Total pages in book: 88
Estimated words: 81986 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 410(@200wpm)___ 328(@250wpm)___ 273(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 81986 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 410(@200wpm)___ 328(@250wpm)___ 273(@300wpm)
“See? No plan, but we ended up here, and it’s perfect.” I bumped Worth’s shoulder with my own. It wasn’t hyperbole either. Years from now, I would bite into a just-picked cherry, ripe from the summer sun, and I would see Worth’s lips stained red with juice and feel the warmth of this moment.
“It is.” Worth’s agreement made me grin, and to my delight, he grinned right back. “These taste like Oregon summer. I remember eating big bags of farm-stand cherries under my tree and Mom complaining because she’d been planning on using them for pie or cobbler.”
I made an indignant noise before laughing. “Depriving the world of one of her pies was a sin. I remember her crusts.”
“She had a secret ingredient. Ice cold vodka from the freezer.”
“For real?” I hadn’t known either of his parents to drink. But then, there was a whole host of secrets none of us had known about Worth’s family.
“Yup. Something about the chemistry of how it affects the dough.” Worth gazed off into the distance. “She was so smart about stuff like that. Should have been a scientist.”
“Or written a cookbook.” I tried to match his fond tone, anything to keep him talking.
“Ha. Everyone always said that, but she’d say cooking was a labor of love, not a job.” He shook his head before his eyes darkened, going from chocolate to coal. “Of course, that changed the summer she started selling Kitchen Kingdom crap.”
Angry. Worth was angry, exactly how my mom had predicted. I patted the back of his cherry-stained hand.
“Half the town got swept up in the craze though.” I’d been younger that summer, earning money for candy and video games, cutting grass and lying around the town pool, moping because Worth Stapleton was away at college. But my mom had been invited to enough of the kitchen implement parties for me to notice the trend. And it was hardly the first or last such craze—candles, leggings, aromatherapy, storage solutions, and educational books had all had their moments in Safe Harbor. “Multi-level mass marketing is always going to have people looking to get rich quick.”
“Like housewives with too much time and not enough income because their kids are off at pricey colleges.” Worth spat a cherry pit into the paper bag we’d been using for trash.
“It’s not your fault your mom got involved.” I tried to meet his gaze, but he grabbed another cherry, studying it intently.
“Fault is subjective.” He plucked the cherry stem loose with nimble fingers. “But there are certain inarguable facts. I was gone most of that summer. Funds were super tight. My folks argued a lot about money. My dad thought I didn’t need a Stanford degree, thought U of O would be a better, cheaper fit. My mom kept telling me not to worry about the money. I had scholarships. The rest could be worked out.” He bit the cherry cleanly in half before swallowing. “Or so she thought.”
“You can’t blame yourself, and you can’t blame her either. Plenty of other people got involved with the kitchen parties.” Buttercup was now rolling in the dust, oblivious to the tense turn of our conversation. “Wanting extra money or a side hustle isn’t a bad thing, and you can’t fault any of the people who signed up either. No one knew.”
Worth snorted. “Kind of like no one knew Perry & Ellis was the scum of the financial world until it was too late?” He spat another cherry pit, lips pursing, expression bitter. “At what point do we tax people for being gullible?”
“We don’t.” I put a firm hand on his shoulder. “Your heart was in the right place with the job. You didn’t intentionally dupe anyone. And the same with your mom. If she wanted extra money to help you with college, that was a noble thing. She had no way of knowing she was dealing with a psychopath.”
“But she damn sure knew she was cheating.”
Ah. There it was, the real source of the anger my mom had worried about. Worth’s eyes glinted, face as harsh as his voice. When the investigation into his mother’s disappearance reopened last year, not only had her remains been discovered along with a link to a known serial killer who preyed on women connected with Kitchen Kingdom but letters had been found that hinted at a more personal relationship between his mother and the killer.
“The evidence of a romantic entanglement isn’t entirely conclusive.” My voice came out too precise and cautious, like a defense attorney facing a hostile jury, and Worth predictably made a disgusted noise.
“I get you’re trying to help me not hate my mom, but I’m not an idiot. And I might not have been in Safe Harbor, but I’ve kept up with the case. I’ve heard the podcasts. Read the articles. I know perfectly well Monroe’s book will argue she was the first victim of the serial killer. He was in love with her, obsessed, and devastated when she wouldn’t run away with him, and all the other victims were women who reminded him of her.”