Lily had finished her pancakes but was still at the kitchen table conducting a tea party of her own for two stuffed seals, a stuffed pony, their cat Marshmallow, and Lord Baxter the basil, who Grace had, against her better judgment, allowed onto the table in the interest of breakfast peace.
“Mommy,” Lily called through the open kitchen door.
“Yes, Baby.”
“Marshmallow doesn’t like tea.”
“That seems like a personal failing on Marshmallow’s part.”
“What’s a personal failing?”
“Something wrong with you that’s nobody else’s fault.”
Lily considered this. “Marshmallow doesn’t have any teeth.”
“She’s quite an elderly kitty, darling.”
“Can she chew pancakes?”
“I imagine she can, but she shouldn’t. I don’t think pancakes are good for cats.”
She heard a knock on the front door and then Charlotte calling hello through the house. Charlotte was the kind of friend who just walked in as if she lived here. The knock was a courtesy.
“I’m on the sun porch,” Grace called back.
Charlotte came through the door with two paper cups and an eager expression that usually accompanied gossip with particularly juicy details.
“I brought you Rose’s coffee,” she said.
“You don’t drink Rose’s coffee. You only drink your own.”
“Yes, but you like Rose’s coffee. And I brought it for you.”
“Why?”
Charlotte set the cups on the beat up coffee table in front of the porch sofa and took off her jacket. She had her hair in a French twist that Grace had never seen her wear before, and she was wearing lipstick. Charlotte rarely put on lipstick and never on Sundays, which were her day off when her craft store was closed.
“You look fancy,” Grace commented.
“Don’t change the subject.”
“I didn’t know we were on a subject.”
“I heard Reno Steele was at your bakery yesterday for three and a half hours. And the two of you made goo-goo eyes at each other.”
Grace sighed. “How does the entire town of Cobbler Cove know what was happening inside my shop yesterday? And neither of us made goo-goo eyes at anyone.” Although there was that moment when she walked past him in the tight aisle and had to stop with her whole left side practically rubbing against his front . . . and the moment after she touched his arm when they stared at each other a heartbeat too long.
“Mary,” Charlotte declared triumphantly.
“Mary what?” Grace echoed, confused.
“That’s how the whole town knows. Mary told her sister, who told the woman who does her hair, who told Suzanne What’s-her-name from the Pinochle Posse. And you know once the pinochle crew gets a hold of something, the whole town knows about it in under and hour.”
“And you felt compelled to come over to ambush me to . . .” Grace paused. “. . . what? Interrogate me until I cough up all the good gossip?”
“I came over to bring you the worst coffee in three counties as an offering and merely to ask one or two questions in a friendly tone of voice.”
“That’s what I said,” Grace retorted.
