Chapter 4 #2
“Well, today he’ll like Maggie noise. Go. Off with you. I nursed your father through colic, two ear infections, and a case of the croup so bad the pediatrician made a house call at midnight. I think I can manage one morning.”
Actually, one whole day if he went to lab. No, that he could skip. “I’ll be back around one, latest.”
“By then, Atlas will know how to walk and play Wordle,” Jo Ellen joked.
He tore back downstairs, started loading up like a pack mule, made three trips, fired off forty instructions that were either ignored or mocked, handed over a cranky baby, then thanked them profusely.
Sweating like the proverbial pig, he climbed into the beater Honda he’d bought a few months ago—a car that made his old van look like a luxury vehicle—and pulled out of the driveway with eighteen minutes to make the twenty-minute drive to Niceville.
Jonah Lawson pressed the gas and hoped traffic was light and Broussard was late. Of course, neither of those things would happen.
The lecture hall at Northwest Florida State College smelled like industrial cleaner and old coffee, which was a cruel combination for culinary students who’d been promised they were entering a world of elevated flavor.
Somehow, with the help of a miracle and a few forgiving yellow lights, Jonah made it with two minutes to spare, sliding into a seat in the third row just as Chef Marcel Broussard walked in.
Broussard was fifty-four, lean and clean-cut except for a salt-and-pepper mustache that he maintained with the same precision he applied to his béarnaise.
He’d spent twenty years in restaurant kitchens—New Orleans, Charleston, and a stint in Lyon—before a blown-out knee and what he once described as “a profound disenchantment with the dining public” brought him to teaching.
He wore his chef’s whites like a military uniform, pressed and immaculate, and he spoke with the unhurried Cajun cadence of someone from deep in the bayou who’d seen every mistake a student could make and had zero patience for repeating himself.
He was, by any measure, terrifying.
He was also the reason Jonah got up every morning and believed this career was possible.
“Today,” Broussard began, immediately silencing the room, “we are going to talk about heat. Not temperature. Heat.” He looked around slowly. “If you think those are the same thing, you are behind.”
As he lectured, Jonah forgot about Atlas’s rough night, the grannies, Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride on the way to class, and the fact that his pullover still smelled faintly of spit-up and…other things.
Broussard took them through conduction, convection, and radiant heat, weaving in stories from his years on the line, like the time he’d watched a cook destroy a two-hundred-dollar cut of Wagyu by panicking at the sear.
“Your hands will lie to you,” Broussard said, pointing at a student in the front row who flinched. “Your thermometer will give you a number. But the food will tell you the truth, if you have the discipline to pay attention.”
Jonah typed into his laptop with such fury that his fingers hurt, attempting to record every word, one thought in the back of his mind: This. This is why I’m here.
When the lecture ended, students shuffled out, buzzing about the afternoon lab session. Jonah hung back, pulling out his phone to check for texts from the grannies.
Nothing. No news was good news, right? He’d check in now, and if Atlas was holding steady, he’d stay for lab.
As he composed the text, Broussard’s voice cut through the noise of departing students.
“Lawson. A minute.”
Jonah looked up. The chef was leaning against the demonstration table, arms crossed, watching the room empty with that cynical expression that made Jonah suspect he’d sized up every one of them and knew who’d end up at a Michelin-star restaurant, and who’d be slinging hash in a diner.
“Yes, Chef.” He abandoned the text and got up.
Broussard waited until the last student cleared the door, then tilted his head toward a chair in the front. “Sit.”
As he did, Jonah’s mind cycled through all the possibilities.
Had he done something wrong on last week’s practical?
He didn’t think so, but Broussard had a talent for spotting flaws that were invisible to the naked eye and then describing them in language that made you want to transfer to the accounting program.
“You’re not in trouble,” Broussard said, reading him. The faintest smile tugged at one corner of his mustache. “Relax your shoulders. You look like you’re waiting for a firing squad.”
Jonah exhaled and forced his shoulders down. “Sorry, Chef.”
Broussard studied him for a moment, the way he examined a plate before sending it off the pass—evaluating, considering, measuring against a standard only he could see.
“I’ve been watching you, Lawson. You have instincts that can’t be taught.
Your palate is sharp, your knife work is improving faster than most, and you don’t panic when things go sideways.
” He paused. “You also have a baby at home and the look of a man who hasn’t slept through the night all summer long, but that’s a separate conversation. ”
Jonah let out a short laugh. “It shows?”
“Everything shows in a kitchen. That’s the first thing I teach.” Broussard uncrossed his arms and reached into the breast pocket of his whites, pulling out a business card he handed to Jonah. “You know Isobel Vega?”
Jonah’s pulse spiked. “Chef Vega? At Driftwood?”
“That’s the one.”
Everyone in the Panhandle who cared about food knew Isobel Vega. She’d opened Driftwood three years ago in a converted boathouse on the harbor in Destin, and within eighteen months it had become the place. She’d scored some insane online reviews, and the buzz was good and loud.
Her cooking was Gulf Coast seafood stripped down to its essentials and rebuilt with precision—local catch, regional ingredients, zero shortcuts.
She’d trained in Miami and Mexico City, worked under two James Beard winners, and had the kind of reputation that made young cooks either desperate to work for her or terrified to try.
Jonah was both.
“Isobel and I did a stint together in New Orleans,” Broussard continued.
“She’s one of the best I’ve ever worked alongside, and she doesn’t impress easily.
” He tapped the card. “She’s looking for a fall intern.
Somebody she can train from the ground up.
The position pays—though not much—and runs September through December.
You’d work three shifts, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, five to whenever she releases you, maybe close.
And Saturday service as needed, but you will be needed, so count on it. ”
Jonah’s mind was already doing math and, pay or no pay, the hours didn’t add up right.
“It’s not a ride-along,” Broussard continued.
“You’d be on the line by week three. Prep, garde manger, working your way through stations as she sees fit.
She runs a tight crew—six, sometimes seven—and she expects her interns to earn every minute.
But the ones who survive?” He raised an eyebrow.
“She hires them. Or she makes calls on their behalf to people who do.”
“Does it count for credit?” Jonah asked, trying to keep his voice steady.
“Full practicum credit. I’ve already arranged it with the department head.
You could substitute the internship for your fall lab requirement, which frees up part of your daytime schedule for lectures.
” Broussard leaned forward slightly. “I recommended you, Lawson. Specifically. Out of twenty-two students in this program, I gave her one name.”
Holy…wow.
“I don’t know what to say, Chef.” And he meant it. What an honor…and what a nightmare for a single father of a four-month-old.
“Say yes or say no. Those are the only two things worth saying in a kitchen, at least at your level.”
Jonah glanced down at the card. Isobel Vega, Executive Chef, Driftwood. The restaurant was ten minutes from the Summer House, so at least it was close and not a haul out to Rosemary Beach or Pensacola.
Still—three dinner shifts and likely Saturday service. On top of his lecture schedule and Atlas.
The hours were brutal. He’d need childcare during the day and most nights, and now on the weekends. No one in his family could do that.
Yes, they could, but he shouldn’t ask them. Atlas was his responsibility.
But this was the kind of opportunity that didn’t come around twice for a man who’d spent most of his twenties living in a van and dodging his potential.
It would land him a great job after he graduated from this program—he had no doubt of that. It would set him up to give Atlas security, comfort, and a good life, even though he’d had the misfortune of losing his mother when he was three weeks old.
But it wasn’t future Atlas’s voice in his head he heard. Not his father or his late girlfriend or anyone but…Melissa Lawson.
“You got this, Jonah!” His mother, his cheerleader, his main inspo. Surely she was watching from heaven, cheering him on like she had from the sidelines of every football game.
“Yes,” he said, clinging to that image. “Absolutely yes, Chef.”
Broussard nodded once, as though he’d expected nothing less. “Good. She’ll want to meet you soon. I’ll set it up.” He stood and eyed Jonah with a narrowed gaze. “Don’t make me regret this, Lawson.”
“I won’t, Chef.”
“And get some sleep. You look terrible.”
“Thank you, Chef.”
Broussard almost smiled—almost—and walked out, leaving Jonah alone in the empty lecture hall holding a business card that felt like it weighed ten pounds.
He sat there for a full minute, letting it sink in. Then he pulled out his phone to call the grannies and tell them he’d be staying for the afternoon lab after all.
Jo Ellen answered on the first ring, which was either a good sign or a very bad one.
“Jonah! Oh, good, I was just about to call you.”
The tone. He knew that tone. It was the voice of a woman trying very hard to sound calm while something behind her was on fire.
“What’s wrong?” He stood and shoved the business card into his back pocket.
“Well, now, it’s nothing to panic about—”
In the background, Atlas screamed. Not the annoyed cry or the hungry cry or even the tired cry. This was the full-throated, something-is-wrong wail that Jonah could identify from a hundred yards.
“Jo Ellen. What happened?”
“He’s running a little fever, sweetheart. And he’s been sick—just a small spit-up, really, but Maggie thinks it’s—”
“Atlas Lawson!” Maggie’s voice cut in from somewhere nearby, sharp and commanding. “That is quite enough of that. You are a Lawson and Lawsons do not carry on like this.”
“Is she lecturing my baby?”
Jo Ellen gave a nervous laugh. “She’s trying to help. Or control.”
Well, yeah, it was Magnolia Lawson, the great control freak.
“But the thing in his diaper, Jonah,” Jo Ellen continued. “I don’t want to alarm you, but it was the color of—well, Dijon mustard? Maybe a little more green. Is that normal?”
Jonah closed his eyes. “How much green Dijon mustard are we talking about?”
“Oh, I’d say a generous tablespoon? Maybe two? Maggie thought it looked more like curry, but I said—”
“I’m coming home.” He grabbed his backpack and moved toward the door. “Try to keep him comfortable, don’t give him any meds or, God forbid, whiskey. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
“Fifteen would be better, dear.”
He hung up, jogged across the parking lot, and threw himself into the Honda. The engine turned over with its usual reluctance, like even his car thought he was asking too much of it today.
As he pulled out of the lot, Jonah did the math one more time.
Three evening shifts. Probable Saturday service. A full lecture schedule. Minus a lab or two. Plus a baby who was currently producing Dijon mustard diapers and screaming at his great-grandmother.
And he’d said yes without hesitation.
It was possible that agreeing to this internship was the single dumbest thing he’d ever done. And considering the life he’d lived, that was saying something.