Page 23 of The Killer Cupcake (Poison Cherry #3)

THE LIE AND THE LIGHT OF TRUTH

W illa took a shaky breath, her heart hammering against her ribs like a caged bird desperate for freedom.

She gathered her worn leather satchel, carefully stuffing it with as many of the beautiful things Aunt Janey had given her that could fit—the lavender dress, the pearl earrings, the cream pumps that made her feel like a lady.

Each item was a treasure she'd never dreamed of owning, and now they were hers to take into her new life.

She crept to the bedroom door and pressed her ear against the cool wood, listening intently.

The hallway beyond was shrouded in silence, empty of the soft footsteps that usually echoed through the grand mansion.

She had waited exactly as Jean-Baptiste instructed—until the moon climbed high enough in the velvet black sky to cast silver shadows through the lace curtains.

He was so clever, so worldly. The thought of him and that devastating smile made her own lips curve upward despite her nervousness.

Carefully turning the brass handle, she slipped into the darkened corridor and began creeping toward the mahogany staircase, her bare feet silent on the Persian runner were muted. Her shoes in her hand.

Willa knew she hadn't had much in her short life—certainly nothing like the luxury she'd tasted these past two magical days.

But now, with Jean-Baptiste's promises ringing in her ears, she felt like he held the entire world in his hands and could give it to her.

He was someone straight out of the fairy tales Big Mama used to tell—rich beyond imagination, popular in all the right circles, devastatingly handsome, and most miraculous of all, in love with her.

He'd told her so himself. Tonight, they would begin their real life together, far from guardians and rules and people who didn't understand that love conquered everything.

The house slept. Alone in the silence, Willa moved toward freedom.

There’s a whole world, chérie, JB had said. Let me give it to you.

Willa was ready to leap.

“ Où vas-tu à cette heure, petite ?”

The voice, cool as tombstone marble, froze her mid-step. When she didn’t respond, Janey asked her question in English. “Where are you going, little one?”

Willa closed her eyes. Shoes dangling from one hand, satchel slung over her shoulder, she turned.

Aunt Janey materialized from the shadows. Her black satin robe drank the moonlight—a stark contrast to the daytime whites she wore like armor. At night, Janey embraced the darkness.

“Je… I’m leaving, ma’am,” Willa confessed, chin lifted.

She was old enough. Grown. Kathy meant well, but Kathy didn’t understand the fire JB had lit in her belly—the promise of his townhouse in the Marigny, servants wanting to do her bidding.

He’d get her a job typing in some air-cooled office.

Anything beats Mississippi’s sun-baked fields, the copper stench of her own blood blooming beneath torn nails.

She’d pay whatever price JB asked for that taste of freedom.

“Come.”Janey gestured toward the parlor, already gliding away. “ One last sherry. Pour l’adieu—before the parting.”

Willa hesitated, gaze darting to the door where JB’s convertible idled to whisk her away like a chariot. Defiance warred with instinct. She set down her satchel, slid her feet into pumps, picked it up, and followed.

Pinkie waited in the parlor.

Not the starch-collared maid, but a woman transformed: hair a cascade of obsidian waves framing high cheekbones, a silk robe the color of crushed violets draping her lush curves. She held out a crystal glass of amber sherry.

She was no longer a servant or shadow in the home, she was Janey’s equal in every way.

“He’s waiting—” Willa stammered. “I really need to go.”

“He’ll wait,” Janey smirked.

“But—” Willa protested.

“ Il attendra .”Janey settled into her wingback throne, swirling her drink.“Sit, Willa. Regarde. Look at Pinkie. Really look at her.”

Willa looked— really looked. Pinkie’s skin was as deep as mahogany as her own, luminous.

Her hair, free of its habitual kerchief, fell in thick, defiant waves—a silent rebellion against the creamy ringlets prized in the Quarter’s gens de couleur libre .

She was… magnificent—a queen in exile. Yes, Janey was beautiful, but the earthy realness of Pinkie’s beauty made Janey’s dim in the moonlight.

Janey’s gaze, sharp as a stiletto, drifted between them.

“When I married Carmine ten years ago,”she began, tracing the rim of her sherry glass,“I brought Pinkie and the family into this house. Put them on payroll, gave them rooms with silk curtains. But the truth?”Her voice dropped, warm as bourbon.

“They walked into my life long before I ever wore Carmine’s ring.

Found me when I was nothing but rags and rage.

Saved me when the world wanted me dead.”

Janey’s gaze lifted. She held Pinkie’s stare.“They’re not servants. They’re my blood, stronger than any tie I have to the sisters. Always will be.”

Willa lowered her satchel.The leather strap slipped from her shoulder like a surrender. She took the sherry glass Pinkie offered, the crystal cool and heavy in her palm, and sank into the velvet armchair. The scent of beeswax and gardenias hung thick in the air.

“I ran here like you,”Janey continued, staring into the middle distance of her thoughts where Mississippi’s ghosts lingered.

“ fourteen years old, with nothing but a stolen knife and the devil on my heels. Followed the river south until my shoes fell apart. Ended up in the swamps—half-dead, all desperation with my mother’s recipes in my pocket. ”

Pinkie stepped forward,her shadow stretched long in the lamplight.

“I was eight,”Pinkie said, her voice softer than Willa had ever heard it.

“Gram sent me to fetch herbs near the froglands at dusk. That’s where I saw her.

”She nodded at Janey.“Looked like something the swamp coughed up. Skinny as a shad, clothes ripped to ribbons. Face so bruised and swollen… scratching the mosquito bites, I guess.”Pinkie’s breath hitched with emotion.

“…you couldn’t tell if she was pretty or plain.

Just… broken. She’d collapsed under Gran’s favorite chinaberry tree.

I couldn’t drag her no further. When I brought Grann and Ma, we found flies buzzing ‘round her open sores.”

Pinkie knelt beside Willa’s chair, the memory pulling her close.

“Mama carried her inside. We bathed her in Gran’s big tin tub—water turned rusty with blood and dirt.

Fed her spoonfuls of broth ‘til she stopped shivering. Tended her for weeks. Gran sang old hymns while changing her bandages. Mama rubbed salve on the whip marks and spider bites. She had old and new ones.”Pinkie touched her own cheek, remembering.

“We called her ‘Little Ghost’ ‘cause she never spoke.

She was older than we thought she was because she was skinny and frail.

Just stared at the wall with those big, hollow cat eyes of hers…

‘til one morning, she finally smiled and said it was the Poison Cherry.”

“Poison Cherry?” Willa asked.

“Offered to pay us with it,” Pinkie chuckled. “We thought she was mad. We done helped her and she wants to give us poisoned cherries. We had no clue.” Pinkie stood and walked back over to her chair and sat.

Janey reached out,her fingers brushing Pinkie’s hand—a rare, tender gesture.

“They pieced me back together,”Janey continued, the words rough with gratitude.

“Gave me a name when I’d lost mine. Fed me hope with their cornbread and red beans, and kindness.

Something even my sisters didn’t give when Brenda left me behind.

”Her gaze drifted to the window, where moonlight silvered the magnolias.

“Made me believe I could be human again.”A pause.

The shadows deepened in the lines around her mouth. “…For a while.”

Willa leaned forward, the sherry glass trembling in her hand.

“Why tell me this?”she whispered, the words raw and urgent.“Why show me… all this?”

Janey set her glass down with a click.Her eyes locked onto Willa’s, sharp enough to cut.

“Because on that platform at the train station,”she said, her voice low,“when I saw your face—those wide, shining eyes drinking in the city like it was holy water—I saw Pinkie, and then I saw myself.”She leaned closer, the lamplight carving shadows under her cheekbones.

“You all young, finally free, stumbling off that train from Mississippi. Convinced you’d reached paradise.

Believing you’d left the pain buried at the Jensens.

‘Here,’ I thought…”Janey’s smile was a bitter twist. “ She thinks this is where negro girls come to prosper. That we ain’t just surviving. ”

“Don’t you? Look at this place. You know what’s in Butt’s Janey. You know where I came from? This is paradise.” Willa said. She stared at the women with hope. Blank stares were all they gave her in return.

Willa’s spine straightened.The memory surged—the primal thunder of drums in Congo Square, the whirl of indigo and crimson silk as dancers spun under live oaks, the throaty laughter spilling from Storyville’s glowing doorways. This place was a dream, and she couldn’t be convinced otherwise.

A silent exchange passed between Janey and Pinkie—a language forged in shared suffering.

“Alive, oui,” Janey conceded, her smile bittersweet. “But paradise? Non, chérie. No Eden for women like us—not handed down. We claw it from the rot. Brick by bloody brick.”