3

Three months later…

As Milli listened to soothing piano music and piped black swirls onto two tiers of a white velvet five-tier cake, she remembered her wedding only six weeks ago. The love she had for Edgar poured out her hands into the delicate, beautiful design she was creating on the cakes.

He was her first in everything from the moment she had saved him from being mugged outside the Velvet Rope Club, to the first thought she had this morning when she woke up. She had gone to pick up Marni at 3 AM. Her sister was always getting off work just as Milli was getting ready to head to work. She and her sister’s life always blended seamlessly from the day Haywood adopted Milli. Side-by-side sisters, always there when the other one needed them. Nothing ever came between them. If Marni didn’t have the job she had, Milli never would have met the man of her dreams.

As her hands flew over the surface of a cake, stacking the tiers and piping the flowers, Milli remembered how Edgar had showered her with gifts and spoiled her with attention the likes of which she had never received from anyone of the opposite sex. Growing up with Marni meant every boy had only shown interest in Milli to get to Marni, but Edgar was different. He loved Milli, and he wanted her, not Marni. It was Edgar’s cousin, Heith, who had taken an interest in Marni and she in him, and soon they were double dating. Doing everything together socially as a foursome. The only hiccup to their happiness was Heith and Milli, both insisting they got married before moving in together. So, on April second, they all got married, a double wedding in a small chapel, just the four of them.

Everything in their shared household seemed ideal. Heith and Milli always seemed to wake up early, even when they didn’t have to work, while Edgar and Marni were the night owls. They had settled into a comfortable family-like life in Milli and Marni’s two-bedroom rental. Milli cooked and baked, Heith did the dishes when he was home, while Edgar threw in laundry, and Marni... Well, Marni just did the things Marni typically did around the house. Milli had never been happier.

Milli leaned back and rotated the cake slowly, ivory roses with hand piped lace, and it was lovely. She really hoped her friend Katy’s cousin liked it. Carefully she put the glossy fondant ribbons in rich turquoise on the cake, it had taken four attempts to get the color to match the swatch she had. But her joy in decorating the cake was tempered by wondering what would happen when Heith got home from South Dakota. Milli thought about asking Edgar if they could stay at a hotel. She didn’t want to hear Heith and Marni fighting again.

“Pick up,” Milli called as she slid the cake off her decorating pedestal. She handed the cake off to Caroline and started on the next one; a chocolate cake with peanut butter filling. Looking at the order sheet, Milli grinned at her own sketch. She got a clean set of brushes, fondant paint, edible metallic powder, clear extract, and bags of white and black royal icing. Soon, she was piping royal icing lines around hand painted lilies and butterflies on the birthday cake, but her thoughts drifted back to the coming conflict between her sister and brother-in-law.

Heith’s job as an energy engineer and geologic surveyor would keep him away until next week and then, when he returned, he would find out Marni had gone back to working at The Velvet Rope Gentlemen’s Club. Milli couldn’t imagine that Heith would be very happy about it. She knew Marni well enough to know she wouldn’t have asked him about returning to her old job.

Marni quit The Velvet Rope the day of their weddings because Heith was old-fashioned; he wanted his ‘respectable’ wife at home to raise a family, but Marni loved to shop. Milli mentally cringed knowing Marni probably needed the money; she had a lot of new things that could only have been bought with her many credit cards or paid for by her secret side gig as a registered sex worker. Another thing Marni had never told Heith about. The pay was ten times what Marni earned as a teacher’s aide. Milli worried that her sister would go back to her party girl ways if she and Heith divorced. It was Milli’s greatest fear that someday she would get a call saying Marni had died, killed by the lifestyle she played at in high school once she got the means to fund it for real from their inheritance.

Edgar was the opposite of Heith in so many ways. He was fine with Milli working; he didn’t even care where she worked or what she did at work, and so she no longer talked about it with him. Milli envied Marni that her husband worked so hard while Milli’s husband lived on a job created by his mother that amounted to just meeting people, mainly men, and taking them out for a good time on the company dime. Her husband shopped like her sister and he never seemed to tire of spending money. She knew Edgar came from money but never asked how rich his family was. She wondered how much things would change when the sisters got their inheritance; she had never told Edgar about the money they would get when they turned 25.

* * *

Another day, another set of cakes. Just as she was finishing piping the royal icing detail, Milli felt someone tall standing over her shoulder and pulled out her earbuds.

“Heith? You’re back early. Welcome home.” Milli tried to sound happy, but secretly she was wondering how she could text her sister to warn Marni without him noticing.

His face looked like he was barely containing his temper, “Where’s Marni? They said that she hasn’t been to school all week.”

Milli hesitated, then shook her head; there was no use hiding the truth. “She didn’t tell you, did she? She went back to work at the club.”

His jaw clenched as he looked down at her strangely. He muttered under his breath, “There’s a lot she isn’t telling either of us.”

Milli looked at him oddly. “Her shift starts at 4 PM, she said she’d Uber over there.”

Even his southern drawl sounded strangled as he spoke in a stilting, hesitant way. “Milli, there’s something I need to tell you but I... I don’t want to hurt your feelings... You’re a really good person and I know you didn’t know... I found out something...” His phone rang, and he cursed under his breath before turning away. “Rowling here.”

For a moment, she thought he would fall. Heith turned pale under his tan as Milli hooked a barstool out from under the decorating table. She sat him down on it, as he seemed to struggle to breathe, even sitting he was still taller than she. She grabbed a bottle of water from the cooler for him.

“Heith, what’s wrong?” Her fear screamed at her that it was Marni.

“Our... our grandfather died. He was helping with the Longhorn cows and...and got gored in the leg. He... he... He bled out before they could get him t-to... th-the h-h-hospital.” Heith stammered the words out.

Internally breathing a sigh of relief that it wasn’t Marni, Milli wrapped her arms around his neck and let him cry. Their grandfather had raised both Heith and Edgar after their parents’ divorces. She murmured soothing things to him. In the bakery around them, the cake was taken away and another set in its place, but she ignored it. Her phone buzzed, a text message from Edgar, telling her what she already knew. The patriarch of the Rowling family was dead, and Heith and Edgar needed to go to Texas tomorrow for the funeral and to help sort out their family affairs.

Telling Ramses there had been a death in the family, Milli took Heith home. Edgar was sitting on the couch; he was already drunk and still drinking. Marni was trying to get him to give her the tequila bottle he was drinking from. She was curled up next to him, with her feet tucked under her, whispering and cooing soothingly. Heith yanked her away from his cousin and dragged her to their room. They immediately started yelling at each other. Milli couldn’t hear what they were saying, only that there were angry words being exchanged.

“Edgar, honey. What can I do?” Milli asked quietly.

Truthfully, Edgar scared her when he was drunk, it seemed like he got angry so easily. He was always sorry afterward, but she had lived through the many times when her biological mother turned violent that it always scared her. Her fear made him even madder; he didn’t know about her childhood before her adoption, only that Marni’s mom adopted her.

“Nothing, Lil’ Bit.” He had started mimicking the nickname Heith called her.

“Have you eaten?” Milli asked softly, afraid of provoking one of his tirades, but he shook his head. “Okay, I’ll make dinner.” She went into the kitchen and made dinner, all of his and Heith’s favorites.

Heith stomped into the kitchen just as Milli finished putting in a spiced peach pie in, then she took the twice-baked stuffed potatoes out. He froze, staring at the food she had made, muttering she was too good for them. The front door slammed and Milli knew Marni had left like she always did after she and Heith fought.

“Thanks for dinner, Lil’ Bit,” Heith muttered.

Nodding, she made him a plate. “I’m so sorry, Heith.”

Heith sat and ate quietly, alone, while Milli took a plate into the living room and coaxed one bite at a time down Edgar. Milli came back just long enough to take the pie out of the oven and cut a piece for Edgar. When Heith went into the living room, Milli and Edgar were gone, and music was coming from their bedroom.

Later that night, a wide-awake Milli laid next to a drunkenly passed out Edgar. She struggled to sleep when he was drunk because she had too many bad memories from her childhood, but tonight… tonight, he had hurt her. Her phone chimed in reminder, and she slipped out from under his arm. Edgar muttered in his sleep and turned over. Shakily, she dressed quickly and headed out to pick up Marni from work. Milli was glad she was off today because she was exhausted.

In the living room, Heith was sitting in the chair by the front window.

“Where are you going?” he demanded roughly.

“Uh... Marni gets off work in a little while, she’s not supposed to drive.”

Milli edged toward the door, trying to keep as much distance between them as possible. She had never feared Heith or Edgar the way she was usually afraid of other men, but tonight there was something different about the way they were both acting. Something dangerous. Edgar had been cruel, and now Heith... Heith seemed to radiate a need for violence, just like Dante used to, and she didn’t want to provoke him.

“So, you’re her chauffeur now too? You’re her cook, her maid, her slave, is there anything you don’t do for that whore?” His words were cruel.

Milli was shocked about the way he was talking about her sister, it made her angry, and being angry made her brave, so she stabbed his chest with her finger and argued with him, but he backed her into the wall menacingly. He was so tall as he towered over her, trapping her, then his head dipped low and he kissed her. His large hand firmly but gently cupping her cheek so she couldn’t turn away. She knew she shouldn’t let Heith kiss her, she wasn’t that kind of girl, and he was married to her sister. Her fear shouted that he was going to hurt her the way her late sister Roxie had been hurt.

“Please, stop.” She half-sobbed against his lips. Her heart pounded fearfully in a way it never had with Edgar’s tantrums until tonight.

Something in her tone got through his drunken stupor and he stepped back, shocked. “Ohgawd, Milli, I’m…”

Fleeing in fear, Milli didn’t wait to hear the rest of what he had to say and ran out the door. Jumping in her little car, she started it and sped away. Looking in the rearview mirror, she saw Heith standing in the yard looking upset that she escaped.