Page 82 of A Spot of Trouble
Ethel dabbed at her eyes with the corner of one of her goofy foam fingers. “It’s hard to watch, sweetheart. You know this isn’t what your father wants for you, either. Or your brothers. They love you just the way you are.”
“Were,” Mavis corrected. “They love you just the way youwere. No one knows this new person you’re trying to become.”
“Even the other residents of the senior center are confused. Yesterday in yoga class, you called murder victim pose something entirely different,” Ethel said.
Violet crossed her arms. “I called itShavasana. That’s the proper word for it.”
Mavis rolled her eyes. “Well, not one person knew what in the world you were talking about.”
“Violet, dear, we don’t go to yoga because it’s proper exercise. We go because you make it fun.” Opal shrugged.
Damn these women. They always knew just what to say to crack Violet’s increasingly fragile composure.
She nodded. “Fine. Murder victim pose it is. Duly noted.”
“Good. Now what are you going to do about Sam?” Mavis backed her walker up a bit, out of cupcake-tossing range.
Violet didn’t like to talk about Sam. Ever. And she definitely didn’t want to do it here, in front of the entire town. “Mavis, please don’t. I can’t talk about Sam right now. You know that.”
“Very well. We need to get to our seats anyway, and you have cupcakes to sell.” Mavis leaned closer and lowered her voice to a mock whisper. “But just so you know, Hoyt Hooper Sr. heard from Hoyt Hooper Jr., who heard from Griff Martin that Sam has been offered a job back in Chicago. He had a big closed-door meeting with Chief Murray about it yesterday.”
All the blood seemed to rush out of Violet’s head in a suddenwhoosh. She swayed on her feet. “Sam’s leaving Turtle Beach? When?”
Mavis shrugged. “That’s all I know, dear. You know I never pay attention to town gossip.”
Violet would have laughed out loud if she hadn’t felt like crying. Mavislivedfor Turtle Beach gossip.
Violet’s throat grew thick. Sam was leaving? He couldn’t. The island wouldn’t be the same without him and Cinder. Turtle Beach was a two-Dalmatian town now. Everyone knew that. What was he thinking?
It’s not your business, remember?
She closed her eyes and tried her best to think beige thoughts, but bursts of color kept breaking through the numbness. Luckily, she had a crush of customers to deal with to distract her from her most inconvenient reawakening.
Violet just needed to get through the next few hours, and then everything would be fine. So what if Sam left? Violet’s life pre-Sam had been perfectly acceptable. Happy, even. She didn’t need a stern-faced fire marshal with a robotic Dalmatian to make her life complete.
Except Cinder had really come out of her shell when the Dalmatians had been switched. Likewise, Sprinkles had learned a thing or two. And Sam hadn’t scowled at her in weeks. In fact, she rather liked the way he looked at her—like she was a perfectly frosted cupcake and he’d eaten nothing but bread and water for his entire life.
“Oh, my gosh,” Violet said out loud.
Sprinkles sat up in her pink crate and cocked her head.
“Sam and I have switched places, just like you and Cinder.” Violet pressed a hand to her stomach. She felt sick all of a sudden. “But I don’t have the honor and heroics to go with his comforting predictability. I’m just…”
How had Mavis put it?
A ghost of your former self…you’re disappearing before our very eyes.
Good grief, Mavis was right.
Panic swirled through Violet as she sold one cupcake after another. She had to do something, but what? The game had already started. The bleachers were packed, and the police department was already up by three runs. Her father and brothers were probably beside themselves. If Violet hadn’t called off the bet with Sam, she would have been ecstatic herself.
The game droned on, and with every change of the innings, the sense of doom hanging over Violet’s cupcake truck grew thicker. Heavier. What if Sam had stuck around in town just to finish the tournament? It sounded like the honorable sort of thing he would do. For all Violet knew, he was leaving right after the victory party at Island Pizza. If the firefighters lost, he might even scoot out earlier.
There was only one thing Violet could come up with that might convince him to stay—one surefire way to get his attention long enough to tell him how she really felt before it was too late.
She marched over to Sprinkles’s pink crate. The Dalmatian sprang to her feet and pawed at the door, as if to sayPut me in, Coach.
Violet unlatched the crate and then flung the door to the cupcake truck open wide. Sprinkles took off like a shot, sprinted to the middle of the softball diamond, and started running around the bases, barking louder than Violet had ever heard her before.
