28. Saint
TWENTY-EIGHT
SAINT
I vy’s back from her sleepover and crunches through cereal next to me, using one of the good mugs again because she says it makes the flakes taste better. I told her that made no sense. She said I was old.
She’s in a talking mood this morning. Humming something under her breath, tapping her spoon against the rim like it’s a drum. I should tell her to stop before she chips the porcelain, but I don’t. I like the sound of her in the kitchen.
It used to be a quiet house. I thought I liked that.
Now, when it’s silent, I notice what’s missing.
Ivy grabs my attention again when she drapes herself over the counter like she’s melting. Crumbs from her cereal cling to the sleeve of her unicorn onesie.
“I’m so full,” she groans, then unspools off the stool and toward the cushioned bench in the breakfast nook.
“Almost like I warned you,” I say, handing her the small blanket she always insists she’s too old for until she’s tired.
She mumbles something about needing lots of stomachs like cows, then curls up without further complaint .
I refresh my coffee and lean against the counter, staring out of the bay windows above Ivy and into our wooded backyard. There’s no rush to do anything today. It’s one of the rare mornings when the house doesn’t need anything from me. No prep list. No kid meltdown. No mess in the sink.
But my phone’s in my hand, anyway.
I tell myself it’s out of habit. Emails.
Schedules. Maybe a shipment delay. That’s the excuse I’ve been using every morning for the past three weeks, ever since Wrenley started posting again.
It’s not a habit I’m proud of. Not something I admit.
At first, it was curiosity. Then concern after becoming aware that she had a seriously unhinged, dangerous fan and someone needed to be on her page to protect her. Now it’s something I can’t name.
I tell myself it’s just to make sure she’s safe. That after what happened in my restaurant bathroom, I have a responsibility to check on her. That it’s not pathetic at all to be thirty-four years old and watching a woman talk about her morning routine.
I open Instagram. The handle my agent chose—@SaltySaint—flashes across the top.
It’s absurd. I didn’t pick it. My former agent grabbed a handle for me on all social media accounts despite my severe hatred of all things online.
I’ll never thank her, but it did make it a lot easier to find Wrenley by having an existing account.
Her latest video appeared twenty minutes ago. I haven’t watched it yet, which feels like a personal failure.
Wrenley stands in her tiny kitchen, explaining how to make a smoothie recipe I taught her that she swears doesn’t taste like “lawn clippings and regret.”
I’ll take that as a compliment, I suppose.
Her hair is piled on top of her head, that pink streak escaping to brush her cheek. She’s wearing a sweater that’s too big for her frame, one I recognize because it’s mine. She stole it last week. And I didn’t ask for it back.
My breathing slows at the sight of her smile. This is a genuine one, not the polished, closed-mouthed tilt she started off using when she recorded herself again. I’ve cataloged her smiles. I know which ones reach her eyes.
I scroll to her previous post from a few days ago with her at the lake, wind ruffling her hair, explaining why she’s been quieter than usual online. I’ve watched it multiple times, noting how her voice changed when she mentioned finding peace in unexpected places.
Am I that peace?
Do I even want to be her happy place?
Ivy snores softly, the blanket pulled to her chin despite her insistence that she’s “practically a teenager.” I lower the volume and tap on Wrenley’s profile, scrolling back through the last week of content.
Each thumbnail is a moment I wasn’t with her, a glimpse into the parts of her life that exist outside of what she shares with me because I’ve asked that Ivy and I not be included in her content, and she’s respected that.
I can’t name this restlessness, this need to see what she’s doing when she’s not with me. It’s not surveillance. It’s not obsession. It’s just ... checking.
She’s fine. She’s happy. She’s wearing my clothes like it’s the most natural thing in the world, and I’m watching her like some kid with his first crush.
So, like the glutton for punishment that I am, I read the comments.
GIRL, you are THRIVING lately!
ma’am that is a MAN’s sweater and we see yo u
who else is zooming in on the background for clues about chef daddy?
Chef Daddy? My brows furrow.
The nickname hits like a slap of cold water.
The comments on her videos used to be about her. Wrenley’s smile, what products she uses, her progress. Now they’re filled with questions about someone else.
Holy fuck. About me.
I click on a comment that’s gathered hundreds of replies.
Okay but we need to talk about those sex hands in the pasta video. Criminal that we don’t have a face to match.
The pasta video . My mind stutters over the phrase. The one I let her film of just my hands and the counter because she asked so sweetly, and we’d both just finished a thorough fuck.
No face. No name. No identifying information except?—
I tap on Wrenley’s profile and scroll frantically, looking for it. The thumbnail appears halfway down her feed: a close-up of a cutting board, a knife, with my tattooed forearm just visible at the edge of the frame.
Four hundred thousand likes.
Holy fuck.
I tap on the video, first noticing the caption: This carbonara made me believe in emotional support carbs again.
I’d watched the video when she first posted it, when it was at something like two hundred views, and I was forced to admit that she is one savvy creator who knows how to trigger views without being obvious.
This time, though, I head straight to the comments.
My coffee mug freezes halfway to my mouth. I scroll through, a sinking feeling spreading through my chest.
Anyone notice the knife technique? That’s professional level.
Those forearms are making me feel things I shouldn’t before 9 a.m.
Did anyone else catch the tiny burn scar on his left wrist? Classic chef mark.
That’s a $300 Japanese knife. This isn’t some rando boyfriend.
I work in a restaurant and THOSE ARE MICHELIN HANDS. I’d bet my entire paycheck.
I’m comparing the tattoos to every chef in the northeast with ink. Will report back.
I scroll faster, my heartbeat rising to a staggering level.
After closing the app, I set my phone face down on the counter, breathing through my nose.
They know.
Fuck me, they’re going to know.
The hot coffee in my hand suddenly feels like acid, burning through my palm. I set it down before I lob it through the window.
Michelin hands. Chef Daddy. Four hundred thousand people analyzing my fucking wrist bones.
I rub my thumb over the burn scar they’d noticed, a souvenir from my first job when I was sixteen and thought I was invincible. Now it’s a beacon for internet sleuths with too much time on their hands .
It suddenly dawns on me how Wrenley directed me that day.
Go slower, let me see the knife, hold the yolk between your fingers .
At the time, I thought her taking control was sexy and irresistible, but it’s taking on a different meaning now.
She’d said people loved food prep videos.
That was her reasoning. Not “I want to use your chef credentials to boost my engagement,” even though, clearly, that’s what she’s done.
Wrenley wasn’t just capturing a moment. She was curating me.
And then, my worst nightmare comes true. A new comment appears at the top.
Wait, isn’t she in that town where Bernard Toussaint opened his restaurant? The chef who disappeared from France after his wife died?
My stomach drops through the goddamn floor.
I scroll frantically through the thread, watching as the speculation builds in real time. Someone’s already replied with a link to an old New York Times profile. Another is posting screenshots from C’est Trois’s website, which doesn’t even have pictures of me, just the restaurant interior.
The walls are closing in. I tap on Wrenley’s profile again, noticing things I missed before.
She never tags the town and carefully crops her backgrounds so that there are no identifying landmarks, but occasionally slips, leaving just enough for a dogged viewer to figure out where she is.
The dock by the lake or the bookstore’s window reflecting Main Street, though it’s blurred.
Little breadcrumbs. Little clues.
Ivy stirs on the bench, mumbling something about rainbows before settling back to sleep. I look at her peaceful face, at the dark hair that’s so like mine, at the innocence I’ve fought tooth and nail to protect.
Three years of careful obscurity. Three years of building a life of privacy and safety for Ivy, so she could grow up without the dark cloud of her mother’s death, of the interest of the press, and the over-glorified fame of her father.
I just became Saint, the grumpy chef with the spirited daughter who runs that French place on Main.
All of it unraveling because I let someone in.
My phone buzzes with a text.
Wrenley: Thinking about you. Brenda’s dragging me through meetings, but I really need to talk to you. Are we still on for dinner tonight?
I said yes to being filmed. She asked, and I agreed.
But I didn’t expect the video to look like that. I didn’t expect people to start pulling it apart.
Wrenley knew. She must have known what she was doing. The angles, the lighting, the way she made everything I did look like sexual foreplay. The careful framing showed just enough ink and just enough technique to make her followers curious. She’s too skilled not to have calculated this.
Fuck, I’m an idiot. She used the perfect recipe for viral content: seduction, skill, and the hint of something forbidden.
My phone buzzes again.
Wrenley: You ok? Brenda’s pitching a beauty brand collab but I’d rather be making that risotto with you again.. .