19. Saint
NINETEEN
SAINT
M onday morning arrives like a hangover I didn’t earn.
Erin shows up at six sharp, wheeling a teacher’s tote behind her and wearing a smile that’s trying too hard.
She’s everything I thought I needed. She’s Ivy’s preschool teacher, already knows Ivy’s routine, and has glowing references from every parent in town.
She’s also wearing enough perfume to choke a horse.
“Good morning, Mr. Toussaint!” Her voice hits a pitch that makes my teeth ache. “I’m so excited to start this journey with you and Ivy!”
Journey. Christ.
“It’s just Saint,” I tell her for the millionth time since we’ve met. “Ivy’s upstairs. She’s...” I pause, searching for the right word. Devastated? Betrayed? “Adjusting.”
“Of course! Transitions can be challenging for little ones. I have several techniques for managing attachment disruption. ”
Attachment disruption.
Is that what we’re calling it when I ripped away the one person who made my daughter laugh?
“She likes her eggs scrambled, not too dry,” I say instead of what I’m thinking. “No foods touching on the plate. She’s particular about how her entrée is organized.”
“I’ve reviewed all the notes you sent.” Erin pulls out a fucking tablet. “I’ve actually created a structured routine that should optimize her development while maintaining consistency.”
Optimize.
“My five-year-old isn’t a restaurant operation.”
“Oh—not at all! I just meant that children form attachments fast , especially motherless ones who’ve had rotating caretakers, and I’m taking all of that into account to make sure she’s all right after … what was her name? Some kind of bird, right? I’m sure she might’ve given Ivy some bad habits.”
“Wrenley.” My voice drops to a temperature that usually sends line cooks scrambling. “Her name is Wrenley.”
Erin’s smile falters. “Right. Well, I’m sure she did her best, but it’s difficult to manage an exuberant child like Ivy without proper training.”
“She made my daughter happy.”
I let that hang in the air, simple, damning, and expectant.
“Papa?” Ivy appears on the stairs in her pajamas, clutching her favorite plushy unicorn, Mr. Pawesome. “Is Miss Wrenley coming back today?”
The hope in her voice guts me.
“Miss Erin’s here to help with mornings now, remember? Then she’ll take you to school.”
“I don’t want her.” Ivy wrinkles her nose. “She smells weird. ”
“It’s not nice to say those things out loud, Ivy,” Erin scolds.
“Like the candle store that makes you sneeze,” Ivy continues unabashed. She backs up a step, then repeats, “I want Miss Wrenley.”
“Wrenley was never meant to be your nanny, mon trésor . We’ve talked about this.”
At length. For hours last night.
Erin’s smile stays in place. “Are you ready to pick out clothes for school? We could wear your butterfly shirt!”
Ivy looks at her like she’s violated something sacred. “I hate butterflies.”
“No, you do not.” I fold my arms, losing patience. “Apologize to Miss Erin right now.”
Ivy turns and runs back upstairs.
“That’s perfectly normal,” Erin assures me, though I didn’t ask. “She’s just testing boundaries.”
“Right.” I grab my keys, already late for prep. “I need to get to the restaurant.”
“Don’t worry about a thing! We’ll have a wonderful morning and be at school right on time!”
I leave before I say something I’ll regret, Ivy’s muffled crying following me out the door.
C’est Trois ’ s kitchen is already humming when I arrive. Eddie, my new sous chef, has the prep cooks started on basics, but he takes one look at my face and wisely doesn’t comment on my mood.
“Special’s already on the board,” he says. “Duck confit with cherry reduction. ”
“Fine.” I tie on my apron with sharp movements. “Where are we on the Henderson anniversary order?”
“Chocolate soufflé’s ready to go. Just needs your final touch.”
I nod, falling into the rhythm of knife work. This, at least, makes sense. Blade meets board, ingredients transform, and order emerges from a complete mess. No complications. No pink-haired women who smell like sun-soaked vacations and make me forget why feeling nothing is safer.
“I heard that new girl in town, Wrenley something, moved into the apartment above Cornerstone Books.”
My knife slips enough to send a carrot rolling across the board.
“It’s not often we see a new face that’s not an annoying tourist,” the garde manger continues. A young guy with plenty of pimples. “And she’s hot.”
“ So fucking hot,” the saucier chimes in.
“You’ve seen her content?”
“Wait, what?”
“Dude! She’s on social media. She’s like an influencer or some shit. Has two million followers. Or I should say, had. Have you seen the video that went viral?”
“What are you talking about?”
They’re huddled by the cold station, thinking I’m absorbed in my prep. The lunch rush hasn’t hit yet, that twenty-minute window when discipline loosens slightly. They’ve got a phone out between them, heads bent together like teen boys.
“Here, look.” The garde manger angles his phone. “This was from three weeks ago. Twenty million views.”
I should cut them off at the knees right fucking now. There’s no gossip in my kitchen, and there sure as fuck is no idle talk about Wrenley Morgan. But their revelations don’t come as a surprise.
Of course I’d done my research on Wrenley before letting her near Ivy.
Found her social media, saw the follower count and the sponsored posts.
She had two million people watching her curated life.
I’d scrolled back through months of content with her bright smiles, perfect outfits, and multiple “latest hot spot” posts.
Then nothing. Six months of radio silence until three weeks ago.
But when I’d clicked on that most recent post, it was gone. This content is no longer available. The comments below were turned off. Whatever had happened three weeks ago, she’d scrubbed it clean.
I’d screenshot her profile, done a background check, and verified she had no criminal record. That was enough due diligence for a temporary fix while I found a real nanny, and with Celeste’s assurance that Wrenley’s online drama was long finished, I’d trusted my gut.
Except now my garde manger has it pulled up on his phone.
“My girlfriend screen-recorded it before Wrenley deleted everything. She saves all the influencer drama.”
“Jesus, is she crying?”
“Full breakdown, man. She was trying to film a ‘life update.’ Look.”
The phone’s volume is too high. Another indication that I should make these idiots shit their pants for their insubordination before this goes any further. But I don’t move because curiosity doesn’t just kill cats.
Wrenley’s voice fills my kitchen in a shaking, guttural tone I’ve never heard come out of her mouth .
“I know everyone’s been asking where I’ve been for months. I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry.” Her voice is thick with tears. “I tried to come back. Tried to be normal. But I…”
A sob cuts through. The sound ignites a wildfire in my throat, and my head shoots up, staring holes into the staff huddled around the phone.
“In Miami, some guy got my hotel key. Paid off a desk clerk. Two thousand dollars to get into my room.” Her breath comes in gasps. “I woke up to him straddling me. His hands in my hair. His tongue?—”
My knife drives into the cutting board with enough force to split wood.
“When I screamed, he wrapped his hands around my throat. Told me I’d been teasing him for three years. That every good morning video was meant for him. That I owed him for all the times he defended me in the comments section.”
The rage building inside me is volcanic. Murderous.
“Hotel security found us because I triggered the fire alarm. Broke a wine bottle over his head first. But he’d already—” Her voice cracks. “Fifteen minutes. That’s how long he was in my room before I woke up. Taking photos. Touching me. Collecting souvenirs.”
“Holy fuck,” someone whispers.
“It took months of therapy, but I thought I could push through. So I turned on the camera one day. I tried to film again. But I just froze. Because behind every username, every avatar, every ‘love you bestie’ comment, could be another him. When I looked at the camera, all I could see were the thousands of strangers who thought they owned pieces of me, too.”
The prep counter’s metal edge cuts into my palms. I’m leaning on it hard enough to break through skin .
“The police asked what I was wearing in my videos. If I’d been ‘suggestive.’ The detective, while taking photos of the bruises on my neck, said, ‘Well, you do put yourself out there.’“ Wrenley’s voice empties. “As if posting makeup tutorials meant I consented to a stranger trying to rape me.”
“What the fuck,” someone breathes.
“My safety was sold for money. And when they caught him, his lawyer argued I’d been ‘inviting attention.’ That my videos were ‘intimate invitations.’“
The paring knife slips. My thumb’s bleeding before I register the cut.
“The comments were worse. ‘What did she expect?’ ‘She made herself a target.’ ‘Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.’ Two million people watched me build a career, then told me I deserved to be violated for it.”
My bleeding thumb throbs in time with my heartbeat. The pain is nothing.
“So here’s what ‘asking for it’ looks like at 3 a.m. When I wake up feeling his weight on me, when I can’t breathe, I dig my nails in until skin splits. See these trenches in my chest? That’s from reading comments about how I should be grateful he didn’t do worse.”
My jaw locks so hard my teeth ache. Blood from my hand drips steadily onto the cutting board.
“This bald spot above my ear? From the night someone DM’d my old account to prove how easy I was to find. Pulled out a fistful of hair because at least that was my choice. My pain. My control.”
A broken sound escapes her throat.
“At least when I hurt myself, it’s someone who actually wants me to survive doing it. That’s more than I can say for the rest of you who are enjoying my trauma.”
I’m moving before I realize it. The prep table flips with a crash that shakes the entire kitchen. Plates shatter. Mise en place goes flying while I roar, “GET OUT.”
“Chef?”
I grab the nearest pan and hurl it across the kitchen. It hits the wall with a crash that makes everyone jump.
“I said GET THE FUCK OUT.”
They run. Actually run. The kitchen empties in ten seconds flat.
I stand there, chest heaving, seeing it all differently now. The way she’d frozen while a scream wrecked her throat when I burst into the guesthouse to get her out of the storm. How she’d shut down when I noticed the scars on her shoulder. The panic in her eyes when I asked who hurt her.
She’d hurt herself.
And when she finally found peace—in my home, with my daughter, in my bed—I took that away, too.
I’m no better than every other person who’s failed to protect her.
Pacing the kitchen, I find an abandoned knife at another prep station. I grab it, needing something to do.
The knife goes into a cutting board. Again. Again. The wood splits further with each strike.
For months, she’s been carrying this. Months of jumping at shadows, of cutting herself to feel alive, of apologizing for surviving.
Then she came here. Let Ivy hug her. Let me touch her. Started to smile again.
Until I proved she was right not to trust anyone.
“FUCK.”
The word tears from my throat as I grab the entire cutting board and send it flying. It hits the dish pit with a spectacular crash.
Eddie appears in the doorway, takes one look at my face, and backs away slowly, hands raised. “Was it the wrong time for me to take a ciggie break?”
“I’m closing lunch service,” I tell him.
“I can see that.”
“Anyone who has a problem with that can find another job.”
Eddie doesn’t move from the doorway. “You want to tell me what’s going on?”
“No.”
He surveys the destruction. “I’ll call the Henderson party. Tell them we had an equipment failure.”
I start to untie my apron, but I force myself to stop. To think.
Every instinct screams to go to Wrenley. To fix this. To prove she’s safe here.
But that’s what I want. Not what she needs.
She came here to disappear. To heal without an audience. And what would I be doing if I showed up at her door right now? Adding to the list of people who won’t leave her alone.
“I need to pick up Ivy,” I say instead.
“It’s barely noon.”
“I need my daughter.”
Eddie nods slowly. “What about the kitchen?”
I look around. Shattered plates. Overturned prep. My blood on the cutting board. “Clean it up. We’ll open for dinner.”
I leave through the back, stepping into an alley that suddenly feels too bright. Too normal. Like the world should have shifted after what I just heard.
My phone buzzes, and it’s a text from Erin. Ivy had a rough morning, but she’s doing better now! We’re working on letters !
Attached is a photo of my daughter at her desk, face turned away from the camera.
Ivy’s not doing better. She’s just stopped fighting.
I pocket the phone and start walking.