charlotte

“Did you hear?” It was the first thing one of her coworkers asked her that morning as she arrived at the office.

“Hmm?” It was unusual that the other woman sought her out at work. There was either good news or bad.

“Lyon’s mother reported him missing.”

She stopped in her tracks, completely caught off guard, she managed to croak out a, “Oh my God.”

Her coworker nodded, her head.

“So, he wasn’t sick...” The words had barely come out, almost inaudible, but her coworker had heard.

“Nope. Our supervisor was complaining that he hadn’t called in and wasn’t answering his phone the other day.”

Her eyes widened. It wasn’t like Lyon, the other could be a bit rebellious, but it wasn’t like him to miss consecutive days of work.

“I’m surprised too. I hope everything is alright.”

“Yeah. Me too,” she managed to say. “Thanks for letting me know.”

The other woman gave a sad smile before they went their separate ways. She eyed the desk in the studio that hadn’t been touched in days wondering where their coworker had disappeared off to.

-

The doorbell rang and her heart skipped a beat as she leapt up to answer.

“Hey!” She tried toning down the huge smile on her face but failed. She hoped she didn’t look desperate as she pressed her hands against her blouse, smoothing out invisible wrinkles.

It was Thursday, their day, a weekly ritual that had formed over the months. They had bonded over the triple chocolate brownies she had brought to the office, which were his favorite dessert. What had started out as a joke of him blurting out that he would love it if he could come over and have something she baked every week had turned into something tangible. They had begun meeting at her place where she would treat him to a dessert she had planned and concocted that week. Sometimes he came with a gift of drinks or even food that they could share.

They had developed a nice little… friendship.

“What’s it today?” He asked excitedly as he followed her inside.

“Strawberry cinnamon rolls.”

There on the counter by her oven sat a tray of golden cinnamon strawberry buns topped with strawberry cream cheese icing. Just another dessert she had managed to plan around and bake after work before their meeting.

Brown butter chocolate chip cookies, sharlotka, various flavored cheesecakes and macarons, 150-hour chocolate cake, frangipane, she was a master of it all.

“Mmm this is so good. You’ve really outdone yourself. They’re so soft.” The man took another bite of his cinnamon bun, licking strawberry icing off his lips.

“The secret is in the tangzhong,” she said proudly. “Do you think this is better than the brownies?”

“Hmm, not quite because I love chocolate, but this is definitely in my top three.”

“Oh really?”

He quickly put up his hands before swallowing another bite as if to correct himself. “Yeah, but no– I mean everything you do is so damn good. You have magic in those hands.”

“My mom told me I should’ve been a baker, but instead I chose boring office life.” She shyly slipped a brown tendril of hair behind her ears.

“I agree with her. Maybe get your- what’s that called… cottage food license and begin selling. Start taking orders at the office and then build up to the local farmer’s market.”

She was beaming with joy, butterflies fluttering in her stomach. There was hope there. Hope for something more.

/

They had been called to do a welfare check at an apartment complex. Something about a horrible smell emanating from one of the occupants. The neighbor who had called in mentioned someone was currently living in it. It was a woman, appeared late twenties to early thirties, friendly, but otherwise stayed to herself. She lived alone and didn’t have many visitors, except for a man who had been visiting pretty regularly but had suddenly stopped.

“Prepare yourself for a body.”

“You think this is connected to that missing person report from a month ago?”

A thirty-five-year-old male bachelor. He had been reported missing by his mother when she couldn’t get a hold of him, and after contacting his job was told he hadn’t been in for a couple of days. She had stopped by his flat, saw that he wasn’t there, but it was in a state that appeared as if he had gone out for a little while but planned to return. CCTV showed he was last seen leaving his apartment several nights before.

There hadn’t been any leads.

“Timeline adds up. But we won’t know exactly until we get in there.”

There were several guesses thrown around. A hoarder situation, dead pet, or just general uncleanliness- whether from depression or other mental illness. Worst case scenario was a body. Of who, they weren’t exactly sure. The officer had a feeling that it was the latter, and it wasn’t going to be pretty.

“Oh… hi.” The barely audible greeting was muttered by a short, mousy looking woman with shoulder-length brunette hair. Her face twisted into shock, then confusion at the sight of them when she answered the door.

“Hi ma’am, we’ve gotten reports of an odd smell coming from your apartment. We want to make sure everything is okay. May we come in?” his partner asked.

“Um… yes. I was just finishing up a Charlotte Russe.” She stepped back from the door and led them inside.

The smell hit them instantly. It was a moldy, rotten type of smell that was thick in the warm air tinged by the faint smell of freshly baked cake. His nose wrinkled in disgust at the sudden odor.

“A special occasion?” his partner managed to ask after a small cough.

“Um..” The woman trailed off shyly before tucking a lock of hair behind her left ear, her eyes looked at the floor. “No, just…just a habit.”

-

“I think this will have to be my last time coming here.”

Her heart dropped. No. “Oh? Why?” Feigning ignorance was a defense tactic when deep down she knew. Their time had come to an end.

“You know how I’ve been going on dates?”

She nodded, the smile on her face wavering as she watched him move around a section of cake on his plate with a fork. “Well, I think I met someone promising.”

“Oh really? That’s amazing!” Fake. Fake. It all felt fake. She just hoped it wasn’t obvious.

“Yeah, and I just… I feel guilty doing this. Even though we’re just friends.”

Just friends. Yeah, they were just friends. That’s all they ever were.

But she had hoped there would be something more, that feelings would blossom with spoonfuls of sugar, and her hard work of sifting flour and mixing batters and batches of buttercream and hours of decorating making sure everything was perfect would convince him that he was in love with her. With every carefully picked recipe and scouring for the finest ingredients, hope grew in her heart. They said that the way to a man’s heart was through his stomach, but she had failed to do just that.

“Yeah, yeah no I totally understand.” Her smile was forced, her teeth clenched. She ran her fingers through her hair and gave out a laugh.

“I’m sorry,” he apologized, and it truly sounded sincere.

“Don’t be. Let me get you some more tea. Tell me about this mystery girl!” Showing interest meant she wasn’t jealous at all. She collected his mug and entered the kitchen that was connected to her dining area.

She stood at the sink absentmindedly staring at the dishes that needed cleaning. Specks of cake crumbs fell down the drain. She hummed to his praises of this mystery woman as pressure built behind her eyes.

“-she’s so cool and down to earth, you know? It’s hard to find that these days. There’s a lot of nut jobs out there.”

“Oh yeah, that’s so true.” She began to pour tea into the mug as she listened to him gush on.

"-and she’s really pretty.”

Unlike her, her hand shook and tea began spilling out of the mug.

“Oh yeah, Charlotte likes chocolate too, but I know she wouldn’t like it if she knew I were here.”

Drops of liquid turned into a stream onto the floor.

Something broke.

That something was inside her brain.

/

The sight was abnormal but led to immense relief. The smell, while still repugnant, was a bit more bearable with the absence of an expected decayed body. The woman’s kitchen table was littered with food– desserts, sliced cakes, tarts, and cookies in varying states of spoilage and rot. He eyed the biohazard of colorful and varying molds, wishing he had brought a mask. That couldn’t have been healthy breathing in and for the woman to live as if it were a normal everyday scene was concerning.

The officers exchanged looks before his partner spoke up. “Do you know anything about a Lyon Smith?”

The woman had picked up a plated slice of cake and paused in step before answering. “He was my coworker.”

“Were you two… close?”

She placed the plate down in front of a space in front of a chair that had been cleared. “Not particularly, we had just bonded over my baking, so he would visit once a week.”

“When’s the last time you saw him?”

-

She found recipes and procured ingredients and baked a dessert every week. Lyon praised the creations she presented him with time and time again, but after a while he grew silent, and then there were no responses, just one-sided conversation before silence grew between them.

/

His partner led the conversation exchange with the woman while he observed their surroundings. The rest of the apartment was neat and tidy. It was just the overflowing tablescape that was bearing the foul smell that a caller had observed “got worse on Thursdays”.

The woman explained that she had seen Lyon the night he went missing, but after an emotional exchange, their secret friendship had come to an end. From what he could gather, she had begun to spiral after learning of the disappearance of her coworker and was stuck in hopes that the other would come back.

“What did you say this was?” he spoke up out of the blue pointing to the fresh slice of cake at the table amongst rotten ones.

His partner looked at him in surprise as did that woman before she looked where he pointed. There was a glimmer of something in her sad eyes.

“Charlotte Russe.”

Charlotte. Something clicked. That was the key.

After a quick check around the rest of the apartment, they left after giving the woman point of contact to the right services for her mental health.

“Man that was disgusting,” his partner said as they both took deep breaths of fresh air once they were back in the hallway. “So, what’s it about that cake?”

“Not the cake, the name,” he answered. Lyon’s mother had mentioned her son had been dating a woman named Charlotte. They had interviewed her once, but there wasn’t anything incriminating her as a suspect. Still, there was something off.

“We need the surveillance videos of this apartment building interior and exterior the day Lyon went missing. I believe it may hold the answer to his disappearance.”