After Charlotte cleaned up the breakfast dishes, she scurried back upstairs to her room and Vivian was left alone at the kitchen table. Five minutes later Charlotte bounded back down the stairs, grabbed her coat and ice skates from the hall closet, and was out the door into the cold morning, headed to Christmas Run Park. Vivian watched her disappear, wishing she could follow. So young, so casual, so careless. Youth is wasted on the young. She’d never really understood that saying. Not now, and not when she’d heard it the first time, when she was in her youth.

She pushed her chair back, stood, and stalked into the living room, where she picked up one of the sofa cushions, held it to her face, and screamed. With her eyes scrunched shut and her mouth wide open, she screamed into that cotton-batting-stuffed beige cushion for a full ten seconds, and when she finally pulled the cushion away from her face she felt light-headed and had to sit down. She dropped onto the sofa, holding the cushion to her chest, the way she used to hold her dollies when she was little, and breathed slowly until the dizziness passed.

She stood up, replaced the cushion with a sound smack, returned to the kitchen, and tied on her apron. She banged around the cabinets and drawers, and took out the oversized mixing bowls, measuring cups, and the flour, baking soda, brown sugar, molasses, and all the other ingredients, and did what she always did at this time of year. She made her fruitcakes. And if there was any rat poison left in the box, maybe she’d make a special cake for Edward.

Christmas Fruitcake (double batch)

6 cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

2 cups butter

2 ½ cups white sugar

8 eggs

3 cups raisins

2 cups red and green candied cherries

1 ½ cups dates, pitted and chopped

1 ½ cups candied pineapple, diced

1 ½ cups chopped walnuts

1 cup flaked coconut

4 teaspoons lemon juice

1. Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Grease pan.

2. In a large bowl (but not the green one because the salad dressing smell wont come out) whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt. Mix in raisins, dates, cherries, pineapple, walnuts, and coconut. Stir until all fruit is coated.

3. In another large bowl, mix the butter and sugar. Add lemon juice, and eggs; mix well. Stir in fruit mixture. Spread batter into prepared pans.

4. Bake for 2 hours or until toothpick comes out clean. Cool completely on a wire rack.

Chapter 12

Vivian hadn’t smashed the alarm clock into her husband’s Adam’s apple that first night, she hadn’t stabbed him with the kitchen knife the night after that, and she hadn’t poisoned him with a tainted fruitcake. Because, what if it wasn’t true? But it was. What if that conversation she’d overheard had just been hateful, idle gossip; the kind Betty Miller was always involved in? This wasn’t idle.