I closed my eyes. I was feeling the effects of my drive, and not up to a fight right now.
“I agree that this time has a different feel to it. CBS programming isn’t usually the method you use to get me to come home, or fix something, or make a call, or literally bail you out when you flood the basement because you forget to turn off the hose. But I’m talking about in the future. When these things happen again? Not going to come running. I’ve got my own life to take care of. I have a career—or I’m trying to, anyway. We clear?”
She opened her mouth. Then closed it. Then opened it again.
“When will you be back?” I asked quietly.
“The main producer said I won’t be able to check in, something about a nondisclosure, but that in an emergency I’d be able to contact you or vice versa, so don’t think that—”
“When will you be back?” I repeated.
“It depends on how well I do, how well Aunt Cheryl does, if we’re able to stay in the game until the end, so—”
I used literally every ounce of patience available to me to calmly ask one more time, “When. Will you. Be back?”
“September. Hopefully by Labor Day.”
Three months. I’d be here the entire summer. Wow. Would I have totally morphed back into my high school self by the time she returned?
I sat up tall. I wasn’t that socially awkward girl anymore. I was a graduate of the American Culinary Institute. A private chef in Los Angeles. California Roxie, a chef so talented I once made a spotted dick so good that Jack Hamilton made a face I’m pretty sure only Grace Sheridan usually gets to see.
I took a deep breath, centered, and nodded. “Okay. The summer. That’s fine.”
“Really?” she asked, looking surprised and relieved.
I forced a smile. “I’m sure it will be just fine. And I’m exhausted, so I’m going to bed.”
I settled into my childhood bed, surrounded by everything important to me as a teenage girl. Instead of posters of Justin Timberlake and Edward Cullen, I had a shrine to Eric Ripert and Anthony Bourdain. Those two would make a heavenly sandwich for any woman to slip in between. If asked, I’d be their meat.
Instead of cheerleading pom-poms and pictures of the prom, I had framed menus from some of my favorite restaurants in New York City. The NoMad. WD-50. The Shake Shack. Pok Pok NY. Union Square Café. Of course Le Bernardin. See above-mentioned Ripert/Bourdain sammich.
While other girls in my high school were planning which sorority to rush next year in college and what dress to wear to prom, I was daydreaming about chanterelles and geoduck. Of the American Culinary Institute in beautiful, sunny Santa Barbara. A world away from my hometown.
And here I was, back in the house I’d grown up in. I pulled back the comforter, smiling when I smelled the homemade lavender laundry soap my mom made each summer, when the herb gardens in the backyard were thick with spicy scent.
She forgot to leave me a note on the door, but she made sure I had fresh sheets.