Books Not Written

Sugar and Spice - Chapter 2

 

Chapter Two

October 16 Thursday After Supper

Patrick Kelly’s House

Cambridge, Massachusetts

 

WHAT A SURPRISE for Patrick Kelly when the phone rang and it was from Cambridge Police Lieutenant Billy Reardon. Both boys had grown up in the Southie part of Boston. Their families lived next door to each other. They were the same age, so it was normal for them to be best buds.

They’d both gone from South Boston Catholic Academy to Boston College High School, complaining bitterly to their parents that they wanted to attend a co-ed school.

For university, Patrick lucked out, winning one of the scholarships given to top Boston students by Boston University. He could never have afforded it otherwise.

Billy went to the more affordable Massachusetts University campus at Boston. The two boys didn’t fall out; it was more a growing apart. Bill, as he told Patrick that he now wanted to be called, lived in Cambridge with other students. After graduation, he took the test to become a Cambridge cop and then worked his way up. From his changing titles, each higher than the last, Patrick assumed he was succeeding.

Back in the old neighborhood their mothers shared information about their boys. When Bill and Patrick did happen to meet, it was as if they had seen each other the week before. The last time they saw each other was Thanksgiving, almost a year before. No contact since then, which is why the telephone call had been such a surprise.

But maybe not considering their career paths.

Patrick had had a teaching fellowship at Harvard where he won his Ph.D. and was later certified as a psychologist. He had built his practice specializing in children.

Patrick married a South Boston girl, Nicole Flanagan. They bought a Victorian house just outside Harvard Square. The first floor served as his office. They lived on the second with the top floor under the eves serving as the bedrooms for them and the twins, Ethan and Violet, now eight. When Patrick thought of the nine-year olds who might have been plotting a murder, he couldn’t imagine his kids doing the same.

Every morning, Patrick threw his dirty underwear into the clothes hamper. He and Nicole had their own bathroom. After his shower he hung his towel with the ends lined up the way Nicole liked it. He didn’t need his psychology degree to know doing small things kept a marriage on a smoother path.

Nicole served as his receptionist and business manager. Once the twins were born, she hadn’t returned to nursing but took over the business responsibilities of Patrick’s practice. It kept her mind active and her salary within the practice and family.

It wasn’t that Patrick was cheap. Growing up he had watched his family’s careful handling of his father’s salary from the nearby power plant.

His mother had become the neighborhood seamstress not just for repairs but had made several wedding dresses for local women. To him and his father the word debt was equivalent to screaming “Fuck you” at the Virgin Mary in church.

It was 10:30, the same night long after Billy’s call, when Patrick went upstairs. He decided to wear his brown turtleneck and beige corduroy jacket tomorrow morning when he was to meet Reardon at the Cambridge Police Station. It would be professional enough but not so intimidating that he might scare four little nine-year-old girls being questioned at a police station.

He crawled into bed next to his sleeping wife. He loved watching her sleep. It reminded him of how lucky he was in everything.

***

The next morning as Patrick stepped out of the shower, the noise of the twins fighting floated up from downstairs. The battle?  As much as he could make out who would have the last box of Coco Pops rather than Frosted Flakes.

Usually, Nicole told the kids that sugared cereals should be considered their one candy a day. She wasn’t in the kitchen. He guessed she was already downstairs cancelling his appointments so he could spend whatever time Billy (she had never known him as Bill) needed at the police station.

Bill hadn’t given him much information, other than saying this was right up his alley, and he probably could write an amazing paper for professional journals about middle class kids wanting to kill other kids.

The twins didn’t notice him enter the kitchen until he plucked the two cereal boxes in contention, replacing them with a large box of Rice Krispies. “Eat fast and I’ll drop you at school,” he said.

Leaving Three Pines

 

I "left" Three Pines, Canada on the 30th of December. It's a place where I know Ruth the poet, Rosa the Duck, Myrna the bookstore owner, the gay men who operate the bistro serving croissants and café au lait in bowls.

It is there, in that mythical village between Montreal and the Vermont border Chief Inspector Armand Gamanche gathers strength to fight crime bolstered by his love for his wife Reine-Marie, his children and grandchildren.

The novel series is by Canadian writer Louise Penny. With each book, I feel as if I'm in the village. I even can change seasons from the heat of summer to the snows of a Canadian winter from my reading corner. And a fall day in Three Pines helps my yearning for the reds and yellow of a New England autumn.

Her last book, Black Wolf, published 2025 was written prior to Trump taking office, but somehow anticipates some of the horrors. As she says, "I thought my leaning on the plot point would be unbelievable, but it turns out it is all too believable."

Sometimes she ventures out of Three Pines more than I would like, but as the author of a mystery series I understand when she says, "Some readers want me to set each book totally in Three Pines. To have the villagers front and center and in many they are. But that is not always possible. I made the decision early on that for the longevity of the series, for its credibility, and my own creative health, I needed to set every few books away from the village."

"I do understand the desire to live in Three Pines. I share it. I created the village as a place of refuge. Where we would find companionship and comfort and acceptance. And safety."

I do have my own "real" Three Pines while I'm waiting for Penny to write and publish the next book, Argelès-sur-mer, France is where I can walk down the street, greet my neighbors of many different nationalities and classes, including Catalan and French, even if they greet my pup Sherlock, before they greet me. I have the smell of baking bread from the boulangerie or chicken roasting from the boucherie. I can buy cherries from the growers nearby and get honey from the man who owns the hives.

Rick and I take turns cooking and often when we chose a restaurant in place of cooking, the staff will ask, "Whose day was it to cook?" Restaurant L'Aurea B always has a plate of meat for Sherlock. We are brought our beverages without ordering. They know.

I am blessed to occupy both the fictional village and the one with real stone made into homes 400 years ago or more. To know more about the past, I need to ask Jean-Marc, the village historian and question him about the 14th century church at the end of our street, why small stones are in the walls, or why they moved the cemetery. 

I am thrilled to open the door to find one of the mamies (old women of the village who've been friends from childhood and lived a lifetime together). She gave me a box of chocolates. We do a very unFrench hug and she melts into it. That was Three Pine moment not on paper, but on another continent.

I feel lucky to have both. 

  

 

 

 

 

Sugar and Spice...Chapter One

 

SUGAR AND SPICE

 

D-L NELSON 

What are little girls made of?
Sugar and spice,
And all that's nice;
That's what little girls are made of.

***

Chapter One

October 15 Wednesday Afternoon After Lunch

Howard James Private School (HJPS)

Cambridge, Massachusetts 

 

WHEN MARGAUX FOURNIER heard the voices of her four enemies outside the Howard James Private School fourth-sixth grade bathroom, she rushed into the last cubicle. She sat on the toilet and hugged her legs to her chest thus preventing her enemies from seeing her feet under the door.

How she hated being in this school with their cliques and bullies, especially those four. They did everything together, even making the toilets into a pee-a-thon.

Margaux wanted to be back home in Basel, Switzerland at her old school with her three best friends. Only that wasn’t home anymore. Her parents said Cambridge, Massachusetts in America now was her home.

She should be proud of her father because of his promotion. He would be in charge of all his bank’s activities in New England. She guessed she was.

Here, from her first day of school two months ago, she had been the target of those bitches who had just slammed the stall doors.

They made fun of her Irish accent. Nanny Maeve had taught her English. Nanny only retired when her father’s bank had transferred him from Basel to Cambridge. Her mother spoke Swiss German to Margaux. Her father spoke French to her.

Margaux wished Nanny Maeve had come with them. She would have understood what she was going through. The Irish woman had been Margaux’s mother’s Nanny and was kept on even after she was no longer needed as a nanny because she was too old to find another job. Margaux hoped she was happy living with her sister in Dublin.

In Basel the school day was in German with two hours of French. Margaux could speak and understand English with no trouble, but she had no idea how to write it. Her mother bought her English books to read. Margaux loved to read, but she found the spelling of English funny, erratic and stupid. Die Rechtschreibung ist lustig, irratisch, dumm.

“That’s because English stole many of their words from other languages,” her mother said. Once the family had settled, they decided to only speak English to help Margaux adjust. She didn’t tell them that her real problem was that her four enemies teased her about her accent.

“You all know what you have to do tomorrow?” Amanda asked.

Margaux thought she could identify each of their voices. Amanda was the easiest because she did most of the harassing with the others nodding.

“I’ll bring the gloves and apron,” Gloria Masters said.

One by one four toilets flushed as Margaux’s enemies finished.

“I’m writing the note,” Emma Jackson said. “I’ve been practicing.”

“Clay will be surprised when the knife goes across his neck,” Gloria said. Stall doors slammed.

Water ran.

Hand dryers blew.

“That’ll teach him. We better get back to class.” Amanda again.

Margaux knew she was missing class, but what should she do? Clay wasn’t quite her friend, but once he told Amanda to leave her alone. Another time he’d pulled Amanda away from Margaux when she’d been pushed against a locker.

Kids don’t kill kids, Margaux thought. But what if she was wrong? Maybe it was just a game the four bitches were playing. She went back to class.

***

“Margaux. Margaux! Are you paying attention?”

“I’m sorry, Ms Rower. Can you repeat the question?”

“What are the state capitals of Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas and California.”

“Montgomery, Juneau, Phoenix . . . I don’t know the rest.”

“It might be better if you spent less time staring out the window,” Ms Rower said.

Her four enemies’ hands went up.

“Montgomery, Juneau, Phoenix, Little Rock, Sacramento,” Amanda didn’t wait for the teacher to call on her. When the teacher turned her back for a moment, Amanda whispered “Dummy,” to Margaux.

Although Margaux tried to concentrate, all she could think of was Clay with his neck cut. Who could she tell? Warn Clay? He wouldn’t believe her.

Ms Rower? Her teacher was always correcting Margaux’s accent.

After the final bell rang and the class ran to put on jackets and join their waiting parents, Margaux stayed at her desk.

“Is there something you want, Margaux?”

“No, Mam.”

Everyone had left the locker area. Checking to see if the four bitches were waiting to ambush her. They weren’t. She walked to the door.

The headmistress’s office was on the way. If she didn’t tell anyone and Clay died, she knew she’d feel guilty worse than she had when she broke her mother’s favorite vase and blamed it on the cleaning woman. When the cleaning woman denied it, Margaux’s mother had fired her. Two years later, Margaux still felt guilty. How would she feel if Clay died, a real death, not like people who died in video games.

Opening the door, she saw the secretary, whose name she didn’t know, packing up for the day.

“I need to see the headmistress,” she whispered.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you.”

“I need to see the headmistress. It’s really, really important."