Page 68 of The Lonely Hearts Guide

Periwinkle reared back his head and groaned. “Mother is waiting. My statement couldn’t have been simpler to understand if I tried. Why is everyone behaving as if I’m speaking a foreign language? You’re doing this to goad me, aren’t you? Well, I don’t appreciate—”

“Periwinkle,” Elliot said firmly. He knew Periwinkle was prone to the dramatics, but he seemed to be going out of his way to make the situation even more outlandish than it already was. “Mother fell into the sea. What do you mean, she’s waiting for me?”

“That was an adorable rhyme,” he said before whirling on his heels, motioning them to follow. “I suppose an explanation is in order, but I’ve got big plans for the day, so you’ll have to hear them straight from the source.”

“Who is the ‘source’?” Alexander asked.

“Big plans?” Elliot asked.

Periwinkle led them through the foyer, toward the grand stairway in the center. “The source is Mother,” he answered Alexander. “And my big plans involve cuddling next to Arthur Price and watching the good bears of Care-A-Lot.”

“I don’t know what that means,” Elliot said.

“It’s a cartoon,” Alexander responded.

Periwinkle paused halfway up the stairs and glared over his shoulder at Alexander. “The Care Bears of Care-A-Lot are not cartoons. They are a shining beacon of hope in these trying times. How dare you diminish their role in history?”

Alexander lifted an apologetic hand in surrender. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to offend.”

Periwinkle winked at him before turning and skipping up the stairs. “You didn’t. It’s just terribly boring here, so I have to make my own fun.”

He led them down the hall, toward Mother’s office. Pausing outside the door, his hand on the handle, he said, “Mother has big plans.”

Twisting the knob, he flung the door open and rushed into the room. It was just as Elliot remembered from his time at the home. The walls were a dark shade of brown—warm and cozy, the way Mother liked to present herself. Framed photographs of her and her Bountiful Beaus lined the walls. There was a large desk in the center of the room with two chairs in front of it. Mother’s swivel chair was turned toward the window behind them, the back so tall, he couldn’t tell if anyone was seated in it. Elliot waddled over, taking a seat. But Alexander shook his head and sat, then patted his lap.

Elliot narrowed his eyes. “I’m nine months pregnant, and I am as big as a house. I would quite literally crush every bone in your body, and I adore your body far too much to harm it.”

Alexander snorted. “You may be nine months pregnant, but I’m still ten pounds heavier than you. I think I can manage.”

Elliot relented, hoisting himself up from the chair and taking a seat in Alexander’s lap. As usual, the moment he touched down, he felt an overwhelming sense of comfort. It was like coming home after a taxing three-hour shift at Twylah’s Sugarplum Treats, basking in the warmth of their little love nest. With the feeling still strong in his heart, he realized that sense of completion hadn’t come from their actual little cottage. It was down to Alexander Davenport; he was Elliot’s home.

Mother’s chair swiveled in front of them, and Elliot jerked his head up, gasping. For some reason, Honey Peppercorn was seated behind the desk, no longer hidden away behind the desk chair’s unnecessarily high back.

As was the case when last he saw her, Mrs. Peppercorn’s wig was styled into Mother’s signature Marcel wave. She wore an A-framed dress that looked similar to the ones Mother would wear around the mansion. Was she still keeping up the charade?

“Hello, boys,” she said with a cheery smile. “I was hoping you’d pop by for a visit.” She scowled at Alexander. “We’ve been trying to contact you for days, young man.”

“I dropped my phone in the sea,” Elliot said for the second time that day, blinking as confusion settled in. “Why are you here, Mrs. Peppercorn?”

"After you boys left, I realized no one could know about Ms. Broussard’s death. With her gone, there was no one left to man the helm of this ship. So, I continued masquerading as her."

“You’ve been pretending to be her all this time?”

She nodded, looking around the room. "At first, it was at the insistence of the beaus aboard the cruise. The ones who saw her topple into tumultuous waters. They came to me, Elliot. They circled around like little lost boys. ‘Mother,’ they said to me—because I was still wearing the wig, you see—anyway, ‘Mother,’ they said, ‘We need you more than ever.’ So, I soldiered on. As they say, Honey Peppercorn is no quitter—”

“Who is ‘they’?” Elliot asked, but Mrs. Peppercorn ignored the question.

“Along the way, I discovered something most unexpected. You know I’ve always been maternal by nature, baby,” she said, though Elliot knew nothing of the sort. He’d only spent a few days with her, but he didn’t point that out. “These boys needed guidance, love, and a firm hand. It gave me a newfound purpose." Her eyes softened as she looked back at Elliot and Alexander. “I know it might seem strange, but I feel like I've found my true calling.”

“Your calling?”

“Yes, Elliot,” she continued, her eyes shimmering with pride. “When I returned to the mansion in New Orleans, there were bountiful beaus aplenty, all hoping to learn the art of keeping a home. These poor souls had no idea how to maintain a household. They were lost, wandering the halls like chickens with their heads cut off. I took them under my wing and taught them everything they needed to know about cooking and cleaning with a cheerful heart. We had daily sessions where I demonstrated the art of preparing a meal with love, how to scrub a floor until it gleamed, and how to keep the mansion as immaculate as Ms. Broussard would have wanted.”

“That wasn’t necessary,” Elliot pointed out. “We only needed you to collect our things from our cabin on the ship and return them to us—which you never did. You weren’t meant to come back to New Orleans.”

Mrs. Peppercorn rolled her eyes. “Yes, well, Clarence was ready to blow the lid off this entire operation, so I had to improvise. He was going to call the police, so Rodolfo and I tied him up, then we held him captive until I managed to talk some sense into him.”

“And how did you manage to do that?”

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