Page 82 of Call Back

I stopped scooping the croissants. “You know everything about everyone. How could you not know?”

She turned at the waist to look at me. “I don’t know everything, Magnolia Steele. I don’t know why you left town a decade ago.”

My face flushed and I glanced down at the baking tray. “I’m not sure that’s entirely true, Miss Ava. I suspect you have your suspicions.”

She chuckled. “I’ve heard the usual. You ran away after a fight with your mother. You were pregnant and ran off to have the baby.”

My head jerked up. I hadn’t heard that one.

“You were deluded into thinking starring as Maria in West Side Story onstage at Franklin High School qualified you to act on Broadway.”

My mouth twitched. “I made it to Broadway.”

“My personal favorite was that you ran off with an older rich man and he dumped you in New York, and you were too embarrassed to come home.”

If only. “And which one do you believe?”

“None of them.” She had a knowing look in her eyes that chilled my blood.

She couldn’t know, but my heart kicked into a gallop all the same.

“Something bad happened to you that night, Magnolia Steele. You ran away to save your life.”

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