Chapter 2 #2
Eighteen-time consecutive winner of the Daughters of Honey Hollow Dessert Competition, and it looks like someone staged an entire photo shoot specifically designed to make my pudding feel inadequate.
On the surface it looks ordinary—with layers of vanilla wafers, pudding, and whipped cream stacked neatly in a glass trifle dish.
But Midge’s pudding has a deep golden color that borders on orange.
And it’s not from food dye. I’ve eaten enough of it.
After all, I’m a baker; I should know all about ingredients.
But that’s the funny thing. I don’t know what special ingredients Midge has been using all these championship-garnering years, and it vexes me to no end.
And worse yet, my own banana pudding looks pale and sickly in comparison.
“Is that Midge’s pudding, or did someone build a shrine to dairy products?” Carlotta squints at the display.
“Both,” I mutter, clutching my own humble offering a little tighter. “Definitely both.”
The crowd in front of us is a sea of women in full 1950s regalia—poodle skirts swishing, tea-length floral prints brushing against calves, and the occasional daring pencil skirt paired with a prim Peter Pan collar blouse.
White gloves flutter like the wings of doves, wide-brimmed sun hats shade perfectly powdered faces, pin curls bounce, pearls gleam, and there’s enough hairspray here to personally expand the hole in the ozone layer.
A smattering of men dot the landscape, mostly husbands who’ve been dragged along and now stand in uncomfortable clumps, tugging at their period-appropriate collars like they’re slowly being strangled by nostalgia.
“The Daughters really went all in this year,” Carlotta observes.
The Daughters of Honey Hollow started back in the 1950s when the old farm plots were carved up into tract houses and the founding mothers banded together to make sure the new families didn’t lose their sense of community.
Potlucks, porch gossip, emergency childcare, morally questionable casseroles—the whole Honey Hollow spirit.
This weeklong reenactment is their tribute to that era, and everyone who’s anyone in Honey Hollow is here in full costume, ready to pretend it’s the 1950s and gossip is a competitive sport.
“It’s the seventy-fifth anniversary of the founding,” I say. “Mom said it was either go big or go home.”
“And Miranda Lemon does not go home.” Carlotta grins. “But thankfully, she takes home any strays I happen to offer.”
I shoot a look her way.
When I was a newborn, Carlotta dropped me off at the Honey Hollow Fire Department, and Miranda Lemon was the saint who adopted me.
Carlotta tried to pull the same maneuver a year later with my sister, Charlie.
But she saw that my mother was in the family way herself, which meant poor Charlie ended up being raised by Carlotta.
Some might say worse things could happen, but at this moment, I can’t quite think of any.
Something catches my attention in the swirl of bodies moving through the opulent backyard.
There, holding court near the raised platform like a queen surveying her kingdom, stands Vivienne Pemberton-Clarke herself.
She’s tall and imperious, with silver-white hair styled in immaculate vintage finger waves that probably require their own staff. Her ice-blue eyes scan the crowd with the perpetual disappointment of someone who expected more from humanity and has been let down at every turn.
A triple-strand pearl necklace rests against her pale pink suit, and everything about her screams I could ruin your social standing with a single raised eyebrow.
“Well, get a load of that one.” Carlotta nods in the woman’s direction. “She looks like the kind of woman who could kill you with a glance and then bill you for the inconvenience.”
“And she’d probably itemize it.”
“With late fees.”
“And charge interest.”
I spot Mom near the dessert table, wrangling the twins’ stroller while Lyla Nell appears to be chasing something through the crowd.
Hopefully, a living creature. Although hopefully not someone’s small dog.
The last time she got her hands on something furry at a public event, we had to issue a formal apology and a muffin basket.
They also suggested I put Lyla Nell on a leash.
Believe me, I’ve given it serious consideration a time or two.
I watch as my mother executes a complicated maneuver involving the stroller, a cloth napkin, and what appears to be a preventative cookie deployment aimed at my toddler.
“Glam Glam looks as if she’s got everything under control,” I say.
Glam Glam would be my mother’s official grandmother nickname. Carlotta’s nickname would be Cray Cray. Both are more than fitting.
No sooner do I get the words out than the crowd shifts.
A ripple of murmurs runs through the sea of poodle skirts as heads turn in one direction, fans fluttering faster and pearls are clutched with renewed vigor. Even Vivienne Pemberton-Clarke pauses mid-sentence to stare.
I turn that way as well, and I’m not surprised in the least to find two of the most handsome men in all of Vermont heading our way.
Noah and Everett.
Noah and Everett would be my aforementioned two husbands, as Carlotta would have the world to believe. Technically, I’m only married to Everett.
And Everett just so happens to be radiating judicial displeasure in a way that suggests he’d rather be presiding over a murder trial than attending a 1950s garden party.
Noah is scanning the crowd like he’s already cataloging potential crime scenes.
And with my track record, he probably should.
Every woman in a fifty-foot radius suddenly finds a reason to adjust her hair, smooth her skirt, and casually angle herself toward my approaching husbands—current and accidental ex variety.
I should probably be used to this by now. After all, I’m not blind.
“Neither of them looks thrilled to be here.” I wince a little at the thought. “But they came because I asked—and because, let’s face it, they’d do anything for me.”
“Anything, you say?” Carlotta’s eyes light up with dangerous glee as they reach us. “Foxy, Sexy—I have a list of all the things you can do for Lot Lot. It’s laminated. I keep it in my bra for emergencies.”
Foxy and Sexy would be Noah’s and Everett’s nicknames. Carlotta likes to gift a nickname to just about everyone she meets. It’s sort of her superpower. That, and making every conversation somewhat inappropriate.
Noah and Everett exchange a look that silently asks why is Carlotta like this, and honestly, after all these years, I’m still waiting on the official report myself.
“Carlotta,” Noah says flatly.
“Hello, ladies.” Everett’s voice carries that low warning growl as he looks toward the feral squirrel who gave birth to me.
I’m about to intervene when movement near the topiary garden catches my eye.
A peacock emerges from the manicured bushes—and not just any peacock. This one is absolutely magnificent.
His plumage catches the May sunlight in an explosion of iridescent teals and emeralds and sapphire blues, and as I watch, he fans his tail feathers at least six feet in expanse, in a display so stunning it belongs in a nature documentary.
“Oh my goodness.” I grab Carlotta’s arm. “Look at him! He’s absolutely gorgeous!”
The creature struts across the lawn in full peacock glory, tail feathers shimmering as if he’s well aware he’s the most fabulous thing on the property.
“Lyla Nell is going to lose her mind when she sees this sweet thing,” I breathe.
Carlotta snorts. “Great. Just what Little Yippie needs—more plumage. The cats already look like Vegas showgirls. One more feather and they’re going to file a restraining order.”
I’m about to respond when I notice Noah and Everett exchanging a different kind of look. Not the Carlotta is insane look, but the one that suggests that Lottie is insane, too.
“Lemon,” Everett says slowly, his blue eyes fixed on the empty lawn where the colorful bird is currently preening. “What peacock?”
My blood runs cold.
Noah offers a mournful smile my way. “Lottie. We don’t see a peacock.”
“But—” I point at the beautiful bird. He’s right there with his tail fanned, his feathers gleaming, and giving me what I can only describe as a knowing look.
I suck in a quick breath, and my stomach drops somewhere around my saddle shoes.
“You know what this means?” I whisper as the peacock ruffles his spectral feathers and a spray of tiny blue stars emits from them.
Everett nods. “This means murder.”