Chapter 4 Mango Jam
Mango Jam
Jack
My car idles as I stare at Sal’s house.
Even in the dark, I can see that it looks the same as it did the night I left. A classic Key West style home with a wide,
wrap-around porch, standing taller than the ranches on the rest of the block. White siding, a metal roof, and green shutters.
A coral pink door, too, a concession Sal made to his daughter, Kiara, long before I stumbled into their lives.
He left this house, on a nice piece of corner property, to her. He should have done the same with the restaurant, plus the
little houseboat he kept in the intracoastal—but for god knows what reason, they went to me.
I should go. It’s late, and I’ve driven a day without stopping, clothes and cookbooks and other random crap thrown into the
back of my Jeep. Kiara won’t want to talk to me.
And even if, by some miracle, she opens that candy-pink door, who knows what I’ll be walking into. A house without Sal. That’s
obvious. But I haven’t spoken to Kiara since one strained phone call around the funeral, when I told her I couldn’t make it.
She should kick me to the curb for that alone, never mind the rest.
I turn off the engine. I know what her voice sounds like, more than a decade down the road, but I can’t picture her. Even
if it’s only for a moment, I need to see her face.
The crushed-shell driveway is flanked by palms, crunching under my feet as I head for the door. A mango tree with a wide canopy anchors the lawn. It’s heavy with fruit. Mango season is in full swing.
Looking at the tree, I can nearly taste the spicy-sweet jam Sal made every year.
I ring the doorbell, then wait, stiff and silent. A humid nighttime breeze washes over me. I shut my eyes, relishing the ocean-tinged
air. It’s been too long since I’ve been in Diamond Bay. August isn’t a time of year that anyone but a local wants to be in
south Florida. It’s the start of hurricane season. Hot as hell. The days stick together like the pages of a well-loved book,
punctuated by thunderstorms.
“Jack?”
Kiara stands in the doorway.
I know it’s her, and yet the differences in her appearance surprise me. Her hair is the same glossy black, but it’s longer
than how she kept it as a teenager, tucked behind both ears. Her eyes are still a rich brown, but her tanned face is full
of new, mature angles. She looks tired, too. Not as if I woke her up, but because of something deeper.
The urge to hug her nearly overwhelms me. Kiara Torres, the closest thing I ever had to a little sister. At least until I
fucked it all up.
“Ki.” I shift my weight from one leg to the other. “I . . .”
She lurches forward, wrapping her arms around my neck. I catch her weight, hugging back tightly. I imagined this moment hundreds
of different ways since I left for culinary school, but it pales in comparison to the real thing.
“Come inside.” She tugs me over the threshold before I can answer. Her hand trembles slightly, and guilt knots my stomach.
“Do you want something to eat? It’s not as good as yours or Dad’s, but I made chili.”
My gaze darts around the foyer. The brass mermaid chandelier is the same, and so is the faded carpet runner patterned with palm trees.
Pictures line the walls, just like when I was a teenager.
Kiara as a little kid, roller skating. Sal on the deck of a boat, showing off a fish he caught.
The Sailfish in full swing, stuffed to the gills with patrons.
Kiara’s veterinary school diploma, proudly placed alongside a graduation photo.
Just her and Sal, beaming for the camera.
I stop short at a framed newspaper clipping. It’s a review of a little bistro in Chicago that I worked at shortly after graduating.
My name is a scant reference at the end: With an expansive palate and eye for creativity, Jack Hartman shows rare promise.
Next to it, there’s a profile of one of the places I worked at in France that appeared in Food I’m in a photo with the rest of the kitchen staff.
Then, a page from the interview with Salt & Savor that I did last year, written by Douglas’s wife, Suzanne.
Finally, an announcement about my nomination for Emerging Chef
at the James Beard Awards. I won it the year I worked at the French Laundry.
“He followed your career religiously,” Kiara says, right next to my shoulder.
I clear the block in my throat. “Really.”
She takes my hand. “He was proud of you.”
I lived with Sal and Kiara for three years, moving in only a few weeks after Sal caught me trying to dine and dash and put
me to work instead of calling the cops. I was fresh out of juvie—one fight too many on school property—and living in a group
home with other angry, unwanted teenage boys. Sal’s place felt like paradise in comparison. For the first time in my life,
I had security. Belonging. A purpose, working at the restaurant, and a passion: falling deeper in love with cooking the more
I learned from Sal.
He wasn’t the first one to give me a beer, but he taught me how to eat stone crab. He showed me how to pick out the perfect
watermelon. He got me on ADHD medication. Helped me apply to the Culinary Institute of America.
My father split as soon as my mother told him she was pregnant. My mother handed me to a social worker when I was born without
a second glance. Once, in middle school, I got into a fistfight with the real son of a set of foster parents who took me in
for the extra cash and had to spend the night on my case worker’s office couch. When she went out for a cigarette, I found
my file and read it cover to cover. I wasn’t wanted. I never had been wanted—until Sal.
“He shouldn’t have left me the restaurant,” I mutter as we walk down the hallway.
Hurt flashes in Kiara’s eyes. “He wanted you to have it.”
“You’re his daughter.”
“I already have a career.” In the kitchen, she points to a bar stool at the island. “Sit.”
“Kiara, I don’t want it.”
“Jack, you got . . .”
“Fired?”
She grimaces. “You don’t have a job anymore. But you do have what Dad left you.”
Every part of my body is screaming to flee, but I sit instead. Kiara bustles around the kitchen, heating up the chili, cutting
a thick slice of cornbread dotted with jalapeno. The kitchen is humble but fastidiously neat, exactly as I remember it. Sal
treated cooking like his religion, and his home kitchen reflected that.
“How is the practice?” I ask, as Kiara sets down the food. She opens a beer for me, and another for herself.
I eye it for a moment. Drinking like a fish is part of what got me in this whole mess.
I lift the glass bottle to my lips. I’ll commit tomorrow.
“It’s good.” Kiara leans across the kitchen island. “We’re expanding. And we started working with a no-kill shelter to provide
health services.”
“Sal must have been ecstatic.”
“He was happy I was happy.” She swigs her beer. “He was loyal to the people he cared about.”
“Unlike someone else you know.”
“At least you’re self-aware.”
“Ki.”
“You left.” Her chestnut eyes fill with tears. “You left without saying a word, Jack. We woke up the morning of the hearing,
and you were gone. We were supposed to be family. You told me you were my brother.”
The pain in her voice twists in my gut like a knife. “I know.”
Sal and Kiara thinking they loved me wasn’t enough to banish the panicky dread of when it would all fall apart.
When Sal wanted to adopt me for real, make me his son the way Kiara was his daughter, I fled.
Left for culinary school months early. It was easier to endure the hurt of losing him and Kiara then, I reasoned, than waiting for rejection that felt inevitable.
For the other shoe to drop, the way it always did.
I had an easy excuse, too, after Sal sat me down and told me he expected me to come back to Florida after culinary school
and help run the Sailfish. I never wanted to stay in Florida, in a town full of painful memories. I had loftier ambitions
than what he could offer.
At the time, I imagined the ties between us being severed with all the delicacy of a guillotine. It’s unnerving to think of
him watching me drift from restaurant to restaurant, all while our stiff, once-a-season calls dwindled to nothing.
“Do you know how hard it was to watch as Dad realized what happened?” she says. “Seeing your room cleaned out, your car gone
from the driveway? The only other time I saw him so lost was when Mom died.”
I take another sip of beer, flicking my gaze to the tile floor. For months now, I’ve wondered if he left me the restaurant
not as a gift but as punishment for running when it counted most.
Feels like it, anyway.
“I’m sorry.”
“You should be.” Her voice sounds taut, steely, the way it always did when she was holding back strong emotions.
“I know.”
“I’m surprised you came back at all. I thought you were planning to let the restaurant fall into the ocean.” She clears her
throat. “I’ve seen you all over social media. Your old coworkers are having fun telling everyone what an asshole you always
were.”
I saw a little of it on the drive down. Every article and GIF about that night makes me cringe, more for Poppy’s sake than
mine. She was right about what she said in that bar. The brunt of the ridicule has been directed at her.
I wonder how she is. If she managed to worm her way back into her father’s good graces yet. Maybe she made up with that coward
who dumped her. I haven’t checked her Instagram, mostly out of sheer force of will.
“Let me sign the restaurant over to you.”
“No.”
“Then I’ll sell it. You can have the profits.”
“I don’t want them.”
I shake my head at her, frustrated. “Don’t be so stubborn.”
“Stubborn?” She laughs. “You’re the stubborn one. He wanted you to run the restaurant, not sell it.”
“I can’t just—”
“Sure you can. Unless you’re busy with all the job offers pouring in?” At my silence, she continues, “He asked me who he should
leave his assets to, you know. If there’s one good thing about cancer, it’s that there’s plenty of time for painful conversations
before the end.”
I wince. “Ki. I’m sorry.”
“I wanted him to leave the restaurant to you. I wanted—I hoped—you’d come back.”
I know that I could sell the Sailfish and get a job somewhere else. But any position I would get now would mean going backward.
I’ve fought my way up too many kitchen ladders for that. I’d wither in another subordinate role, making other people’s visions
a reality.
Green Street was supposed to be the first thing in my career that was wholly and truly mine.
Poppy’s challenge circles my thoughts. I tried my best to ignore it on the drive down, but now, it’s impossible to escape.
Sure, I hurt her first, but she snapped right back, piercing me between the ribs. At least I’m not wallowing in a bar getting hammered after losing my dream job. If it was me, I’d be trying to do something
about it.
“Where’s the key?” I grit out.
Kiara takes a chain from around her neck, studded with a set of keys. She hands it over. My fingers curl over the skin-warmed
metal.
“I can’t stay for good.”
“Jack—”
“No, listen.” I reach across the island for one of her hands, covering it with my own. “Eventually, I need to go back. But
you’re right. I’m out of options right now. The stuff that’s going around online—it was a long time coming.”
She looks at me warily.
“After all the shit that went down that night, I got a drink with Douglas Winfield’s daughter. Poppy.”
“Poppy from the video?”
“Yeah.”
“And?”
“And she’s . . .” I stop, unsure how to explain the utterly unique tornado that is Poppy Winfield. I’d liken her to an unbroken
horse, but that implies she can be tamed. “She’s a pain in the ass, really, but she told me the best way to get her dad’s
attention would be to show him what he’s missing. I have to prove myself if anyone is going to let me into a serious kitchen
again.”
Kiara catches on right away. “You can run the restaurant.”
“Just long enough to make things right. I can’t have it forever. And when it sells, I’m serious, the profits are going to
you.”
She squeezes my hand. I can tell she’s disappointed, but it’s all I can offer. I gave up the right to be her brother the moment
I left.
“He wanted you home, Jack. Stay. If Dad meant anything to you at all, you’ll do it. You’ll at least try.”
I nod shortly. I doubt that, but I’ll let Kiara believe it if she needs to. He was her father, after all. Not mine.
She won’t ever know this, but he called me a coward when I left Diamond Bay.
My chest aches. It’s ironic that this restaurant, in this town that never wanted me, is my only option. Right now, it’s all
I have. All I can do.
“Will you stay here?” she asks. “You know there’s plenty of room.”
I hate to crush the hopeful note in her voice, but I shake my head. “I’ll stay on the houseboat.” The other thing Sal left
me. Feels fitting.
She makes a face. “That thing is so crappy.”
“I don’t want to be in your hair.”
“But—”
“It’s easier this way, okay?”
“Fine.” She breaks her piece of cornbread in half but doesn’t take a bite. “Have you gotten in touch with Chester yet?”
At my guilty silence, she rolls her eyes. “He’d love to see you. He’s mostly been bartending down in Delray, but he’ll come up for you.”
“I doubt that.”
Chester Harrison was pretty much the only friend I had growing up. He was goofy, a bit of a nerd, and after I fought a bunch
of kids picking on him during recess, we were inseparable. Worth the black eye and scolding from my case worker—no kid had
wanted to be my friend before then. He didn’t mind that I was weird and angry and couldn’t sit still to save my life, or that
my address changed every few months. After I left, we tried to keep in touch, but as time passed, that petered off, too. Another
regret, festering like a wound.
She eyes me with the scrappy determination that no doubt makes her great at her job. She always loved animals, always wanted
to be a vet. I’m glad she achieved that dream. I remember watching her at horseback riding competitions, waving to me and
Sal with a wide grin.
“Come on. It’s just Chester.”
“Fine.” I hold up my hands. I wonder if he still has a crush on Ki, or if that finally faded. If they were together, he wouldn’t
be spending his time down in Delray, that’s for sure. “I will.”
“Good.” She gives me a satisfied look. “Text him now.”
“Later.”
“Jackson.”
“Kiara.”
“Ugh. You’re so stubborn.”
Yet when I leave, an hour later and two beers drained, Kiara stops me in the entryway with a feather-soft touch.
“Jack?”
“Yeah?”
She hugs me, quick and fierce. “You better not leave again without saying goodbye.”