Page 50 of Don't Call Me Sweetheart

They were also some of my best customers. My smile stretched wide. “What can I get for you, ladies?”

The clickety-clack of the knitting needles did not cease as the women relayed their orders.

“A pound of those strawberry candies,” Estelle said. “The hard ones with the soft centers. You know what I mean.”

“I want the sour gummi worms,” Lillian said. “Five pounds.” When Estelle and Maud side-eyed her, she said, “What? The grandkids are in town.”

“I’ll have a box of the caramels,” Maud said. “The good ones.”

Estelle clucked her tongue. “You know better than that, Maud. They’ll pull your dentures right out.”

“Well, I can put them right back in again, can’t I?” Maud shot back. “Make it two boxes, Kate.”

My smile broadened even further. “You got it.”

I placed two boxes of caramels—the good kind, thick and sticky, just how Maud liked them—on the counter, then reached below for the stack of cellophane bags customized with the Sweet Things logo. After a moment’s thought, I selected one red bag and one yellow.

“We heard you had a date at that axe-throwing place,” Estelle said as I scooped strawberry candies into the red bag.

Oh, I just bet they had. “Hmm,” I said noncommittally.

“With the principal of Piedmont,” Maud said.

“Hmm.”

“And you kissed him.” This last bit uttered with gleeful shock by Lillian.

“Hmm.”

“That’s old news, Lillian,” Maud said. “Did you know that Kate’s car has been parked in Mr. Darlington’s driveway every afternoon this past week? Which is very interesting because my son, who, as you know, teaches eleventh grade English at Piedmont, told me Mr. Darlington has been sick since Tuesday.”

With my back turned to the counter as I weighed the strawberry candies, I made an impolite face. I doubted very much that Lillian was unaware of where I parked my car. The three of them had probably discussed all the details before ever entering my shop.

“She picked up his prescription at the pharmacy on Tuesday,” Estelle added helpfully. “Abigail Matthews saw her. I would think you have to be someone’s special friend if they trusted you to pick up their prescription. Don’t you think so, Maud?”

Maud nodded fervently, making her Lucille-Ball red curls bob with the motion. “Oh yes.”

“Are you Mr. Darlington’s special friend, Kate?” Lillian asked, peering through her glasses at me like she was an FBI agent conducting a lie detector test.

I arched a brow. The knitting needles fell silent. All three women leaned forward expectantly, as though they didn’t want to miss a word.

“I like to think all my friends are special,” I said. “Especially you ladies.” I looped a pink-and-red striped ribbon around the bag of strawberry candy and tied it shut with a bow. “That will be five fifty, Estelle.”

Estelle pursed her bright-pink lips. She pulled her wallet from her knitting bag and counted out the cash, giving exact change and stuffing an extra dollar bill in the tip jar.

I beamed. “Thank you.”

I turned my attention to Lillian’s order of sour gummi worms, hoping that was the end of it.

But the septuagenarian mafia wasn’t done with me yet.

“I still think parking your car in the principal’s driveway every afternoon seems a might fishy,” Estelle said. “Be careful, Kate. We all know what sneaking around leads to, and you don’t want to find yourself in a bad spot again.”

I frowned. Sneaking around? I wasn’t sneaking around. What on earth were they talking about? What bad spot—

Oh.

I had gotten plenty of side-eyes and snide comments as an unmarried, pregnant seventeen-year-old. Everyone thought it was their responsibility to give me a lecture or a setdown. But those judgments all fell silent the day George died.

---