Deadly. Irresistible.
Then, from behind a locked door in my skull that I have kept locked for years: a small blue velvet box surfaces. I hear the sound of the lid snapping shut. I see her hands pushing it back into mine, her beautiful, pained face as she spills words of apology, words that have no more meaning now than back then.
Even all those years later, I'm still a fool.
I straighten.
"Good night, Maddie."
My feet carry me to the doorway and through it. The hall is dark and cool, and behind me the kitchen light spills out in a warm rectangle across the stone, and from somewhere inside it, the girl who once held my heart in her palm watches me.
I keep walking.
Chapter Seven
Maddie
IhatetheRolls-Royceand the Rolls hates me back.
It took me the better part of ten minutes to figure out how to move the seat so I could at least peek above the monstrous steering wheel, another five to figure out how to adjust themirrors, and a deeply humbling thirty seconds to remember how to roll down a window after I accidentally deployed what I can only describe as a personal hurricane climate system.
The damned thing even played a welcome chime when I turned it on. That's right. The car played a jingle at me. Like it was mocking me or something.
But we made up and I have an understanding with the stupid machine now. What I am less prepared for is Jazz's bakery appearing on the left side of Broad Street and having absolutely no available parking in front of it, which means I have to go around the block and park on Main, in full view of the Saturday afternoon foot traffic of the Wandering Gnome.
I'll have to climb down from this catastrophically oversized vehicle in front of people who all know my name.
I pull in, I cut the engine, and I sit there for a moment.
The car idles into silence. Around me, through the tinted windows, life goes on. Old Mr. Prewitt, the troll who used to own the bait shop, walks his basset hound past the hardware store. Two mermaid teenagers sit on the library steps with their phones, giggling at each other. The Kowalski twins are coming out of the pharmacy with identical paper bags. Sooner or later, someone will see me sitting in a car that would be at home in some castle driveway.
Ugh. I know I'm being ridiculous. I had no real choice here. Agatha is a minotaur and there's no way she would be able to sit in my compact car, not without having to crank her head out the window to accommodate her horns.
I simply had to take the Rolls to drive her to the Knitters Club, where I have no doubt she reigns supreme, huddled inside the library. Which gives me about an hour of free time, just enough to pop in to visit my bestie at her bakery.
I get out of the car, stare resolutely at the ground and walk like a woman wearing a scarlet letter.
My climb down is not graceful. The Rolls sits just high enough that I have to actually jump down rather than simply exiting like a normal person in a normal vehicle, and the step coincides with Mrs. Kowalski calling out "Maddie Berwick!" from across the street with the specific delight of someone who has just identified a rare bird in an unexpected habitat.
"Hi, Mrs. Kowalski." I lift a hand. I don't dare look her way. "Nice day!"
I walk to Jazz's door like a woman who parks borrowed billionaire vehicles on Main Street every day of the week, and I walk through it.
The scent hits me the second I'm inside. Warm sugar and browned butter and something with cinnamon in it, coming from somewhere in the back where Jazz's ancient Hobart mixer lives. The display cases run the length of the left wall, and the mismatched chairs and round marble tables are exactly the same as they were when Jazz and I were seventeen and used to split a croissant after school because neither of us had enough money for one each. We used to practically live here. It's really no surprise Jazz bought it from the old owners the moment it was put on the market.
Some things in Saltford Bay stay stubbornly, blessedly themselves.
Jazz is behind the counter. She looks up, clocks my face, then looks past me through the window at the car sitting on the other side of Main Street like it's waiting for a chauffeur.
"Maddie-girl." She sets down the pastry bag she's holding, very deliberately, with the calm of someone who needs her hands free to properly lose her mind. "Did you just climb out of that?"
"It's not mine." I huff.
She gives me a look that says she's gathering her strength to properly lose her shit.
"I know it's not yours, you drive a car that cries when it rains." She plants both hands on the counter. "Whose. Car. Is it?"
"It's a long story." I try my best to ignore the patrons who turn to gawk at the car in tandem with Jazz's antics.
