Free Once Upon a Lie by Maggie Barbieri Page B

and Sean taking one, pretending he was going to eat it, but pressing it into her mouth instead, acting as though it were all great fun until she started crying, loud, gasping sobs, her bottom tooth, the first adult tooth that she had, chipping in half. He told her father she had fallen. She had been eight years old. After a few seconds, in which she erased the memory of her cruel cousin and replaced it with those of her father, she raised her head. “It’s okay,” she said. Jo was crying openly now. “It’s okay,” she repeated.
    “I would never do anything to hurt you,” Jo said, making her way around the counter.
    Maeve held up a hand to stop her. If Jo hugged her now, she would crack into a million pieces. “I’m sorry. I just want to distance myself as far as I can from this. It would be bad for business…,” she started, looking at Jo. “It will be bad for business,” she amended. Because the cat was already out of the bag, and in due time, everyone would know.

 
    CHAPTER 10
    Maeve was wrong: it was great for business.
    She never could have anticipated what the murder of her cousin would bring her in terms of profits, but it seemed as though everyone wanted to pay their condolences to her and, while doing so, place an order.
    “I’ll have two dozen of the mini chocolate cupcakes,” Sarah Teitelbaum said.
    “Four dozen of the large gingersnaps, please,” Carolyn Bain said when she called.
    “Can you make one of your chocolate cream cakes? Enough to serve thirty people?” Barbara Worthen asked.
    Sure. I can do all of that and then some, she thought. Even the distributor had contacted her again, out of the blue, and asked if her operation had grown at all since the last time they spoke. She didn’t honestly believe that he had called because of the murder, but maybe her luck was changing. That first day after it seemed like everyone knew, she posted record sales and was able to put half of the next month’s rent in an envelope under the register drawer. Might as well pretend it wasn’t there; if she kept it in her possession, it would be gone before the month was over.
    She had smoothed things over with Jo, too. Nothing like making change for a fifty-dollar bill, or even a hundred, to make her forget that one slip of the tongue had revealed something she had wanted to keep to herself forever. She even gave her friend and only employee that afternoon off to study for the upcoming test she would be taking; a master’s in social work was something Jo had always wanted but never had time for when she was married. Now on her own, she had decided to pursue her dream. The Comfort Zone was Maeve’s dream come true, but not Jo’s. Hers was to help the less fortunate, those in need of assistance. Maeve’s was to keep everyone well fed; she guessed that she could also make the world safer, just in a different way.
    Maeve had underestimated just how nosy people were and how they loved a good tragedy. A sordid one? Even better.
    Two nights before, Cal had asked her if she had found a hobby yet.
    “Still working on it,” she had said, turning away from her computer to stare at the stack of bills she needed to pay and, for once, would be able to.
    “Well, keep thinking about it,” he had said. “I’m sure you’ll find something.” And then he had kissed the top of her head in that annoying way he had and taken the girls out to dinner at a new pasta place they were dying to try. She wondered how he would fork pasta into his mouth with young Devon strapped to his chest, but if she knew Cal, he would find a way.
    That kid was never going to learn to crawl if Cal didn’t unstrap him soon.
    “Try the red velvet. You won’t be disappointed.”
    Maeve’s head snapped up from behind the glass case. She’d been so engrossed in rearranging the refrigerated display that she hadn’t realized she wasn’t alone. Marcy Gerson was doing what she always did when she came to Maeve’s store: hard selling other