Chapter 7
It was the end of May. Sunlight drenched the back porch of The Dockside, a gorgeous space that overlooked the docks and the yonder Atlantic, a space that should have been full on a gorgeous Sunday like this.
It begged the questions: what was wrong with Theo? What was wrong with his vision?
Theo sat at his favorite table, again going over the various spreadsheets and notes he’d put together, documents that he’d hoped would help him find his way to breaking even again.
But the fact was, the city council members were right.
His restaurant was a dud, and he had no idea how to survive.
Just last night, honesty finding its way into his conversation with his sister, she’d asked him, “Why don’t you close up?
Do something else? You could be a chef at some other restaurant.
You could stop trying so hard to stay afloat. ”
Now, there was a knock on a nearby table. Theo raised his head to find his chef and part-time manager, Ben, hovering, wiping his hands on a towel. For the past six years, Ben had worked here at The Dockside. He’d fast become Theo’s best and maybe only real friend.
“Hey, Bossman,” Ben said, using the silly nickname that Theo sort of hated. “You said you have a big reservation tonight, right?”
“That’s right. Ten people,” Theo confirmed.
“Congrats!”
Theo didn’t want to tell Ben about his connection to the reservation, how Celia Harper had probably made it because she felt bad about the past, about Juliet, about everything that had happened.
But something about Ben’s gaze told Theo that he didn’t want to talk about the reservation for long. He had something else on his mind.
Cold stones dropped into Theo’s stomach. “Want to sit down?”
Ben came over and sat across from him, his spine too straight. Theo suddenly couldn’t remember the last time he and Ben had gone out together or talked about anything save for Theo’s panic about the restaurant.
Theo thought of all the little ways he should have shown up for his friend: asking about Ben’s wife and his children, making sure he was happy. But something told Theo that he was too late.
“Listen, Theo,” Ben said, spreading his big, scarred hands across the table. “I want you to know that this has nothing to do with The Dockside. Or with you.”
“Uh-oh.” Theo’s heart pounded, but he put on a brave smile.
Ben laughed, maybe because he was nervous. “You know I’ve loved it here over the years. We’ve had our ups and downs…”
“Mostly downs,” Theo reminded him.
Ben raised his shoulders. “Man, it’s not about that. It’s my dad in Florida. You know his health took a turn recently, and he doesn’t have anyone else around. After last year, Marnie and I want a fresh start somewhere.”
Theo vaguely remembered that Ben and Marnie had considered getting divorced. They’d been fighting a lot.
“You’re leaving Maine to go to Florida.” Theo shook his head. “What a traitor!” He’d wanted to make a joke about it, something to do with harsh Maine winters and balmy Florida Januarys, but calling Ben a “traitor” felt too true, at this moment.
Ben knew Theo couldn’t afford to hire anyone else. Already, Theo hadn’t been paying Ben nearly as much as Ben was worth, but Ben hadn’t asked for more, probably out of loyalty. But loyalty like that was always ready to run dry.
“Honestly, it’s been a pleasure,” Ben scrambled to add.
Theo wondered if he looked as sick as he felt. But rather than push Ben to stay or make him an offer that probably wouldn’t come to fruition anyway, he stood and extended his hand. “Thank you for everything, man.”
Ben stood, looked at Theo’s hand, then walked around to hug Theo instead.
Theo closed his eyes mid-hug and tried to fathom the summertime without Ben’s help. Ben had always been around to pick up the slack and get excited about Theo’s menu ideas. He’d done a lot of their social media, mostly because Theo hated it too much to do it himself.
Without Ben, Theo wasn’t sure how the restaurant would stay open another day, let alone till the Christmas Festival at the end of the year.
But now, Theo heard himself telling Ben he could leave whenever he wanted. “Honestly, I can handle tonight,” he said. “I can’t imagine we’ll have anyone else besides that ten-top. And you probably need to wrap your mind around the move and what comes next.”
It was clear that Ben was surprised but grateful. “I haven’t known how to tell you, man. And now, I’m so relieved that I can hardly think straight.” But Ben agreed that it was better to make a clean break of it. He was excited to tell Marnie that they were ready to go.
* * *
After Ben left the restaurant, Theo wandered among the tables and chairs, adjusting things and listening to music too loud from the speakers, which needed to be replaced because they kept crackling and spitting.
Theo felt brokenhearted. When he got back into the kitchen, he tried to force himself to fully commit to the food he needed to prep for the Harper family tonight.
But every slice of an onion, every spit of the skillet, reminded him that he was failing.
At seven on the dot, Celia and her boyfriend, Landon, arrived. Behind them were Celia’s daughter Sophie, plus Landon’s children, Isaac and Mallory. After that came Ivy and her boyfriend Elliott, plus Ivy’s children Lily and Tyler.
“Wow! Your own restaurant!” Celia said brightly as Theo led them to the indoor table he’d prepped for them. It was supposed to dip into the fifties in a half-hour or so and was too cold for outdoor dining. “Look at this place!”
Theo wanted to say she was a good actress, that he knew just how crummy the restaurant looked—that he knew about the outdated decor and the paint that desperately needed to be applied to many of the walls and shutters.
But he also wanted the Harper sisters (the elder two) to consider the food before making an assumption about Theo’s skills. In his opinion, you could get some of the best food at crummy-looking market stalls or diners in the middle of nowhere.
Why had people in Bluebell Cove forgotten that?
Theo didn’t have menus, at least not right now, as he so often experimented with what he cooked in the kitchen and couldn’t update them every day.
He relayed to the Harper sisters and their families the various flavor palates he was exploring, with a “Peruvian theme” that highlighted Maine’s adoration of fish.
“That’s exciting!” Celia exclaimed. With Theo’s help, they ordered enough food and drinks for everyone.
As Theo filled glasses with diet sodas and juices, he overheard Celia’s daughter talking in what she thought was a whisper. “He dated Aunt Juliet?”
“Not really,” Ivy said quietly.
“I don’t think they did at all,” Celia muttered. “But I don’t know. We were so much older than them.”
Theo’s heart pounded in his neck. He felt frozen solid, eager for them to say something else.
“Where is Aunt Juliet, anyway?” Ivy’s daughter, Lily, asked. “She hasn’t been in Bluebell in, like, forever.”
“And Wren hasn’t updated her socials in months! Wasn’t she in Asia?” Celia’s daughter asked.
Mentally, Theo urged them to return to the topic of Juliet. But when he came back with the drink orders, they were talking about Wren again, about how “reckless” she could be.
“I want to travel like that,” Ivy’s daughter said wistfully.
Ivy groaned and flashed Theo a smile. “Do you have children?”
Theo shook his head. “Nope.”
Celia cast Ivy a look that Theo thought meant: don’t make him feel worse than he already does.
Did everyone pity him?
“But I was married,” Theo added, trying to brighten the mood, or make himself seem more normal, or something. “It didn’t work out, but. Yeah. She was French.”
“Wow!” Lily’s and Celia’s daughter were bright-eyed at that.
“She grew up in Paris, actually,” Theo added, remembering his beautiful bride. “She was a pastry chef.”
“Did you learn French?” Lily asked.
“I was okay at it, but she never wanted to talk to me in French,” Theo said. “My French was so much worse than her English that it didn’t make sense to.”
“Did she live in Bluebell Cove for a while?” Ivy asked.
“Yes,” Theo said, his chest tightening.
“I think I remember her,” Ivy said thoughtfully.
Theo decided not to tell them that his ex-wife had thought Bluebell was “quaint but boring.” She’d ached for the big city, for French cuisine, for things she understood.
She’d come to hate the smell of the coast and the taste of clam chowder and Maine accents.
When she left, she’d said, “Do yourself a favor, Theo, and leave, too. This place is killing you, the way it killed me.” But she hadn’t wanted him to come with her.
Back in the kitchen, Theo worked his magic, ultimately delivering Peruvian-inspired fish dishes that the Harper sisters and their families gushed over. Smiling down at them, Theo allowed himself to fall into their compliments.
“Honestly, Theo,” Celia said, shaking her head and pointing down at the messy-looking platter of fish curry on her plate. “This is divine! I’ve never had anything like it.”
Ivy nodded furiously.
“You have to get more people in here,” Elliott said, frowning. It looked comically empty in there, with a table of ten full to the brim and the rest of the restaurant vacuous.
“Ha. Easier said than done, I’m afraid,” Theo said. “Celia heard them at the city council meeting. They’re ready to shut me down if I don’t find a way to get more people in here.”
That is, if Theo didn’t have to shut himself down first.
“Have you considered hiring someone to do marketing for you? Maybe figure out a way to brand what you’re doing?” Landon asked.
Theo wanted to laugh, as he had no idea how he would pay for something like that. “It’s not a bad idea. I’ll have to look into it.”
Ivy decided to order a glass of wine, and Celia joined her, saying it was cause for celebration.
Theo was happy to recommend the wines he thought best paired with the dishes he’d made.
Landon and Elliott decided to join in as well.
As Theo searched through the back fridge for the wines he’d promised he had (although he hadn’t seen them up close in quite some time), he again heard the Harpers discussing Juliet.
“I told you she called me?” Ivy whispered, maybe to Celia.
“You did, but you didn’t say what she said,” Celia offered.
“She seemed out of her mind. I was worried. Before I could get anything out of her, she hung up on me. But then I thought…” Ivy trailed off. “I mean, she’s been such a stranger to us this year. She doesn’t tell us what’s going on. We don’t even know her daughter.”
“She has a daughter?” Lily asked, sounding shocked.
“We shouldn’t talk about this here,” Celia murmured.
Pulling himself from his reverie, Theo found the bottle of wine he’d been looking for, then uncorked it, thinking about Juliet and her apparently “secret” life in the big city.
After he delivered the wine and more sodas for the younger people, he returned to the kitchen and did what he’d always told himself not to do. He googled Juliet Harper.
The first image of her that came up was taken in her early twenties, when her modeling career was in full bloom and she was discussed in the same circles as megacelebrities and top models.
Just as he’d been as a younger kid, Theo was floored by her beauty.
But the darkness in the gaze of these model shots was proof that Juliet’s path to stardom had not been easy.
Not long into Theo’s quest, he found photographs of Juliet’s wedding to “Alvin the lawyer.” In them, she looked so happy and beautiful, smiling at her husband and raising glasses of champagne in celebration.
Nobody could have guessed that just the night before, she’d called Theo and told him that his food was the best she’d ever tasted.
Theo wondered if Juliet still thought that about his food. Probably not, he guessed.
But as he continued to study the story of Juliet through the years, he discovered a press release from La Cote Fashion House.
It was from last year and concerned Juliet’s performance at a fashion show in Paris.
According to the press release, the fashion house put all the blame squarely on Juliet’s shoulders.
Within the next few months, the fashion house dismissed Juliet as an employee—after more than a decade of working together.
Theo marveled at the rise and fall of Juliet, his ex-best friend and the woman who still mystified him. “Oh, Juliet,” he muttered to himself, there in the kitchen of his failing restaurant. “What happened to you?”