From Scratch (21 page)

For the first time I see a crack in Drew’s usually relaxed, easygoing facade, his gaze shining with worry, his mouth pulled down into a frown.

“I don’t understand,” he says. “We’re well suited. We have a content life. We love each other.”

I gulp down a breath, trying to get myself together. “I do love you, but not in the way that’s enough. Not in the way that’s fair to either of us.”

Drew shakes his head, as though he refuses to believe it. “I think you’re just confused, Lillie. With everything that’s been happening with your father, it makes sense. We don’t have to get married this February. We can take the break you said you needed and reevaluate later. Whatever it is, we’ll figure it out together. I don’t want to lose you. Not like this.”

For a second I feel my resolve crumbling. I picture the two of us fifteen years down the road, holding hands as we stroll along Michigan Avenue, people watching and window-shopping. Or the two of us lounging around in flannel pajamas and slippers on a Sunday morning, sipping coffee and reading the newspaper. I could live that life, maybe even learn to find happiness in it, but then I hear Nick’s taunting voice in my ear.
Keep pretending to be someone you’re not.
I know I have to remain strong, see this through to the end.

I shift on the step to look directly into his eyes. “I’m not confused.” My voice is gentle yet firm. “You shouldn’t want to marry someone who isn’t passionately in love with you because that’s what you deserve and what I can’t give you,” I say, echoing Nick’s words from earlier.

Drew studies my face. He must notice something in my expression that tells him everything he needs to know because he asks, “Is this about him? . . . Nick?”

A fist squeezes around my heart. Maybe I should deny it, spare Drew more pain, but I can’t lie to him. Not in addition to everything else. I’ve had enough of the secrets and the lies, because, truth be told, the only difference between a secret and a lie is that a secret is a lie not spoken aloud.

I swallow. “Yes, but this is more about
me
,” I say as the tears continue to flow. And I mean it. This
is
about me. I want something real and messy and complicated, no matter what happens between Nick and me in the future. “I’m so,
so
sorry, Drew. I never meant to hurt you.” Removing my engagement ring from my pocket, I set it in his open palm and close his fingers around it.

Drew’s eyes stay glued to his clenched hand. He’s quiet for a long time. When he meets my gaze, his lashes are wet, but there’s acceptance on his face. He kisses my forehead and whispers good-bye. The finality of his words feels like jumping into a cavern, endless, yet somehow freeing. Drew stands, and I watch him move farther and farther away from me until he vanishes under a blanket of darkness.

Out into a world where I can’t follow.

TWENTY-THREE

WHEN I ARRIVE
at the diner the next morning well before dawn, it’s dark and empty. Peaceful. It seems to be sleeping, its windows half lidded, waiting for its caffeine injection of clanging dishes, happy chatter, and jukebox songs.

I flip on the light in the back room and look around. The last time I stood in this exact spot, clutching my mother’s apron, I felt overcome with dread. This time, when I tie my father’s dancing clams apron around my waist, the soft, faded fabric roots me here.

I step around the bags of flour stacked on the floor beside the industrial mixer. The schedule posted on the corkboard nailed to the tile wall indicates today’s breakfast Blue Plate Special is pancetta and pear waffles with cinnamon honey syrup.

Grabbing the boom box off the shelf above the prep counter, I pop in the copy of
Resolution
Nick gave me and let the band’s music keep me company while I gather the ingredients from the walk-in pantry and refrigerator.

I rummage around in a drawer for the paring knife with the duct-taped wooden handle and take a pear from a wicker basket. Pressing the blade into the fat end, I turn the pear around and around, the skin falling onto the prep counter in one long curl. I repeat the process with another, then another. With each pear I peel, images of my father in the ICU, what happened with Nick the night before, fade away. For the first time in years I allow myself to just be. Before long all the pears are peeled, halved, cored, and arranged cut-side-up in baking dishes for roasting.

I pull the plug on the power cord as I hear the lock turn on the side door. A beat later, Ernie strolls into the back room, yawning. He stops when he sees me and whistles.

“You’ve been busy,” he says, hanging his jacket on a hook before putting on an apron. “I didn’t expect to find you here. I thought you’d be at the hospital.”

“Visiting hours haven’t started yet,” I say as I wipe down the prep counter. “Plus, I figured you may need some help.” In truth, I don’t know
why
I’m in the diner’s kitchen, only that when I woke up this morning, something primal and deep was pulling me to it. The desire was so strong I don’t know how I survived the last five years without it. Or why I ever allowed it to die in the first place.

Ernie rests a hand on my shoulder. “How are you holding together, Lillie?”

“Oh, you know. Fine.” My voice cracks. Tears fill my eyes. I blink them away. I’m so sick of crying. “I’ve been better,” I say, then fill Ernie in on everything Dr. Preston told me.

“Despite all that, I’m sure Jack will be in good spirits when you see him later,” he says.

“Yeah, probably too good,” I say with a laugh, though there are more holes in it than Swiss cheese. “I hope he takes his condition seriously.”

“Jack knows what’s at risk,” Ernie says. “Why else do you think he asked you to come back here? He needs you to force him to see sense when he’s too stubborn to see it for himself.”

I smile, surprised at how genuine it feels. Ernie’s always had this special way about him. How he can cut straight to the heart of the matter, remind you of exactly what’s important. I remember his first shift at the diner, nearly twenty years ago and without a lick of cooking experience. He jumped right in anyway. Before that, he repaired engines at a local body shop, and at night, played in an amateur baseball league with my father. Somehow my father suckered him into a career change. I’m glad he did.

Ernie squeezes my shoulder, then heads off to the kitchen. I finish the pears, drizzling lemon juice evenly over each half, dotting them with butter, and sprinkling the whole thing with vanilla bean–infused sugar. When I enter the kitchen, baking dishes in hand, Ernie has fired up the flat-top grill and preheated the oven for me. While the pears roast, I render some pancetta until crispy, combine cinnamon and honey in a large saucepan for the syrup, and prepare the waffle batter, which includes beating egg whites into soft peaks to add air into the mixture. Down the line, Ernie preps the ingredients for the usual breakfast staples: biscuits and red-eye gravy, overstuffed omelets with all the fixings, fried chicken and waffles, corned beef hash. My mouth waters over the different scents floating around me, familiar and welcoming.

With a pastry brush, I grease the waffle iron with vegetable oil, then pour batter into the center and scatter the pancetta bits on the top. Three minutes later, I pluck the fluffy waffle out of the iron and taste it immediately, burning my tongue and the roof of my mouth in the process. Still, the flavor is heavenly—slightly sweet with subtle savory notes. The perfect complement to the tender, grainy pears and warmed spiced syrup. Though the waffle texture isn’t quite right. I retrieve the wooden box containing my mother’s recipes from the office safe and flip through it.

“Searching for something?” Ernie asks, coming to stand beside me.

“There’s an ingredient missing in the batter, but for the life of me, I can’t remember what it is.” I bite my lip. “Where’s the card for this recipe?”

“Not in there.”

I meet his gaze. “Why not?” My father guards the contents of this box like an oyster guards its pearl. He notices when the cards get out of order, let alone if one disappears altogether.

“Because it’s not your mother’s recipe.”

“Then whose is it?”

Lines appear around Ernie’s eyes, extending down to his mouth in a frown. “It’s yours, Lillie.”

What is he talking about? Sure, a few Blue Plate Specials are inspired by my high school newspaper columns, but all the regular menu items trace back to my mother.

“What do you mean?”

“The original recipe used your mother’s classic Belgian waffle batter, but sometime during your middle school years, you revamped it, added your own touches like the pears and pancetta and syrup. We’ve been serving your version ever since. So if you want to know what ingredient is missing, you’re going to have to rack that pretty little brain of yours.”

Ernie stares at me the same way Sullivan Grace did that morning in my father’s kitchen. Like there’s something I’m supposed to understand but haven’t figured out yet.

It feels as if I’m running out of chances.

BY THE TIME
I climb behind the wheel of my truck, my body feels as though it could snap apart. I forgot how much filling orders, rushing about the kitchen, and pushing food down the line wreaks havoc on my muscles and joints.

I grab my cell phone out of the glove box and power it on. The icon for my voicemail inbox pops up. I cringe as I listen to the messages.

“Lillie, Thomas Brandon here. Kingsbury Enterprises wants to move up the product launch by a month. We need you on the next flight to Chi—”
Delete.
“It has been two hours since my last voicemail. I thought we already discussed your dedication to this project. If—”
Delete.
“It appears your phone has been turned off. White, Ogden, and Morris provides all employees with company cell phones with the expectation that—”
Delete.

I toss the phone onto the seat beside me and merge into traffic, driving in silence to Baylor Medical. As I’m parking in the visitor lot, my cell vibrates. Thomas Brandon. That man is more aggressive than a pit bull attacking a pork chop.

“Hello,” I say, entering the hospital through the sliding glass doors.

“Why haven’t I been able to reach you?” he barks.

I start to respond, but he cuts me off, spewing a tirade about my lack of commitment, my failure to complete tasks, my poor work ethic. I block him out as I walk down a hallway that reeks of antiseptic to the elevators. As I step into the ICU waiting area, Thomas Brandon transitions to ranting about my inability to function as a team leader, how brownnosing Ben is better suited to handle the responsibility. I can hear him breathing hard into the phone.

Finally he clears his throat and says, “You’re off the project, Lillie. I suggest you start looking for another place of employment.”

I stare at the screen as a laugh bubbles up. This is all so ridiculous. My father has a potentially fatal heart condition and everything with Nick is a mess and my friends have been lying to me for months and Thomas Brandon thinks I care about this job or a stupid promotion?

Just like with Drew, I know Annabelle’s right. If this career path were truly my passion, where I’m meant to be, I would’ve better managed my work obligations from Dallas. I would’ve prioritized my life in Chicago rather than sinking so easily back into my old life here.

“You have impeccable timing, Mr. Brandon.”

He grunts. “Why is that?”

“Because I quit.”

MY FATHER IS
awake and causing trouble as usual when I arrive at his room. Apparently not even a heart attack can slow him down.

“Baby girl, explain to Nancy here that I’m as ready as a Cornish game hen on plucking day,” he says as soon as he sees me come in. His skin still appears sallow, eyes sunken. The bruises marring his arms somehow seem even darker in the daylight. There’s a lipstick mark on his cheek that matches Sullivan Grace’s signature color.

I look at the nurse, Nancy, I guess, who is replacing an empty IV bag with a new one.

“Jackson is attempting to charm the hospital staff into discharging him early,” she says. “Which will only occur if the doctor grants the order. Until then, he’s staying in this bed.”

My father exhales a long breath, his cheeks puffing out. “What if I offered you free peach cobbler at the diner for a year? That’s a darn good deal if I do say so myself.”

“I don’t think that bribery is your lucky golden ticket to freedom,” I say, pulling up a chair beside his bed and settling into it. “Try amping up the flirting instead.”

The nurse laughs and excuses herself with the promise to return in an hour. My father mutters under his breath and glares at the muted television mounted on the wall.

I tuck the blanket tighter around him, then grab his hand. “How are you feeling?”

He says nothing. The room fills with the noise of medical equipment beeping, whirring, humming. When my father does respond, the words fly from his lips. “Baby girl, you need to get Ernie on the phone and confirm the Spoons hasn’t collapsed.”

“I was already there this—”

“Remind him that all floats are half price until closing.”

“Dad.”

“Tell Ernie he needs to get the pumpkin mac and cheese in the oven by three o’clock or else it won’t be ready in time for the dinner rush.”

I lean forward and say his name again, firmer this time.

“Then you need to help him prepare the—”

“Dad!” I shout, then soften my voice. “You could have died.”

He blinks, momentarily stunned. “Nonsense,” he says, recovering quickly and patting my hand as though placating a child. “I’m not going anywhere.”

I shake my head. My father has always been too stubborn, too prideful, to the point that it’s a detriment. Standing, I pace in front of the windows and peer out at the world below. In the reflection of the glass, I can see my father watching me, a wrinkle between his brows.

A knock on the door makes my heart jump like water droplets in hot grease. Dr. Preston strolls in. “How is my happiest patient today?” he says, a stethoscope around his neck. He nods and smiles when he sees me, one side of his mouth lifting higher than the other just like his son. An orderly trails after him, carrying a tray.

“Never better, Doc. Never better,” my father says, wincing as he struggles to sit up.

“Easy,” I say, propping the pillows behind him.

The orderly sets the tray on the bedside table and removes the plastic cover before exiting. My father sniffs at the bowl of chicken broth and pokes at the blob of green Jell-O. “Doc, I ain’t touching no food that resembles sea foam salad and probably tastes just as questionable.”

“Then it appears that starving yourself is the only other viable option because from now on your middle name is Nutritious,” Dr. Preston says. He performs a physical examination, listening to my father’s chest, inspecting his incisions, checking his tubes and vital signs.

My father grumbles something about convincing the nurse with the pretty green eyes to sneak him pancakes later.

Dr. Preston scribbles notes on a chart, then spends the next ten minutes explaining to my father the severity of his prognosis and his updated treatment plan. I write down Dr. Preston’s instructions word for word, even though he already outlined all of this to me yesterday.

“Do either of you have any questions or need me to go over anything again?” Dr. Preston asks.

I tell him no, while my father continues grumbling. A voice crackles over the PA system, requesting Dr. Preston’s presence in the OR immediately. “My apologies. If you’ll excuse me,” he says, then dashes out of the room.

“We have quite the journey ahead of us to make you healthy again, Dad,” I say after the door clicks shut.

“I don’t know why everyone’s got to be such dream crushers. Even Nick’s sayin’ I’ve got to lay off the mashed taters.”

“Nick was here?” I ask, surprised, but then, of course, Nick would visit my father. No matter what Nick’s feelings are toward me, my father is still hugely important to him.