarb. Butterscotch, double peanut, and lemon icebox. So many choices. All of them sounded amazing. I hadn’t had Patti’s sawdust pie in years. The name had something to do with a lady likely named Patti. That was the extent of my Patti knowledge. But how had I missed out on a delicacy called grits pie?

Bottom line: they sold a lot of pies, and those pies weren’t cheap. The pies were the lead seller at Mags’ Desserts but cupcakes, scones, cakes, and muffins made a pretty impressive appearance on the list as well. Lots of people. Lots of orders. Everything here seemed fine.

Maybe the real problem was my imagination. It’s possible I’d taken a few unrelated things and slammed them together to create a fictional problem. After all, doing that was easier than tackling the mess I’d made with the business pitch. Still, I couldn’t shake the idea of Gram hiding something. Gram and Celia formed a rose- and jasmine-scented wall between me and the reality they didn’t want me to see.