32. Harper
CHAPTER 32
Harper
The bakery was hopping. We’d gone through all our cupcakes, but customers weren’t deterred. Tourist season was in full swing in Tilikum, and that meant a steady stream of visitors looking for treats as they wandered around our little downtown. The pink lemonade cupcakes had been especially popular. I made a mental note to create a cookie version of the recipe.
Beth and I worked the line until it was manageable. She was such a rockstar. I was definitely giving her a raise. She was like a little Energizer bunny—never seemed to get tired no matter how busy we were.
Me, on the other hand? I was dragging.
Which was why, in the midst of my busy afternoon, it was so great that I had a potential new baker in the kitchen.
Mila had a dark brown pixie cut, dramatic eyeliner, and bold red lipstick. She lived in Wenatchee, a small-ish city not too far from Tilikum, and had been working in a bakery there for several years, but was looking for a change.
I was trying to decide what to make of her. She spoke in an odd monotone and her eye contact was intense. She had a whole Wednesday Addams vibe going on. But maybe she was just quirky. And what I really wanted to know was how well she could bake, especially under pressure.
I’d asked her to make chocolate chip cookies—a classic any baker needed to be able to make, and make well. I popped into the kitchen to check on her, and if the scent was anything to go by, she’d nailed it.
“How’s it going back here?” I asked.
She checked her watch, then glanced at the timer. I approved of her double-timing tactic. “Excellent.”
“It smells great.”
“Thank you,” she said, her voice completely expressionless.
“While we’re waiting for the cookies, let’s have you show me your cake decorating skills. I have a small cake in the fridge we can use.”
“I can do that.”
“Awesome.” I went to the fridge and brought out a small layer cake that already had a crumb coat and put it on a rotating cake stand on the island. “Feel free to imagine this as anything you want. The top tier of a wedding cake, a baby shower cake, birthday cake. The sky’s the limit.”
She tilted her head to the side and a little groove formed between her eyes as she inspected the cake. “Baby shower,” she declared definitively.
“Okay.” My phone buzzed in my back pocket, so I pulled it out to check. Sugar cookies, it was my mother. “Go ahead and get started. I need to take this. I’ll be right back.”
I left her to it and headed out the back door. A prospective new employee did not need to be subjected to a conversation with my mother. Especially because I had yet to tell her I was pregnant.
This was going to be interesting.
“Hi, Mom. What’s up?”
“Why do you insist on using that phrase?”
“What’s up? I don’t know. Habit, I guess. ”
She let out a frustrated sigh and I rolled my eyes. Lovely. This was already going so well.
“I have news,” she said. “Your sister just accepted a promotion at work.”
“Wow, that’s great.”
“It’s more than great. It’s extraordinary.”
“Is she excited?”
“She’s proud. As she should be.”
“Awesome. Are you doing anything to celebrate?”
“I suppose I’ll need to treat her to dinner.”
“That would be nice.” I scrunched my nose, dread making my stomach knot. Now was probably not the best time to tell her about the baby. But there was never going to be a good time. I needed to just rip the bandage off and be done with it. “So, Mom, I have some news as well.”
“Oh?”
“I realize this is going to come as a surprise, but I want to first assure you that everything is fine. It’s good news, okay?”
“That’s quite the lead-in.”
“I know, but I don’t want you to hear what I’m going to say and immediately worry. Or judge me.”
She groaned. “What did you do? You didn’t burn down Doris’s bakery, did you?”
“No.” I took a deep breath. “I’m pregnant.”
“I think I preferred a burned down bakery.”
Okay, here it comes.
“You’re pregnant? Harper, what on earth is wrong with you? How could you let this happen?”
“Well, it was a surprise, but we’re both really excited about it.”
“Tell me you’re not going to marry him.”
“What? I… I mean, we haven’t really had that conversation. But why not?”
“If you’re having the baby, and I assume by the way you phrased it that you are, whatever you do, do not get married.”
“Why?”
“Because then you’re stuck with him. No one wants that. Not really. We’ve evolved. We don’t need to be tethered to a caveman to meet our needs. We can meet our own needs quite well, financially and otherwise.”
“Okay, but I’m in love with Garrett. If he wants to marry me, I’m absolutely going to say yes.”
She groaned again. “I honestly don’t know where you came from.”
“Just because I want different things doesn’t make me wrong, Mom. This baby was very unexpected, but it’s turning out to be the best thing that’s ever happened to me. So is Garrett. He’s a wonderful man.”
“I’m sure he seems that way, what with your hormones acting up.”
“I don’t think it’s my hormones that are in love with him, but okay.”
“You think that now, but wait ten years. When he’s on the couch, scratching himself under his beer belly and keeping you awake at night with his snoring. Then we’ll see how much you love him.”
I had no idea why my mom was so cynical. She’d never been married. How did she have any idea what it was like? But fortunately, I was able to stop myself from asking her who’d hurt her so badly that she hated men so much.
It kind of made me grateful she’d never had a son. She hadn’t been a terrible mother to me and my sister, but what would she have done with a boy? He would have perplexed her more than I did. And she had no idea what to do with me.
“How about this? I’ll keep your advice in mind as I move forward. But I just wanted you to know that you’re going to be a grandma and—”
“Stop. ”
“What?”
“I’m not a grandma.”
“If I’m having a baby, that means you are.”
“That child is not calling me grandma. It makes me sound old.”
“That’s fine. What should the baby call you?”
“I don’t know. I’ll have to give it some thought. But absolutely not grandma.”
So maybe that was what this was about. She was feeling insecure about aging, and me having a baby reminded her that she wasn’t in her twenties, or thirties, or forties anymore.
“You can let me know what you decide. There’s plenty of time. It’s still early and babies don’t talk when they’re newborns anyway.”
“No, I suppose not.”
“Tell Holly congratulations for me.”
“I will. Do you have prenatal vitamins?”
That made me smile. She wasn’t perfect, but she did care about me in her own way. “Yes. I have prenatal vitamins and a doctor and everything. I’m doing fine.”
“Okay. Don’t forget to take them. And eat a vegetable once in a while.”
“I eat plenty. I bake for a living, but I don’t live on pastries.”
“I hope not. You’d never lose the baby weight.”
“Sugar cookies, Mom. Sometimes you know the exact wrong thing to say.”
“What did I say?”
“Nothing. It’s fine. I’ll talk to you later.”
“Bye.”
I ended the call. I could have been mad, or at least annoyed, but for some reason, I wasn’t. I hadn’t expected her to be overjoyed about my pregnancy. And she wasn’t. That was fine. I didn’t need her to be. She’d come around, in her own way. And I’d make the best of it, like I always did .
Besides, this baby was going to have a set of grandparents here in Tilikum who loved him or her to pieces. And aunts, uncles, cousins. A big brother…
And just like that, I was crying.
“Hey, Harper. Are you okay?”
I jumped at the sound of Matt’s voice and quickly wiped beneath my eyes. “Oh yeah. I’m fine. Just… nothing.”
He was dressed in a faded gray T-shirt and basketball shorts and the poor guy really needed to learn how to trim his scraggly facial hair.
“Are you sure? You seem upset.”
“I’m really fine. Happy tears, actually.”
“Oh. That’s good. Have you ever heard of the Garcia murder?”
His abrupt changes of subject into his fascination with true crime always left me slightly off kilter. “Um, no?”
He grinned. “It was really grisly. The killer kept the victim in a shed on his property for a while before he murdered her.”
“That’s terrible.”
“They caught him, though. And he was dumb enough to have left DNA evidence. Got him for two other murders.”
“Was that recent, or did it just pop into your head for some reason?”
“I was just doing some research.”
“Oh. That’s… nice.”
“What did deputy Haven tell you about the Joyner case? Anything good?”
“He doesn’t really talk to me about details. I don’t think he’s supposed to.”
“Probably not. Do you think he’s going to solve it?”
“I hope so. One less killer on the loose would be a good thing.”
He glanced away, his eyes seemingly unfocused. “Yeah. Shame no one’s caught him yet. Who knows what else he could be up to.”
There was an odd wistfulness in his voice that sent a chill down my spine. Did he know something?
Or was it worse than that?
He couldn’t be the…
No.
He was just a guy who was a little strange and knew way too much about true crime stories.
Right?
“Do you think there are more victims?”
He slowly turned and met my eyes, his expression intense. He didn’t say a word. Just nodded.
My heart sped up and I swallowed hard. “Well that’s terrifying. I… I should go.”
“Do you want to come over?”
“I’m sorry, what?”
“Do you want to come to my house?”
“Um…”
“I want you to meet Lily.”
Sugar cookies, who was Lily? And why did I suddenly picture a soundproofed shed in Matt’s backyard with a missing woman named Lily inside?
My voice shook slightly. “Who’s Lily?”
“My pet.”
This wasn’t getting better. That made me picture a woman being held in a cage. “Pet?”
“Yeah, my bearded dragon. Do you want to come see her?”
I let out a breath. Okay, not a woman in a cage. But still. “Oh, no thank you. I shouldn’t.”
“She’s very tame.”
“That’s great, Matt. I’m sure she’s really cool. But I have to work.”
“It wouldn’t take long. I’m parked right there.” He pointed to a white van with the back doors open.
A. White. Van.
My eyes widened. Was this actually happening? All my childhood memories of stranger danger warnings had revolved around a creepy guy in a white van, and usually a pet. Granted, I’d been warned about not leaving with a stranger who claimed to have lost a puppy or something, not about saying no to going to some guy’s house to see his bearded dragon.
And did he really mean bearded dragon, or was that some kind of weird euphemism?
I needed to get out of there before Matt started offering me candy.
“I can’t, but thanks anyway.” I backed away before turning decisively so my meaning would be clear. I was leaving. He said goodbye but I didn’t answer. Just waved without looking.
My heart was still racing as I slipped into the bakery and locked the back door. It was just my luck I’d get a call from my mom then run into Matt outside.
Then I realized, of course. It was my luck.
I wasn’t going to think too deeply about the physics of it all, but Matt seemed to be a product of my bad luck curse.
Or, at least, I hoped that was all he was. My gut had told me from the first time I’d met him that something was off. And every time I saw him, I felt the same way. I wanted to believe he was just a bit weird, but what if he wasn’t? What if his fascination with true crime was more than it seemed.
A copycat, maybe? Did he fantasize about committing the crimes himself?
Had he ever acted out those fantasies?
My stomach turned over. Matt didn’t seem like a killer. Did he?
I was probably letting my imagination run away with me. But I’d tell Garrett anyway, just in case.