Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Stella sat on the kitchen counter with her camera in her lap and her feet tucked under her, watching her father hold a single egg over a pot of water.
He’d been holding it for three minutes. The water simmered.
A splash of vinegar floated on the surface—YouTube said vinegar helped the whites hold together, and Tyler had measured it twice.
“Just crack it,” Stella said.
“I’m visualizing.”
“You’ve been visualizing since the water boiled. The water’s not boiling anymore.”
Tyler adjusted the heat. The water went from simmer to something slightly more active. He cracked the egg against the rim of the pot and it dropped in sideways, the white immediately feathering out into pale ribbons that drifted in every direction.
“That’s not right,” he said.
“No.”
“It’s supposed to hold together.”
“It’s supposed to do a lot of things.” Stella raised the camera. Click. Tyler mid-crisis, egg dissolving. “That’s four.”
“I know it’s four.”
“Out of four.”
“I know.”
The first egg had hit the water like a grenade—yolk burst on impact, whites everywhere, Tyler staring at the pot like it had personally betrayed him.
The second made it in intact but stuck to the bottom and had to be scraped off with a spatula, which defeated the purpose of poaching.
The third was actually promising until Tyler tried to flip it with a slotted spoon and launched it onto the stove, where it slid behind the burner and disappeared.
“We should find that one,” Stella said.
“Later.”
“It’s going to smell.”
“Later, Stella.”
She pulled out her phone and texted Bea.
Egg four. Also a disaster. He’s not giving up though.
Bea responded in seconds.
How bad?
Like, the pot looks haunted. There’s egg on the ceiling from number two.
On the CEILING?
He cracked it too hard. Physics.
Stella pocketed the phone and watched Tyler drain the pot, refill it, add more vinegar. His jaw was set. His hair had gone flat on one side from running his hands through it. The kitchen smelled like vinegar.
His phone buzzed on the counter. He glanced at it. His ears went pink.
“Lindsey?” Stella asked.
“She wants to do dinner Tuesday.”
“So do dinner Tuesday.”
“I’m going to be here at the Shack at five AM on Tuesday prepping breakfast for a restaurant.” Tyler picked up another egg. “I’ll have to cancel.”
“You’re canceling a date to poach eggs.”
“I’m postponing a date. There’s a difference.”
“There really isn’t.” Stella watched him turn the egg in his hand. “Text her back at least. Don’t just leave it.”
Tyler set the egg down, picked up his phone, and typed something with his thumbs that took far too long for what was probably three sentences. His ears stayed pink the whole time.
“Do you want to try something else?” she asked. “Scrambled eggs are—”
“No.”
“Pancakes?”
“No.”
“Toast. You can almost make toast now.”
Tyler put both hands on the counter and looked at her. “I told everyone at that meeting I would do breakfast. Eggs Benedict. That’s what I said. That’s what I’m doing. Because it’s what we order every Saturday and I know what it’s supposed to taste like and I am going to learn this.”
Stella held up both hands. “Okay.”
“Okay.”
“Should I get more eggs?”
Tyler looked at the carton. Two left. He’d started with a dozen. “Yeah. Get more eggs.”
She hopped off the counter, grabbed her jacket, and headed for the door. “I’ll try the market. And we need lemons.”
“For what?”
“Hollandaise. You can’t make eggs Benedict without hollandaise.”
Tyler’s face went blank. “I forgot about the hollandaise.”
“You forgot about the hollandaise.”
“I was focused on the egg part.”
“The egg part is one part. There are four parts. Egg. Muffin. Canadian bacon. Sauce.” Stella pulled on her jacket. “I’ll get lemons. You practice. And maybe clean the ceiling.”
She walked to the market on Forest Avenue—ten minutes, downhill. Eggs, lemons, a bag of english muffins, and a package of Canadian bacon because she had a feeling Tyler hadn’t thought about any of it beyond the egg. She texted Bea from the checkout line.
Going to Margo’s for better lemons. Her tree.
Tell Margo I said hi. Also tell her Tyler is trying to cook and she should probably know that.
Margo knows. She was at the meeting.
She knows in theory. She doesn’t know about the ceiling.
Stella dropped the groceries at the bungalow and walked to Margo’s—four blocks, the kind of walk that was Laguna at its best in October.
The house was quiet from the outside—curtains open, porch light off, the garden that Eleanor’s committee had been tending looking slightly more organized than Margo preferred.
Stella knocked and let herself in, because that was how Margo’s house worked.
You knocked as a formality and entered as a family member.
Margo was in the kitchen with a cup of tea and the newspaper spread across the table. She looked up over her reading glasses.
“Stella. To what do I owe—”
“Lemons. Do you have lemons? We need them for hollandaise. Eventually.”
Margo set down her tea. “Who is making hollandaise?”
“That’s a developing situation. Tyler’s handling the eggs. The hollandaise is... aspirational.”
“Tyler is making eggs Benedict.”
“Tyler is attempting eggs Benedict.”
“Tyler who burned the—”
“Yes.”
Margo took off her reading glasses and folded them slowly. “How many eggs has he gone through?”
“Ten. Two left. I bought more.” Stella held up her empty hands. “But your lemons are better than the market’s.”
“My lemons are better than everyone’s.” Margo stood and headed for the back door. The lemon tree in her yard was a point of pride she pretended wasn’t a point of pride. She’d been growing it for thirty years and it produced fruit that made everything else taste like it had been manufactured.
Stella held the bag open while Margo picked lemons, turning each one in her hand the way she turned everything — checking, weighing, deciding.
“How bad is it?” Margo asked. “At Tyler’s.”
“The ceiling has egg on it.”
“The ceiling.”
Margo dropped another lemon in the bag and looked at Stella. The corner of her mouth twitched not quite a smile, not quite a wince. The look of a woman who wanted to go fix it and was choosing not to.
“Tell Tyler to lower the heat. The water should barely move. And use a small bowl—crack the egg into the bowl first, then slide it in. Don’t drop it.”
“I’ll tell him.”
“And the hollandaise—when you get there—needs to be warm, not hot. If it breaks, add an ice cube and whisk.”
“Got it.”
Margo stood in her yard with the lemon tree behind her and her grandson’s cooking disaster happening four blocks away, and she didn’t go fix it. She stayed where she was. Her hands kept moving—picking a leaf off the tree, smoothing it between her fingers.
“He’ll figure it out,” Stella said.
“He’s a Walsh. He’ll figure it out or he’ll burn the building down. Either way, he’ll commit. Tell everyone—Tyler’s tonight. Six o’clock.” Margo handed her one more lemon. “Let me know later how it goes.”
“You’re not coming?”
“I’ll get a full report.” Margo looked at her lemon tree. “This one’s theirs to figure out.”
“Even the eggs?”
“Especially the eggs.”
Margo handed her two more. Stella stuffed them in the bag and walked home, the October afternoon turning the hills gold. When she came through the door, Tyler stood at the stove with a fresh pot of water and a small bowl—he’d looked it up himself while she was gone.
“Small bowl,” he said, not looking up. “Crack it in here first. Then slide it in.”
“Margo said the same thing.”
“Great minds.”
He cracked the egg into the bowl. Lowered the heat until the water barely moved. Tilted the bowl to the edge of the pot and let the egg slide in, slow and careful.
They both held their breath.
The white curled around the yolk. Held. Didn’t feather. Didn’t stick. Just sat there in the water, turning gently, becoming something that looked—for the first time all day—like an actual poached egg.
“Don’t touch it,” Stella said.
“I’m not touching it.”
“Don’t even look at it too hard.”
“I’m looking at it a normal amount.”
Three minutes. Stella timed it on her phone. Tyler lifted it out with the slotted spoon, trembling slightly, and set it on a plate.
They both stared at it.
“That’s an egg,” Tyler said.
“That’s an egg.”
It wasn’t perfect. The white was slightly uneven on one side and the yolk was maybe a minute past ideal. But it was recognizably, undeniably a poached egg, made by a man who had burned pasta water and put cardboard in an oven and once created chicken that was simultaneously raw and charcoal.
Stella raised her camera. Click.
Tyler looked at her. His eyes were bright. “One more. I need to do it again to make sure it wasn’t a fluke.”
“You have eleven eggs.”
“That’s eleven chances.”
By the time Stella texted Margo—he did it, five out of six, we have breakfast—Tyler had poached four more. Three of them held. One was a casualty, but even the casualty was better than the morning’s disasters.
He stood at the stove, slotted spoon in hand, grinning at a plate of poached eggs.
Stella photographed that too.