Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
They started arriving at six.
Joey was first, which surprised no one. He came through the door carrying a bakery box, already talking before it was fully open.
“Muffins,” he announced, setting the box on the kitchen counter. “Lemon blueberry, classic. Plus two new variations—cranberry walnut and a chocolate chip that I’m still evaluating but early feedback from my study group was extremely positive.”
“Your study group evaluated muffins?” Tyler asked.
“I brought them to Thursday’s session. Brandon said the lemon blueberry was quote ‘life-changing’ and Amanda cried.”
“Amanda cried over a muffin?”
“She’s going through something. The muffin helped.” Joey opened the box and arranged the muffins on Tyler’s counter with the focus he brought to napkin placement. “These are ready. I’ve been ready. The question is whether the rest of this operation is ready.”
Tyler looked at his plate of poached eggs on the stove—six of them, lined up, slightly uneven but intact.
The survivors of a dozen-egg campaign that had started at seven this morning and ended in something that could, with generosity, be called competence.
The kitchen still smelled like vinegar. There was a stain on the ceiling he’d deal with later.
“We’re getting there,” he said.
Meg and Luke arrived next, Meg carrying a grocery bag and Luke carrying what appeared to be a six-pack and a calm disposition. Meg surveyed the kitchen—the eggs, the vinegar pot, the muffins, the ceiling stain — and set her bag on the table.
“I brought hollandaise ingredients,” she said. “I’ve been watching videos.”
“Since when?”
“Since this afternoon. I watched eleven videos. Two were contradictory but the French one seemed most authoritative.” She pulled out butter, lemons—Margo’s lemons, Tyler noticed, which meant Stella’s trip had been redistributed—and a whisk that looked new.
“I’m going to make it. Nobody else touches the sauce. ”
“Nobody was going to touch the sauce,” Tyler said. “Not after I realized how hard it looked.”
“Good. Because hollandaise is temperamental and it responds to confidence.” Meg tied her hair back and positioned herself at the stove like she was about to give a presentation, which in a way she was.
Anna came through the door with Bea, who had her calculus textbook under one arm and a bag of fruit under the other.
“Fruit,” Bea said, setting the bag on the counter. “For the breakfast menu. Mom’s idea.”
“And I can extend the focaccia into breakfast,” Anna said, looking around the kitchen. “Toast it, serve it with butter and jam. Plus the soup can carry over for dinner. We stretch what we already have.”
“So the breakfast menu is muffins, fruit, focaccia toast, and Tyler’s eggs,” Luke said, opening a beer. “That’s a menu.”
“That’s barely a menu,” Meg said, whisking butter over a double boiler she’d assembled from Tyler’s only saucepan and a mixing bowl that didn’t quite fit. “That’s a suggestion.”
“It’s a start,” Anna said.
“It’s what we can do by tomorrow morning,” Tyler said.
“We could do more if we—”
“We can’t do more.” Tyler leaned against the counter and looked at his family—his sister whisking butter, his other sister arranging fruit, his daughter photographing muffins, his niece doing calculus at his kitchen table, his future brother-in-law drinking a beer and being the calmest person in the room.
“We can’t do more because I can make one thing.
I spent twelve eggs learning to poach. I can do it now—mostly.
Tomorrow I can do eggs, toast muffins, and heat up Canadian bacon. That’s what I’ve got.”
Meg stopped whisking. “That’s eggs Benedict.”
“That’s eggs Benedict. If the hollandaise works.”
Meg looked at the double boiler. Looked at Tyler. “The hollandaise will work.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I watched eleven videos and I have good lemons and I’m not going to let a sauce beat me.” She went back to whisking. “Taste this in two minutes.”
Everyone stood in Tyler’s small kitchen—too many people for the space, bumping elbows, reaching over each other for things.
Joey had rearranged the muffins twice. Anna was slicing focaccia.
Bea was eating grapes from the fruit bag while pretending to study.
Luke had found a corner near the window where he could drink his beer and stay out of the way, which was Luke’s gift in every family situation.
Stella was on the counter again, camera in her lap. She’d been quiet since everyone arrived—watching, the way she did. Tyler caught her eye and she raised an eyebrow. He wasn’t sure what it meant but it was probably something he’d hear about later.
“Okay,” Meg said. “Hollandaise. Taste.”
She held out a spoon. Tyler tasted.
It was good. Actually good—rich and lemony and smooth, nothing like the grainy mess he and Stella had attempted that afternoon with the first batch of lemons.
“That’s good,” he said.
“I know it’s good.” Meg set the spoon down. “I’ll make a batch every morning before work and drop it off. It holds for a few hours if you keep it warm. Not hot. Warm.”
“Margo said the same thing,” Stella said from the counter.
“Margo is correct.” Meg pulled out her phone and started typing—a schedule, probably, or a checklist, or a spreadsheet for hollandaise logistics. “What time does the first customer walk in?”
“Seven,” Tyler said.
“I’ll have the hollandaise at the Shack by six-thirty.”
Anna arranged her focaccia slices on a plate and slid it to the center of the counter.
Joey’s muffins sat beside it. Tyler’s eggs—reheated, slightly less impressive than they’d been fresh but still holding together—went next to those.
Meg’s hollandaise in a small bowl. The fruit Bea had brought, washed and cut.
They all stood back and looked at it.
Tyler looked at the spread on his counter. Tomorrow morning this was going to be a breakfast menu. People were going to come in and sit down and order this food and he was going to serve it to them. On purpose. For money.
“It’s not much,” he said.
“It’s enough,” Anna said. “For now, it’s enough.”
“And the muffins are excellent,” Joey added. “I want that on the record.”
“Noted,” Tyler said.
Everyone ate standing up—tasting, adjusting, commenting.
Meg’s hollandaise over Tyler’s eggs on a toasted muffin with the Canadian bacon was, by unanimous agreement, a legitimate eggs Benedict.
Not restaurant-quality. Not perfect. But real and edible and something a person would pay for, especially with an ocean view.
Bea closed her calculus book and tried a muffin. “Joey, this is really good.”
“Amanda cried,” Joey said.
“Amanda has good instincts.”
The kitchen emptied slowly. Joey left first, muffin box repacked, napkins straightened on his way out the door.
Anna and Bea walked home—Anna hugging Tyler at the door and saying “six-thirty” and meaning it.
Luke and Meg were last, Meg still typing hollandaise schedules into her phone as Luke steered her toward the door.
“You’ve got this,” Luke said to Tyler on the way out.
“Do I?”
“You poached an egg today. Yesterday you couldn’t. That’s progress.”
“That’s one egg.”
“One egg at a time.” Luke clapped him on the shoulder and followed Meg into the evening.
Tyler closed the door. The kitchen was quiet. Stella was still on the counter, legs dangling, camera in her lap.
“You’re going to say something,” Tyler said.
“I was going to say you did good today.”
“I destroyed ten eggs and burned the scrambled ones and there’s egg on the ceiling.”
“And then you figured it out.” Stella hopped down from the counter and picked up the plate with the last poached egg on it—the best one, the one she’d photographed.
“You committed to something and you didn’t quit.
Even when it was bad. Even when I told you to make toast.” She held the plate up.
“A-plus parenting, by the way. Terrible cooking. But the parenting part was solid.
Tyler looked at the egg. At his daughter. At the kitchen that still smelled like vinegar and was going to smell like breakfast in twelve hours.
“What if nobody comes?” he said.
“People will come. Joey’s muffins alone will bring people. And your eggs are good, Dad. They’re actually good.”
“You’re not just saying that?”
“When have I ever just said something?”
Fair point. Stella didn’t give compliments she didn’t mean. She was constitutionally incapable of false encouragement. If the eggs had been terrible, she would have told him the eggs were terrible and suggested toast again.
“Six-thirty,” he said.
“I’ll set an alarm.” She headed for her room, then turned back. “For the record, I think this might actually work.”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t let it go to your head. You still burned the scrambled eggs.”
“Goodnight, Stella.”
“Goodnight, Dad.”
Her door closed. Tyler stood in the kitchen and looked at the counter — crumbs from Joey’s muffins, lemon rinds from Meg’s hollandaise, the plate of fruit Anna had arranged, the egg still sitting there like proof that impossible things were occasionally possible.
He cleaned the counter, washed the dishes, and set his alarm for five-thirty.
Tomorrow. Breakfast. One egg at a time.