Forgotten Groom in the Back Alley novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: The Decoy

Dot did not ask a single question about the empty ribbon.

She listened to Hazel at the foot of the kitchen stairs, in her quilted robe, and then she went to the office and came back with the cloth-bound guest book under one arm.

"This goes under my mattress," she said. "I've slept on better secrets."

"Gran, we should change the locks."

"We should do nothing of the kind." Dot's blue eyes were bright. "She wants this book and that photograph. She's taken a card to get them. So she'll come and get them."

"And?"

"And I'd like her to find something."

She marched back to the office and pulled open the bottom drawer of the old oak desk.

Inside lay a fat ledger bound in green cloth, the same size and shape as the guest book.

"Nineteen ninety-four," she said. "Every cake I ever baked, with the weight of the butter."

Hazel stared at it.

"You want her to steal your cake ledger."

"I want her to steal it on camera."

Hazel's face changed.

By midnight she had a phone on a shelf above the filing cabinet, angled at the desk, with a light on the wall switch.

We put the ledger in the drawer with the framed photograph from a 1998 wedding, because it had a wooden frame like the one in the garden room.

I put my copy of the certificate on top, and Dot added a sheet of plain paper marked in her careful hand: Do not remove.

"That's cruel," I said.

"It's marketing," said Dot.

Then she went to bed, with the real book beneath her, and Hazel and I sat in the dark corridor on the back stair, in our coats.

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