Chapter 11
ELEVEN
NADIA
Sofia's kitchen smelled of garlic and good olive oil, and rang with an argument that had been running for forty minutes.
"The basil goes in at the end," I said, for the third time. "Heat destroys the volatile oils. You lose the fresh note entirely."
"The basil goes in when the basil goes in," said Sofia, not looking up from the pot. "My nonna put it in early. Her nonna put it in early. You're going to tell me four generations of Ferrari women were wrong?"
"I'm going to tell you four generations of Ferrari women had a different goal than I do. You were cooking for family. I'm cooking for a corporate client who's going to eat it cold on a buffet table forty-five minutes after it leaves my van."
Sofia turned around. That was progress; she'd spent the last exchange pointedly facing the stove. "Cold," she repeated, with the expression of a woman being told something genuinely offensive.
"Lukewarm, at best. It's the reality of large-scale catering."
"Then your client has my sympathy." She turned back to the pot, but I saw her lips twitch. "Fine. Basil at the end. But you taste it my way first."
"I already tasted it your way. It was extraordinary."
"Of course it was." She handed me a wooden spoon without turning around. "Now stir. Don't let it catch on the bottom."
The back door opened, and Daemon walked into the warm kitchen, still in his work clothes, fine sawdust covering his once-white t-shirt and leaving it the color of knotty pine.
"Daemon." Sofia didn't look up from the stove. "Wash your hands. You can taste the sauce."
"I'm fine, I don't need to—"
"I didn't ask if you needed to. I told you to." She pointed at the sink with her wooden spoon.
He washed up, then surveyed the kitchen the way he surveyed job sites. Sofia had three pots going at once, and another sat next to the sink, a large copper monster full of soapy water, close enough to the edge of the counter to make me nervous every time either of us passed.
Daemon must have shared my concern, because he reached past me to shift it back. He misjudged the weight, the handle slipped, and the pot lurched sideways, sending a wave of sauce-laden water over the front of his t-shirt.
He sucked in a breath. "Hot."
Sofia still hadn't turned around. "That's why we don't grab things we haven't been asked to grab." Then she spun around and made for the pantry at the back of the utility room, telling me to mind the sauce.
Faced with Daemon's t-shirt plastered to his chest, I wasn't capable of minding anything except his finely tuned six-pack. The construction work had clearly paid off, and the wet cotton left nothing to the imagination.
I was supposed to be minding the sauce. I was not minding the sauce.
He looked down at himself, then up at me.
I looked away quickly before I did something stupid, like removing his shirt under the pretense of putting it in to soak.
"Nadia." His voice had dropped a register.
"The sauce needs stirring."
"I'm aware." He fell silent, although not for long. "Are you going to look at me again, or are you planning to stir that for the rest of the evening?"
I stirred. The sauce moved in slow, glossy circles.
Sofia cleared her throat from the doorway. "There's a spare dish towel in the second drawer. You can't stand there dripping on my floor."
He found the towel and blotted his shirt, which helped almost nothing. It was still white, still wet, and he was still watching me like he knew exactly what I was thinking.
"Smells incredible," he said, coming to stand beside me at the stove. The kitchen was small enough that there was no avoiding it, his shoulder almost touching mine, both of us looking at the pot.
"It tastes better," said Sofia, and I could only agree wholeheartedly, although I was no longer talking about the sauce.
I dipped the spoon and held it out to him without thinking, a habit from years of feeding people, testing and adjusting, making sure things were right before they went out.
He closed his hand around my wrist to steady it and leaned in.
I forgot what I was doing.
His eyes came up to mine, and whatever he saw there made him pause. His hand was still around my wrist. The sauce was cooling on the spoon between us.
"Well?" Sofia asked.
"Perfect," he said. Not looking away from me.
Sofia made a satisfied sound. "Of course it is. Nadia, more pepper."
I turned back to the pot, my wrist still burning where his hand had been. The t-shirt was still wet. I was trying very hard not to know that.
"You're still dripping, Bambino," said Sofia, steering Daemon toward the kitchen door. "Go home, change. Come back when you're done."
He went eventually, leaving me with an ache only he could salve. Still, if he'd stayed, I'd have been in danger of burning the sauce, and I knew Sofia would give me grief over that.
So I stirred. The sauce was a deep, unhurried red, the kind that took time and couldn't be rushed, and the kitchen was warm in the way of rooms where something has been cooking for hours. Sofia's kitchen was nothing like mine.
No stainless steel, no commercial equipment, no floor-to-ceiling shelving organized by frequency of use. Instead, a vintage stove, a scarred wooden bench, copper pots hung in order of size, and forty years of excellent decisions baked into the walls.
"You know what's wrong with those corporate companies," Sofia said, settling onto her stool at the end of the bench. This was her teaching position. I recognized it. "They think food is fuel. Something you consume so you can keep working."
"I think for many people it is."
"No." She said it firmly. "Food is memory.
Food is family. Food is the reason people stay at the table when they'd rather leave.
" She pointed at the pot. "That sauce. My nonna made it the first Sunday after my nonno died.
She cooked for six hours. Fed half the neighborhood.
People came, and they ate and they stayed, and nobody had to say anything, because the food said it. "
I kept stirring. The sauce moved in slow, glossy circles.
"That's what those bastardi will never understand," Sofia continued.
"They can copy a recipe. They can hire chefs and buy equipment and undercut your prices.
But they can't cook with forty years of knowing why the food matters.
" A faraway look came into her eyes. "That's what we're building. You and I. Something they can't buy."
"Sofia Ferrari's Authentic Italian Cuisine," I said.
"And Nadia Becker's military background," she replied. "Don't underestimate your half. I know how to make the food. You know how to get it to the table while it's still worth eating." She tapped the bench with one finger. "Together we're formidable."
I tasted the sauce. Even my way, with the basil held back, it was extraordinary. The tomatoes were sweet and serious at the same time, the garlic was present without being aggressive, the slow cook having collapsed everything into something greater than its parts.
"It's going to be good," I said.
"It's going to be better than good." Sofia slid off her stool and came to stand beside me, looking into the pot like a general surveying favorable terrain. "Now. While we wait. Tell me how things are with Daemon."
I should have seen that coming. "Things are fine."
"Fine." She tasted the word the way she'd taste an under-seasoned sauce. "Fine, is what you say when you don't want to talk about something."
"Or when things are actually fine."
"He's scared," Sofia said. Not unkindly, but as a fact, the way she'd tell me to add more salt or stir faster. "He's been scared since the day I met him. He came here angry, and I fed him until the anger got quieter, and what was underneath it was fear."
She picked up the wooden spoon, tasted the sauce herself, and nodded once. "He's afraid of being the one who breaks something good. He did that before, when he was young, and he's never forgiven himself for it."
"I know about his past."
"Knowing about it and understanding it are different." She handed the spoon back. "He'll pull away. Probably already has a little." She looked at me sideways. "He has, hasn't he?"
She already knew the answer. I kept my eyes on the pot. "I can handle it."
"I know you can." Sofia patted my arm once, briskly, the way she did everything.
"I'm not worried about you. I'm telling you because when it happens, you'll want to know it's not about you.
It's about a boy who couldn't save his mother and has spent every waking minute since deciding that means he can't be trusted with anything he loves. "
The kitchen was quiet except for the low bubble of the sauce and the distant sound of Sofia's radio somewhere else in the house.
"He's worth the patience," she said finally. "That's my two cents worth. But you didn't hear it from me."
"Hear what?" I said.
Sofia smiled and picked up the basil.
Our Lady of Sorrows held its Feast of Saint Francis on the last Saturday of the month, and Sofia had been feeding it for thirty-seven years.
She made sure I understood this on the drive over. To be fair, I'd had sloppier briefings in the military.
"The Ladies of the Altar Society," she said, her handbag balanced on her knees, "they think they run the kitchen. They do not run the kitchen. I run the kitchen. This year, they will discover I have a partner."
"Should I be concerned?"
"Only if you let them rattle you." She patted my hand. "They will try. Particularly Rosaria Benedetti. She has opinions about garlic."
"Doesn't everyone?" I replied. I knew I did.
"Rosaria's are wrong," said Sofia, with the serenity of a woman who'd made peace with this long ago. "You'll know her by the hat."
Daemon, who was driving my van because Sofia had decided he was our chauffeur for the day, snorted, although he soon turned this into a cough. His expression when I turned to look at him told me I was on my own with this one.
I looked away before I laughed.