25. Chicken Pastina #2
I didn’t know why this was bothering me so much.
I had spent enough time with Lucas to know that the man felt trapped and had since he was a small child, and here I was, picking at him like a scab that had never healed.
I couldn’t imagine never being able to choose one’s life purpose—my family was poor, but at least I’d been given that freedom.
“Is that why you visit your mother?” I wondered. “In Arizona, I mean. Do you pretend to have a different life there with her?”
Lucas went still, and I feared I’d overstepped.
He pushed a hand through his hair, spreading water through the short strands. “I—maybe.”
I didn’t say anything, just waited for him to continue.
“She’s a watercolor artist—quite a good one, actually.
” His voice was careful, controlled, like he was testing each word before he spoke it.
“I only got to see her for a week every year after she left. Maybe a few weeks in the summer when I was in college. We were never completely close, but there’s a warmth between us.
A kind of…realness, I suppose, that I don’t find many other places. Though I saw it tonight.”
“With my family?”
“Yes. I don’t think you know how rare that is.
Everyone is pigeonholed by their families, but not everyone can be themselves with the people who raised them.
You may have changed a bit, but it’s obvious that your family loves you for who you are.
I doubt I could say the same about mine if I stopped writing checks for their yachts, clothes, and whatever else they spend all that money on.
My mother, though…she never asks me for anything.
” He tipped his head. “Sort of like you, actually.”
The honesty in his voice made my chest ache. How long had it been since Lucas had been able to just be himself? To exist without the weight of everyone else’s expectations?
“You were good with the girls,” I told him. “Xavier noticed too.”
“Would it shock you that I like children?”
“Honestly? A bit, yeah.”
“I always have.” He shrugged. “When Daniel was born, I was so fucking excited to have a little brother. Disappointed, of course, when I realized that a baby was terrible company, but even then, I was always happy to spend time with him.”
I snorted. “You didn’t realize that at eleven?”
He gave me a pointed look. “Eleven-year-olds are not known for their foresight. All I really knew was that I wouldn’t be alone anymore.”
The sad truth was an arrow through my heart. I wanted to climb into his lap like I had in Japan, guide his head to my shoulder, and kiss him until his sadness left.
I wanted to tell him that he didn’t have to be alone anymore.
Not with me.
But that would be a lie, and Lucas wasn’t done telling stories.
“When I was in high school, I tutored to meet the community service requirements for graduation. I liked working with the little ones who were about Sofia’s age.”
The image made me smile: a lanky, teenage Lucas hunched over a copy of Peter Rabbit , holding little boys or girls in his thrall.
“Why haven’t you gotten married and had kids, then? And don’t tell me it’s because you can’t find anyone special.”
“You’d be surprised.”
“Do you want a family?”
That full mouth twisted as he gave me a look that was full of something I never thought I’d see on his older, wiser face: wistfulness. “I didn’t for a long time. Didn’t think I was suited for it.”
I found myself fiddling with the shoulder strap of my bikini. “And now?”
“Now I find myself wanting all sorts of things I shouldn’t. I suppose a family might be thrown in there as well.” Before I could probe what, exactly, he meant by that, he asked me, “And what do you want, Marie?”
“What…what do you mean?”
His hand spun an invisible idea through the night air. “For your life. You’re young. You must have dreams.”
I swallowed. “Well, I just accomplished one of those dreams, didn’t I? Your family made it happen by sending me to Paris.”
He tipped his head, the storm-cloud gaze starting to swirl as though he could see through my lies, or at least through my partial truths. “And after? I doubt you want to prepare my family’s meals for the rest of your life.”
I stared through the water at the soft, pale shapes of my bare legs compared to his longer, stronger ones on the other side of the pool. Our toes were only inches from each other.
“Does anyone really know what their dreams are at twenty-five?” I asked. “What did you want at my age? Was your dream to increase your family’s net worth by a factor of fifteen and become the youngest Fortune 500 CEO in history?”
I had the feeling Lucas knew I was deflecting.
Still, he answered. “ Fortune has a tendency to exaggerate its estimates.” Then, under his breath, “It was closer to ten.”
I snorted.
“But I take your point,” he spoke more loudly. “And my case was different. I wasn’t really allowed to have dreams. I inherited a legacy instead.”
“And did that make you happy?”
“You know it didn’t.” His gaze drilled into me. “There’s a strong possibility I never knew the meaning of the word until just recently.”
I wanted to ask exactly what he meant by that , but he shook his head.
“Stop avoiding the question.” He shifted around the pool so he was a bit closer. Close enough to make me turn to look at him. “Culinary school isn’t really a dream. It’s a means to reach one. And I don’t believe working for my family is yours.”
“It was for Ondine.”
“Ondine was fifty-three when she started working for us. She had raised children. Gotten married and divorced. Helmed a Michelin-starred restaurant. She had set her goals, reached them, and by the time Winnifred found her, she was ready for something simpler. We provided that.”
He moved closer again, enough that his broad shoulders cast a shadow over the water in front of us.
I didn’t look at him, though. Instead, I stared through the steam rising from the water, watching it dissipate into the cool night air.
Somewhere below us, London hummed with people going home from work, meeting friends for dinner, having dates, friendships, lovers, careers.
Living their complicated, messy, beautiful lives.
And here I was, twenty-five and as isolated as ever, trying to drum up the courage to admit the one thing I’d ever really wanted but was too terrified to reach for.
“I want my own place,” I confessed. “A restaurant, maybe. I’m not sure. But it doesn’t matter, because I don’t think I could do it.”
The admission hung between us. It was the first time I’d said it out loud, but like a bell that had just been rung, it couldn’t be un rung. The echo was out there, vibrating through the world.
“Why not?” Lucas demanded gently.
“You know why. I’m scared of my own shadow half the time.”
“You struggle outside your routine. It’s not the same thing.”
I shook my head. “At the Institute, on top of our classes, they had us stage at a few different places in Paris.”
“What does that mean, ‘stahj’?” Lucas said, struggling over the French pronunciation.
“It’s sort of like a cooking internship.
You work alongside chefs or specialists to learn techniques, experience the pacing of their work, and provide them with help in return.
I did a month at a café in the Left Bank, two with a patisserie in Montmartre, and six months with Ondine’s old restaurant. She still knows the owners.”
Lucas’s eyes popped open. “Ondine’s restaurant had three stars. That must have been quite an experience.”
“It was terrifying. You can’t imagine the pace these places run at.
Every dish had to be timed down to the second in terms of preparation.
I walked in, and they were incredibly intense.
No one spoke. But the entire staff knew everything about everyone who entered the restaurant.
Their likes, their dislikes, personality types, anniversaries, special requests.
” I shook my head. “I realized how much of the business isn’t about the food.
It’s about the people. And I don’t know if I can handle it. ”
“You can.”
That was when I found Lucas watching me so intensely, I thought I might fall over. Or fall into him.
“I don’t know much,” he said. “But I have no doubt that you are capable of anything you put your mind to. And if you want to own a three-star restaurant or anything else, it will be one of the best places to eat on the planet.”
“But how do you know ? I know you think you do, but, Lucas, before this last month, you and I had barely spoken. I was just a girl who worked in your house. How could you really know that I can handle something like that?”
“Do you remember the first time you ever made soup at Prideview?”
I sat back. “I—yes. Do you?”
He nodded. “Daniel was sick. You made him something called chicken pastina.”
“Yes.” I was surprised that he knew anything about this story. “He liked my soup so much, he told Mrs. Lyons to hire me.”
Lucas squinted. “You thought Daniel was the reason you got hired?”
“Wasn’t he?”
Lucas looked up at the sky again, muttering something like “God, I wish.”
“Lucas?”
He sighed. “Daniel was home from college with mono. Had a throat that felt like fire and was losing weight. You were cleaning out his room and mentioned your grandmother’s soup to him.”
“That’s—that’s right. How did you know that?” I didn’t think anyone knew that part of the story.
“It was the first thing Winnifred saw him eat in four days. She couldn’t stop talking about it.
Even Ondine couldn’t get him to eat. When I heard about it, I went down to ask her what it was, and she told me what you put in it.
Bone broth, but with pork and chicken. Oregano and tarragon, no parsley.
Shallots instead of onions, but with roasted garlic blended into the broth because he doesn’t like the texture. ”
I stared, my mind struggling to keep up. I remembered making that soup, but I’d done it because it felt like I’d been given a chance to show Daniel how much I cared. I had so little power in that house, and food was the only language I could speak without tripping over myself.
I’d thought Daniel had been the one to notice. But apparently it had been Lucas.
He shook his head, like he still couldn’t believe it.
“You had a laundry list of all the things my brother loved and hated in one soup. You knew exactly what he needed, and you figured it out, just like you did for our parents and me in other variations of a similar story. It sounds to me like you can do exactly what those restaurants were doing for their customers. You have been for years.”
I gaped. “Did you even try the soup? Maybe it wasn’t any good.”
Lies. It was fantastic.
“No, I did not try Daniel’s soup. But I did try the container you left for me. The one that did include parsley, but also a bit of lemon because you knew I liked citrus, didn’t you?”
Slowly, I nodded. It was the truth.
“You weren’t even in the kitchen yet, and you knew those things. You paid that close attention to everyone around you. That’s why I told Ondine to promote you.”
“Why didn’t…why didn’t you ever tell me any of this?”
Lucas sighed, low and long. “I thought about it. After I tried that soup, I went to tell you myself that you were going to be promoted. You were upstairs, changing the sheets in a guest room, dancing to something on your headphones. And you were talking. I think you curtsied once.”
My cheeks bloomed. “Well, that’s embarrassing.”
“Not embarrassing at all. Endearing, I’d say.”
“Do I even want to know what I was saying?”
“You were serving someone. Offering them the special. At one point, you said, ‘of course, Daniel.’”
I covered my face. This was mortifying. Lucas had come to pay me a compliment and found me in the middle of a daydream about his brother while I was working for him.
“I’m surprised you gave me the promotion at all.” I cringed, still reeling from the fact that it had been Lucas all along who had been responsible for it. “I might have been eighteen, but you basically found a little girl playing make-believe.”
“I saw a beautiful young woman who was dreaming.” He smiled a little, more to himself than to me. “I couldn’t take my eyes off her. Which is why I knew it would be better if I stayed out of the kitchen from that point on.”
I sat there, digesting what he had shared.
Had Lucas just admitted what I thought he was saying?
Had he seen me that day, almost eight full years ago now? Homely and small in my ugly maid’s uniform. My hair tied back, and my glasses smudged, the definition of mousy. Hardly ever speaking, and when I did, only in platitudes or silly pretend-dreams to myself?
“So you—” I stammered. “You saw me—and then you—are you saying that?—”
“Yes,” he answered my unspoken questions. “The answer to all of them is yes.”
I had no more words. No more thoughts. Shock had replaced them all.
Lucas reached out like he was approaching a wild animal and gently cupped my cheek, running a thumb across my cheekbones, then over my lips.
“It’s you, Marie,” he whispered so quietly I wondered if I’d actually heard him. “God help me, it’s always been you.”