I hope the throwaway excuse is enough to stop her from thinking too far into the question.
“Oh, I’m sure,” she says. “I can’t even tell you how proud we all are around here every time another of your cases ends up on the news. One of our own, a famous FBI agent.”
It’s not the first time someone described me as “famous,” but I don’t like it any more now than I have the other times. That was never my intention. I didn’t become an FBI agent so I could gain notoriety for myself. I won’t pretend that sometimes it doesn’t come in handy. But most of the time I would rather just be another face in the crowd.
“There’s certainly been a lot going on in my career the last couple of years,” I say with as much of a laugh as I can muster.
“I understand that,” she says. “The message you left asked for copies of your class schedules and all of the alumni bios you’ve submitted for the University publication since graduation. Are you making some sort of scrapbook?”
“Something like that,” I say. “You said you wanted to confirm my email address. Which one do you have? I want to make sure it is my personal one and not my professional one.”
She rattles off an address and I pull up the notes feature on my phone to jot it down.
“Is that the correct one?” she asks.
“Actually, let me give you a different one,” I say.
The conversation over, I end the call and continue toward home, tumbling the strange situation around in my head. This isn’t just a misunderstanding. It’s not a wrong number or someone mistyping an email address. Someone called my school and specifically asked for information while posing as me.
Sam isn’t at the house when I get there, and he doesn’t answer his phone when I call. It means he’s still working, trying to finish everything he can before everybody gets here tomorrow. I’m hoping for a quiet few days without him getting too many calls. Fortunately, the worst that has happened in Sherwood on Thanksgiving in the last few years was when Mrs. Bethel two streets down tried to fry her turkey and ended up lighting the yard on fire.
I can only send out good thoughts into the universe that she has learned her lesson and will stick to the oven from now on.
The conversation with Nancy Fulbright is still itching the back of my mind as I unpack the groceries and pull out the notebook I’ve been using to keep Thanksgiving prep under control. I have the menu written out and a timeline of how to do it all. It starts today, with making the pie crusts and putting them in the refrigerator so I can make the fillings Wednesday.
But no matter how much I try to focus on pumpkin puree and pecans floating in glorious buttery goo, my mind goes back to the phone call and the uncomfortable feelings it brings up.
They aren’t just about the discomfort of knowing somebody called the University impersonating me. It’s the memories that are filtering up through the years, thoughts I tucked away over time because I had to.
Chapter Twenty
“I don’t smell food,” Sam says when he comes into the house later that afternoon.
“Is that just general commentary, or are you talking about Thanksgiving?” I asked.
“Thanksgiving,” he says, coming into the kitchen and dropping a kiss to the top of my head.
“Ah, well that’s because I have been given strict instructions that nothing savory can be prepared fully until Thursday. The desserts can be made ahead of time, but all appetizers, bread, side dishes, and especially the turkey must be completed on Thanksgiving itself,” I say.
“Who decided that?” He asks as he reaches into the refrigerator to take out a bottle of beer. He cracks the top off then shakes his head. “Never mind. I already know the answer to that. So, what does Xavier have against prepping food ahead of time?” he asks.
“Oh, I can prep it,” I tell him. “I just can’t cook it all the way to the point where it is survivable. If I do, that makes it leftovers.”
“Leftovers?” he asks. “Even if they aren’t eaten at all before Thanksgiving?”
“Apparently. In order for it to be truly a Thanksgiving meal and not a Thanksgiving leftovers meal, it has to be cooked fully on Thanksgiving itself,” I say.
He nods again and takes a long sip of the beer, looking into the middle distance like he’s thinking this through. “You know, actually I think I agree with him on that.” He starts toward the back of the house to take a shower but pauses before he gets all the way to the hallway. He turns back to me. “You don’t have to like grind the wheat and bake the bread on the hearth in order to make the dressing, or harvest the potatoes, or fill the turkey with eel and venison, or anything, right?”
“No. Store-bought bread is already dried up, all thirty pounds of potatoes are in the pantry, and nothing is going in the turkey but an onion and an orange.”
“Okay. And I still get summer sausage and cheese on crackers before dinner even though it says ‘summer’?”
“Yes. Apparently, it’s called summer sausage because that’s when it’s made,” I tell him.
“Okay. Then, yeah, I’m with Xavier on this one.”
He sips his beer as he walks away, and I get back to the fiddly dough leaves I’ve been cutting out to decorate the pies.
By the time Sam gets out of the shower and comes back into the room smelling warm and fresh, I have two trays full of the little decorations ready to put into the refrigerator, but I’m just sitting at the table. My hand is wrapped around the cup of cider beside me, but I haven’t even taken a sip.
“What’s this?” Sam asks, gesturing toward the cup.
“Hot cider,” I tell him.
“Ooooh.” He takes the cup from my hand and takes a swig,
