Summer at Seaside Cove (43 page)

“But . . . but I've never even seen you put bread in the toaster!” Heather protested. “Rosario does all the cooking at home,” she added, referring to their live-in housekeeper.

“Which is why I never had to learn—someone's always done it for me.” Laurel's voice grew louder with each word and Jamie's brows rose at her sister's growing agitation. “You've never seen me cook because I do it when you're at school.”

“How come?” Heather asked in a tone that sounded both bewildered and hurt. “You know I like to cook. Why wouldn't you do it with me?”

Laurel slapped the peeled onion onto the counter and regarded Heather through eyes that reflected anger and suppressed emotion. “You want to know why? Fine. I'll tell you. It's because I wanted to surprise you. For your birthday. I know you enjoy cooking with Jamie and so I wanted to learn so I could cook with you, too. I've only had a couple of lessons, so I'm still a novice, but I was planning to cook you dinner for your birthday. But then you came here and . . . well, that was the end of that.”

She then turned to Jamie and said in a tight voice, “I hope you know how lucky you are that you grew up with Daddy and a mom who taught you how to cook rather than having to pay someone to give you lessons.” She turned her head to include Jamie's mother when she said, “I may have grown up with a lot of money, but there are some things that money just can't buy. Things that both of you were fortunate to have.”

Without another word, she set the onion on a small cutting board and carefully applied her knife to it.

Silence throbbed in the kitchen for several long seconds. Then Heather cleared her throat. “Mom . . . you were really going to cook me dinner for my birthday?”

“Well, I was going to
try
. No promises as to the results. Just lots of prayers I didn't poison us.”

“Wow, Mom. I seriously don't know what to say. Except that that's really . . . cool. And that you're full of surprises lately.”

“Good. I'd hate to think I'm boring.”

No, Laurel definitely wasn't boring, Jamie decided, shaking her head. And she couldn't deny that she sounded sincere or that she'd heard that bleak note in her voice when she'd said there were things money couldn't buy. Growing up, Jamie had spent countless hours in the kitchen with both her mom and dad. She couldn't imagine not having done so. Not having those special memories. Memories Laurel didn't have.

They went about their tasks, and Jamie sensed a slight lessening in the tension—as if a storm had passed. The quiet was punctuated by the whirr of the food processor as Jamie pureed the ripe tomatoes she'd purchased at a farm stand near the Piggly Wiggly. Soon the scent of onions sautéing in olive oil filled the kitchen.

“Smells great in here already,” Laurel remarked, sniffing the air. She watched Jamie add sliced garlic to the large pot, then stir with a wooden spoon.

“How do you keep the garlic from burning?” Laurel asked, moving to stand next to Jamie in front of the stove. “I keep ending up with brown, overcooked garlic.”

“Your heat is probably too high,” Jamie said. “The oil should barely sizzle. Then only sauté the garlic for about twenty to thirty seconds—that's all you need to release the flavor. After that you start adding your other ingredients and that keeps the garlic from overcooking on its own.” She demonstrated by pouring in the pureed tomatoes. “Ready for the herbs, Mom.”

Her mother slid the basil and oregano from her cutting board into the pot. Heather added freshly ground pepper while Jamie tossed in a pinch of salt. After giving the pot a stir, she put on the lid and then wiped her hands on her apron.

“Done. We'll just let that cook while we get these other dishes going.”

“Did I ever tell you about the first time your father made spaghetti sauce for me?” Jamie's mother asked.

Jamie and Laurel exchanged a quick glance. “I don't think so,” Jamie said. “What happened?”

“Did it turn out good?” Heather asked.

Jamie's mom laughed. “God, no. It was an utter disaster. Tom forgot to turn down the heat once the sauce came to a boil. It burned on the bottom and tasted like scorched dirt. While trying to rescue the sauce, he completely forgot about the meatballs and they burned, too, which set off the smoke alarm.” She chuckled at the memory. “Poor guy. It was our second date and he was trying so hard to impress me and everything went wrong. Since I knew next to nothing about cooking back then, I wasn't any help at all. The first time I tried to cook chicken?” A shudder ran through her. “I discovered that overcooked chicken tastes like cardboard and undercooked chicken tastes like bird Jell-O.”

“Bird Jell-O?” Heather said. “E ww ww! That sounds gross!”

“Try tasting it,” Jamie's mom said dryly.

“I've set off the kitchen smoke alarm a few times,” Jamie said.

“I've set it off every time I've attempted to cook,” Laurel said with a laugh.

Jamie's mom's gaze bounced between her and Laurel. “Obviously you're both your father's daughters.”

Jamie's gaze flew to Laurel and she found her sister regarding her through serious eyes. A long look passed between them, then Laurel said softly, “Yes, I guess we are.”

A heart owie fluttered through Jamie, one that filled her with the sudden urge to reach out and touch Laurel's hand, to make physical that instant of emotional connection she'd felt flow between them. But then she recalled Laurel's betrayal, the profound hurt, and she curled her hand into a fist and looked away.

“Meatballs are next,” she said, moving to the fridge to take out the necessary ingredients. Jamie added the ground beef to a large bowl and mixed the ingredients with her hands while her mother and Laurel added eggs, bread crumbs, herbs, minced garlic and onions, and grated Romano cheese as Jamie asked for them. Heather, meanwhile, set the oven to preheat, then added the lasagna noodles to the pot of water, which had come to a boil.

“Grandpa Tom always used to tell me that food brings people together,” Heather said, coming to join them at the counter. “I never really thought about that much, but”—she made a circling motion with her hand that encompassed the four of them—“it seems like he was right.”

Laurel nodded. “I never really got it when he'd say that, but yes, I'm starting to see what he meant.”

Heather guffawed. “Mom, you never got it because, until you started those cooking lessons just a couple months ago, the only thing you'd ever made in a kitchen was a mess.”

Jamie thought for sure Laurel would take offense at her daughter's words, but instead she laughed. “True. But thanks to the cooking lessons, I'm now making even bigger messes in the kitchen.” Just then the egg she was holding slipped from her grasp and fell to the floor with a wet splat. They all looked down at the gooey mess. Then they all raised their gazes and burst out laughing.

“See?” Laurel said, reaching for the paper towels.

“You sure timed that well, Mom.”

Jamie's mother suddenly frowned and sniffed the air. “Do you smell something? Like something's burning—”

The screeching wail of the smoke alarm pierced the air. Jamie's gaze flew to the stove, but nothing seemed amiss there. Then she saw that the oven was on. Pulling her fingers from the bowl where she was mixing the meatball ingredients, she stuffed her hand into a pot holder and flicked on the oven's interior light and peered through the tempered glass. No flames—thank God, but there was something in there, on the rack. Something that looked like . . . paper? What the hell?

“Stand back, and someone turn on the faucet,” she yelled to be heard over the deafening noise. She opened the oven door. A poof of smoke emerged, along with the pungent scent of burnt paper. She reached in and grabbed a booklet with curled, charred edges from which wisps of smoke rose. Jamie slammed the door, then immediately tossed the paper into the sink and directed the spray of running water on it.

The screen door burst open and Nick ran in, followed by Alex.

“What's going on?” Nick shouted.

“Everything's fine,” Jamie yelled. She grabbed a dish towel and waved it vigorously beneath the smoke detector. Her mother, Laurel, and Heather grabbed towels and waved them as well. “Smoke alarm went off.”

“Got that part,” Nick hollered.

Just then the piercing noise stopped. Jamie blew out a sigh of relief at the sudden silence and lowered her arms.

“What happened?” Nick asked.

“Well, the good news is your smoke detector works,” Jamie reported.

“Got that part, too,” said Nick. “The question is why did it go off?”

“That's the bad news.” Jamie moved to the sink, turned off the faucet and then lifted the dripping booklet with two fingers. “The operation manual for your oven has seen better days.” She glanced at the charred front page and read the oversized, bold lettering, “Do not leave in oven. Remove immediately.”

Heather clamped her hands over her mouth. “OMG. I never thought to look in the oven before I turned it on. I'm so sorry.”

“No problem,” Jamie said, dropping the soggy papers back in the sink. She shot a pointed look at Nick. “Wouldn't have happened if
someone
had taken the manual out of the oven when he installed it. Obviously you haven't used your new oven yet.”

“Sweetheart, I don't even know how to turn the stupid thing on,” Nick said, shaking his head.

Jamie shook her head. “Jeez. What the heck did they teach you at Princeton anyway?”

“Nothing about ovens.”

“You
seriously
need that cooking lesson I promised you.”

“Starting with the very basics,” Nick agreed.

Jamie's mom started to laugh. “At least the sauce didn't burn on the bottom and it wasn't the meatballs that set off the alarm.”

Heather giggled, adding, “And at least it's not bird Jell-O.”

Laurel joined in, and then Jamie, and suddenly none of them could stop laughing.

“OMG, you should have seen your face, Mom,” Heather said, tears of mirth streaming down her cheeks.

“OMG, you should have seen
your
face,” Jamie mimicked to Heather.

“It's almost like Tom was listening and decided to make his presence known,” Jamie's mom said.

“In the noisiest way possible, which was just like him,” Laurel added, brushing tears of laughter from beneath her eyes.

Nick turned to Alex. “You have any idea what the hell is so funny?”

“Beats me. I just hope we're not having bird Jell-O for dinner. But just in case, I'm gonna deaden a few taste buds. Want a beer?”

“Good idea.”

That exchange set the four women off into more gales of laughter. Alex grabbed two long-neck bottles from the fridge, and after he and a clearly baffled Nick had once again headed outside, Jamie grabbed a wad of paper towels and passed them around so they could all wipe her eyes.

“Well,
that
was fun,” Jamie said. She eyed the bowl of partially mixed meatball ingredients. “Think we can get these finished without any further catastrophes?”

“One way to find out,” her mother said. With a devilish grin she picked up the box of breadcrumbs and sprinkled some into the mixture.

They all washed their hands, then resumed working. As Jamie formed the meatballs, she asked, “You know what Heather said about cooking bringing people together?”

“I was wrong,” said Heather, draining the lasagna noodles. “It's smoke alarms that bring people together.”

They all laughed. “Seriously, I bet ninety percent of the world's problems could be solved in the kitchen,” Jamie continued. “Think about it. If political leaders would get out of the war room and into the kitchen—”

“Planet Earth would be a better place,” said Laurel, nodding.

“That would be a lot of cooks,” Jamie's mother said. “You know what they say about too many of them spoiling the broth.”

“There're a lot of cooks in this kitchen,” Heather pointed out. “Three generations of us. And we're doing pretty good.”

“Exactly,” said Laurel. “Instead of arguing about nuclear weapons, those political leaders could debate the virtues of paprika versus cumin—”

“Discuss whether Himalayan sea salt is superior to the Mediterranean variety,” added Jamie. “You know, subjects that don't lead to wars and death.”

“Mediterranean gets my vote,” said her mom.

Jamie shot her mother a mock ferocious scowl. “I prefer Himalayan.”

Mom scowled right back at her. “This means war.”

More laughter filled the kitchen. As they began browning the meatballs, Jamie mused, “Cooking has always been like therapy for me. It relaxes me. Takes my mind off everything else.”

“Although I'm new to cooking, I'm finding it affects me the same way,” said Laurel, rinsing the used utensils and putting them in the dishwasher.

Jamie's mom nodded. “Me, too. The kitchen is always where I've done my best thinking. Except when it came to helping Jamie with her high school math homework. I remember us suffering through trigonometry problems in between baking batches of cookies.”

“I remember you weren't much help in the sine, cosine, tangent departments,” Jamie teased.

Her mom laughed. “No kidding. About all I could do was commiserate with you and keep your glass of milk refilled. I was fine helping with the math when you were younger, but all that algebra and trig—yikes. I barely squeaked through it when
I
was in high school. Who knew triangles could be so complicated?”