Chapter 27 Dane

Chapter 27

Dane

Vicki Anderson is breaking.

In the good way.

We’ve been searching the bakery for hours. Every time Amanda tears up, Vicki flinches.

I’ll never claim to be an expert at reading people I don’t know, but I don’t think those are flinches of a woman who’s horrified that her granddaughter has made a terrible choice in fiancés and doesn’t want to inherit a bakery.

I think that’s the flinch of a woman who’s starting to feel bad for standing in the way of her granddaughter’s happiness.

She might never like me.

My family.

She might never like my family .

But I think she’s starting to see the harm that the feud has done.

“Did you get on the floor and look under the prep table?” she says to me at one point. “My old bones don’t like me bending that way anymore.”

I look under the prep table. I shine a light under the fridge and under the ovens. I help pull everything out of the fridge and ovens. I help put it back. I search the dining room. Behind the counters, even though Amanda says she wasn’t behind the display cases and checkout counters.

I don’t get kicked out.

And honestly, they’d have to call the sheriff if they wanted me to leave. So long as Amanda wants me here, I’m here.

By early afternoon, it’s pretty clear the ring isn’t in the bakery.

Lorelei’s activated the entire town.

Everyone’s looking for the ring outside the bakery too.

Including Uncle Rob, apparently.

“Are you sure you were wearing it when you left the cabin?” Kimberly asks Amanda as we all sit together at one of the tables in the dining room.

Amanda won’t make eye contact with me. Her eyes are dull and her lips angled down, and even her hair seems to have lost some of its curl. “I’m absolutely positive I was wearing it in the car.”

I’ve thoroughly searched the car.

It’s not there.

We’ve retraced basically every step she made since getting here, though there were some glances between the women that tell me I’m missing something.

I loop my arm around Amanda, feeling absolutely helpless. “It’ll turn up.”

She meets my gaze for the first time in what feels like an eternity. “I’m so sorry.”

“It will turn up,” I repeat.

It was a hefty chunk of change.

But I wasn’t going to return it. I knew what I was investing in when I bought it, and it wasn’t a fiancée, no matter how much I like Amanda.

Damn thing’s working to soften up Uncle Rob because it’s lost.

And I know she didn’t lose it on purpose. The Amanda I know—the Amanda I believe in—would not have lost it.

But maybe she’s devastated that this was supposed to be my excuse to break up with her because she doesn’t want to do it herself, and I’m not playing along.

That thought, more than anything else today, is what has my heart twisting itself into a knot.

“You don’t need a ring to get married,” Kimberly says. “Dane’s right about that.”

My phone buzzes with an incoming text message.

I check to see if it’s Lorelei with good news, but it’s a number I don’t recognize.

Is this Dane? My name is Winona. I’m the Tinsel town historian. I got a message you wanted to talk about some letters.

Amanda makes a noise next to me. She’s reading it too.

“Did someone find it?” Kimberly asks.

“Cake emergency,” Amanda blurts at the same time as I say, “Tux shop needs me ASAP.”

Kimberly and Vicki stare at us.

I shove my seat back.

Amanda leaps out of hers too.

“What’s going on?” Vicki asks.

“I forgot I stopped at the bridge to make a wish that our entire families would be happy for us on my drive in, and someone just texted that they thought they saw something shiny in the water but they can’t dive in, and I didn’t want to tell you how much it hurts that you’re being an asshole about me marrying Dane, but we’re going to go see if we can find my ring in the creek,” Amanda says. “I’ll be back for your party tonight. Probably.”

She’s operating at half-strength perkiness, but the asshole comment still lands.

Vicki and Kimberly are both slack jawed as Amanda and I push back from the table and head out the front door.

I’m calling Winona the minute we’re a shop away from the Gingerbread House.

And fifteen minutes later, she’s showing us into the archives room at city hall again.

“You’re not the first people to ask about this in the past month,” she tells us as she lays out a spread of original letters on a wooden table in the musty-smelling room. “I got curious, so I dug these out myself and took them home to look them over during my off hours.”

“You’ve been sending us copies,” Amanda says.

Winona shakes her head. “I have not.”

“But these are the letters we got,” I say.

There’s the letter about George breaking Maud’s heart.

The one about George stealing the dowry.

And more that we haven’t seen yet.

At least a half dozen more.

Including letters back from Lucy, my great-great-great-great-aunt.

I’ve read all of them three times, but I’m not learning anything new.

George and Maud were engaged. Lucy sent the dowry. George got the dowry, broke up with Maud, and married Minnie instead.

Okay, we learn Minnie didn’t give birth for another thirteen months and that my great-great-great-grandmother was convinced that it was either the world’s longest pregnancy or that Minnie had lost a baby and not told anyone.

And we learn that my family has a deep and abiding dislike of Amanda’s family.

“So my family couldn’t let go that a romantic relationship didn’t work out, and they claim a dowry is missing, but we have no record of what the dowry was,” I say quietly.

“That’s my read,” Winona agrees.

“Do you have any letters or records about the Andersons?” I ask.

“Nothing until they built the original Gingerbread House right after the war.”

“The Gingerbread House,” Amanda whispers. “Oh my god. Oh my god. ”

I arch my brows at her. “The Gingerbread House?”

“This one.” She points to a letter from Lucy. “May I please have a copy of this letter?”

I skim the letter again. “What are you seeing that I’m not?”

“The handwriting.”

I lift my gaze to her.

Her eyes are shiny, but not sad.

Not completely.

There’s a level of triumph in there too. “I think I solved the rest of the mystery. But I need a copy of this. And then I need to do something. Alone.”

She pinches her lips together, and her eyes go shinier. “Oh my god,” she whispers again. “This could change everything.”