Foreshadowing Brooklyn
Foreshadowing
Brooklyn
Nashville, Tennessee
It started like so many of the rest, the day my husband disappeared.
We woke to the sound of our children giggling, the aroma of coffee wafting through the house, and sun streaming in through the slit in the blackout curtains, because sunlight was the only thing that worked to rouse Trey properly.
He hated alarms. They reminded him too much of sirens, startling him awake and making him jumpy all day. Sunlight is best. Children are better.
For a few minutes that precious morning, everything was normal. My husband: feigning sleep. Our kids: tearing in with joyful screams, flinging open the curtains, calling for their father to rise. The dog: hopping around with us. Me: already awake, looking at the flight details.
The kids started jumping on the bed, and Trey grabbed them with his strong arms and pulled them into the covers, faking a snore as he pretended to fall back asleep.
They called like little blue jays, giggling and rolling until the dog leaped onto Trey’s stomach, and he sat up with an overly theatrical “Ooof!” scattering them all like seed corn in the bed.
The children laughed in delight; the dog barked in time, and I just shook my head and joined them.
Every day was like this. Joyous. Loving.
Silly. Full of nonsense and happiness. The way a young family should be.
Ten years of marriage behind us now. Our eldest, Andrew Edward Locke IV, fondly referred to as Four, nine years old, and his sister, Neve—it’s Irish, the proper spelling is Niamh, which is on her birth certificate, but too many people had trouble with the pronunciation, so we spell it phonetically now—two years his junior, are the lights of our lives.
They are the best kids. Bright, fun, growing into their personalities.
Four looks like Trey, with dark hair and clear whiskey-brown eyes.
He has inherited his father’s brains and acumen with numbers.
Neve looks like me, but prettier, with sunny-blond hair and to-die-for curls, a cerulean gaze from that perfect heart-shaped face.
She is softer, gentler. Heartbreakers, both.
The kids were extra jazzed because their aunt Margot, my twin sister, was coming to help bundle us all off to the airport and then stay home with the dog.
We were all excited to go on vacation—a bona fide vacation.
Trey instigated this trip, and when pushed later, I will admit it was out of character.
Trey was a homebody. He hated vacations.
Hated to travel, period, though he had to for work.
He drove everywhere, though. He and planes didn’t get along.
The rest of the time, he worked from home and was perfectly content ambling around our neighborhood, triangulating between home and town on foot or bicycle.
Walking the kids to school, hitting the gym, and returning to the nest. Maybe grabbing a coffee on the way.
He was intensely shy, my husband. His family was his world.
My world, too. We were living a quiet, happy life on a peaceful, happy street in a calm, happy town. Everything was perfect.
Which is why I was completely shocked when, the day before my world imploded, Trey popped into my home office with the words that upended everything.
You have to understand, Trey was a steady, calm presence in my life—in all our lives.
Rarely off kilter, always in control. Too much control sometimes.
“Brook? Brookie?” Trey is calling me from the kitchen. I start to get up but hear his footsteps drawing closer. Sure enough, seconds later he appears at the French doors to my office. He is grinning his head off, knocking on the glass, full of glee and excitement.
“Brooklyn. Love of my life. I have a surprise for you.”
“You know I don’t like surprises.”
“You’re going to like this one.”
Trey’s interruption is well timed. The kids are at school, and I am (mostly) writing an article for the gluten-free-food magazine I work for.
It isn’t going perfectly. There are only a few ways to describe the luscious silkiness of a perfect beurre manié: luscious, silky.
That’s my job, though: find ways to explain how exciting it is to successfully combine butter and cornstarch to thicken stews, or whatever meal I’m interpreting, to make the perceived difficulty easy and accessible, then take pictures of the finished dish and send the whole lot in for editing.
At least we have a great kitchen, perfect for making and photographing food.
It’s not fair to say that I’m bored. Not fair to say I’ve been wondering if there is more I can do with my life. I’m happy. I love my work, my family, and my grinning-like-a-loon husband. Everyone needs taming eventually, don’t they? I have new opportunities, too.
I pull off my computer glasses and stretch. “I have a surprise right back at you, darling. But yours first.”
He comes in and sits on the black leather chair opposite my desk.
Margot found it for me at an estate sale, an original Eames lounger.
The owners hated it; it belonged to their father, and it wasn’t their style.
I love it with a passion reserved for only the man across from me, and my kids.
And my first Nikon. Probably in that order. It’s a great chair.
Trey props his big feet on the footrest. “No, that’s okay. What’s going on?”
“Sherry called a little while ago. She’s been approached about doing a TV show featuring the recipes we specialize in.”
“Sherry wants to do TV? That sounds like a lot of extra work. More power to her.”
“Um . . . not Sherry. Me.”
Trey blinks, his eyebrows hiking up. “You?”
“Yes, me. She said, ‘Brook, we all think you look good on camera. You’re made for this. We’ll call it Baking with Brooklyn, and everyone will want to watch.
’ I mean, I agree. Not about me being on camera, but that people would watch.
Food sensitivities are not going away, and the magazine is going gangbusters.
We have singled out a niche with endless possibilities. ”
“You sound like a marketing plan,” Trey says. “And you want to do this?”
“Well, it might be more fun than collating recipes all day. And I have the experience, albeit on the back end.”
“Let me guess. They mentioned Bandolier and his show?”
“Hmm. Yes.” A shadow passes over me, as it always does when Roger’s name comes up. I am thrust back in time, to France, to the river, to the great chef’s untimely death, another moment when my life changed forever.
Rest in peace and leave me alone.
I realize Trey is snapping his fingers at me. “Earth to Brook.”
“Sorry. You say Bandolier, and I immediately deep-dive into the past. Anyway, I would just need to find a way to balance the increased workload.”
“You want to do this?”
“Not sure. Being on air is very different from working behind the scenes.” Unsaid: All our hard-won privacy, gone.
“Honestly, babe, don’t worry. I’m not sure I want people looking that closely into our lives.
Having my name and socials out there is intrusive enough.
Anyway, we have time to talk about it. There’s no rush to answer.
It would take months to get off the ground anyway. Let’s do your surprise.”
The little boy is back, eyes sparkling. “You’re never going to guess.”
“Let me try, at least.”
“Trust me, it’s so good you can’t imagine.”
That smile . . .
Ten years, and he is getting more and more handsome by the day.
I, on the other hand, am getting soft. All the tasting, all the sitting, all the “Sorry, I worked late, let’s grab takeout.
” I’m tall enough that everyone says I carry it well, but I’ve just gone up a size in jeans, and that needs to be remedied, especially if I’m going to be on camera.
Maybe he bought me a gym membership? That would be grounds for divorce, surely.
No, he’s grinning too widely, so it must be something fun.
“So good I can’t imagine, huh? You bought an elephant.”
Trey rolls his eyes. “Good grief, Brook. It’s within the bounds of reason.”
I spin my chair around and around, dropping a guess every rotation.
“You bought me a Ferrari.” Spin. “My own seventeenth-century Shakespeare folio?” Spin.
“A small island?” Spin. “Oh, oh! I know! You’ve found and secretly renovated a charming witch’s cottage deep in the redwood forest where I can plant a poison garden and creep around after dark to scare the local villagers.
” I put on my best Disney-witch voice, the one the kids beg for: “Here’s an apple, my pretty. ”
He groaned. “Brooklyn . . .”
“All right, I give up. Tell me.”
That mischievous grin widens, enough to make his dimple pop. And then he drops the bomb. “I’m taking you and the kids to Italy for the holidays.”
I stop swiveling. “Excuse me?”
“Italy. All four of us. We’ll spend Christmas sipping Chianti and walking through the markets in the snow.”
“Ha ha.”
“I’m serious.” He leans forward, captures my leg, pulls me and the chair over to him.
Puts his hands on my hips and kisses me.
Deeply. My heart begins to pound, and when he pulls away, I am breathless.
The beard he’s been growing has moved past the spiky stage to soft, and I am more than interested in taking things further.
The advantage of school-age children and two work-at-home parents—plenty of private time.
He places his palm on my cheek and stares deep into my eyes, as if he knows what I’m thinking. “Italy. For three weeks.”
I like being married. A lot. I like having kids. A lot. There is a steadiness to it all, a sense of completion. I especially like the guy sitting across from me. And I love to travel, especially on short notice. It appeals to my sense of adventure.
But I don’t like being made the fool, and there isn’t a chance in hell he is really serious.
“All right. What’s really going on?”