Chapter 20 #2
“When he’s hungry,” she finished. “He’ll tell me. When he’s got a diaper full of something awful, he’ll let me know. When he needs to be held, we will find arms. It’s all good.”
Holding the baby, she came over to him and put a hand on his shoulder and looked him dead in the eye. “Go. Be brilliant. Make the shrimp thing. My dad already tried your recipe at home, and it was heavenly.”
Broussard tried his recipe?
“He really believes in you,” she added softly. “That’s why he’s squeezing. It’s his twisted and annoying way of showing love. Trust me, I’m an expert.”
“What’s your twisted and annoying way of showing love?” Jonah asked, utterly mesmerized by eyes the color of caramelized sugar fringed with those sweeping lashes.
“I’m holding him.” She grinned and lifted her chin defiantly and suddenly everything…was right.
All the things that were not good—the panic, the clock, the doubts about this decision—vanished.
But…what would her father say? “Are you going to tell the chef?”
“What the old guy doesn’t know won’t hurt him,” she said. “If I get caught, we’ll deal. You just focus on the food. Driftwood would be a spectacular opportunity for you, Jonah, and Atlas and I need a win. Go get it.”
Atlas and…her?
He froze in place, unable to look away. “Where did you come from?” he asked under his breath.
She gave a melodic laugh. “Dropped down from heaven to save your tush. Go!” She gave him a nudge.
“Get there early and impress your new boss.” She kissed Atlas on the peach fuzz and all he could think of was how much he wanted to be a small bald head at that moment.
“Give me your number,” she added. “I’ll text you pictures and updates. ”
Still rendered speechless, he handed her the diaper bag. “There’s a few—”
She swiped the air. “You have two hours and change, Mr. Lawson. I assume you still have to shower because you smell like shrimp shells. Use the locker room in the west gym.”
He looked at her, marveling at how she was holding his son like he belonged there while encouraging him to chase his dream and obliterating every problem that got in the way. Something cracked in his chest, opening to allow…her. All of her.
“You’re right about one thing,” he whispered. “You came from heaven.”
“Go.” She shooed him with the hand holding the diaper bag. “And Jonah? You’ve got this. One hundred percent.”
You’ve got this, Jonah!
Suddenly all he could see was his bright-eyed mom, young and alive and so beautiful, jumping at the sidelines when he took the field, screaming her signature cheer. You’ve got this, Jonah!
Aw, man.
He grabbed his knife roll, kissed Atlas on the head, and walked out of the kitchen before he did something stupid, like cry. Or propose.
When Jonah finally smoothed his chef’s apron in the kitchen at Driftwood and stared at a spectacular plate of Brazilian shrimp over coconut rice, he knew he’d cooked his heart out.
Maybe his soul, too. Because there on that plate was the essence of a man who’d been kicked in the teeth by loss, dragged through the mud by self-doubt, and hung out to dry by the universe’s lousy sense of humor.
And still he’d won.
He’d created a masterpiece of plump Gulf shrimp in a rich, rust-colored sauce of tomatoes, coconut milk, and palm oil, the cilantro bright and fragrant, a wedge of lime balanced on the rim. Under the mix, the aroma of the rice rose to a pleasing crescendo.
Isobel Vega stood across the pass, a spoon in her hand, studying the plate with the focused silence of a woman who’d tasted ten thousand dishes and knew within seconds whether she was looking at a cook or a chef.
She tasted the sauce first. Then a shrimp. Then the rice, separately, then together. She set the spoon down.
The kitchen was quiet. Two of her line cooks had paused what they were doing to watch a career that was being decided ten feet away.
“The stock,” Isobel said. “How long?”
“Fifteen minutes. Low heat.”
“And the palm oil?”
“Stirred in at the end. With the coconut milk.”
She nodded. “The coconut rice was genius.”
He knew better than to be smug. “Chef Broussard’s suggestion, Chef.”
The almost-smile appeared—the one he’d seen during his interview, the crack in the armor that said she was human underneath the standards. “He has his moments.”
“Indeed.”
“And, clearly, so do you. I like this.” She placed the spoon in the wash bin and crossed her arms, then pinned her gaze on him. “The cook who called in sick is coming in after all. Apparently, ‘sick’ meant hungover on Tito’s. So, I don’t need you on the line tonight.”
His stomach dropped. Was this—
“But the internship is yours.”
The air left his lungs in a rush he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.
“I don’t need a cook who can make perfect shrimp, although this is close,” she said.
“I need a disciplined team player who shows up on three hours’ notice with a baby at home and delivers a dish this clean.
That tells me more than any recipe.” She extended her small, powerful hand.
“Welcome to Driftwood, Lawson. Two weeks. Monday, Wednesday, Friday, five to close. Count on Saturdays, just not this one.”
He shook her hand and felt the future shift under his feet—solid ground where there had been sand.
“Thank you, Chef. I won’t let you down.”
“You’d better not.” She turned back to her kitchen, already moving on. “Now go home. Celebrate. And don’t even think of ever calling in sick, coming in late, or questioning any order I give you.”
“Heard, Chef.”
She slid him a rare smile and flicked her fingers in dismissal.
High on life and hopes and trying really hard not to worry about childcare for ten minutes, he drove to the address Pepper had texted him, breaking approximately three speed limits and calling her on the way.
She picked up on the second ring, and in the background he could hear music—not pop, not hip-hop, but something orchestral. Strings and piano, warm and slow.
“How’d it go?” she asked.
“Great, but I’m finished for the day earlier than expected. How’s Atlas?”
“He’s the king of Sunset Shores.”
Sunset Shores? “I’m on my way, if it’s the address you sent me.”
“It is! Just go to the main building. Mavis is at the desk and she knows you’re coming. Oh! Gotta go! Wrong foot, Virgil!”
Virgil? Mavis? In a class full of five-year-olds?
He followed the GPS, the sound of her raspy voice still echoing, until he arrived at…Sunset Shores, which was no dance studio for teenagers.
This was assisted living! Actually, the sign read Sunset Shores Retirement Community, as if to correct him from calling it anything less than pleasant.
The main building sat at the end of a palm-lined drive—a clean, well-kept facility with white stucco walls and flower boxes in every window.
He parked and walked to the front door, spying a few residents rocking under blankets on the porch, all greeting him with wrinkly smiles and waves of vein-knotted hands.
He entered a lobby decorated with an abundance of turquoise and seashell art, meeting the smiling face of a white-haired woman at the front desk.
“Mavis?” he guessed.
“You must be Atlas’s father!” she gushed. “What an angel!”
He beamed like the proud papa he was. “That’s my boy.”
She pointed toward a wide hallway. “The activity center is right through there. Follow the music!”
He did, finding a large room bathed in sunlight and filled with waltzy music and about twenty-five nearly ninety-year-olds, some sitting, some dancing, some sleeping.
And there, in the middle of it all, was Pepper Broussard, lighting up the world like she was obviously born to do.
In the same dance clothes and bare feet, she led a circle of elderly women—and two gallant gentlemen—through a slow, gentle ballroom sequence.
A step, a turn, a careful sway. She was counting out loud, her voice musical and patient, adjusting someone’s hand position, encouraging a woman in orthopedic shoes to “feel the music, Sheila, not the floor.”
The residents were beaming. Some moved with surprising grace, as though they still had muscle memory from decades of dances at weddings and anniversaries and New Year’s Eves.
Some were clumsy and laughing about it. One tiny woman in a floral dress was dancing with a pillow because there weren’t enough partners, and she was having the time of her life.
And there, in a padded recliner near the speaker, was Atlas, surrounded by no fewer than four elderly women who appeared to be taking turns holding him.
Sound asleep, he wore a crocheted cap in blue and white that Jonah knew had not come out of his diaper bag, his elephant tucked under his arm.
A blanket Jonah had never seen was draped over his legs, and one of the women was gently rocking the recliner with her foot, following the beat of the music.
For what felt like an eternity, Jonah stood in the doorway and took in the sight of something that was holy and wholesome and…good.
He watched Pepper guide a woman who had to be ninety-five through a turn that made the woman’s face light up like she was eighteen again. He watched his son sleep in the arms of great-grandmothers who might not have held a baby in years and were savoring every second.
He watched the room full of people who’d lived entire lives—marriages, children, wars, losses, joys and sorrows too numerous to count—swaying together in the late afternoon light because a sassy girl with ballet slippers and a broken heart had brought them music on a Saturday.
Something shifted in him. Not the lightning bolt of falling in love—he was too exhausted and too raw for that.
But the slow, undeniable recognition that settled into his bones and told him that this woman was extraordinary.
She was special in a way that Jonah could only dream about, and everything about her humbled him.
And made him want to wrap her lithe body in his arms and keep her there as long as he could.
The song ended. Pepper took a graceful spin, stopping right in his line of sight. Her face brightened with a blinding smile.
“Atlas! Daddy’s home!” she announced, and every head in the room turned toward him, a cheer going up like he’d just caught a pass and scored.
The four elderly women around Atlas closed ranks and started arguing over who got him next.
Instantly, Pepper swooped in, gently extracting the sleeping baby from the group effort. “Sorry, ladies. You’re outranked.”
“What about the hat?” one woman asked from a wheelchair, pointing at the crocheted creation on Atlas’s head. “I made that in forty-two minutes. A personal best!”
“The hat stays,” Pepper assured her. “Margaret, you outdid yourself.”
Pepper carried Atlas to Jonah and handed him over without waking him. He was deep in the boneless sleep of a baby who’d been held and rocked and sung to by an entire community of great-grandmothers, and he was utterly, completely at peace.
“He was a hit,” Pepper said softly. “Diane wants to adopt him. Yes, Margaret crocheted the hat in record time, but I believe ninety percent of it was done for her great-grandson, who never came to visit. A woman named Gloria claims to have taught him to clap, so be prepared to share the credit when he does. Oh, and he really likes to dance with me.”
Jonah couldn’t speak for a moment. He held Atlas against his chest and looked at Pepper and felt every defense he’d been building dissolve like sugar in warm water.
“You got it, didn’t you?” she said, reading his face. “The internship.”
Oh, yeah. That. “I got it,” he confirmed. “I start in two weeks.”
Her eyes lit up. “Jonah. That’s incredible.”
“It’s incredible and it’s impossible.” He paused, snuggling Atlas closer.
“Monday, Wednesday, Friday, five to close. Most Saturdays. I need someone for Atlas. Not daycare, not family favors. Someone consistent. Someone he trusts.” He looked at his son, sleeping in the knit hat, then back at Pepper. “Someone like you.”
She tilted her head, and the look in her topaz-laced eyes told him she’d already known this was coming. Maybe since the first day in Broussard’s office, when she’d held a screaming baby and made him stop crying with nothing but a sway and a murmur.
“Are you offering me a job, Lawson?”
“I’m offering you a very underpaid job with terrible hours and a boss who will spit up on you.”
“Sounds dreamy and a huge improvement over filing in my dad’s office.”
“Your dad…will probably kill me.”
She didn’t argue the point, but lifted a shoulder in the definition of laissez-faire. “He won’t like it, but Dad doesn’t get a vote on my career choices. He got a vote on my dance training, my college, and approximately seven hundred boyfriends he scared away. But this one’s mine.”
The job or a boyfriend? He lifted his brows in question.
“So, yes. I can find a teaching job for the off nights, still volunteer here, and…start a new life.”
“Lofty goal for a part-time babysitting gig.”
“What good’s a goal that’s not lofty?” she replied. “But he will be here with me every Saturday evening, just so you know.”
He glanced around. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
She laughed. “You’re gonna have a lot of crocheted caps.”
“Thank you,” he said on a sigh. “For today. For Atlas. For the hat. For”—he gestured at the activity room, the waltz still faintly playing from the speaker—“all of this. Since I don’t have to work tonight, can I take you to dinner?”
The question was out before he could stop himself.
“To thank you,” he added when her expression didn’t exactly say yes.
“Better not mix work with…that,” she said vaguely. “But you go home and celebrate, Jonah. Atlas is very proud of you.”
He nodded, refusing to let the rejection hurt. She was right—she’d technically work for him, and she probably knew that taking this favor she’d done for him and turning it into something more might be pushing it with “the old guy.”
After schmoozing with the sweet residents, watching a few perform the dances they’d learned, and letting Margaret do the honors of giving Atlas a bottle when he woke up, Jonah drove home with a smile.
Atlas slept under his blue knit cap, so Jonah put the windows down and let the salt air rush through the car. In that moment, he felt something he hadn’t felt in so long that he almost didn’t recognize it.
Not just hope. Not just relief.
The bone-deep, unshakable certainty that the pieces were finally falling into place. Not perfectly—nothing in Jonah Lawson’s life had ever been perfect—but solidly.
You’ve got this, Jonah.