Whispers and Lies Read Free

sell off any of her friends. How about a piece of cranberry-and-pumpkin cake?” I asked, changing the subject for fear of getting maudlin. “I just made it this morning.”
    “You can bake? Now I’m really impressed. I’mabsolutely hopeless in the kitchen.”
    “Your mother never taught you to cook?”
    “We weren’t on the best of terms.” Alison smiled, although unlike her other smiles, this one seemed more forced than genuine. “Anyway, I’d love a piece of cake. Cranberries are one of my very favorite things in the whole world.”
    Again, I laughed. “I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who felt so passionately about cranberries. Could you hand me a knife?” I motioned toward a group of knives slid into the artfully arranged slots of a triangular chunk of wood that sat on the far end of the white tile countertop. Alison pulled out the top one, a foot-long monster with a tapered two-inch blade. “Whoa,” I said. “Overkill, don’t you think?”
    She turned the knife over slowly in her hand, studying her reflection in the well-sharpened blade, gingerly running her finger along its side, temporarily lost in thought. Then she caught me looking at her and quickly replaced the knife with one of the smaller ones, watching intently as the knife sliced effortlessly through the large Bundt cake. Then it was my turn to watch as she wolfed it down, complimenting me all the while on its texture, its lightness, its taste. She finished it quickly, her entire focus on what she was doing, like a child.
    Maybe I should have been more suspicious, or at the very least, more wary, especially after the experience with my last tenant. But likely it was precisely that experience that made me so susceptible to Alison’s girlish charm. I wanted, really wanted, to believe she was exactly as she presentedherself: a somewhat naive, lovely, sweet young woman.
    Sweet
, I think now.
    Sweet is not exactly the word I would use.
    How could anything that sweet be destructive?
she’d asked.
    Why wasn’t I listening?
    “You’ve obviously never had a problem with your weight,” I observed as her fingers pressed down on several errant crumbs scattered across her plate before lifting them to her mouth.
    “If anything, I have trouble keeping pounds on,” she said. “I was always teased about it. Kids used to say things like, ‘Skinny Minny, she grows like a weed.’ And I was the last girl in my class to get boobs, such as they are, so I took a lot of flak for that. Now suddenly everybody wants to be thin, only I’m still catching flak. People accuse me of being anorexic. You should hear the things they say.”
    “People can be very insensitive,” I agreed. “Where’d you go to school?”
    “Nowhere special. I wasn’t a very good student. I dropped out of college in my first year.”
    “To do what?”
    “Let’s see. I worked in a bank for a while, sold men’s socks, was a hostess in a restaurant, a receptionist in a hair salon. Stuff like that. I never have any trouble finding a job. Do you think I could have some more coffee?”
    I poured her a second cup, again adding cream and three heaping teaspoons of sugar. “Would you like to see the cottage?”
    Instantly, she was on her feet, downing the coffee in one seamless gulp, wiping her lips with the back of her hand. “Can’t wait. I just know it’s going to be beautiful.”She followed me to the back door, an eager puppy nipping at my heels. “Your notice said six hundred a month, right?”
    “Will that be a problem? I require first and last month’s rent up front.”
    “No problem. I intend to start looking for a job as soon as I get settled, and even if I don’t find something right away, my grandmother left me some money when she died, so I’m actually in pretty good shape. Financially speaking,” she added softly, strawberry-blond hair curling softly around the long oval of her face.
    I had hair like that once, I thought, tucking several wayward waves of