Back To U

chapter Twenty-One

Use a subtle hand when dealing with ingredients that pack a punch.





She’d set up Jason to chop herbs. He might be safe doing that. Bryan was in charge of vegetable cleaning and peeling, and for Hayden she’d roughed out a recipe for a shallot and orange vinaigrette to dress the salad.

Fifteen minutes into her four hours she was second guessing the Chicken Provencal, but three hours into it, she thought she just might have a winner. The tomato-based sauce smelled earthy and rich with the smidge of anchovy paste she’d made from a… well, seriously violated anchovy. She’d never been a fan of the little fish, but when it was time to coat the golden chicken breasts with the sauce pan’s delight, people would swoon.

She’d even stopped looking over at Ty. One hour left and she didn’t want to know what he was up to with the Iron Chef Gang. By now he'd probably brought the chicken back to life and had it doing circus tricks with tomatoes.

She leaned over Jason’s shoulder at the mountains of herbs he'd chopped. She wasn’t going to use more than a pinch of each pile, but he deserved a scout badge. "Good work, Jason. The carpal tunnel will be worth it."

He flexed his right hand and grinned at her.

Walking over to check on Hayden, she saw him jerk toward the serving line, nearly knocking over the jug of vinaigrette he'd made. She steadied it before it rocked all the way over and followed his line of sight to Missy. Her daughter had come after all and everything would be alright. She could win even. She had chicken ready to be Provencaled. She had the boys to help, and Annie and Guy on their way to happiness, and Missy beside her. Followed by... Gwen’s heart overflowed with the abundance of people who loved her, her own dear mother come to help and... Steve.

She walked over to the cart, grabbed a half empty bottle of wine, poured it into a mostly empty coffee mug, and took a big drink.

"We’ve come to help, Gwennie."

She watched Ellen look around, ready to pitch in, ready to offer all that she could even after Gwen had ignored her for weeks. "Mom, I owe you an apology, and I--" She felt herself held tightly by the wild woman who had always been there for her and never failed to mother her in unusual and wonderful ways. The scent of Fellipe of Beverly Hills comforted her, and she whispered. "I missed you."

"You’re a good girl, Gwennie, and you’re turning out quite nicely."

Gwen laughed. Weeks away from forty, and she was turning out quite nicely. She'd take that.

Behind her she heard Steve clear his throat, stepped back, and tipped her head in his direction. "What's up with him?"

Ellen shrugged in apology. "He had the wheels."

"Oh, well that’s better." She’d just ignore him then. She’d focus and not let... She watched Bryan put his hand low on Missy’s back, guiding her to the nearest stool. "Hey, Missy, why don't you help Hayden dress the salad? I put him in charge of it because he's so reliable."

Hayden whispered, "Reliable? That's not helping, Venus. I’m this close to getting her to take Advanced Music Theory with me." He crossed his fingers. "It’s the seven modes of the Diatonic Scale."

Ellen patted his arm. "Every pot has a lid."

But Missy walked past Hayden and stopped in front of her looking both irritated and hurt. "Stay out of it, Mom. You think you know, but you don't. I mean, you married an insurance salesman, and you didn’t make that work."

Steve gave Missy his wise father hmmm. "That's an interesting point, Missy."

"Dad?"

"Yeah?"

"Not helping."

"Got it," he made a gun motion with his right hand, "here to help."

Gwen couldn't believe her own daughter would suggest that she hadn't tried to make the marriage work. "We had two decades together, Missy. Your father was reliable for a long time." She nodded at him. He could back her up on this one, and she could stop herself from pointing out the obvious reason their run had ended.

He walked over to stand beside her. "Your mom’s right, Missy. We’d still be together if there hadn’t been other circumstances."

Gwen snorted, felt her eyes roll involuntarily. No, she wasn’t going to have it out with him there in the cafeteria when she needed to put the finishing touches on the… "Other circumstances? Is that today’s euphemism for other woman?"

Steve gave her the half-smile he used on anyone without term life insurance. "I think we both know there wasn’t another woman."

He said it with such earnestness that she studied his face to see if he was telling the truth. She knew him well enough to see that he really meant it. So why had he… "Oh my god, you’re gay!"

His mouth hung open in shock.

But it all added up. Did it all add up? "You have that pink tie. I could never figure out why you wanted that damn tie. You were trying to tell me, weren’t you?"

Missy’s eyes were huge. "I have a gay dad?"

"No!" A shudder ran through Steve. "And the tie is salmon."

"Dude," Jason shook his head, "only a gay guy would know that."

Gwen reached for another coffee cup, poured wine into it and handed it to Steve. He took it and shook his head. "I love women. I love you, Gwen. I just left you first, that’s all."

She took a gulp of the coffee flavored wine and looked around the large kitchen for a private spot. There was only one room that had a door, so she dragged him into the walk-in cooler.

When they stepped in, Steve held up his coffee cup and checked all around, probably to make sure none of the raw food touched him. "Are we drinking now?"

She was. She took a drink from her mug and knew that it would stay chilled in there, but there was a reason coffee kiosks did not offer wine-flavored lattes. She set it down on the metal shelving unit between a stack of eggs with wavy purple cardboard between the layers and a three foot long block of cheddar cheese. The cafeteria should buy cheddar-jack instead. It wasn’t any more expensive, but it added color and flavor. She’d have to stop doing that.

She took a deep breath. "What did you mean by you left first?"

"Gwen." He turned sideways. The long, narrow space was lined with shelves and barely wide enough for one body, let alone two. "Missy’s whole senior year, anybody could see you were checking out. You’d raised her, and you were both getting ready to leave. All the signs were there. You stopped ironing my shirts, having sex with me, making that bacon and egg thing I like. A man notices these things. I wasn’t going to let you fire me. I quit."

Had she been leaving? She definitely hadn’t been having any sex. They hadn’t for… well, she couldn’t remember. That probably told the story there, didn’t it? But the bacon frittata, the shirts? She’d been ironing plenty. Missy’s senior year hadn’t felt any different than any other year of their marriage.

She felt her breath catch, her eyes fill with tears. He was wrong. She hadn’t been leaving him. She’d never fully been with him. It had been Max. It had always been Max, and for that love, she had nothing to show. She was alone in every way that mattered, and she’d left Steve that way too. "I’m so sorry."

He shifted, accidentally kicking a plastic bin of onions. "You have been drinking."

"I wanted you to be the lid to my pot, but Steve, you’re not. You were lots of things, good things, like stable, and I know you love Missy. But for me--"

He straightened, his elbow touching a rash of raw bacon he was better off not knowing about. "I’m not coming back to you, Gwen."

He was quitting before he got fired, and she owed him that. "Right." She smiled, hugged him quickly before either of them could think about it. "And you’ll be just fine, won’t you?"

He handed her the mug. "Of course."

People could marry and live out two decades then get divorced, all the way divorced, with fairness and if not affection, then a kind of healthy understanding. It made a person feel good about humanity. "About the money…"

He held up his hands, tried to ease by her toward the cooler door. "It’s not me. It’s Frame Incorporated, Gwen. You saw the green files, remember, after the blue ones?"

She reached for the block of cheddar as Missy came in, and it only took the girl a second to assess the situation, based on how quickly Gwen had the cheese taken from her.

Missy held onto it. "I draw the line at being an orphan."

Deb followed Missy in, and Gwen could hear her from the doorway, "What’s going on in here? For Christ sake you’re in a cook-off. I have money on this, and Nicola is not going to--"

"Disqualifié." Nicola pushed her way in and joined the single file column of bodies. They all crunched back further and the only thing blocking Gwen from the end wall was Steve, horrified by having his body up against a stack of tater tot bags.

Deb refused to turn around even though Gwen could see Nicola popping over her shoulder like an angry ferret. But Deb could fight even with her back to the enemy. "You’d like that wouldn’t you, Nicola? But I think you’re the dishonest one here."

Gwen didn’t want to rat the French rat out, but she was literally up against the wall. "I know why her family kicked her to Belmar." She tried to spread her hands out, but they wouldn’t clear a shelf on one side. "It’s pretty big too."

Nicola’s eyelids lowered, a Gallic bluff, "You know nothing."

Deb tried to crank her neck to see behind her but only an owl’s could rotate that much. "You’ve been using us to make a cookbook, haven't you?"

"Oh," Gwen snorted, "it’s more than that."

Nicola’s eyes opened wide. "How did you--"

Deb sucked in a breath. "Stolen recipes?"

Gwen watched surprise register on Nicola’s face, quickly followed by anger. "My grand-mère left much to my brothers. She would not sèst opposè my borrowing of her recipes."

It was worse than Gwen thought, and she’d thought some pretty bad things about the woman. "Your family turfed you because you took recipes from your..." Gwen could only whisper, "dead grandmother?"

She heard Steve suck in a breath. "Shame on you."

She turned to him, eyebrows drawn. It was okay for him to take her equity in the house, but a few stolen lamb recipes and his ethics kicked in?

He backed further into the tater tots. "You’re not my grandmother. A grandma!"

Ellen hollered from the doorway, "What about grandmas?" She squeezed in behind Nicola, who looked unaccustomed to touching the masses, and Gwen could see the boys peeking in from the doorway.

Missy tipped her head toward Nicola. "She stole from her grand-mère."

"Oh for crying in a bucket." Ellen gave Nicola’s back the disapproving mother look, and Nicola slowly turned toward her.

Ellen pointed to her chest. "And what have you got on that lovely silk blouse?" She whipped out a white handkerchief, distracted apparently from the true crime, and began to dab at the inside of the placket.

Nicola looked horrified that Ellen’s hand was down her shirt, which served her right. Then Gwen noticed there seemed to be quite a lot of whatever it was. She motioned for her mom to pass over the handkerchief.

It cleared Missy and then Deb handed it to her, and the distinct sweet of cocoa rose up from the fabric. "Is that?" Gwen sniffed again to make sure. "Nicola has chocolate lava cake inside her shirt." She looked past Deb to meet Nicola's wide eyes. "Inside your shirt."

Deb's voice wobbled on a laugh. "Shame on you."

Gwen smiled back at Deb. "Oh for crying in a bucket, Deb, isn’t Ty a student in Nicola’s program? Why, that’s a real problem, isn’t it?"

Nicola lifted her chin. "I am leaving already--"

Deb nodded to Gwen. "And there’s the cookbook we tested and refined the recipes for..."

All that lamb for nothing but recipe thievery. "I bet Ma and Pa Gaspard would be very, very disappointed if they found out, but if Grandma's name went on it and half the profits--"

Deb shook the number off.

"If seventy-five percent of the profits from the cookbook went back into the program. It would be a…"

"Goodwill." Deb grinned.

"Yes, a goodwill donation. And you," she pointed at Nicola, "don’t get to vote today. And, to be fair, Deb, you shouldn’t either. Deal?"

Deb nodded.

Nicola shrugged as if it had all been her idea. "Oui."

Gwen sighed. "Well, my work here is done. My work out there nearly done. File out, people."

The boys stepped aside and Ellen and Nicola walked out, followed by Missy and Deb and Steve behind her. They spread out when they cleared the cooler, but she caught Nicola looking back. "Don’t worry. I won’t tell him. I wouldn’t want to cause you any trouble." She smiled. "You and Max are the perfect couple."





Gwen stared at the sauce pan. A dozen tiny fish heads bobbed in her once perfectly balanced sauce and made her eyes tear. There'd been a pinch of anchovy paste when she’d gone in the cooler and a school of anchovies when she’d gotten out.

"Whew!" Steve shook his head. "This kind of cooking is not for me. I’m gonna go." He patted her shoulder, kissed Missy on the cheek, and left.

"Mom..." Missy stood beside her, waiting.

But it was over. She looked over at Ty’s side. The last hour and he was already celebrating with champagne, the saboteur, and yeah, that was aptly French. She turned to rummage around for a meat thermometer and checked the temperature of her fishy sauce. One hundred and twenty degrees. Not bad. She picked up the pan and made her way over to Ty.

He turned with a smile that now seemed a bit too practiced. "Gwen," he sniffed the air, "la poisson." He shook his head as if in sympathy but looked ready to laugh. "Which one of the guys made the sauce?" He studied the boys across the kitchen as if genuinely trying to see who’d been stupid enough to put that many fish in a sauce Provencal.

Stupid enough? Maybe, who was vindictive enough? was the real question. She turned and caught the smirk on Mranda’s face that softened into a doe-eyed innocent look that Gwen was the wrong gender to fall for.

Closing the gap between them, she saw Mranda narrow her eyes in challenge, and the expression was so familiar, it finally clicked. "You're a second generation R.A., aren't you?"

All those years ago, Gwen had tried her best to be nice to that nasty Mandy. Hell, she'd even taken her on that road trip to the Curtis, even though Max had tried to talk her out of it, and she'd had to wait another couple of weeks to lose her virginity, dammit. Well, she was done being nice to people who got in her way.

"I believe I knew your mother." Gwen kept eye contact, calculated the best way to make revenge count, and poured half the pan of sauce on Mranda's purple suede pumps.

The girl jumped back but so, so late. The shoes simply could not be saved, and before Mranda regained the gift of speech, Gwen pointed to the sardine head caught in the right one. "Ah, look, the little guy’s swimming right in your toe cleavage."

Mranda made a choking sound and scrambled to get out of her shoes.

It was Ty's turn next, but he held up his hands in innocence. "I didn't tell her to do that."

"Oh, I know." She moved closer, put her left hand on his chest just as she had that day in his room. "You only give women a little chocolate lava cake encouragement." She slid her hand down the length of his tight torso, "and they’re moved…" She slipped it under his white chef’s coat, "to help you." She pulled his waistband out.

He shifted, looked around. "Gwen…" And she dumped the rest of the sauce down his pants.

He jumped, air sucking in, Aussie swearing out.

"Don’t worry. It’s only a hundred and twenty degrees. It would take five minutes of exposure to result in third degree burns, remember? It was on the test I helped you pass."

He whipped his pants down to his ankles and doused his boxers with a glass of champagne.

"Cheers, Ty."

Turning back to her side, she could see that the boys, her daughter, and even her mother knew it was over. She’d lost and once she left Belmar, she knew she’d never come back. She’d been wrong, dead wrong about the fork in the road. It was time to admit that she'd screwed things up a long time ago, and nothing would change that. Nothing could.

But she would, one more time, feed the people she loved.





The chicken pot pies came out of the oven golden brown and bubbly. The rustic crust, draped over the vegetables and herbs, said comfort in the best possible way. But even though they’d delivered them to the banquet room, potpies didn’t say five star chef.

Waiting for the inevitable verdict, they sat around a cafeteria table and enjoyed the meal. By the time Gwen finished the last bite, Deb joined them, sat heavily, and sighed.

But Missy smiled. "This is like a set-up, right? You act all disappointed, but this is so good. Mom really won, didn’t she?"

Jason rapped his knuckles on the table. "Way to go, Venus!"

Deb shook her head at Jason. "Uh, no. Ty made sesame garlic lettuce wraps with smoked chicken tied up with tiny strips of red pepper. In bows. I don’t even know how he did that. You’d have to have really clever hands, and yeah, he won." She shrugged. "He’s going to Paris. Early actually. Nicola got him a job before his degree even." Deb subtly pointed to the placket of her own blouse.

Gwen nodded. "His lava cake must be really good."

"We had it, remember, Gwennie?" Ellen looked at her like she was surprised anyone would forget. "We all had it at Max’s. My mouth waters just thinking about it."

Before she had to answer, Hayden got up and began to take plates. "We’re gonna clean up, Venus." Jason and Bryan jumped up to help him.

"Nope. Thanks, guys, but you’ve done enough. I need to finish this." She saw them look at each other, reluctant to leave her losing and alone. They were the nicest boys, and one more ounce of pity from them and she might cry. "Go on. I’m fine, really. I could use a little quiet."

She hugged each of them and felt a little like Dorothy saying goodbye to the tin man, scarecrow, and Hayden, who didn’t deserve it but by default would be cast as the cowardly lion. "You have a great heart."

Hayden smiled as if he knew, and she wished she could stay and see them through their time at Belmar. She watched them walk away and understood they’d be okay just as clearly as she understood that she wouldn’t be.

Ellen rose, her ankle clearly giving her some pain. "I’m gonna go, Gwennie."

Missy moved beside her. "I’ll drive Grandma back home. We’ll see you there tonight?"

"Yeah, I’m hoping I can move back home with my mother."

"Of course, Gwennie. We’ll have a code. I’ll put a scarf on the doorknob when I have a gentleman caller." Ellen leaned in and kissed her forehead, and Gwen closed her eyes and breathed in the sweet bite that was her mother. Missy kissed her in the same spot, and they smiled at each other.

In the silence after they'd left, Deb cleared her throat. "I’m sorry that I thought--"

But Gwen held up her hand. Deb hadn't been wrong about much. "The old college boyfriend? It’s Max. And before I knew he was married to Nicola, we had, you know, lava cake, so I did know the power couple. But I didn’t know about the cookbook, really."

"I'm even more sorry that you're leaving, Gwen. Stop by the kitchen if you're back on campus again." Deb tried to smile. "You can give me the lava cake details."

But Gwen knew she wouldn’t be back. "I’m gonna be pretty busy living with my mother."

"Well..." Deb got up, put a friendly hand on her back. "You’re always welcome."

"Thanks, Deb."





She sat on the nearest counter top, a definite no from the first week of school, not that it mattered anymore. Her section of the kitchen lay in ruins, the floor littered with raw shreds of pie crust and carrot coins. She didn’t need to see Ty’s side to know they’d tidied up like the next activity would be a surgery.

Beside her were leftover mounds of chopped cilantro and parsley and more odds and ends than she could use in a season of home cooking. Home cooking. She looked around and knew she would miss the cafeteria, the friendly round tables with energetic college students, the rattle of flatware being replaced by a work-study employee, the smell of vats of coffee and simmering taco meat and the sizzle of the burger grill. She hadn’t missed it the first time she’d gone. Things had been too... well they’d just been too. But this time, she would know what she’d lost.

She swung her legs back and forth, took deep breaths, and tried to find the motivation to get off the table and get to work before the cafeteria staff slipped in the pool of chicken broth that had been ladled out too vigorously by Bryan.

Hearing footsteps, she turned to see Max standing with the winning kitchen perfection behind him.

He lifted his chin, "Hey," and looked so much like the boy she’d fallen in love with she felt pain squeeze her chest. "I..." he tipped his head in the direction of the banquet room, "tried the plates."

"Oh. That makes my day even better." She jumped down from the table.

"I heard what happened."

"What part?" She walked over to the cooler’s wall and reached for a broom hanging from a metal bracket.

"Did you think you could win?"

She stopped. "Excuse me?"

"Did you believe it would work out, any of it?"

She pulled the broom down and began to sweep, the back and forth motion stirring the fresh scent of parsley. If it hadn't been for the anchovies… She considered her cooking against Ty's and wanted to say yes more than she ever had. She wanted to believe yes about herself, about her whole life. She met Max’s eyes. "No."

He didn’t say anything but took the broom from her and kept sweeping.

She focused on the leftover food and put the herbs and remaining sauce in empty cafeteria bowls. She hoped old man Jameson would bend enough to use them.

They worked in silence, finishing a few minutes after the first staff arrived for the dinner shift. She started to tell one of the cooks about the leftovers, and then knew they’d never use them. This was by-the-book cafeteria fare, institutional cooking. Who ponied up the extra touch of spice or flair of creativity? It wouldn’t get done unless she did it herself.

She felt herself smile, felt the anti-gravity motion of it, like her skin had to overcome its inertia from the hours of stress. She was leaving Belmar, and not even Old Man Jameson could fire her now. She walked over to the table where chicken enchiladas were being assembled and set a bowl down in front of the work-study student. "We’re adding fresh cilantro today." She pointed to the large laminated recipe card in front of him. "Just put it in the mix and then a little bit on top of the tray after it comes out of the oven."

The young man pulled the bowl closer to the chicken. "Got it."

Max walked over to the coffee urn, poured himself a cup and stood back, watching, waiting, while she set out to add a little something to every recipe in the kitchen. When she’d made the rounds, unstopped by Old Man Jameson, she headed over for pie. Max got in line beside her. "You were like that guy who pretended to be all those things, you know an airline pilot and a doctor." He pointed to the apple pie and the server put a slice on a plate and handed it under the sneeze guard. "Everyone thought you ran the cafeteria."

"Yeah. For my next gig, I'm going to impersonate a homeless woman." She put a fork on the edge of her plate. "Oh wait, I am."

They sat down at a table, and Gwen knew it was the same section of the cafeteria they'd always sat in. They'd shared a hundred meals together from the first dinner at his parent’s house until she’d left school a year-and-a-half later, and she didn’t want it to, but it felt right to sit with him one last time.

Max took a bite of pie, set his fork down. "You’re leaving, aren’t you?"

She didn’t even pretend she could eat. "Yeah."

He seemed to consider that for a moment. "It always looked like I was the one who ran."





Gwen's Life… December 12th, Tuesday 1990



The cramps woke her. She lay on her side with her knees tucked into her body, and it took her a moment to remember she was in Max’s apartment. She’d dreamed herself back home while she slept, back to the summer vacation past when things were uncomplicated, except for missing Max so intensely.

He lay beside her in the dark, and she wanted to close her eyes and pretend, but she knew. Another cramp fisted low inside her.

She’d known, without wanting to, the day she’d told him in the football stadium. She’d known there was trouble, but they’d both ignored it as if it would just go away.

She felt her body begin to shake. This was trouble that wouldn’t be ignored. She reached out and touched his shoulder, rounded in a curl of sleep. "Max."

He turned toward her, rubbing his face on the edge of her pillow.

"Max, something’s wrong."





He drove and the late night radio jarred them with hard rock.

She sat with her arms crossed low over her belly, now a steadier pain, but still enough to make her heart race. If she could stop holding herself together for a second, she’d reach out and snap the radio off. She’d reach out, grab Max’s hand, and never let go.

He pulled into the wide arch of the emergency entrance and walked in by her side, leaving only to re-park the car. By the time she’d filled out her paperwork, he was back. She didn’t know how long they waited. She just felt herself sit without time or space, as if other people weren’t waiting there too. And she thought about luck, about thin slivers of luck, and how ninety-eight percent effective meant two percent would have to live with failure.

A nurse with tired eyes, so tired they looked permanent, took them back to the exam room. She asked more questions, and Gwen thought she answered them and then the nurse handed her a faded gown and asked Max to step outside.

He kissed her. He said he would be right back, and she watched him go.





He stood in the hallway, leaning his back against the wall. He’d stood like that before, one foot behind him, sole to baseboard. Maybe he’d been ready to run into the gym for a basketball game. Maybe he’d been waiting to get his high school diploma. None of that had been very long ago and yet a whole lifetime had passed too.

He felt the doctor move down the hall, turn next to him, and go into the room. But Max didn’t look up, not until the doctor came back out and stood in front of him. The guy studied him for a moment, and Max didn’t even want to imagine what he saw. "You’re..." he tipped his head toward the door.

"Yes."

"It’s a first trimester, what we call, clinical spontaneous abortion. Very common. We’ll do a D and C, and she’ll get antibiotics to make sure there’s no infection. Miscarriages happen to ten, twenty percent of women who are pregnant."

Max felt himself flinch, not at all the doctor had said, all that was going on, all that was happening to Gwen. The word miscarriage hadn’t hit him. Pregnant had, and he felt ashamed for that.

"We’ve already given her a sedative. Come back in the morning." The doctor headed down the hallway as if everything was settled.

Max stayed with his back against the wall for how long he didn't know then he headed for the exit and back to U.





Back to U…



Max looked at her like he was finally figuring something out. "It always looked like I was the one who ran."

She flinched, and he must have seen the guilt that flashed through her.

"I'm right, aren’t I?" He studied her face, and she wished she’d mastered the art of the bluff because he didn’t need to know what hand she really held. It felt like he found a crack in her armor and pushed.

He leaned closer across the table as if asking something from her. "I came back. I came back to that hospital, Gwen, came back to get you, to be with you, and be there for you, and..." he swallowed, "and you were both gone."

Tears were already leaving her eyes, but she was too far gone to even worry that she might not stop if she started. She'd run for twenty years, and no matter how hard she'd tried to hold things together, she couldn't. Keeping everything from the past contained in the past hadn't worked because when the time arrived, it arrived, and nothing could seal the dam.

She took in a shallow breath, no older than she had been in that minute, nineteen and scared beyond belief. "I started to have cramps, and I thought..."

She hadn't been sure she could rely on her lungs to breathe, her eyes to see, her ears to relay the choices the doctor had given her at that moment. And Max hadn't been there.

She'd known he’d been leaving, maybe from the first time they met. He'd been someone to fall crazy in love with, but she wasn’t ever supposed to need him. He'd left her there and not come right back like he'd said he would.

She'd been trapped, but he was free to walk alone into his future. That loss felt like the twin mountain of the one she'd known was ahead. "They asked me to decide. The cramping was slowing, and they didn't know if I would miscarry or not. They asked me if I wanted to try to save, you know, save the baby or just go through with it. I, I had to decide. And I did."

Reaching for a napkin, she pulled a dozen of them out of the silver holder and wiped beneath her eyes as if she could erase the tears. "They didn't know what would happen. No one could say, and I was so scared. I've never used that as an excuse. I just was. And I chose to have an abortion."

For a moment Max didn’t seem to understand what she’d said. She found herself praying that he would, he would just get it, and she wouldn’t have to say any more, explain what she hadn’t ever wanted him to know in the first place.

When she watched his face fall into loss and the muddied mix of emotions that shoots in with it, she understood for the first time that he didn’t have a Missy. He’d never had that child that made, somehow, the child that wasn’t there, not all the way lost. She wished, when she saw him rise and start to say something, that she could have died with the knowledge, that he could have gone his life never knowing.

He shook his head. "I came back for you, and they said you’d gone."

She felt her own pain at that. "You can think I’m right or wrong for what I chose, but I was right about you, Max. I may have wanted to believe otherwise, especially when we met again, but your wife ended whatever that might have been. "

His eyebrows came together, and he shook his head. "I don’t have a wife, Gwen. I told you about Nicola."

"Right. And then she told me…" Gwen considered for the first time the source, the grandmother recipe stealing source.

He laughed, short and sarcastic. "You know, I knew back then what you thought of me, but I loved you anyway. I wasn’t perfect, Gwen, nobody can live up to your version of perfect, but I did my best, and I’ve done my best by you twenty years later too. You needed some big gesture back then, I guess, something that would prove I was there for you. Well, I was scared about the future too, but I was there. You were the one who ran away."

When he shook his head she knew he didn’t even have the words to say how much he hated her for it. She had hurt him again, and after so many years, the wound was unnecessary. She watched him leave and felt pain in a way she’d never felt before, not even twenty years earlier when she'd left Belmar, and he hadn’t come after her.





He didn’t know how long he'd been sitting in the stadium bleachers. He just kept looking out at the skiff of snow on the field, its thin coverage only making the grass a sickly shade of yellow.

There had been beauty in the emerald green of summer, and there would be comfort in the thick coat of white a full-out winter would bring. But this wasn’t either of those seasons.

He felt the leather camera case in his grip, just in the palms where he had a little warmth left. He ought to capture the moment. It was under-photographed, the ugly middle, the sketchy late fall when things were dying and not gone enough to offer the resignation of hibernation. She would leave. Not that it should matter. She’d already left him. Left him the first time by shutting him out. Left him the same way the second time, he supposed.

And he had what he’d always had. Himself. A camera. When he was younger, he'd also had the need to see the world. Maybe that impulse had really been to run, and probably from the moment he’d opened his eyes to his parents. But when it came to Gwen, he hadn’t been the one to take off. This time he’d tried to prove himself, and maybe he hadn’t even done a completely bad job of it.

But a man couldn’t prove anything to a woman who didn’t care either way.





She sat in the cafeteria until the last student left and the last work-study worker wiped the second to last table then skirted around her and dimmed the lights. She didn’t consider that she couldn’t stay forever. Nothing existed except the moment, the moment she’d hurt the one man she’d never wanted to hurt and, she knew, changed things forever.

When the table shift slightly, she looked up to see Old Man Jameson across from her. He wore the same neutral going-on-sour expression he always did, and he sighed like sitting was more work than he cared to engage in.

She sighed back because it was a language Eyeore might have understood.

"So, you changed my recipes."

She nodded once, sighed again.

"Without my say so, in my kitchen, past your own little gourmet hoo-ha."

"Yep."

He shifted in his chair, and Gwen felt more exhausted just witnessing it. "I suppose you know better with your fancy cooking da-gree and your la-de-da herbs."

He’d said herbs with the h, but Gwen didn’t have the energy to correct him.

"Suppose you think you’re something."

"Yes, I suppose I am just full of myself. I’m a la-de-da herbal genius."

"I could kick you out, Missy. Don’t get sassy with me."

Old Man Jameson used to call her missy? "Oh my god, I named my daughter Missy."

"Probably just as big a know-it-all as you were. Got to learn the rules before you break them. Didn’t know that when I sent you packing, did you?"

"Well, don’t pop a blood vessel. I’m gone for good this time."

"Cry me a river. You’d think you didn’t want a job, taking that attitude with me."

"Oh, please hire me 'cause I really need a minimum wage job dishing up runny eggs to match the rest of my life. I’m broke and homeless and out of school one semester before I actually finish a god damn degree, and alone, alone because I am a total screw up, twice with the same wrong man, and don’t even get me started on my teenage daughter and mother."

"Your mother’s a teenager?"

"Go away."

He rose, his knees creaking, which only made Gwen think serves him right when she might normally have thought oh, that’s too bad. "Got an assistant who up and left for one of them rib houses. Serve you up dinner on a garbage can lid like people need a trough these days. Could have been a la-de-da chef myself, but I landed here. Benefits and a chance for my kids to go to college for free. Me too if I’d wanted it."

She studied his long, thin face. He had the beady eyes of a really sharp crow, but he made no sense. "What are you talking about?"

"Well, isn’t Miss Smarty Pants paying attention now?" He sat back down. "I’m offering you a job."

"I have nothing, and you’re offering me..."

"Free school, free room if you want it."

"And about…"

"Ten thousand meals a week."

Gwen swallowed then put her forehead on the table.

"You can eat nineteen of those yourself, but you might want to pace it some. Woman your age can run to fat."

Gwen didn’t lift her head off the table but held out her hand. Old Man Jameson took it in his dry thin one, shook it and, she thought, laughed.





When his fingers took on a shade that was more frostbitten white than really cold red, he’d left the stadium for his office, fumbled with the lock on the door, and managed to get inside to unthaw in the dark. He blinked when the light went on.

"Cher?"

He smiled to himself and turned toward the doorway and the woman who would be blamed for sabotaging him, if Gwen had really loved him. He studied her pretty face, so Gallic with its sharp features, and so expressionless. A dozen images of Gwen, happy, irritated, in crisis, in passion, in sleep, came to him, but he pushed them aside.

"I am off now. Just now. My mère and père have asked me home."

Bailed her out again. "I’m happy for you, Nicola."

"You will not go with me?" She asked, but he could see her discomfort, or could guess at it since she didn’t like to wrinkle her face with feeling.

He’d make her wonder a minute before he put her out of her misery. One thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three. He glanced out the window and tried to feel something for the snowflakes drifting down. Nothing. He heard her let out the small impatient huff she usually reserved for her parents. He turned, smiled. "I’m going to stay here, I think."

She briefly took his hands in what felt like an afterthought. "I am here then to say goodbye. And also my passport, naturellement. You were watching these things when we arrived."

He nodded and slid open the top drawer of his desk, reaching for a silver key in the midst of a nest of rubber bands. Behind him he could hear Nicola poking around in his boxes with the lack of effort he’d once thought charming. He keyed the bottom drawer and opened it to her passport and the keys to the Paris apartment. He had watched out for her and maybe taken better care than he’d given himself credit for. It didn’t escape him that he’d figured something out just in time for nothing. He was like the guy who finally develops the skills for basketball, and it’s football season. He was ready for a spring sport, but in his life, it was fall.

He turned to Nicola, the passport and keys in his hand, and felt relieved that they weren't for him. "Here you go." He saw that she’d managed to unpack the top layer of every box. It was like turning your back on an irritated but not very thorough cat.

She dropped what was in her hand, a battered green notebook that took the fall as if it were just another of many. He moved to it, felt Nicola tug the passport out of his hand. He opened his palm to give her the keys and reached for Gwen’s journal.

Smoothing the cover, he pressed down the bend at the corner, and looked up to see Ty in the doorway, standing half-turned towards the hall with his eyes glancing towards the exit. Aussie boy didn't have much fight in him, but Max would bet a hundred bucks he excelled at flight. The kid hadn't been worried about Max wanting to poach Gwen, but seemed stressed about a potential caveman fight over Nicola. Dingo-got-my-baby boy was an idiot.

Max held out his free hand, shook Ty’s before he could do anything but react out of habit.

Behind him, he felt Nicola’s growing impatience. He was doing her a favor, slowing down her exit. Any delay in their take-off would give her another minute of Ty sticking around to use her. Nicola jostled by, tilted her head at Ty. "You have put the valises to the car?" She didn’t wait for him to answer, and Max felt her attention turn his way. He tried not to wonder what she wanted next, but she just kissed him lightly on each cheek, "Adieu," and set off down the hallway, leaving Aussie boy behind.

Max tilted his head at Ty just as Nicola had. "Bonne chance."

Ty shot off after her, and Max turned back to his office and the scattered boxes. In his hands, he held Gwen’s college life. He should put the journal back in the nearest box, and seal it away for another twenty years in a masking-taped time capsule. He tossed it in the bottom desk drawer, slid it closed, but didn’t lock it.