Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
“I will go with you to lunch,” Hope said warningly to her grandmother as they drove through the streets of Magnolia Shore, “but not if you try to brag about me to that nice chef again.”
Hope was playing it a little cool by pretending that she didn’t remember his name.
After they’d run into one another at the grocery store, she’d looked up Riverstone Kitchen online.
When she realized that Jared had been a prominent chef in some of the biggest restaurants in the world, and that he actually had a Michelin star, she’d been so embarrassed about her grandmother’s bragging that she’d had to lay down for a while to compose herself.
Yes, Sharp’s had been a great restaurant, and, yes, Hope had been a great waitress. She wasn’t denying any of that.
But it was a big leap from really good at waiting tables to being the genius chef who had been profiled in four different culinary magazines.
“I will brag if I want to,” Miriam said stubbornly.
“It’s in the Grandmother’s Law. I am allowed to brag whenever and to whomever I like.
And if you try to challenge me, I am legally obliged to brag even harder.
Don’t test me, Hope Landers. I still have a video of your ballet recital when you were seven, and I will happily show people how good you were at your arabesques. ”
Hope was driving, which was the only reason she didn’t put her hands over her face.
“Oh my gosh,” she said. “You realize that if you do that, I will enter a state of mortification so profound that I will hide in my room forever and you will have to bring me my meals through a hole in the door?”
Miriam rubbed her hands together like she was a villain in a movie. “Now you see my secret plan for keeping you forever!”
Both women laughed as Hope pulled into the parking lot for Riverstone Kitchen.
The days had been getting warmer with enough confidence that it seemed like the last wintery squalls were finally done for the year, and even the chilly rains of early spring were beginning to morph into the bright greenery of the warmer season.
Hope had taken to opening the windows in Miriam’s house every morning when she got up, and the fresh air seemed to be hastening her grandmother’s recovery, something that made Hope feel much more cheerful.
It was good to focus on her grandmother, since Hope didn’t have any idea about where she was heading with her own life. But that was a problem for another day.
And agreeing to go to the restaurant really did seem to make Miriam very happy.
“Oh, I’m just so excited,” she said, rubbing her hands together gleefully. “For me as well as for you. I have been stuck home feeling under the weather for so long that I haven’t eaten out in an age, and the food here is just divine. You’re going to love it.”
“I’m sure I will,” Hope said vaguely, then startled when she realized Miriam was staring at her. “Sorry.”
“What’s on your mind, buttercup?” her grandmother asked, and the nickname took Hope straight back to childhood.
And, just like when she’d been a kid, she wasn’t able to hide anything from her grandmother for long.
“Well, I didn’t tell you earlier, but it’s possible that the grocery store wasn’t the first time I met Jared,” she said sheepishly.
“It’s possible that he rescued me from being completely turned around when I was first coming to visit you.
I couldn’t figure out which house was yours, and I was dragging my suitcases, and he came to my rescue.
” Hope stuck out her tongue at her own past foolishness.
“And it turned out that your house was about twenty feet away from me. So it was the tiniest bit embarrassing.”
Miriam didn’t look as though she was suffering from secondhand embarrassment, however. She looked utterly charmed.
“Oh, sweetie,” she said, her hands clasped to her cheeks. “That’s like something out of a movie.”
“No,” Hope said at once, raising a finger to her grandmother. “No ideas.”
“I’m not getting any ideas,” Miriam protested, and it was so obviously a lie that Hope only arched an eyebrow. “Okay, fine. I will immediately stop getting ideas, even though I am a renowned matchmaker in this town.”
Hope rolled her eyes, but she trusted her grandmother not to intervene… or at least to do so as little as possible. Miriam might be an unrepentant romantic, but she respected people’s boundaries.
They went into the restaurant, but found the place hopping, which meant that Hope’s nerves were for nothing; she didn’t have any exchange with Jared beyond a quick wave through the window that went from the kitchen into the main dining area.
This was a little disappointing. Hope only admitted it deep, deep down, but it was.
The food, however, was far from disappointing.
Hope ordered a steak salad, which came out with perfectly seared steak sliced over a dish of mixed greens that leaned heavily toward sharp, peppery arugula.
The lightly pickled red onions had clearly been made in-house, and they provided a lovely counterpart to the rich steak and the crumbly blue cheese that was scattered about the plate.
The vinaigrette dressing was perfectly light, making each bite an explosion of flavor in her mouth.
Miriam ordered a quiche Lorraine with pastry so fluffy that it looked practically ready to take flight.
The smell of the bacon wafted over to Hope and it was so promising that she made a mental vow to come back and try the dish before she left town.
Miriam’s lunch came with a side salad made with the same crunchy, bright arugula that made up so much of Hope’s salad.
They tucked into the food eagerly, but soon after they’d begun, Hope noticed that her grandmother’s vigor, both for the food and for conversation, began to wane. She looked a little paler than Hope might have liked, as well.
“You know,” Hope said quietly, so nobody could overhear. “My lunch will taste just as good if we take it home. Maybe even better. You know how salad sometimes mixes together just right in transit.”
Miriam shot her a grateful look.
“I suppose I’m not all that subtle, am I?” she asked.
Hope laughed a little. Miriam Landers was a lot of things, most of them wonderful, but nobody had ever called her subtle.
“I admit that I might have overdone it a little,” she said, folding her napkin in her lap. “Would you be terribly disappointed if we took the rest of this home?”
“Not at all,” Hope promised her grandmother.
There was a brief scuffle in which they each tried to beat the other out to pay the bill faster, which Miriam won because she informed the waiter, who was thirty if he was a day, “I have your mother’s phone number and I’m not afraid to use it, young man!”
“Sorry,” the waiter told Hope sheepishly as he took Miriam’s credit card. “She’s scarier than you.”
“Don’t I know it,” Hope said, waving him off with a laugh.
As they exited Riverstone Kitchen, Jared wasn’t visible through the window, which sent another pang of disappointment through Hope, although she very sternly told herself that it was only because she wanted to thank him for the delicious meal and offer her compliments.
Miriam was looking too tired to risk hanging around, however, so Hope got them loaded up into the car and headed back for her grandmother’s house. Along the way, Miriam played tour guide for all the sights in Magnolia Shore.
“Oh, that’s Carter Rose,” she said, pointing at an older gentleman who was walking two dogs dressed in sweaters.
The sweaters matched, but that was the only thing similar about the dogs; one was a tiny dachshund, its ears flapping with each jaunty step, the other a massive, shaggy dog whose breed Hope couldn’t identify beyond big mutt.
“He used to play the tuba in all the local parades for, oh, at least thirty years. But he gave the job over to his niece, and she does a fine job, although she always looks as though the great big instrument is likely to tip her right over. And, oh!”
This time, Miriam pointed at a couple sitting on a bench. The man was strumming casually on a guitar, while the woman looked at him adoringly. Hope thought the man looked a little familiar, and wondered if she’d met him on one of her previous trips to visit her grandmother.
“And there are Levi and June,” Miriam said, waving as the car drove past, although the couple seemed too wrapped up in whatever they were doing to notice the world around them.
“Oh, they have the most romantic story. June is a single mom; she lost her husband a few years ago, and she was raising her boy all by herself. Then, a few months ago, Levi comes to town because he’s tired of the country music scene, and the two fall in love after he hears her singing at an open mic night.
And,” Miriam added proudly, “I helped, because I was the one babysitting Benjamin the night they met. He keeps me up to date with all the hip things that the kids are into these days.”
Hope was focused on using her turn signal and navigating a four-way stop, which meant that it took her a minute to put together the pieces.
“Wait,” she said, once they’d turned onto the next street. “He’s a country music singer named Levi? You don’t mean Levi Hawkins, do you?”
Hope wouldn’t consider herself a huge country music person, but even she knew about Levi Hawkins.
He’d had one hit a few years back that Felicity had sung so much that Hope had threatened to tape her sister’s mouth shut…
which was an indictment on Felicity’s less-than-superb singing voice, not the quality of Levi’s song.
“Yes, that’s him!” Miriam said happily. “He’s a very nice boy.”
“He’s a super famous ‘very nice boy,’” Hope said, astonished. “And he just… moved here? And fell in love?”