Page 43 of The Killer Cupcake
By the time you get this letter, we will have already talked. But all of the things happening right now are so crazy, so wild, I have to write them down to make sure it’s real. Need to tuck these thoughts away with someone safe, and that has always been you.
New Orleans felt like a fever dream at first. Aunt Janey welcomed us into a world that Willa and I could never have foreseen: Big houses dipped in ice cream colors, fancy-dressed Negro servants attending to Sicilian mobsters and their mulatto wives, jazz music spilling from every doorway. Women like Janey move through it all like empresses—café-au-lait skin, French rolling off their tongues, bowing to no earthly authority. I mistook that beauty for genuine freedom.
Lord, how I wish I'd heeded Mama's warnings about Janey. Wish I'd never let her sink those perfectly manicured claws into my heart. There's something rotten at Janey's core, Debbie—a bitterness that spreads through everything she touches like poison in a well. It’s the poison and the curse.
Janey played us. Worst of all, she played Willa. She planned Willa's destruction with the precision of a master chess player.
From the moment we stepped off that train, Janey transformed our sweet girl: draped her in expensive silks, arranged her hair in sophisticated styles, whispered seductive lies about “privilege” and "claiming your rightful place." Last Wednesday morning, I woke to find Willa's bed cold and empty. She'd vanished in the night—run off with Jean-Baptiste Thibodeaux, a Creole snake wrapped in old plantation money and European manners.
These people aren't like us, Debbie. They own a world between Black and white: French passed down through generations, skin ranging from warm honey to pale cream, eyes like golden amber or Spanish moss. Some pass for white when it suits them; all of them wield their mixed bloodline like a weapon against those they considerbeneath them. They worst than the white people, because they are supposed to be us.
I knew he was trouble the moment he first set eyes on Willa—like a hunter studying prey, calculating exactly how to spring his trap. I tried everything, begged her to see past his charm. But Janey? She might as well have delivered Willa to his doorstep with a ribbon around her neck. She handed our innocent Willa to a man who collects dark-skinned beauties like other men collect hunting trophies.
Four days now. Not a whisper of news, not a trace of where he’s taken her. Carmelo and Caesar attempted to storm the Thibodeaux plantation yesterday, even without Marcello’s blessing, because I’ve been so upset. They were met by armed guards and turned away at the gates like common trespassers. Their "family compound" sprawls across so much land it’s bigger than the Wynns and Jensens’ combined.
When I confronted Janey, she merely sipped her imported sherry with those eyes glittering like something was amusing her. My pain made her smile. And if it wasn’t my pain, it was her own. Because that’s what I think is wrong with Aunt Janey. Whatever happened to her whenMama left her behind has stolen her soul. And she spends all night thinking of ways to steal the souls of others.
I begged her to tell me why she did it. She said: “Innocence is such a burden, chère. Survival is what transforms girls into women who truly matter." What kind of monster speaks such words about an innocent girl? What manner of woman destroys a child to prove some twisted philosophical point?
I've left that cursed mansion and taken refuge in a boarding house room in the Quarter, where the drunkards and prostitutes can be heard outside my window all night. Of course, Carmelo is with me. I even go to watch him practice for his fight in the ring. The Sicilians don’t care when I’m around. Like I said. It’s different here.
Tomorrow brings Carmelo's fight—the entire city buzzes with anticipation—but every prayer I whisper is for Willa alone. Praying, she draws breath. Praying she remembers the way back to people who genuinely love her in Butts. Praying that whatever happened to her doesn’t turn her into Janey. Praying she survives.
Protect that precious baby. Tell him his Aunt Kat loves him.
I miss you,
Kat
Kathy folded the letter with deliberate precision. She sealed the envelope with a lick and then addressed it to Debbie in her most careful penmanship.Mail it. Coffee. Find news of Willa.A mechanical checklist in her mind to keep her anchored in sanity.
She turned from the scarred wooden desk, her gaze inevitably drawn to the rumpled bed that dominated the tiny room.
Her stomach clenched with a mix of memory and shame.
Carmelo’s sexual appetite had increased to a level she could not have originally conceived. Last night, his mouth had mapped territories on her she hadn’t known existed—his tongue relentless, demanding surrender until she’d sobbed his name, while forcing her to sit on his face until her body convulsed. He worshipped her body like a sacrament, leaving her trembling and reborn. Then showed her things he wanted her to do to herself while he watched. Every night, Carmelo came up with something new and tantalizing. There was just nothing left unexplored but one. He wanted her to put his penis in her mouth, and she refused. Nothing in her life prepared her for the incandescent ruin of her virginal thoughts of intimacy.
And he left a message that he would come home early because he wanted more.
The problem?Sex made babies. Babies without marriage destroyed girls like her. Hell, it destroyed girls everywhere.
Kathy toiled over her growing concerns as she stripped the sheets with sharp, angry movements, the scent of sweat and sin rising like an accusation from the tangled linen. Bundling the evidence under her arm, she pressed Debbie's letter against her ribs and headed out.
How come sex was all he wanted when they were alone? What about reading books and telling stories to each other, orplaying cards like in the attic? What about just lying together and being one person as they talked about Africa and safaris?
This.This was why mothers preached marriage before passion, why the Church built walls around desire. What she and Carmelo shared wasn't mere pleasure—it was playing with lightning over and over. Her prayers this morning had been desperate whispers that dissolved into shaky sobs of relief when her period arrived on time that morning.
Downstairs, the boarding house hallway reeked of mildew and yesterday's cooking grease, the narrow space cramped with the dreams of people who couldn't afford better.
"Mr. Chen?" Her voice sounded thin and brittle in the quiet. "I need to arrange washing for my linens."
The elderly Chinese proprietor glanced up from his meticulous ledger, spectacles catching the dim gaslight. "Afternoon tubs available. All empty now." He accepted the bundle with a nod and handed her a numbered slip. Kathy fumbled twenty cents across the scarred counter, the coins cold against her palm. "I'll return soon," she promised, already turning toward escape.
She pushed through the heavy door—and froze.
The Quarter's morning mist hung thick and heavy over the street, softening the edges of slick cobblestones and the muddy swell of the Mississippi it floated in off of. Parked directly across the narrow street was Carmine Boanno's gleaming sedan, its chrome bumpers catching what little light penetrated the fog.
He leaned against the front fender with deceptive casualness, his silver-topped cane planted firmly, its tip disappearing into the thick waves of fog on the uneven stones. Even at this distance, she could feel the weight of his pale gaze studying her like a specimen under glass.
