Chapter 2
Solvang, California
Mom, please. You have to listen.”
Robin storms into the room in a cloud of Chanel perfume, Chloe trailing in her wake. Chloe’s voice, usually soft and restrained, carries effortlessly over the empty restaurant without the din of patrons and waitstaff to dampen it. The pang of panic in her words is unmistakable.
I peer down from the stepladder from which I’d been hanging fairy lights in the Oak Room of the Laerke Inn, our family’s preferred event space for decades, as the dutiful spinster does when her baby sister is having a pre–New Year’s Eve engagement party.
Chloe had decided to hold the party on December 29, giving people something to do in the weird void between Christmas and New Year’s.
A lot of her childhood friends would be in town for the holidays, and having it now would save them a trip.
Plus it was a Sunday night, so the venue rental was cheap.
This is totally in line with Chloe’s people-pleasing mindset.
She probably racked her brain trying to find the least obtrusive date that would maximize the guest list. Off-peak pricing? Even better.
“You have no experience planning these things, Chloe.” Our mother’s dulcet tones lace the air like an arsenic cocktail. The more she speaks, the more I’m glad there isn’t actual poison handy, lest I be tempted to take a swig. She has a maddening way of speaking as though she rules by fiat.
Chloe’s jaw actually drops. “Mother, what are you talking about? I plan events for a living.” It’s the closest I’ve heard Chloe come to challenging Robin in ages. Good for her.
Robin looks at her youngest with an indulgent gaze that one might give an errant six-year-old.
“It’s not the same thing, darling. Weddings are different.
We’ll do the seafood buffet like the Hansens did for Astrid’s wedding.
” She takes Chloe’s hand and pats it. “You need to trust me to organize things. It’s the appropriate thing to do. ”
Appropriate. Her favorite word. I feel my shoulders droop in exhaustion, and the party hasn’t even started.
At least I haven’t had time to stew about my interview.
How I aced it. How it will all come to nothing anyway.
How Edward needs my help to get his house in order, but there is no way he’ll accept it.
I’ve started looking at other opportunities, but it’s still the holiday season and hardly anyone is hiring.
The overt threat to my blog and Michelin aspirations weighs even heavier over my head.
There is no way I’d cover 540 Blake or any other of Edward’s restaurants on my blog now .
. . even to praise them. But he is just the sort of person to blow my cover just because he’s mad at the world.
He thinks he should have made it bigger by now, and he hasn’t.
So, yes, the upshot of being in Solvang is that there’s always too much drama surrounding . . . everything . . . to dwell on my own misfortunes. The downside of coming home is pretty much everything else.
Rather than meet Robin toe-to-toe, Chloe shrinks. “Chris is allergic to seafood, Mom.”
I’ve only met Chris, a very bland investment banker sort, three times before this trip, but I already knew this about him. He isn’t just itchy-hives allergic, but ambulance-ER-anaphylaxis-level allergic.
Robin chuckles as if indulging the prattling of a willful child. “So we have the caterers make him a steak. Astrid’s wedding dinner was so lovely. People talked about it for months.”
The red in Chloe’s cheeks deepens several shades, but she doesn’t speak up.
Chris shouldn’t even sit near a fish tank, let alone be in a room where fish is being served.
If he ever were to come to a restaurant I was managing, I’d have the kitchen on high alert to keep any kind of seafood from coming within ten feet of him. Liability is a thing.
Chloe bows her head in defeat, and I want to shake her.
Stand up for yourself, woman! But I’m just as apt to cave to our mother as she is.
I just won’t be as sweet about it as Chloe generally is.
The problem is that Robin has already got the whole affair planned in her mind.
Once this happens, she won’t accept any deviations from her vision.
Robin bristles at Chloe’s displeasure. In her mind, Chloe should be radiating with gratitude at Robin’s magnanimity in sharing her expertise in planning an event that’s appropriate.
Appropriate for whom, I can’t say. “So what do you have in mind then? Pizza and beer? This isn’t a frat party.
” She has her trademark steel-blue glare of disdain, which makes stronger mortals than Chloe quake in fear.
So very much in character for Robin. No one knows better than her about such things, and anyone who doesn’t heed her advice is a fool.
No matter that Chloe’s job involves planning movies, which is far more complicated than any wedding our family could afford.
The truth is of little consequence to Robin.
I feel the heat in my own cheeks now. Chloe is closing in on thirty and has fabulous taste—and she’s far more in step with modern preferences than Robin.
But as much as I want to go in swinging in Chloe’s defense, I soften my approach, hoping it’ll lead to less bloodshed in the minutes before we welcome guests.
I descend the ladder and wrap an arm around Chloe’s delicate shoulders.
She is a strawberry-blonde pixie of a thing, and I feel like a giantess in comparison.
“I sense a catering emergency. My superpower has few uses, but this is one. How may I be of assistance?”
Mom glares at me as though I’ve just tracked mud in on her clean white tile floors.
“Now’s not the time, Sabrina. Aren’t there more lights to hang?
You’re the tallest, after all.” She speaks as though my height is a personal affront.
Inheriting my stature from my dad’s side was the first of my many offenses against her vision for me and my future.
She scans me from head to foot with her assessing eyes.
“Did you really need to wear heels, dear?”
Chloe stiffens under my arm. “Leave Sabrina alone. I don’t want my maid of honor pecked to death before the wedding.”
I startle slightly. Chloe has a bevy of friends, and I was certain I’d be relegated to guest book detail. “Really?”
She embraces me, careful not to rumple her pale pink dress that looks like it might be crafted out of meringue. “Of course. Who else but my big sister?”
“Chloe, dear, we still have a lot to decide before we finalize the attendants. You have so many friends who would look so nice in the bridal party photos.”
For the first time in my memory, Chloe shoots Robin a try me, woman look.
She has always been the favored daughter precisely because she never challenges Robin when she insists on something—which is often.
I likely don’t fit our mother’s vision for the wedding party: petite, delicate girls all under the age of thirty who would look pretty in whatever dress Mom picks out and who wouldn’t complain about her numerous demands for the day.
But Mom is trying to hold her tongue since it’s Chloe’s engagement party.
“Tonight’s about Chloe.” I accept a glass of bubbly from a waiter who’s loaded a tray of glasses for the imminently arriving guests. I raise the glass in Chloe’s direction, hoping to deflect Robin’s attention off me. “I want to hear all your plans. I’m happy to help with whatever I can.”
Chloe’s face lights up, and she looks ready to launch into a rapturous speech about dress fittings and centerpieces when Mom interjects.
“I don’t see how you can help from Paris.” Robin shakes her head as though I’ve suggested lending a hand from the International Space Station. I’m momentarily dazed at how resolutely every strand in her shellacked strawberry-blonde bob stays fixed in place.
“I’m not in Paris anymore.” I wish I could reel the words back in as soon as I say them. This is not a can of worms I need to open tonight.
“So I suppose you’ll be wanting your old room back?
” Robin looks half exhausted, half delighted at the prospect.
She’d love nothing better than to have me back under her roof to boss around until she’s had her fill—a limit we’ve yet to find.
More than anything, she’s thrilled at the idea that as the one of us three who’s been the most likely to ignore her advice, I’m apparently the biggest screwup.
This smarts because, at least at the moment, it feels extremely true.
“No, I have some prospects in Denver.” It’s a lie, but the best cover I have.
“Denver? For heaven’s sake, why?” Robin looks horrified, as though I’ve suggested I’ll be renting a stall in a barn rather than an apartment.
“Yes, I’ve already begun settling in.” Another lie.
Everything I own is currently in my hotel room upstairs.
Any furniture I acquire in a city is generally secondhand and left to benefit whoever takes over my lease after I move on or be donated to the nearest thrift.
The life of a Michelin inspector is nomadic: three weeks of travel per month and 275 reviewed meals per year.
I have done my best to adapt myself to life on the go so I’ll have the stamina and fortitude I need when I finally get the job.
Though I freely admit that the idea of a home base with decent furniture and things like decent kitchen equipment and throw pillows—unnecessary, extravagant throw pillows—sounds wonderful at times.
But then again, I wonder if I get used to a decent mattress and a nice sofa, will it be harder to go back on the road?
I shove the thought away and turn to Chloe, refusing to put more gas on Robin’s perpetual fire of martyrdom. “I have tons of contacts in catering. I’ll hook you up.”