CHAPTER 32
The talk with Sam had been surprisingly helpful. They’d been emailing a bit back and forth since, which went better because Thorn wasn’t setting a time limit or interfering. She was very happy with both the book’s organization and the recipes. Now she was just testing. Ordinarily, she’d want a number of rounds, both to replicate the recipe and ensure the amounts were spot on, and then give it to a few beta testers to make sure that home cooks could also both understand the instructions and repeat the results.
Unfortunately, her house still smelled heavily of eau de skunk, so she was camped out at Hudson’s house, hijacking their kitchen.
She also had an audience. Mari and Kimber were at the dining table culling berries and cherries into boxes for the farm stand. She felt a stab of guilt, since she was taking up their countertops and any workable kitchen space.
“What’s this going to be?” Jeremy asked her from a chair in the corner where he was fiddling with his phone. He’d seemed at loose ends since she’d met him. Hudson told her that he’d quit his job and now had moved back to live with them, but he had no idea what Jeremy was planning to do past that.
Same, Jeremy. Same.
“Homemade tagliatelle with lobster, in a Meyer lemon cream sauce,” she said. “It’s a wider pasta, so you can just cut from the sheets, no fancy pasta machine required. The lobster? That’s the luxury element. And the lemon and butter in the cream sauce echoes what you’d normally eat with lobster, with the fresh thyme and shallots adding a nice counterpoint.”
Jeremy sighed happily. “Can you stay forever?”
She sent him an awkward smile. “Guess you like the food!” she chirped, playing it off.
“If you’re gonna sit here,” Kimber shot at him, “at least be useful, Jem.”
Jeremy rolled his eyes but got to work.
“What’s your next cookbook going to be?” Mari asked as she piled the berries in the boxes with a quickness and care that showed just how much practice she had.
“Not sure. It depends on what I’m assigned.” She rolled out the pasta, thinking through the order of the instruction list. Since it was homemade, she’d just toss the pasta in to cook with the sauce. But there was also the lobster to consider, which was delicate and could easily be overcooked. She’d parcook the tails she’d bought first, in some butter, and set them aside.
“Ever thought of writing your own cookbook?” Kimber asked.
Willa laughed as she sliced lines through the pasta, even and straight as a ruler, then moved the lot out of the way. “Nope. I’m not famous enough.”
“Did you want to be?” Jeremy asked, surprising her. “I mean, did you plan on being a celebrity cook? Like Gordon Ramsay or something?”
“ God , no,” she said, but his face fell, and she realized he wasn’t just asking because he was curious or trying to make conversation. He was thinking of his own position. Maybe what he’d wanted—and what hadn’t worked out.
He might be twenty-three, but at half her age, he was a baby . He had so much time. “I did want to be a chef, though,” she added, and his attention snapped back to her.
“Why didn’t you become one?”
“My parents didn’t want to pay for culinary school,” she said. “Even though I’d always get work, it would be for crappy pay, restaurants go under all the time, and they certainly didn’t think I’d be a Gordon Ramsay. I didn’t even think I would be.”
“But you’re a chef now, kind of,” Kimber piped up. Willa got the impression that she, too, was subtly trying to encourage her brother. “You like what you do, even if it isn’t quite what you thought you’d do.”
His subtle glare, the silent communication between them, suggested he knew exactly what Kimber was trying to do, no matter how innocent her returning expression.
Willa sighed. This wasn’t her business, and she was hardly someone to give career counseling to anyone , much less the son of the guy she was ... doing what she was doing with Hudson. But she understood feeling lost.
“I got a degree in food science, actually,” she said, before the twins could devolve into silent warfare. “I thought my life would go a totally different direction. Then I met my husband, and my life went down a completely unexpected path. I didn’t even get into cookbooks until ... God, at least five years later? Something like that.”
They all looked at her curiously. She zested the lemons, then juiced them, with more attention than the action required.
“We had a restaurant that went under. Before that, we did pop-up restaurants. We did a bit of catering for really weird events,” she remembered with a warm smile as memories popped up. That one midnight circus pop-up. The Camellia Gala ... God, that had been a bitch to come up with appetizers for. And of course, the infamous graveyard bash. “But sometimes, money was just tight, and I wound up taking gigs. That’s how cookbooks came in. Otherwise, I helped other people create recipes, or planned seasonal or special menus for restaurants. I had a pretty good reputation.”
“That sounds fascinating,” Mari said.
“My parents would say flaky,” she tried to joke. But somehow, it didn’t quite land the way she’d hoped. “It’s not an easy way to make a living. Sometimes, it’s barely a way to make a living.”
“Do you regret it?” Jeremy asked.
She stilled her knife, looking at him. The small, insecure part of his voice stopped her in her tracks.
“Why do you ask?”
He shrugged, looking away. “I can’t just keep moving home,” he said.
“The hell you can’t ,” Mari said, shocked. “You are always welcome here!”
“Yeah, but I’m twenty-three years old,” he said. Now he was packing a box of raspberries like he was packing a Fabergé egg. Obviously he didn’t want to make eye contact. “Shouldn’t I have it together by now?”
“Mom called you, didn’t she?” Kimber’s voice was edged in frost. “Jesus. Why can’t she live her life and leave us alone?”
“Kimber,” Mari warned, but her voice had a note of sadness.
Kimber turned to her grandmother, eyes blazing. “Just because she knew she wanted to be a lawyer from the time she was eight or whatever doesn’t mean she gets to judge Jem!”
Willa got the feeling that the woman probably judged Kimber as well, and Kimber probably didn’t care in the slightest. But she’d fight tooth and nail for her twin.
“Don’t you think?” Kimber suddenly sprang on her, and Willa froze.
She thought about what Hudson had told her about the kids, and to a lesser extent, about his ex-wife. It wasn’t her place to comment, and she ought to say so. But since the Bruno incident, she knew Kimber admired her, and according to Hudson, Kimber’s good opinion was hard won.
“I’ve never had kids,” Willa said carefully. “So maybe this isn’t my place. I can only comment on the little I know.”
That stopped them, and their intent focus was uncomfortable. She quickly minced some shallots, a bit of garlic, and a bit of just-picked thyme to settle herself.
“My mother came here with her family from Saigon,” she said. “My father’s family came to the US a few generations ago, from Poland. They’re both from immigrant families. Did I wish I could’ve gone to culinary school? Sure. But I get why they didn’t want me to go. I think sometimes people who don’t live in other places don’t understand what it’s like ... to not have a safety net. They think that not being supported in their dreams is, like, this horrible thing. But in Saigon, dreaming was dangerous. If you lived, you were happy, and if you had some way to keep your life stable, you went for it. My mom was looking out for me, or thought she was, when I was graduating high school. Even now. Sure, sometimes it’s frustrating. But I know where she’s coming from, and I appreciate that.”
That struck them silent. The twins looked taken aback, while Mari looked pensive. Willa wondered if she’d overstepped.
“Do you know what your mom’s family was like?”
They looked at each other and shook their heads. Mari answered instead. “They were hard people,” she said. “Kept to themselves, didn’t have a lot of money most of the time. Amanda didn’t like talking about them. We were shocked when they cut her off like that, but I guess they thought it was a waste for her to go to college because she’d be too busy mothering, and they felt she was ungrateful, derailing their plans. Or something.” The note of disapproval made it clear what Mari thought of that .
“Now I feel like an asshole,” Jeremy said, and Mari tutted him.
“No! I don’t mean—I’m not saying you should just put your head down, get a job you hate, and feel grateful you have it,” Willa said, abashed. “I mean, as much as I appreciated it, I also went ahead and leaped into one of the most unstable series of gigs in one of the most temperamental industries I could find. As much as I love my parents, and I do, I also had to go my own way. You know?”
Jeremy looked at her with blue eyes, so like his father’s, and nodded. He had two deep dimples instead of one, and his smile was broad.
“You know,” he said, “maybe you could do your own videos for cooking. In addition to your cookbook gigs. Build your own name until you became famous enough for your own cookbook?”
She laughed, thinking of Sam. “Yeah, I’ve seen the people who go viral for cooking,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t think I’m sexy enough for that!”
Jeremy and Kimber laughed too. “I don’t mean those videos. There are plenty of people who just teach cooking, or have a theme, or whatever,” he said. “Or you could interview other chefs or cooks or whatever—like Chef’s Table , but more intimate.”
It sounded interesting, but also overwhelming. “I don’t know anything about any of that,” she admitted. “Honestly, I don’t know where I’d start. I’d hate to put up crappy stuff and look lame.”
“Nobody’s perfect right from the jump. That’s the only way you start,” Jeremy argued, then stopped abruptly, like he’d been goosed. His eyes widened.
Kimber, on the other hand, traded a smug look with their grandmother that Jeremy missed.
He shook himself, then looked at her intently. “If you decide you want to try doing videos,” he told Willa sincerely, “I can help you. For fun even.”
She bit her lip, quickly pulling the sauce together. “I don’t know ...”
“You’d be doing me a favor.”
Shit.
Of course he’d play the favor card. Especially here, in their family kitchen, where she was freeloading and taking up their space and time, even if she was paying for ingredients.
“All right,” she agreed, and couldn’t help but smile as the twins cheered in response.