Page 47 of Layla Meets Her Match

She takes a deep breath and then presses her lips together.

“What?” I ask, knowing there’s something she wants to say.

“Just—if this is out of line or something, let me know,” she says, not lifting her head from my shoulder to meet my gaze. I raise an eyebrow. “Could you ask Mrs. Van Buren? She can’t give you all the answers, but I bet she could give you some. More than you have.”

“Hmmm.” I’ve thought about asking her things, but it does seem out of line. But I have wanted answers, and not getting them—Grandpa being gone before I could ask—that’s out of line too. And it’s not a nice thought, but Dottie had an affair with my grandpa. Doesn’t she owe me answers, even if they’re painful?

No. She doesn’t owe me anything for the choices she made. But I’d bet she’ll talk about it for me.

“I think I’ll ask. Maybe,” I say.

“Yeah,” Layla says softly, the tone filled with what she doesn’t say. She understands that would be tough, even without meeting Dottie.

Margot has rolled herself over closer to us, and she pats my leg with her hand. I can’t help scooping her up. In the last few weeks, holding her has become a lot more natural, and there’s something about her squishy face that just makes everything better.

I’m overwhelmed in the moment to be something so much more than just a friend to this little family. Dottie nailed it when she told me that I had fallen in love with both Layla and Margot. I have. Margot lays her head on my shoulder just like her mom, and it’s all I can do to keep quiet. Because if I spoke right now, crazy as it sounds, it wouldn’t just be I love you spilling out. I’d beg Layla to spend the rest of her life with me.

But she still needs time to show the world that she’s got this, that she can handle everything life throws at her, and because I love her, I’m going to stand back a little longer and let her do that.

CHAPTER 27

LAYLA

The apartment is quiet after Lincoln leaves, in a way that makes me miss him. He left at Margot’s bedtime, saying he didn’t want to upset her routine, so she’s asleep now too and I’m by myself. I only had a handful of videos to do, and I got them out of the way quickly, clearing out my job cache and not accepting any others.

Jack gave me ten thousand dollars.

It’s still kind of stunning. I know he has that much money to spare and more. I know my daughter deserves his support. He helped create her, but he’s skated by with no responsibility so far, acting like if he ignores that she’s here he can also ignore his part in it.

With that money and my new job, which starts filming in a couple weeks, I don’t need to worry about doing those videos. Jack’s money opens up a lot of possibilities. I could secure a really good daycare for Margot. But does his money come with strings?

He is Margot’s father. I don’t think he deserves the right to see her, to spend time with her, or anything just based on that, but should I allow him to be part of her life? Will she resent me for keeping her father away if I don’t?

I pull out my phone to do something about those questions, searching the internet for advice on what to do and coming up with a myriad of answers. The best involve communication, clear expectations, and boundaries. I don’t think Jack would be good at any of that, but maybe I should give him a chance.

It’s past midnight and I’m being irresponsible with my time, but I don’t put my phone away like I should once I’m tired of looking up how to deal with my ex. If I’m going to be irresponsible, I figure I might as well do responsible things while living on the edge, so I pull up the Sweet Kisses bakery truck social media channels to check up on comments. We get a lot of likes and shares for the most part, but not many comments aside from “I tried the new peach cobbler cookies and they’re amaaaaazing.” AI has helped me come up with an assortment of thankful responses that I tweak and use to reply to those. There’s been an uptick in comments since we put out the sign asking our customers to be on the lookout, many along the lines of “What’s going on?” I’ve responded with the same vague answer that I gave the woman at the truck today.

After checking on both Facebook and TikTok, I head over to Instagram and switch the user right over to the Sweet Kisses account. Mine will be full of notifications over pictures of Lincoln and me, and if I go down that rabbit hole, I’ll stay up all night. It does sound like a nice rabbit hole after dealing with Jack for the first time in months.

There’s a new comment on a Sweet Kisses post from a couple days ago, a reply to one of our regular customers and commenters—CookieFan99, if you can believe it. She expressed her hope that Mila was able to figure out what was going on soon and that whoever was messing with her has a change of heart as soon as possible. Oh, bless your heart, CookieFan99. It’s such a sweet reaction.

An account I don’t recognize, FitBallerLA, posted a strange response. “Controversial opinion on this account, but maybe this will open some of the Regular Customers’ eyes about the dangers of sugar to healthy lifestyles. There are people who should be more mindful and need reminders.” A handful of customers have indignantly come to our defense, telling the troll to move on and that a bakery truck wasn’t an account for him if he was into Healthy Lifestyles. The rampant capitalization of that has me laughing, considering it seems to be a strike against the response’s weird capitalization of Regular Customers.

But the comment makes me pause. Could capitalizing that be purposeful, not just some weird grandpa choice like all caps to ASK HOW YOUR DAUGHTER’S THIRTIETH BIRTHDAY PARTY WENT?

Am I leaping to conclusions because it’s late, or could a Regular Customer be someone high profile like Lincoln? As far as I know, he’s the only famous customer we have. And he’d be someone that others might think needs to be more mindful—he’s an elite athlete.

I would have noticed the commenter before if they’d commented about Healthy Lifestyles on our posts before this, but I skim through the posts for the last couple months just in case. FitBallerLA has never commented before this, which is strange. Why now? I tap over to their profile, ready to dig up if this person might be a viable suspect. What’s a little sleep lost chasing a thin theory? We don’t have anything else.

FitBallerLA’s account is about a dozen pictures of a shirtless bearded guy doing various healthy things like weightlifting and hiking and posting pictures of gluten-free meals, and when I see his profile picture, it hits me who he is. It’s the guy who came to the bakery truck complaining about not having healthy choices.

Could he be the one behind the poisonings? I’ve seen him twice now, but as I think back, I realize that the day he showed up in line, Lincoln’s muffins turned out clean. So he couldn’t have done something to them then. And the first time was before the first poisoning happened. Has he been around before and I haven’t noticed him? I guess it’s possible, but he stood out to me the other day, so I have to assume I’d notice him hanging around more.

I tap over to see who he follows and notice that it’s filled with LA Rays players, including Lincoln. I’ve gone beyond thin theory and right into suspicious. Maybe not damning evidence, but something worth checking into more. When I go back to his profile, something catches my eye that I’d missed before. At the top is a list of accounts we have in common—well, one account we have in common.

Astrid.Manning

I blink. This could be a coincidence. My whole theory is based on coincidence. But all piled up together? This guy is concerned about sugar intake, he follows the entire Rays team, one particular member of the Rays team comes to a sugar dealer every day, and Astrid is maybe friends with him. Or just follows him?

---