“You are, too.” She jutted a finger. “Your eyes are shiny and hyper-alert. Fess up.”
I sighed. So much for thinking I could keep anything from my pal. “I was telling Matthew that I won’t sit idle while Urso incarcerates Ipo.” I ogled my cousin. “You, yourself, said he wasn’t guilty.”
“I’ve been known to be wrong about people,” Matthew said.
“Hell-o-o-o!” Sylvie, wearing a quasi-antebellum outfit with big flowing skirts and a strapless black bustier top, sashayed into the tent. She looked tartish, at best. The black lace fan she fluttered didn’t help. A few customers pointed and whispered.
Meredith said, “Does she have a clue how ridiculous she looks?”
“I doubt it.” How dare Sylvie have the gall to give me advice about my wardrobe. I reveled in the fact that her shoulders looked covered in goose bumps.
Sylvie waltzed to the counter and posed. “How do you like the new trend? I’m calling it Punk-Southern.”
Meredith bit back a laugh and elbowed me. I nudged her to hush.
Sylvie whacked Matthew playfully with her fan and held out a lace-gloved hand to him. “Let’s go, love. Time to hear our girlie-girls sing.”
“The recital isn’t for two hours, Sylvie, and I’m attending with Meredith.” Matthew grabbed Meredith’s hand. He must have squeezed it too hard because she winced.
“Tosh.” Sylvie pouted. “Whatever happened to parental unity?”
Matthew kept his voice low. “It vanished the day you walked out of our lives.”
Sylvie visibly jolted, and Matthew smirked, which warmed me to my toes. He couldn’t have made that comment a year ago. He had rebounded in the confidence department, thanks to Meredith’s love.
“You’re holding that against me?” Sylvie huffed.
“Why shouldn’t I?”
“I didn’t rove, I didn’t stray. I quite simply took a breather.”
Matthew said, “Sylvie, the way you rewrite history amazes me.” He turned to me and waggled his thumb between us. “You and I … we married Peter Pan and Tinkerbell.”
“Except Chip and I never married,” I reminded him.
“Minor detail.” Matthew pecked Meredith on the cheek and returned to his duties at the counter. “Next.” Customers in line moved forward.
Sylvie huffed at Matthew’s dismissal and started for the door. A few feet short, she turned back. “Oh, Charlotte.” She hurried back to me, the skirt of her ensemble swinging like a bell, and pulled me toward the side of the tent. She cupped a hand around her mouth. “I found out with whom Kaitlyn Clydesdale was having an affair.”
I tilted an ear, ready for her to corroborate the gossip I had heard at the theater.
“Ainsley Smith,” she confided.
“I know.”
“You know?” Sylvie sputtered. “Why did you ask me to do your bidding then? My time is precious.”
“I recently found out,” I said.
Sylvie rolled a bare shoulder back in triumph. “Oho! I”—supreme emphasis on the
“Why didn’t you tell me then?” I said, employing the same tone she had used on me.
“Because gossip is tastier if it takes longer to learn.”
Wish I’d thought up that line. Rats. “What about Barton Burrell?” I said.
Sylvie tapped her fan against her palm. “What about him?”
“He was having an affair with her, too.”
Sylvie sniffed. “Where did you learn that?”
“You mean you haven’t heard it?”
“No, and if I haven’t, it’s probably not true.”
The actresses at the theater said they had picked up the tidbit at the clothing store. Had they meant Prudence’s Le Chic Boutique? I said, “Sylvie, you do not own the market on gossip.”
“Oh, yes, I do, Charlotte, and when you figure that out, you’ll be oh so much smarter. Ta-ta.” Sylvie gathered the train of her skirt in a bundle and trotted out. Scarlett O’Hara couldn’t have made a more dramatically smug exit.
“Charlotte, we’re running out of Zamorano,” Rebecca said.
“I’ll handle it.” I fetched a new hunk of cheese from the ice chest and set it on the prep table behind the cheese counter. “Why don’t you take a break.”
As she wiped her hands on a towel, she said, “Well, well, lookie who’s still roaming about.”
“Who?”
“That creep.” She jerked her chin toward the northernmost tent window where Oscar Carson was pacing back and forth outside. “He came in earlier, asking when you would arrive, and I said I wasn’t sure, so he said he’d wait out there.” She grinned. “He must not have seen you slip in.”
Wondering what Oscar could possibly want to tell me, and spurred on by my grandfather’s insistence that I
“What about my break?”
“In a minute.” Quickly I wove a path through the crowd; however, by the time I reached the spot outside the tent where Oscar had been pacing, he was gone. I spun in a circle and caught sight of him walking down an aisle with Georgia. She had her arm looped over his shoulders; her face was turned toward him; she was speaking into his ear. I was tempted to follow and listen in, but before I moved a step, Georgia swiveled her head, locked eyes with me, and smirked. A shiver of suspicion spiraled down my back. What was her story? Why the smug look?
I had no time to mull over the answer because at that same moment Barton Burrell, with his three sons in tow, was striding purposefully between the tents. They looked like a posse in search of a criminal. I tracked the direction Barton was headed and spied his wife, Emma, who fidgeted near the knight on a horse ice sculpture. Though she stood tall, her shoulders nearly even with the horse’s, Emma looked withdrawn and sullen. The heavy drape of her coal black coat didn’t help the image. She clung to a bottle of soda and her mouth was moving, as if she was talking to herself.
Barton arrived beside her, his face a solemn grimace, and seized the soda from her hand. He tossed it into a nearby trash can, then returned to Emma and pulled her into a fierce hug. Emma burst into tears. The boys clutched their parents in a ring of love.
My heart broke at the sight. Had Emma heard about Barton’s affair with Kaitlyn and gone off to contemplate her options, or had she gone off to grieve the child she had miscarried? Either way, the family appeared devastated.
CHAPTER
At five thirty, Rebecca left the tent to visit Ipo. Matthew and Meredith departed a few minutes after her. At six o’clock, Tyanne and I left the shop in the capable hands of Bozz and Philby.
Outside, the scents of hot pretzels and roasted nuts rose up to meet us. My stomach panged big time. Since my quickie slice of pizza at the theater, I hadn’t eaten more than a nibble of Zamorano cheese.
“We’ve got an hour to get a bite of dinner before the recital starts,” I said. “Are you hungry?”
“Sure am, sugar. Good ol’ comfort food would do.”
“Charlotte and Tyanne,” Delilah called. She and Freckles looked like happy-go-lucky children, skipping toward us, each carrying a wand of fluffy cotton candy. The glow of the tent’s lights danced on their faces. “We’ve decided we need a spur-of-the-moment night out.”
“There’s so much electricity in the air,” Freckles said.
Delilah bobbed her head in agreement.
“My sweet hubby is escorting our daughters around the faire, so I’m a free woman.” Freckles did a gleeful hop-skip. “Are you game?”
“What we are is starved,” I said. Even the sight of their cotton candy made my mouth water. “But we don’t have much time. We’ve got to attend the recital in an hour.”
