Chapter 7
Isabelle
I'm nearly done for the day, ready to crash in my cottage and hopefully get some sleep before opening night tomorrow. There’s still plenty to check and not much time to do it.
The last of the prep crew has trickled out, and I'm doing my final walk-through of the kitchen, clipboard in hand, checking off each station as I go.
My phone buzzes in my pocket and I suppress a groan, fishing it out. My father's name is on the screen, which is a surprise. He should be asleep in Paris right now, nine hours ahead.
Merde.
"Papa," I say, leaning against the edge of the prep station and setting down my clipboard. “Is everything alright?”
"Isabelle." He sounds tired, not irritated. "We have a situation in New York."
My stomach tightens and I press my free hand against the cold metal counter. "What happened?"
"Lacy Chapman was at the restaurant last night." Papers rustle on his end. "Laurent called me this morning. The duck was overcooked. Timing issues on two other courses. She left before dessert."
Double merde.
Lacy Chapman writes for the Times. She's not just a critic, she's the critic in New York, the woman who can make or break a restaurant with a single review. If she left before dessert, that means she'd already decided what she thought of the experience.
"Did she say anything?" I ask.
"No, but Laurent said she looked disappointed." He pauses. "This is a problem, Isabelle. That kitchen should be running flawlessly, especially this close to your transition. I know you're focused on the pop-up, but you need to stay connected to what's happening in New York."
I rub my temple. "I'm three thousand miles away, Papa. Laurent is in charge. What exactly do you expect me to do about a duck dish I didn't cook?"
"I expect you to be managing both," he says.
"You insisted on doing this pop-up against my better judgment.
I told you it was a distraction, that you should be focused on New York, but you pushed for it anyway.
So if you're going to do both, then you need to actually do both.
That means staying in touch with Laurent, checking in on service, making sure things don't fall apart the moment you're not looking over everyone's shoulder. "
"I have been checking in—"
"Clearly not enough." He cuts me off. "I had to hear about this from Laurent, not from you. You should have called me the moment you knew Lacy was in the dining room. Instead I'm finding out twelve hours later from someone else."
My jaw clenches. "I didn't know she was there. Laurent didn't tell me."
"Then you're not managing your team properly." His voice is flat, matter-of-fact. "A good chef knows what's happening in their kitchen even when they're not there. You wanted this responsibility, Isabelle. This is what it looks like."
I close my eyes and press my thumb and forefinger against the bridge of my nose. "What do you need me to do?"
"Call Lacy." His tone brooks no argument.
"You have a relationship with her. Reach out, acknowledge that the kitchen wasn't at its best, invite her back for a proper service.
If Lacy publishes a negative review the week you take over that restaurant, you'll spend six months trying to recover from damage you didn't even cause. "
I say nothing, staring at the rows of perfectly prepped ingredients lined up along the counter.
Everything organized, everything in its place, everything ready for tomorrow night.
The kitchen looks like a photograph, like something out of a magazine spread.
But three thousand miles away, the kitchen that actually matters is burning.
"You should be in New York right now,” he continues, sounding frustrated. “Your actual career is on the other coast. If you were in New York where you belong, you could have been there last night. You would have caught the duck before it went out."
"I wanted to do this, and you even told me you thought it was a great idea!" I say, keeping my voice level even though I want to throw my phone across the room.
"I know." He sighs, sharp and impatient. "But that doesn't change the fact that you have responsibilities in New York. Running a restaurant at this level means managing everything at once, even when you're not there."
"Right," I say, my voice flat. "Of course."
"Call Lacy tomorrow morning. And I'm taking the early flight tomorrow. I should arrive a few hours before service. I'll have a colleague from NYC with me as well, we’re flying back from Paris together while going over a potential deal."
“Yep,” I say stiffly. “Sounds good. Just text me when you land. I’ll give you an update on the Lacy thing tomorrow, I’m sure I can get it worked out.”
"Isabelle, you know I adore you. I'm hard on you because I know what you're capable of, not because I doubt you. But these things are important. Projects like Napa, while admirable, shouldn't get in the way of your future. Your real future."
"I know, Papa."
"Good. I'll see you tomorrow night. Bonne chance."
He hangs up and I pull up Lacy's contact and stare at her name on my screen.
We've hung out a few times through mutual friends, always in group settings, always brief.
I don't know her well enough for this call to be anything but awkward.
She'll know exactly why I'm reaching out, and she'll know it's damage control.
Inevitably my thoughts drift to Alex and how he'd handle this.
He'd call her up like they were old friends, be so warm and self-deprecating that she wouldn't know what hit her until she'd agreed to come back and give the kitchen another shot.
He makes it look so easy, that kind of effortless charm.
I've watched him do it with Morrison, with the suppliers, with the staff, with me.
Maybe I can channel some of that. Probably not, but I can try.
I'll call her first thing in the morning.
She's probably asleep now, so I tuck my phone back in my pocket and return to my checklist. I try to focus on the tasks in front of me, the final checks that need to happen before we start prep in the morning.
But I can feel the weight of New York pressing down on me, heavier with every passing second.
Maybe I should have been checking in more with Laurent.
Maybe I've been too focused on Napa, too caught up in the vineyards and the sourcing trips and the rhythm of building something from scratch.
Maybe my father is right and I should have stayed focused on New York instead of pushing for this pop-up.
Maybe I've been fooling myself.
I roll over in my bed and glance at the clock.
After midnight, and I still can't sleep.
Between the phone call with my father and the pressure of opening night tomorrow, my mind won't stop turning over every detail: the critics arriving, my father flying in from Paris with a colleague in tow, the handful of celebrities and athletes Margot casually mentioned were on the reservation list like that was a normal thing to say out loud.
All of it pressing down on me, but the two things that keep circling back are the food writers who could tear me apart with a paragraph, and my father with his perpetually impossible standards.
He'll be watching every plate that leaves that kitchen tomorrow. He'll smile proudly for the guests and then pull me aside in the kitchen to discuss what I could have done better, because that is what love looks like in the Beaumont household.
Conditional. Contingent. Always just slightly out of reach. Not to mention the call with Lacy in the morning, which I'm already dreading.
Nothing can go wrong, or I will never hear the end of it.
I need to be better than everyone expects me to be.
I start running through a mental checklist, even though I went through everything hours ago when I left the kitchen.
The beurre blanc base is prepped and resting, the stocks are reduced and portioned, the dessert components are set, and the—
The fig compote for the amuse-bouche. Did I strain it? I definitely strained it. I rack my brain, flipping through the afternoon like pages in a book. Or did I just think about straining it and then get pulled away when Sofia had a question about the cold line?
"Ugh!" I flip the sheets off in frustration, sitting up in the darkness of my cottage. I'll never be able to sleep unless I check.
I pull a sweater on over my pajama set, a long silk one with little pancakes printed all over it that I bought as a joke but now wear religiously because it's the most comfortable thing I own.
I shove my feet into my slip-ons and head out the door, making my way along the path toward the main building through the vineyard.
It's chilly tonight, so different from the scorching afternoons. The vineyard stretches out on either side of me as I walk along the path, quiet and empty and somehow ominous in the dark.
I don't consider myself someone who gets spooked easily. Still, the daytime vineyards are a completely different thing than what's out here now. The dark, twisted vines stretching in every direction are not particularly comforting at midnight. In fact, they look downright sinister.
I scurry along the path faster, keeping my eyes fixed on the warm glow of the kitchen windows ahead and trying not to think about every horror movie I've ever seen that started with someone walking through a field at night.
My brain, ever helpful, decides to replay the scene from Signs where the alien's leg moves through the cornfield. Last month's horror movie marathon was clearly a mistake. I fight the urge to whip around frantically, suddenly regretting not bringing anything but my phone with its crappy flashlight.
Relief washes over me when I reach the door, and I let myself in, immediately hit by the warm, buttery smell of something baked with figs. At the island counter in the center is—