Chapter 12 #2
Jonah’s heart dropped. His son would be one of six babies being managed by two women who didn’t know that Atlas hated having his left ear touched, or that he liked to be held upright after eating, or that he really couldn’t fall asleep unless someone sang “You Are My Sunshine” and the lyrics didn’t matter, just the melody.
He walked to the crib, seeing the vast emptiness and a sheet that was once white but was now the color of…parking lot cement. And looked about as comfortable. “He likes an elephant—”
“No stuffed animals in the cribs,” Nora said. “Safety hazard.”
“Say bye-bye to Daddy,” Brenda said brightly, reaching to take Atlas from his arms. “It’s better if you go quickly, dear.”
Atlas looked at Jonah. Then at Brenda. Then back at Jonah. His face crumpled in slow motion—a sequence Jonah knew by heart—the chin wobble, the lip quiver, the eyes filling, and then the sound.
Not the angry scream from Broussard’s classroom. Not the frustrated cry of a baby who wanted attention. This was the confused, reaching-back-for-Daddy cry. The one that asked: Why are you leaving me? Where are you going? Come back. Come back.
Atlas’s arms stretched toward him, fingers opening and closing on empty air, and every cell in Jonah’s body screamed at him to take his son back.
“He’ll settle,” Brenda assured him with the practiced confidence of someone who said this forty times a week. “First days are always rough. Go on, Dad. He’ll be fine.”
Jonah walked out. He made it to the Honda, sat in the driver’s seat, and put his hands on the wheel.
He did not start the car. He sat there for six minutes—he counted—listening to the silence that Atlas’s crying had left behind.
He wasn’t failing his child. He was securing both of their futures.
Driftwood sat on Harbor Road in a converted boathouse that had been stripped down and rebuilt with the kind of precision Jonah recognized from watching his father work. Clean lines, natural wood, big windows facing the harbor.
Although it was closed until four, the front door was open, and Jonah walked into the dim lobby with benches for waiting patrons and a sleek hostess stand. He poked his head into the dining room, instantly noting that the kitchen was visible through a pass—stainless steel, immaculate, tight.
A young man sat at one of the tables in chef’s whites, papers strewn around, a few menus next to him. He looked up and met Jonah’s gaze.
“Chef Vega is expecting me,” Jonah said.
“Wait at the bar,” he said, thumbing toward the other side of a fluted wood wall. “She’ll be out in a minute.”
Thanking him, Jonah stood near a row of cane-back barstools, checked his phone, then muted it. Sorry, Atlas.
Isobel Vega swept into the room a few minutes later, looking very much like the pictures he’d seen online.
She was in her late forties, compact, with dark hair pulled back tight and eyes that assessed him the way Broussard’s did—measuring, calculating, deciding whether what she saw was worth her time.
She wore street clothes, not an apron, and reached out a hand that was so small he fleetingly wondered how she managed a chef’s knife. Quite well, he reminded himself.
“Mr. Lawson,” she said, shaking his hand. “Marcel speaks very highly of you. Thanks for coming in.”
“Thank you for the invitation. Chef Broussard’s been a great mentor.”
One dark brow lifted. “He doesn’t mentor. He tolerates. If he’s mentoring you, that tells me something.” She gestured to a stool. “Sit. Let’s talk.”
She wasted no time firing questions at him.
She asked about his training, his technique, his palate.
She wanted to know what he’d cook if he had thirty minutes and a fish he’d never seen before.
She asked him to describe the difference between a sauce that was good and a sauce that was right.
She was sharp, direct, and not completely humorless, though she kept her smiles in check and didn’t laugh once.
Which tracked, based on what he knew about her and the high-end restaurant industry.
He tried to concentrate and mostly succeeded. But the urge to check his phone and be sure Atlas hadn’t gotten “lost” in a stucco building in Niceville with a sticker on his chest was strong. He couldn’t stop seeing those little arms reaching for him.
“Where’s your head?” Isobel asked, fifteen minutes in.
He looked at her. She was watching him with an expression that said she already knew the answer and was testing whether he’d be honest about it.
“My son is in daycare for the first time,” he said. “He’s four months old. I dropped him off an hour ago and it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”
“Where’s his mother?”
It was a natural question, maybe a little personal, but he was used to it. He just didn’t want to get into the “killed three weeks after Atlas was born” thing now. It would derail the interview.
“She’s, um, out of the picture.” He hoped that wasn’t disrespectful to beautiful Carly Danes. Surely she’d understand, having worked in restaurants most of her adult life.
Isobel studied him for a long moment. “How old are you?”
“Thirty.”
“Totally single parent with full custody?”
“Yes.”
“And you want to work in a kitchen three nights a week plus Saturdays while you go to culinary school.” She looked next-level doubtful he could pull that off.
He took a deep breath. “I want to build a career that gives my son a life worth having.”
Something shifted in her face—not sympathy, exactly, but recognition.
“I started in kitchens when my daughter was eighteen months old,” she told him.
“My mother watched her. Every night, I’d come home smelling like fryer oil and garlic at one in the morning and check on her while she slept.
” She paused. “It’s not easy. It doesn’t get easier.
But if the work is in you, you find a way. ”
He nodded. “The work is in me.”
“I know it is. Marcel wouldn’t have sent you otherwise.” She stood, scrutinizing him, visibly weighing her decision. “I have one other candidate I really like.”
His heart dropped.
“I’ll want kitchen tests from both of you. You have two weeks to think and prepare, then I’ll want you in here to make your signature dish. I’ll watch every move you make, pick apart every slice of your knife, and judge every decision. Then I’ll decide.”
“That sounds good.”
Her brow flicked. “It won’t be, so come prepared to wow me.”
He shook her hand and felt the weight of it—the opportunity, the impossibility, all of it pressing down at once. “Thank you, Chef.”
“Don’t thank me. Thank Marcel. And by then, you better figure out your childcare because your competition is…not in that situation.”
He gave a tight smile with no idea how to answer that. He was in this situation, but that didn’t make him less of a cook.
And for the first time, there was just a little break in her armor as she reached out and put one of her small hands on his arm. “I like you. Marcel likes you. He says you have the right stuff. Don’t disappoint either of us.”
“I won’t, Chef.”
But he might, he thought as he walked out, disappoint his son with too many…Sunny Days.
He climbed into the Honda and put the windows down, letting the magnitude of what he was facing sink in before he pulled out his phone and checked his—
Oh, man.
Sunny Days had texted three times and called twice.
Swearing under his breath, he called back and felt his heart roll around while the phone rang nine times. Nine! Finally, Brenda answered.
“Oh, Mr. Lawson? We’re sorry, but Atlas hasn’t settled since you left. He’s been crying almost continuously. We’ve tried everything—rocking, bottle, pacifier, the swing—but he won’t take comfort from any of our staff. He’s refusing his bottle entirely and he’s getting himself pretty worked up.”
Jonah closed his eyes. “How bad?”
“He’s not in distress medically, but he’s very unhappy. We like to call parents when a child has been inconsolable for more than two hours because, honestly, some babies just need more transition time and some babies need—”
“I’m coming.” He turned the key. “Fifteen minutes.”
He made it in twelve.
The infant room sounded like a war zone from the hallway—Atlas’s cry rising above the ambient noise of the other babies, who had apparently been inspired and joined the chorus. Brenda met him at the door looking frazzled, her singsong voice notably absent.
“I’m really sorry, Mr. Lawson. We tried everything.”
Atlas was in the arms of another staffer—not Nora, thank God. This young woman looked almost as worn out as the baby in her arms.
Atlas’s face was blotchy red, his striped shirt damp with sweat and tears, and the name sticker—ATLAS L.— peeling off his chest like even the label wanted to escape.
The second Atlas saw Jonah, the crying stopped.
Not gradually. Not a slow wind-down. It stopped, like someone had flipped a switch.
Jonah scooped him out of the poor woman’s arms and pressed him against his chest, the baby letting out a long sigh and going limp with relief.
Something inside Jonah’s chest cracked like the whole foundation of his life had shifted. Not quite enough to collapse, but enough to know that something structural had changed and if it didn’t get fixed—everything was coming down.
“I’m sorry,” Brenda said again. “Some babies take longer to adjust. You’re welcome to try again—”
“Thank you,” he said. “But we’re good.”
He collected the diaper bag—which had been stuffed in a wholly different cubby.
He spied the elephant that Atlas had apparently hurled across the room at some point, and the backup pacifier that had never made it out of the bag.
He peeled the name sticker off his son’s chest and dropped it in the trash on his way out.
In the parking lot, he buckled Atlas into the car seat. The baby was half-asleep, the way he always crashed after a hard cry—deep, boneless, wrung out. One fist was curled around the collar of Jonah’s shirt, and he had to gently pry the tiny fingers loose to get the harness buckled.
He sat in the driver’s seat and stared at the steering wheel.
All this and he had to go prove himself against some nameless competition who didn’t have “his situation.”
All for…what?
Atlas shuddered out a contented sigh.
For that. This was his shot—the real one, the one that could turn a guy who lived in a van into a guy who could give his son a life.
Could he even do the kitchen test?
Yes, but that wasn’t the real test, and Chef Vega had made that clear. His life was being tested.
School wouldn’t work. Daycare wouldn’t work. Family could help, but not three nights a week plus Saturdays. There was no one he could ask for that kind of commitment.
He needed a Plan C. For Clueless.
The answer was out there somewhere. It had to be. Because Jonah Lawson had spent the last year clawing his way back from the worst version of himself, and now he had a son who needed someone to look up to and emulate.
He started the Honda. Atlas slept. And Jonah drove home to the Summer House, skipping his lab. He might be running out of plans, but he wasn’t out of hope.
Not yet.