Prologue #2
His toothbrush is gone. His razor. The expensive moisturizer he kept on the third shelf.
He’s been clearing himself out in increments, taking a piece at a time, while I stood right here brushing my teeth every morning and didn’t notice.
My gaze travels across the half-empty shelf, the gaps between my things where his used to be, and the anger arrives all at once like a wave that’s been building.
I sweep my arm across the shelf. Everything crashes to the floor.
My cleanser, my toner, a bottle of something French that was a birthday gift from him, all of it shattering and clattering against the tiles.
It doesn’t help. I want to scream, so I do, just once, sharp and raw, into the empty room, and then I stand there panting in the wreckage and the silence and the total absence of the man who was supposed to join me at the studio today.
I stare at myself. Puffy eyes. Blotchy skin. Shaking hands.
I got this.
I don’t got this. But nobody else is going to do it for me, so.
I wash my face. Reapply foundation with trembling hands.
Concealer under my eyes, extra, blended with a finger because my beauty sponge is somewhere in the mess on the floor.
Mascara, waterproof this time. Lipstick.
Unbothered. I press my lips together and stare at the woman in the mirror who is held together with cosmetics and willpower and absolutely nothing else.
I grab my bag, step over the broken glass, and pull on the heels that Katie swore would make me feel powerful but currently make me feel six inches closer to a fainting spell.
The car horn sounds from outside, and I hurry out the front door into the cold, bright morning of Mistberry Cove, where the fog is already starting to roll back from the coastline.
I slide into the back seat, press my knees together, and call Katie.
She answers on the first ring. “Hey! How are we feeling? Ready to smash it?”
“Louis left me.”
Silence at first. “He what? That fucker!”
“Packed suitcase. Asked for the ring back. Another woman, probably an Omega, was waiting in the car.” I say it flatly, mechanically, the way you relay information that hasn’t fully reached your nervous system yet. “About twenty minutes ago.”
“Oh, fuck.” Her voice drops. “Claire. Are you okay? Where are you?”
“In the car. On the way to the studio.”
“Are you… wait, you’re still going?”
“If I cancel again, we lose the slot.”
“Claire, forget the slot. If you need to—”
“I can’t, Katie. The producer already thinks I’m flaky, and the publisher needs this coverage for the second printing. I just need to get through one hour, and then I’m done.”
She’s quiet for a moment, and I listen to her breathing. “I’m so sorry, babe.”
“What’s wrong with me?” My voice wobbles. I press my thumbnail into my palm until the pain gives me a point of focus. “Am I broken? Is there a defect in me that people can see and I can’t, because I’m starting to think there is.”
“Don’t you dare let that mediocre prick make you think you’re anything less than extraordinary. You know what Louis is? A man who peaked when he learned how to use a tripod and has been coasting ever since.”
A laugh escapes me. Wet, ugly, but real. “Katie, you don’t—”
“I’m serious. And you’re going to get through this. Walk in there, talk about your recipes, plug the book, and get out. Tonight? Chinese food, wine, and the worst movie I can find on streaming. I’m talking something so bad it has a two-star rating and a CGI shark.”
“I love you.”
“Obviously. Now blink away those tears, fix your face, and remember: You wrote a whole actual book that people buy with real money and then text their friends about. Louis can barely write a caption. So he can go fuck himself. I’ll be waiting at the studio.”
“Love you.” I hang up, staring out the window as Mistberry Cove slides past. The town stretches out along the coast in a long, lazy sprawl, clusters of multicolored buildings giving way to open cliffs and then more buildings again, the whole place spread across the headland as if it couldn’t decide where to settle and chose everywhere.
I grew up here and still love it just as much, seeing as I moved back after my studies.
The harbor is below to my left, charter boats and fishing vessels huddled at the docks beneath the marine fog that gives this town its name, that low silver mist that sits on the water until midmorning and burns off slowly, turning everything soft at the edges. On a good day, this view calms me.
Today’s not a good day, except the view doesn’t know that, and it tries anyway.
The car turns away from the coast and climbs the hill toward the station. My chest aches. The pressure behind my sternum is back, spreading outward, and my palms are slick against my bag. I wipe them on my pants, which defeats the purpose of the nice slacks, but I’m past caring.
Once inside, I realize the studio is smaller than I expected.
A squat building with a satellite dish on the roof and a reception area that smells of stale coffee and carpet cleaner.
Someone is ushering me down a hallway, clipping a microphone to my collar, dabbing powder on my forehead, telling me I’m going to do great in a voice that suggests she says this to every person who sits in this chair.
Then I’m on the set, which is really just a corner of a room dressed up with bright lights, potted plants, and two armchairs angled toward each other.
There’s a small table between us with a stack of my cookbooks, the glossy cover showing a rustic berry tart dusted with powdered sugar, my name stamped beneath it in gold.
The host, Veronica Keane, is already seated.
She’s mid-fifties, with red hair pinned in a twist and reading glasses pushed up on her head.
She’s been Mistberry Cove’s morning fixture for eleven years, and everyone in town adores her.
She reaches across and squeezes my hand.
“First time on the show?” she asks with a smile.
I nod. “Yep.” My voice comes out thinner than I want. “Sorry. I’m a bit nervous.”
“Don’t be. Just keep your eyes on me, pretend the cameras are furniture, and if you lose your train of thought, I’ll catch it.” She winks. “I’ve been doing this long enough to make anyone sound brilliant.”
A man with a clipboard holds up three fingers. Then two. Then one.
The red light blinks on.
“Good morning, Mistberry Cove! And welcome back. This morning I have a very special guest. She’s a local, a trained chef, and this Omega has published her debut cookbook, Salt and Comfort: Recipes for Quiet Nights, which, I can tell you personally, has the most incredible clam chowder recipe I have ever made in my own kitchen. Please welcome Claire Darling.”
I smile, which feels stapled on. My hands are clasped in my lap because if I let them go, they’ll shake and the camera will pick it up. The lights are brighter than I thought they’d be, bleaching out the edges of the room, and I can feel a bead of sweat forming at the base of my spine.
“Thanks for having me, Veronica.” My voice holds. I can do this.
“So, Claire. Tell us about this beautiful book. Where did these recipes come from?”
This one I’ve practiced. “My grandmother, mostly. She ran a little bed-and-breakfast on the coast, and she cooked entirely by instinct. No measuring cups, no timers. She’d taste and adjust and taste again until it was right.
When she passed, she left me a binder of handwritten recipes, and I spent the last few years updating them with my own twists.
Modern techniques, seasonal ingredients. But the heart of it is still hers.”
Veronica nods warmly. “And you trained professionally, is that right?”
“Culinary school in Seattle, then I worked the line at a couple of restaurants before realizing I preferred writing about food to cooking under pressure.” I pause, noting that I’ve been picking at the seam of my pants under the desk, and stop.
“There’s a different kind of creativity in it.
You get to slow down. Think about why a dish matters, not just how to get it to the pass in ninety seconds. ”
This is going well. Veronica’s nodding, the red light is steady, and Katie is giving me the thumbs-up from near the cameraman.
Nobody’s making a face that suggests I’m embarrassing myself.
My pulse is still too fast, but the words are coming and they almost sound like they belong to a person who knows what she’s doing.
“Now,” Veronica says, leaning forward with a smile that tells me this is the fun part of her script, “I have to ask. Your book is all about home cooking and comfort food, and I love that. But these days, everybody’s a food expert, aren’t they?
You’ve got influencers, bloggers, people making incredible content online.
How do you feel about that world? Is there room for everyone at the table? ”
It’s a soft question. On a normal day, the answer is easy. Something warm and generous about how food is a universal language and every kitchen has a story worth telling. I’ve rehearsed a version of this. I know the words.
But my brain is not in this chair. It’s suddenly standing in the living room, watching Louis slide my ring into his pocket without a glance.
I can’t keep pretending. The word pretending is lodged behind my eyes, pulsing in time with my heartbeat, and Veronica’s question sits wrong in my scrambled head.
I hear it as a challenge. As a comparison.
As someone asking me to justify my existence when I’ve just been told by the person closest to me that I’m not enough.
“I-I think there’s a difference between someone who has actually trained and put in the work in real kitchens and someone who just films themselves making pasta in nice lighting.” I swallow. My mouth is dry. “It’s not really the same thing, is it?”
My answer is finally out, and I exhale.