Family Plot (9781982163860) by Collins Megan

Author:Collins, Megan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2021-08-17T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

There’s a shattered eggshell on the kitchen floor. Its yolk, glossy as sunlight, oozes between the tiles. A rack of unburnt cookies cools near the oven, edges perfectly golden.

Mom’s slumped over the counter, silent and motionless, arm on the marble, forehead on her arm. I watch for the rise and fall of breath, listen for a moan or cry. When she remains as still as a grave, I step over the egg to approach her, stretching out a tentative hand.

As soon as I touch her, she jolts. “Dahlia! Oh!”

I jump back, palm pressed to my chest.

“Here!” she says.

She pirouettes toward the cookies, scoops one up with a spatula, and places it on a napkin that she pushes into my hand. I look at the chocolate chips studding the top of it, and the scent that wafts toward me is sweet and familiar, whiffs of Greta’s café. For the first time since returning home, my mouth waters; my stomach churns with hunger.

“Thanks,” I say, and I take a bite. The cookie is soft and buttery and warm. I give an appreciative groan as I lick the chocolate off my teeth. “Wow. It’s good.”

Mom beams, hands tucked toward her chin, clasped as if in prayer. Her smile reaches her eyes, lighting them up, and it completely transforms her, the slumped woman from just moments ago now bouncing on her toes.

“How are you doing?” I ask. “After yesterday.”

Her smile dims, flickering once before disappearing completely. She looks at the egg on the floor but doesn’t bend to clean it up. “I’m… managing,” she says carefully. “How are you?”

She glances at the sink, the cookies, the gaping hole where the kitchen door once was, and it’s strange, watching her try this hard to avoid my gaze. Even when she told us how Dorothy Stratten, once a Playboy playmate, was found naked on the carpet, her brains blown out of her head in chunks so big that “one resembled a whole roast chicken,” she stared at me and Andy as if daring us to look away.

“Managing,” I agree.

Mom reaches into a cabinet for a plastic container and begins placing the cookies inside, three neat little rows.

“Fritz called,” she says, matter-of-factly, and right away, my skin feels shivery, my forehead moist. “He said that, given the circumstances, he’s going to take some more time off.”

“Time off?” I practically yell. “I hope you told him he’s fired! At the very least, he’s fired.”

Mom freezes for a second, a vein jumping at her temple. But then she shakes her head, stacking more cookies on top of one another. “Detective Kraft said they let him go. They don’t think he’s the… the Blackburn Killer.” Her movements slow, the spatula gliding to a midair stop. “Or Andy’s. And I know what you said yesterday, but the more I think about it, the more impossible it seems, that Fritz could have—”

A timer bleats, startling us both.

“My shortbread!” Mom cries. She opens the oven door, shoves her hand into a mitt, and pulls out another tray of cookies.

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