Chapter 3

CHAPTER 3

M aggs and I hurried the ten feet from Oddities to Coral's door and went into the most tantalizing cloud of warmth and aroma in the universe: coffee, fresh baked bread, sugar and butter, all the smells of heaven.

"And where is the handsome Max this morning?" Coral called from behind the center counter. She looked as warm as her bakery case, smiling at me as her cleavage pressed against the top of her low-cut apron like risen bread rolls, her platinum blonde hair gleaming as if it were sugar glazed in the overhead light. Coral is seventy-four, but she doesn't see what that has to do with her clothes or her hair. I aspire to be Coral someday.

"The handsome Max is out walking in the woods again," I said. "Can I talk to you?"

"Of course," Coral said, and stopped, watching my face. "Oh." She nodded. "Anita," she called to her shop clerk. "Watch the counter for me, please." Coral had the slightest of accents, which I'd never thought much about, but that Max had said was German, Berliner, which was pretty damn specific, but Max could be that way. With accents, not so much with his future plans.

Anita, an anomaly in Rocky Start because she was in her twenties, sweet-faced, and not armed, came out of the back and waved to me as I retreated down to the end of the bakery cases to the little stretch of counter that was perpendicular to and half hidden behind the last case. It was where Coral's friend-with-benefits Pike usually sat, and it would also keep me at least partly hidden if somebody came in looking for me, but mostly it would give Coral and me some privacy since the questions I had were not something I wanted to share with the general populace. Not that the populace of Rocky Start is general. We have a lot of outliers here.

Coral came down to meet me and smiled over the counter at the dog. "And does our sweet Maggs require a cookie?"

Maggs immediately sat down and looked expectant, much more appreciative of good things than her owner.

Coral got a cookie out of her dog cookie stash and reached over the counter and Maggs took it delicately, like the good girl she was.

Then Maggs looked at me. The dog was trained not to eat unless given permission because someone might try to poison her. That seemed appropriate for a dog that hung out with Max. It had taken a lot of convincing for Max to dive into my lasagna that first day he was in town, and my lasagna is epic.

I nodded at the dog. "Knock yourself out, baby."

Maggs crunched down on the cookie happily, and I went back to Coral.

"I am somewhat confused," I told her.

Coral held up one finger to tell me to wait, went down the counter to pour hot water over a lemon zinger tea bag for me and a cup of coffee for herself, and came back to put the cups on the counter. "Continue."

"Is it some kind of retired spy thing that they have to be always on the move? I mean is it part of the general psychological make-up of ex-spooks not to stay anywhere for long?" That was actually not where I had planned to start the conversation, but evidently that's where my reptile brain went.

Coral frowned at me. "Why would you think that? Pike and I will never move from here. Oz was never away more than a night or two. Betty Baumgarten hasn't left in twenty-five years. Even Melissa is never away more than two or three nights. This is where we are safe."

"Max is leaving," I said, trying to sound unconcerned.

Coral sighed. "Oh. I thought he might stay. You are so good for him. Pike wants him here."

"Well, I'll be fine, of course," I said, pretty sure I wasn't lying. "But it's going to be hard on Poppy."

Coral nodded. "She seems to be highly strung lately. So not like her."

"Well, she got kidnapped and threatened with bodily harm over a week ago by a batshit bitch, and she thought her boyfriend was dead, and then she watched while the kidnapper was killed in front of her, the first time she'd ever seen death happen, so . . . she could be better." I swallowed. "It was the first time I've seen death, too, other than finding Ozzie cold on the floor over two weeks ago." I rubbed my forehead, trying to calm down. "She cries a lot and she snaps at me, but it's understandable. Max says it's PTSD." I looked up at Coral. "We're not ex-spies like some of the others in the town. We're not used to this. But she was doing better because Max was here."

Coral's face changed then, sympathy or worry or both, and she opened the nearest bakery case, took out a slab of yellow cake, put it on a plate, and put the plate next to my rapidly cooling lemon zinger.

" Butterkuchen ," she said.

" Danke ," I said.

" Bitte ," she said and handed me a fork.

I cut into my butter cake, cracking the sugar glaze full of almonds on top, and tasted it: Rich and sweet and nutty, like Coral. Divine, also like Coral. Sugar: the universal solution to every problem. Except for the problems of my traumatized daughter and my lover with one foot out the door, and what the hell I was going to do with my failure of a secondhand shop.

Stop whining, Rose.

Coral sat down again. "People like Max, like us, it is not easy to change from the life we were used to. Always on the move. It is a life with—" she paused, then gestured, her hand going in a wave movement—"constant ups and downs. It took us all a while to settle in. To become still. I think he is afraid."

"Afraid?" That was the last word I would associate with Max. "Of what?"

"Of what happens when he is still," Coral said.

"But we're good together."

"That will scare him, too." Coral shook her head. "I understand this can be upsetting, Rose, but you are strong. You will be fine."

"Great." I cut into the cake again. "And what about Poppy?"

"Her, too." Coral grew still. "Death is difficult to absorb at the beginning, but she is eighteen now, correct? She will recover."

Coral speaks from experience. She'd told me before that she'd killed her first man at fifteen when she'd been attacked and dragged into an alley. Of course, then she'd become an assassin slash spy, so I'm not sure ‘recovered' is the word I'd have used for her. Maybe adapted? Like ‘I seem to be good at this killing thing, maybe that's a career?'

"But young people recover from these things," she was saying. "I recovered quickly. Poppy saw bad things, but she will get over it. She has support, you and Max and Pike and me protecting her. And Darius. Darius is so good for her."

"Poppy did more than get kidnapped and threatened," I reminded her. "She watched Serena die in our shop."

I still hadn't gotten Poppy's blood out of the places it had seeped between the cracks in the wood. The cuts she'd gotten during her kidnapping were slowly healing, but they were still much faster than the psychological damage. Poppy was refusing to admit there was a problem, still insisted she was fine, all the while looking like a really beautiful grenade about to go off.

"She won't let me take her to a therapist," I told Coral. "She insists she's okay, but I know Max and Maggs leaving is going to upset her. And then there's the shop." I took a deep breath. "I know Ozzie didn't care if it made money, but I have to feed Poppy. And me. So if you have any ideas for?—"

The door opened as it had been doing the entire time we'd been talking—Ecstasy is a very popular place—but this time it was Sid Quill, our local pharmacist, and even though Coral and I were half hidden behind the bakery case, he looked around until he spotted me.

"Oh, hell," I said, and Coral stood up, not smiling.

Sid came toward me, beaming. He really shouldn't do that. Did you ever see Rocky Horror? He reminded me of Riff Raff, so even when he was just being friendly, he looked like he was plotting something for the secret lab in his basement. That was not a joke, he actually has a secret lab in the basement of the pharmacy. It was disquieting, but then this was Rocky Start, home of many upstanding citizens and some retired spies. Who were also upstanding. As long as you didn't cross them. "Disquieting" was practically the town motto. Along with "We don't do warning shots."

"There you are," Sid called to me.

I looked at Coral. "Can you teach me knife skills?"

Coral nodded. "The basics, certainly."

"I think I'm going to need them," I told her as Sid sat down beside me.

New skills for a new future.

Without Max.