I squirmed, not wanting to hurt him. “Well, of course I’ve missed you, but—I mean, I wasn’t expecting this. I have a life here. I have a job and a house and a podcast corner. I have a cat.” Tink flicked an ear against my palm.
Trace jumped into motion. “I’ve overwhelmed you and you need time. Of course. Take all the time you need. Think it over. I’m confident that you’ll come to the same conclusion I did. We’re meant to be together. Come on, Tink.” Tink followed Trace him down the porch steps, toward the rental car he’d parked on the street across from my house. “I’ll be back in a couple days,” Trace yelled over his shoulder as he got into the car. “We can talk about it again then.”
“Wait, what?” I said aloud when I’d finally snapped out of my dismay. But by then he’d already gone.
Chapter 20
I was up before six the next morning, waiting for it to be late enough to call Mom and Aunt Ruta. I called at exactly seven o’clock. They answered on the first ring, singing “Hello” in harmony.
“I think you know why I’m calling,” I said icily.
Mom gasped. “You’re engaged? She’s engaged, Rut!”
“It’s about time,” Ruta yelled from the background.
“Once again, you’re on speaker, you don’t need to yell. I can hear you just fine. Unfortunately,” I added under my breath. “And, no, I am not engaged. How could you, Mother?”
“How could I what?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Encourage Trace to visit me without ever telling me anything.”
“Well, he’s a grown man,” she said. “There wasn’t exactly anything we could do to stop him. He’s very motivated.”
“You could have warned me,” I said. “You told him you warned me.”
“We tried,” Ruta said.
“When? I am pretty sure I would remember if you told me Trace was going to be sitting on my front porch last night.”
“When we called you and you so rudely hung up on us,” Aunt Ruta yelled. “We were calling to warn you. You never called back.”
Oh. Yeah. That.
“I didn’t know that you wanted to tell me something important,” I said. “You could have called again.”
“Nah,” said Aunt Ruta. “We decided you’d like the surprise instead. Were you surprised?”
“Uh, yeah. Very.”
“We thought you would be excited to see him,” Mom said.
“Excited? To see my ex-boyfriend who I’ve spent a year trying to get over? No. Whose side are you on, here?”
“I wasn’t aware there were sides,” she said.
“Two sides,” Ruta yelled. “The rational side and her side. Glad to see you finally came around.”
“I did not come around,” I said.
“That’s not what we heard,” Ruta said.
“We heard there was lots of apologizing, and he’s going back in a couple days after you’ve had a chance to think about it. And we heard there’s a job interview. It will be so good to have you in the city where you belong, Hollis.”
“Finally a decent driver to take me to my eye exams,” Ruta yelled.
“I’m a decent driver, you old picky-pick,” Mom said, and then the two of them launched into one of their trademarked arguments. I knew this one by heart and could have mouthed along if I hadn’t been so angry.
“You talked to him?” I asked. “After he was here?”
“Well, we had to know how it went,” Mom said.
“Why didn’t you call me to ask that question? My answer would be that it went terribly. Because I was totally blindsided and I didn’t know what to say to him and I didn’t have time to think about anything.” And because even after thinking about it all night long, I still wasn’t sure what to say or do.
I had ached for my old life since the moment I’d left it. And now I could get it back.
And I was pretty sure I no longer wanted it.
“Welcome to the Knock ’em Dead podcast.”
“Where murder and muffins meet.”
“I’m Hollis.”
“And I’m Daisy, the cookie lady!” Daisy had brought a beautiful tray of iced lemon sugar cookies decorated to look like slices of lemon. I’d already scarfed down two; they were amazing. “Now, most people add water to their royal icing to thin it. But I add fresh lemon juice to make it extra lemony. Tart and tasty.”
“And very dangerous,” I said. “Sort of like a hit-and-run on the tastebuds.”
She covered her mic with her hand. “Nice tie-in. But I was thinking something more along the lines of, So delicious, they could be poisonous.”
“Most poisons are bitter and unpleasant to the taste,” I reminded her.
“Antifreeze tastes good,” she countered. “That’s what makes it so dangerous.”
“True,” I said.
“Do you remember the band?” she asked. She grabbed a cookie, shook off the crumbs, and took a bite.
“Band?”
“Poison,” she said. “‘Every Rose Has It’s Thorn’? ‘Unskinny Bop’?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t remember the b—you know what? Let’s start over.” I stopped recording, took a deep breath and started again. I was feeling off-kilter and grouchy. A dangerous combination.
“Why? I thought we were being charming.”
“Welcome to the Knock ’em Dead podcast.”
“Where murder and muffins and unskinny bops meet!”
I flicked a look at her, but decided to keep going. Let the listeners try to figure that one out.
“Today I have cookies,” she said, and went into her spiel about royal icing again, allowing me just enough time to scarf down a third cookie while stressing about how I was going to segue into what I was planning to say to start the episode. I pushed the tray closer to her to get it away from me.
“So last time we talked about the mysterious poisonings of Jane Stanford,” she said. “What poison scandal do you have for us today, Hollis?”
Perfect transition. This was why we were partners. We could set each other up without even trying.
“No poisoning just yet, but I definitely have a scandal. A local scandal. We’ve talked about it a few times, but I think something really sketchy is going on here. A cover-up of the
