Free Once Upon a Lie by Maggie Barbieri

in the front pocket of her apron. “I’ll be right back.”
    Lorenzo looked at his watch and tapped the face, letting her know who was in charge.
    You think so, huh? she thought as she exited through the screen door. Let’s see.
    Outside, it was easy to pick out the minivan that had transported the dysfunctional family to the party, the family with the child who was afraid to get icing on her hands, the mother who either endured abuse or had had a run-in with the old standby—the doorknob—and the father whose silly fashion sense betrayed a sinister side that Maeve could almost smell on him. The minivan—with a Mad River Glen bumper sticker on the back—was the only other car in the back parking lot, parked beside and almost on top of her sensible but aging Prius in which she found the candles. She wedged herself between the two cars, and she indulged in a fantasy in which she ran the knife down the side of the van until she got to the end; it was far enough down on the body of the car that it wouldn’t be noticed immediately. In her mind, the final flourish came when she carved “F U” right above the fender.
    But she didn’t do any of that. She’d had every intention of doing it when she had left the store but knew what would happen if the car was found with a scratch on it. First, Mr. Lorenzo would take her to task for allowing people to drive erratically in the lot, as if she had any control over that. With her luck, he’d blame it on Jo and then Maeve would really have to kill him. Then, he’d take out whatever pent-up rage was left on his wife and possibly his kids. He had no self-control, while she had it in spades, and that’s what separated her from him. With a satisfied smile on her face, she walked back into the store, the candles held tightly in her hand.
    “Now who wants a piece of chocolate cake?”

 
    CHAPTER 9
    Maeve wanted to remind Julie Morelli that when they were in yoga class, and corpse pose in particular, there was no talking.
    She would have liked to put Julie in corpse pose for good, but that wasn’t polite. Even Jack, who had met her in the store once, couldn’t stand her, and he didn’t remember anyone long enough to form an opinion. Julie was different, though. “Could talk a dog off a meat wagon,” he liked to remark in her presence, but she was too stupid to realize he wasn’t talking about canines and hamburgers in general. Maeve always thought that no jury in the land would convict Julie’s husband—also known as “the Mute” to Maeve and her friends—if he smothered her while she slept, the only time her mouth wouldn’t be working overtime. Maeve turned her head to the right and smiled at Julie, when in her heart she wanted to tell her to shut the hell up.
    Julie took Maeve’s smile to mean that talking was now appropriate. “So sorry about your cousin,” she said. News traveled fast. Maeve had told only one person besides Cal—Jo—that Sean Donovan, the guy whose murder had been all over the papers, was her first cousin. Maeve had been counting on the fact that there would be nothing to connect her to him and on the fact that over two weeks later, the media attention would start to wane. Apparently, she had been wrong. “Were you close?”
    Maeve looked back up at the ceiling, her legs stretched out, her arms held tightly at her sides. That was the funny thing about yoga: although Maeve had taken it up for the relaxation it supposedly provided—and to replace the meditation on Sunday that going to church used to provide—she was more tense than ever when she left, and Julie Morelli had nothing to do with that. Maeve wondered if she was just wired to be continually wound-up. While everyone else in the room was close to a comatose state, she and the woman on the next mat with the mouth that wouldn’t quit were wide-awake and not focused on their deep breathing.
    Julie was still talking. “Kids? Wife? Did you see him on holidays? Did you grow up together?