Page 3 of The Killer Cupcake (Poison Cherry #3)
Kathy, baby girl,
Got your letter. It made me smile wider than a cottonmouth in August. Of course, you forgive me—we Elliott girls always do forgiveness after a proper punishment. Come on down, sugar.
I know about Carmelo's fight. The Marcellos own this city.
Boxing, gambling houses, and even the music breezing out of the windows of the French Quarter at midnight.
Sicilians got all the keys to all the doors that matter.
My Boanno does business with 'em, so yes, it's all set.
But you listen to your Tante Janey. Be careful chasing that boxing boy around in the South.
These Sicilians smile with their teeth and cut with their lies.
Oh. In your letter, you mentioned the Klan?
Des sauvages. Carmello must have warned you.
The Klan's been raising holy hell since the Marcellos started skimming their protection money. Bombed three shops on Rampart last month—made it rain rosary beads for two blocks. Now they’ve got some corn-fed giant they're calling "The Cotton King" fighting your Carmelo.
Word is, Nazi money's backing him. Even got some of our own people dancing to their tune for the right price.
Shameful, but hunger and greed makes devils of us all.
Come to me in Tremé, ma petite. My house has got galleries sweeter than café au lait, and walls that know how to keep secrets.
Nobody here asks questions unless they want the kind of answers that come with a side of my special candies.
And Kathy, I’ll show you things while you’re here.
Things that'd make your Harlem heart spin like a roulette wheel for the bayou instead.
Come before the heat makes everyone stupid and bloody.
The city's changing, chère. Prosperity of the coloreds in the Tremé done stirred up everything. White folks nervous, colored folks restless, and people like us—nous autres—we walking a tightrope stretched between heaven and hell.
Your Carmelo, he’s gonna need someone who understands the music between the notes, if you catch my meaning.
And you? You’re gonna need someone who knows how to love a man without losing herself to the fantasy.
Because until you both face the world like all Elliot women do, you are a liar, and your love affair is just a dream.
It’s okay to lie, not for a man but to a man. Don’t worry, I’ll teach you the difference. Just come. Viens vite, before the summer heat makes me lazy.
Love you like gumbo loves rice,
Auntie Janey
P.S. - Burn this letter after you read it twice. I don’t want Big Mama getting a whiff of this plan. She mad at me enough. And bring that skinny shadow of yours—Willa?—as cover. Make up something, Kathy, but don’t let her or your love-sick Ely know you’re coming to Auntie.
K athy crumpled the letter in her fist. She'd disobeyed—kept it instead of burning it. Janey's words always cut deep, layered with meanings that revealed themselves only after the third or fourth reading.
She glanced over at the traveler next to her.
Her name is Willa. A vibrant, beautiful girl with deep ebony brown skin and hair so thick and dense it coiled and had to be worn under a scarf.
She’d been sleeping against the train window since the sun disappeared behind the Mississippi pines.
Poor Willa. For her, she was escaping the subjugation of the Jensens, only to be used by Kathy as an alibi.
Willa had been orphaned as a child and given to white folks who promised care but delivered servitude to the Jensen family instead.
Almost every day since arriving in Butt's, she'd declared to anyone who'd listen—white and black alike—that she was going to find her people and go home someday.
The words had become her prayer, her battle cry, her reason for breathing.
They'd become friends the moment Kathy arrived, two girls lost in different ways but finding solace in each other.
When Debbie visited for Christmas, Willa grew even more attached to Kathy.
Together, a pregnant Debbie and Kathy braided Willa's hair into intricate patterns, dressed her in Kathy's nicest clothes, and spent long evenings talking about the heartbreak that gnawed at them—their boyfriends in New York tangled up in troubles too dark to fully understand, troubles that had deepened after Mrs. Ricci's suicide.
Through the stress-filled months that followed, Willa became Kathy's confidant and co-conspirator. Ely had given up and walked away. Willa was her only friend now. She was the person to help Kathy craft the elaborate deception.
The plan was simple but brilliant. It required Kathy to track down her Aunt Janey. An impossible task she imagined, but she wrote to Boanno and nearly fainted when Janey wrote back. It was the power of the pen.
Kathy then wrote a letter to Willa, one that Willa carried to Mrs. Lottie Jensen with trembling hands and practiced words.
The letter spoke of a long-lost sister living in Texas—a sister Willa desperately wanted to visit, if only for a week.
She even produced a train ticket, bought with money saved from months of kitchen scraps and mending work.
Though Willa was rarely allowed beyond the Jensen property line without permission, they'd always treated her more like family than servant.
Kathy suspected that Lottie Jensen genuinely loved the girl, because she did something she wouldn't have done even for Big Mama— she gave her blessing and agreed that Kathy should accompany Willa as a chaperone to ensure her safe return.
Convincing Big Mama after that had been surprisingly easy.
Her beloved grandmother respected the Jensen family's judgment, and the idea of Kathy acting as protector for young Willa appealed to her sense of propriety.
Even sweeter was the beautiful coincidence neither Big Mama nor Mrs. Jensen questioned: the train to Texas ran straight through New Orleans.
It was destiny. It had to be. After all this time, after all the terrible fragments Debbie had shared about what had happened to Matteo and Carmelo—secrets her sweet, protective boyfriend couldn't or wouldn't burden her with—she was finally going to be with him again.
Happiness bloomed in her chest. This was the beginning of the future the girls whispered about in dark corners and promised each other under Mississippi stars.
She was ready. Lord help her, she was more than ready.