Punch, Pastries, and Poison by Harper Lin (ebook reader for pc and android .txt) 📕

and turned to the side, putting her hands on the top and bottom of her belly to emphasize its size. “I’m having another baby!” she squealed.

“Congratulations!” I gave her a hug, taking care not to splash any of the red punch on her white blouse. “Boy or girl?”

“Another little girl!”

I asked her a few more questions like when she was due and how she was feeling. Then I remembered what had started our conversation. “This bowl has alcohol. That one down there doesn’t.”

She gave me a brilliant smile. “Thank you! And happy birthday!”

As she walked away, I finally took a sip of my punch. My forehead wrinkled. Something about it didn’t taste quite right. Not bad, necessarily, just not quite right. I wondered if Sammy had done something different when she mixed up the fresh batch. I couldn’t think of what, but maybe one of the containers of sorbet was a little different from the others or something. Or maybe it was the Italian sausage I’d just eaten messing with my taste buds. Either way, it was still good, just different. I drained my cup and refilled it then drained that and refilled it again.

I spotted Matt sitting at a table across the room and made my way over to him. As much as I enjoyed chatting with everyone who had turned out to help us celebrate, the party was for Matt and me, and I wanted to spend at least a little bit of time with him.

“Hey, gorgeous,” he said as I walked up and took the seat next to him. “Good party. Everyone seems to be having a great time.”

I surveyed the room, looking at all the small clusters of people chatting happily as they ate their hors d’oeuvres and sipped their punch.

I smiled up at Matt. “It’s exactly what I wanted.”

He smiled back, but the warmth that was usually in his eyes was missing. I looked at him a little more closely. His face was a little red, and his breathing seemed heavier than usual.

“Are you okay?”

He nodded. “Just not feeling great.” He pulled at his T-shirt collar. “Is it warm in here?”

“A little.” I felt his forehead. It was a little warm but also clammy. “Do you need to go lie down?”

He shook his head. “I’ll be okay. Just don’t be mad at me if I’m not moving around and talking to people too much.”

I put my head on his shoulder. “I would never.”

He shifted in his chair and pulled at his collar again.

“Do you want me to get you something to drink? Some more punch? Or water?”

“Some water might be good.” His breathing sounded more labored already.

I got up and started making my way through the crowd over to the sink for some water. I hadn’t made it very far when Mary Ellen’s gentleman friend rushed past me on his way to the bathroom, clutching his hand over his mouth. As my eyes followed him, I saw Rhonda coming out of the other bathroom, looking decidedly green.

I stopped and looked around the room. More than a few people around the room were looking a little red-faced and sweaty like Matt. Some of the others just looked weak and pale. Worry started to flare up in my gut when something else flared up as well.

I barely made it to the bathroom to crouch in front of the toilet before my stomach clenched and everything I’d eaten that day came roaring back up.

Chapter 8

The next morning, I found myself huddled on Matt’s couch, wrapped in a blanket, willing myself to feel less awful. I’d spent the night at Matt’s place because it was marginally closer to the café than my own house two doors down was. With how terrible I’d felt when I’d stumbled home the night before, I didn’t actually know if I would have made it the last one hundred feet to my door. When Matt and I left the café, I was feeling weak and shaky, but I could walk, which was more than I could say for some of the other people who’d come to the party.

By the time I’d stumbled out of the bathroom the night before, after ignoring more than one knock on the bathroom door, the café had been lit up with the flashing red lights of the two ambulances parked outside. I already felt terrible from the nausea that had sent me running to the bathroom, but the sight of them made me feel even worse. In all the time I’d spent planning the party, it had never occurred to me that it might end with paramedics making their way around the room, checking my guests’ vital signs. Most people were sent home with instructions to rest, drink lots of fluids, and call 911 if they felt any worse, but several of them got hooked up to oxygen, loaded into the ambulance, and carted off to the hospital.

The worst part was that I had a sinking feeling that it was my fault.

During the few moments I’d had during the night when I didn’t feel too sick to even think, I’d wracked my brain trying to think of somewhere that I might have cut a corner in my food prep or been sloppy with my cleaning or refrigeration. As hard as I tried, I couldn’t think of anything. I’d prepared a lot of food and had to juggle multiple recipes and ingredients at a time, but I couldn’t think of a single thing I might have done that could have caused cross-contamination or compromised the safety of the food. But I must have. All those people didn’t get sick from nothing.

Matt was on the couch next to me, also in his pajamas with a blanket wrapped around him. He’d been drifting in and out of sleep in between trips to the bathroom all night and looked, at the moment, closer to sleep than wakefulness. An occasional groan was the most coherent sound I’d heard from him in hours.

Latte lay