Monday morning Alice opened the kitchen door of the Riverview Inn and stepped into a dream. Her dream.
Doubt, second thoughts, worry that she’d somehow screw this up the way she’d screwed up Zinnia, had plagued her for the past three days, since taking the job. Uncertainty had dogged her as she drove down from Albany. But now, as she set down her bag and tried to catch her breath, worry vanished.
This kitchen was hers. Meant to be hers. It was as if Gabe had opened her head and pulled out the daydreams and plans she’d been accumulating over the years.
A south-facing window overlooking a brilliant green forest filled the room with sunshine. The pale cream walls seemed to glow in the clear morning light and the appliances sparkled, clean and unused.
Racks of pots hung from the ceiling. She reached up and carefully knocked the saucepan into a sauté pan and reflected light scattered across the far wall.
It was the most beautiful kind of chandelier.
A stainless steel table filled the bottom portion of the L-shaped room beside two big glass-front refrigerators.
In a place that was often busy and loud and filled with a sort of graceful chaos, the silence of the downtimes seemed almost healing.
A kitchen at rest, a kitchen such as this one, was a beautiful thing. A place of peace.
She ran her hand along the chopping block sitting next to the stove. The same monster slab of oak, easily ten inches thick, used to sit in their house. It had come from Gabe’s mother whose parents had been Polish butchers. Thousands of pigs had been bled on that wood, thousands of cabbages had been chopped, thousands of perogies had been rolled and formed there. Alice wanted to climb on top of it and dance.
This kitchen even smelled like a fresh start.
I will stop drinking, she promised. I will not waste this chance. She made the promise even as the remainder of last night’s wine throbbed in her skull. I will swallow my resentment and try very hard not to fight with my ex-husband.
“Hey,” Gabe said from behind her as if her promise had conjured him. She couldn’t quite face him yet. Things in her were shaken loose by the beauty of the place, by her earnest desire to deserve this fresh start.
“Executive chef,” she said, opening a door to find a small closet, lined with shelves, ready for spices and root vegetables, maple syrup and vinegars, “reporting for duty.”
“What do you think?” he asked and she finally had to look at him. For an instant she wanted to shield her eyes from the radiant brightness of him. He was clean and fresh in a wrinkled white shirt and khaki pants, his blond hair mussed by his hands, his face tanned from working outside.
He looked like a lifeguard. A Swiss Alps ski-rescue guy. He just needed the dog.
She felt small in comparison, dark and mean, dressed in black because it didn’t require her to think to coordinate.
“Alice?” he said, breaking in to her ugly comparisons. He ducked his head to look into her eyes and smiled. “What do you think? Recognize it?”
She realized, belatedly, that the kitchen wasn’t a coincidence. She’d told him a million times what a kitchen should look like according to her. She’d sketched the floor plan on the bare skin of his back over and over again.
“It’s amazing,” she said, her joy in finding her dream brought to life turning to cold resentment. Of course he would take this for himself, too. “You know that.”
“I practically have the floor plan tattooed on my back.” He grinned and the reminder of their intimacies, casually uttered out loud, chilled her to the bone. “When the time came to design the kitchen, I just remembered everything you taught me.”
It was a compliment, probably a sincere one, but she didn’t want compliments.
This is not mine, she told herself, ripping the dream from her clenched fists. I am hired help. I am a bit player. She had no business coveting the butcher’s block, imagining years of early mornings in this kitchen, planning menus.
There is nothing I want, she reminded herself. There is nothing I need.
She forced cold distance into her head and her heart and when she looked at the beautiful kitchen, the chandelier of pots and pans, she just saw things. Inanimate objects that had no relationship to her, that cost her nothing and only represented a way to get out of debt and move on with her life.
They were tools. That’s all. Gabe, this kitchen, the whole inn, they were a means to an end.
“I think we better get to work if you want to open in a month,” she said, cold as ice.
“But did you see the view?” Gabe pointed to the window. “Come on, we can have coffee and take a walk around the grounds. We have a capacity of one hundred guests between the cottages and the lodge, which we’re hoping—”
“No.” She shook her head. “I just want to work, Gabe. That’s all.”
For a moment she thought he might ask her what was wrong. Instead, true to form, he nodded in that definitive way that always indicated he was biting his tongue. “Okay. Come on into the office and we’ll talk—”
“Get your hands off me!” someone yelled, and both Gabe and Alice whirled to the doorway leading to the dining room. They stood like deer in headlights while the swinging door banged open and Max and a teenage boy plowed into the kitchen. “Didn’t you hear what I said!” The kid, practically drowning in oversize black clothes, yelled.
“Yep. And I’m not touching you.”
“Good, don’t start.”
Alice nearly stepped back, as though the kid were a rabid dog.
“Here he is,” Max said and from the corner of her eye she saw Gabe’s mouth fall open.
“You’re kidding me,” he said.
“Nope.” Max shook his head. “This is Cameron.”
“Cut that out, man,” Cameron said, jerking himself away from Max. “The name is DJ Dolla Dolla Bills.”
“That makes you sound like an idiot,” Max said. “Your name is Cameron.”
“Hi, Max,” Alice said, pleased to see her former brother-in-law. The best things about Gabe were his brother and father, both as emotionally stunted as Gabe, but at least they didn’t try to pretend otherwise.
“Hey, Alice,” Max said with a quick grin. “Good to see you.”
“Good to see you, too.” She meant it. “How you keeping?”
“Starving,” he said. “We’ve been living on toast and freeze-dried noodles around here.”
Alice shuddered and Max’s grin stretched into a smile. He looked thin, painfully so, and wounded in some dark way, as if all the intensity that had illuminated him was banked, burning out.
“What the hell am I doing here, man?” Cameron asked. “This is an after-school program.”
“Not when you’ve got a day off school. Then it’s an all-day program.” Max answered.
“This your love-child you never told us about?” Alice asked Max, falling into their old give-and-take.
“This dude ain’t my father,” Cameron answered for him.
“Gabe didn’t tell you?” Max asked, his dark eyebrows hitting his hairline, and Alice suddenly felt a serious lack of information.
“Tell me what?” She crossed her arms over her chest, just in case Gabe misinterpreted her tone as happy.
It took a moment, but Gabe finally issued a response. He looked at her, put on his game face and said, “He’s your staff.”
“Bullshit!” the kid yelled.
Alice laughed. “I’m with him.”
Gabe winced and remained silent, which could mean only one thing. Alice’s mouth fell open. “You’re kidding.”
He shook his head.
“You’re kidding.” She turned to Max, who only shrugged.
She finally focused on the kid, whose eyes met hers briefly. “I got nothing to kid about,” he said, looking as unhappy as she felt.
She shook her head. “I can work alone until I get proper staff.”
“Okay,” Max said, opening the swing door behind him. “Let’s go back to stacking that wood.”
“This is bullshit!” The kid hollered as Max led him into the dining room.
Gabe’s silence worried her, actually set small stones a-twirl in her stomach. “What aren’t you telling me, Gabe?”
“There’s no money for staff unless you take a pay cut,” he said point-blank. “Not until the next check comes in from the Crimpsons.”
“When will that be?” She asked, disbelieving.
“Two weeks.”
“Even if that kid was Cordon Bleu trained, I couldn’t pull together the menu for this wedding with one staff member!”
“I know.” He rubbed his forehead. “We open in a month and I’ve already got some reservations and am running an Internet spring promotion, so I should get more. I can make this work. We can use the money—”
She laughed, listening to him rob from Peter to pay Paul.
“You think this is funny?” he asked, his blue eyes dangerously clouded over.
“A little, yeah.”
“Great. Wonderful attitude from my chef.”
“You hired a chef, Gabe. Not a cheer-leader. If you’re screwing up—”
Her comment must have lit his dormant temper because he bristled. “I’m not screwing up. You’re the one doing two months’ work for the price of what I had earmarked for a yearly chef’s salary.”
She shrugged. “You should have gotten a beginner chef.”
“No, you should have been reasonable.”
“Ah, I thought I recognized that voice.”
Patrick Mitchell’s loud voice boomed through the kitchen, stalling their argument as he stepped in from the outside. His red flannel shirt matched his ruddy cheeks and it was as if the sun had come out from behind clouds. Indomitably cheerful, that was Patrick, and she was inordinately glad to see him.
“There’s only one person Gabe actually fights with,” Patrick said and held out his thick burly arms. Alice allowed herself to be hugged, the sensation odd but pleasant enough since it didn’t last too long.
When was the last time someone touched me? she wondered. Even casually. That awkward embarrassing kiss from Charlie months ago, when she’d been so lonely and sad and drunk that she’d let him touch her.
She didn’t know when she lost the capacity for casual touch, when any sort of physical affection, no matter how benign, made her ache.
“How is my favorite former daughter-in-law?” Patrick asked, his blue eyes twinkling.
Some of the tension from locking horns with Gabe fell away and she smiled, even patted Patrick’s grizzled cheek.
“Don’t tell me he’s got you working here, too?” she asked.
“Unpaid labor.” Patrick shook his head, always one for teasing. “At least now we’ll have decent chow.”
“Don’t be too sure, Dad,” Gabe said, leaning against the doorjamb of his office. “She may have decided she doesn’t like the terms.”
“Always trying to make it my fault, aren’t you, Gabe.”
“If the shoe—”
“Wonderful!” Patrick rubbed his hands together. “If you don’t mind, Max and I are just going to pull up some chairs and watch you two duke it out for the next few months. That way no work will get done.” His eyes flicked from her to Gabe, who, chagrined by his father’s reverse chastisement, looked down at his shoes.
“I told Max this was going to be trouble,” Patrick said and she could feel his direct gaze on her face.
She’d only been here minutes and already things were going wrong.
“I can make it work,” Gabe said, resolute. “It won’t be a problem.”
“For you,” she said.
“You, either,” Gabe insisted, his tone hard, his smile sharp. “I will make it work.”
She nodded, wondering why she felt so small. So dark and ill-tempered. He was the one who had lied, who had told her he had staff. She shouldn’t feel bad because she was making him hold up his end of the bargain.
“You always do,” she said. He did. He could make gold out of hay without making it look hard.
“Ah, that’s how children should play,” Patrick said. “Nice.”
“Don’t you have some work to do, Dad?” Gabe asked.
“I’m going to hook up your fancy dishwasher,” he said, pointing to the far corner of the room where a dishwasher sat, with its tube and wire guts spread out across the floor.
He winked at Alice and vanished behind the equipment.
“Let’s get to work,” she said and pushed past Gabe into his minuscule office. “I’ve got some ideas for menus.”
Gabe had prepared himself for the worst. He was fortified by too much caffeine, and ready to do battle with Alice over kitchen operations. But, surprisingly, there was no battle. It didn’t take long for them to ease into their old routine. They were rusty at first, but the one thing they’d always shared—well, two things—was that they were both perfectionists. Fortunately, they both had the same idea of what perfect was.
“All right—” Alice looked down at her notebook “—breakfast buffets at the beginning. You have some kind of waitstaff, or do you expect me to do that?” She glanced at him from beneath her lashes and her eyes, black as night, twinkled just a little more than they had before, and he sighed.
“I’ve got staff.”
“Juvenile delinquents?” She was having too much fun with this at his expense. “DJ Dolla Dolla Bills going to be your front-of-house staff? He’ll be a real hit with guests.”
“You’re hilarious. No, I’ve got it taken care of. Keep going—” He pointed at her list, though he had all the pertinent details of their conversation locked in his head. His years as a waiter had honed his memory.
“Two options for lunch. Two options for dinner, including a vegetarian pasta, and three desserts.” She tapped her pencil on the pad. “Are there going to be kids?” she asked but she didn’t look up. He wondered how long that open emotional sore of hers was going to still bleed.
“There are no reservations with children yet. I’ll let you know when there are.”
“Great.” She took a deep breath, her thin shoulders lifting under her black blouse. “Then I can make up something kid friendly.”
“I’m missing some equipment,” he told her. “Food processor, blender, some larger roasting pans. If you want to write up a list I’ll go see what I can find.”
“I brought what I’ll need,” she said, still staring at the pad of paper. “It’s in my car.”
“Always prepared.” He repeated fondly the motto she used to live by. The woman used to carry a can opener, a bottle opener, a paring knife and curry powder in the glove box of her car.
Camping with her had been like roughing it at the Ritz.
She flashed him a quick smile but never stopped scribbling.
“I’m getting a list of food we’re going to need. I can run to Athens today and pick up some stuff,” she said, more to herself than him.
“I’ve found a few organic farms in the area.”
“Great. Let me just finish this…”
She still appeared so dramatic, her thinness only adding somehow to the tragic appeal of her.
Daphne of Athens Organics, her wholesome, honest plainness was the exact opposite of his ex-wife. In fact, most of the women he’d dated after the marriage ended could be considered, in one way or another, the exact opposite of Alice.
Which wasn’t an accident.
“Now, the organic farmers. What are we looking at?”
“I met with a local farmer yesterday and we have an appointment to tour her farm tomorrow morning.” He handed Alice Daphne’s card.
“We?” Alice asked and exhaled heavily. “Gabe, you are supposed to be staying out of my way, remember? We shook on it.”
“Okay.” He nodded and leaned forward in his chair, putting his pencil against the top edge of his blotter, reluctant to look at her. Why? he wondered, angry with himself. It’s been five years, I’ve dated a lot of women and I’m sure she went on her share of dates, too. But still, it seemed like he might shatter this nice…equilibrium between them.
“You have an appointment,” he said. “I…have a date.”
He cleared his throat to break the silence.
“You’re dating a farmer?” she asked. She blinked at him, unruffled. He couldn’t tell if she was kidding with him, which would be like the old Alice. But this new incarnation…she didn’t seem to be much for joking.
“Her name is Daphne and she runs the farm.”
“So, she’s a farmer.”
“She runs…yes, she’s a farmer.”
“You date her in the morning?” she asked.
“It’s our first. For coffee.” Why he felt compelled to tell her, he wasn’t sure. But perhaps it was better to get it all out there, instead of having her be surprised at some point. A surprised Alice was a recipe for the unexpected.
“This should be good,” she said, her lips quirked in a grin. She stood, tucked her notebook into her bag.
That’s it? he wondered, waiting for her punch line. Her zinger. But none seemed forthcoming and he wondered if maybe he’d braced himself for nothing. Maybe, he realized with a slight relaxing of his shoulders, they could do this—work together, be in each other’s lives—like adults.
“You want to show me to my room, or cabin or whatever?” she asked. Her eyes held no secrets. No questions, no suppressed anger and resentment.
He nodded and stood up as well.
We’re going to be just fine, he thought and grabbed the key to the smallest cabin that so far was unrented.
The need for a drink was stronger than all her promises and wishes. The need to drink was a demon in the back of her throat, in the back of her head, howling and screaming and tearing her apart with temptation.
A date. Of course. Gabe dates. She knew that intellectually. But to have to watch him do it made her feel trapped.
She followed her ex-husband out the back door of the kitchen, around the front of the inn and down a narrow foot-worn path and battled her demon with the cooling calming influence of lists.
Lists of men she’d dated since her divorce.
Marcus, Luke and…
Marcus and Luke. Each for about ten minutes.
That was depressing. Fine. She’d focus on work lists. Things she needed for work.
Well, first on the list was calling Daphne and rescheduling her appointment. Alice wasn’t going to drive up to the farm with Gabe for his date. She needed to find a dairy supplier. Meats. Start making stocks, pesto—
“Here you go,” Gabe said, opening the door to a cabin. “This is yours until I need to rent it and then I’ll move you into the lodge with Dad and Max and myself. Cleaning staff will come by once a week with fresh linens and towels.”
The cabin was small, sweet and redolent of the scent of fresh paint and sawdust. The blue and green linens on the white-painted brass bed lifted and waved in the cross breeze between the open east-facing windows and the door.
The cabin was exactly as Gabe had always envisioned for his inn. His dream come true. Her throat tightened with uncomfortable emotion.
“Bathroom’s through there.” He pointed behind the door, then handed her the keys.
She took them, clenching her fingers around the cool metal. Say something, she urged herself. Say something about how well he’s done. How perfectly he’s brought the dream to life, how glad I am to see this come to fruition. Say something. Anything.
“Shout if you need anything,” Gabe said, then turned and walked away.
She watched him go, the words dead in her throat. Another in a long line of missed opportunities.
Unpacking her personal stuff from the car took an embarrassingly small amount of time. Four chef jackets, two pairs of checkered pants, some regular clothes and clogs.
She shook her head at the meager clothes hanging in the closet, like deflated, lonely people.
Toothbrush, expensive face and hand lotion sat on the glass shelf over the old-fashioned pedestal sink in the bathroom.
She took a look around the cozy cabin that was no doubt made for lovers, for two toothbrushes and closets filled with his-and-her clothes, and shuddered.
I gotta get the hell out of here.
Far more comfortable in the kitchen, she unloaded those indispensable kitchen items from her house. Food processor, standing mixer, her knives, her grandmother’s cast iron skillet, roasting pans and recipe box—all handed down in her family like diamond engagement rings were handed down in others.
With nothing else to do but tour the grounds and constantly come face-to-face with the physical reality of their once-shared dream, she pulled out the Athens Organics card and rescheduled her appointment.
“Well,” she said when Daphne asked her for a good time to reschedule. It was five in the afternoon. “I’m free right now. I can be there in a half hour.”
“Ahh,” Daphne stalled for a moment and Alice wondered if she actually was going to have to piggyback Gabe’s coffee date.
Really, she wondered, was there anything more depressing.
“That work’s great,” Daphne finally said. “I also have some information on local butchers and a great recommendation for an organic dairy farm near Coxsackie.”
Smart woman, Alice thought, hanging up. But I’m still not going to like her.
Alice grabbed her keys and beat a hasty retreat from Riverview Inn.
She flew down the New York interstate then took Highway 12 along the river, past Black Rock and the old Van Loan mansion. Twilight came to the Catskills like a slow bleed of India ink from the east, while the western sky remained light behind the rounded back of the old mountain chain.
It was beautiful country. She’d grown up here—her parents were only a hundred miles away from where Gabe had built the inn.
Alice rolled down the window and let the cool air hit her cheek, slide into the open neck of her blouse. She was tired, hungry but, she was honest enough to admit it… excited. Excited about filling the back of her car with herbs and organic potatoes and radishes. Excited about waking up early tomorrow, putting on a pot of coffee and getting to work.
Excited about organic dairy suppliers, mint pesto, incoming guests…all of it. She was excited about life again. She’d lived in such a small dark place for so long, constantly trying to fill up the emptiness in herself with empty things—work she didn’t care about, wine that didn’t help her forget. But this opportunity…she felt flushed with ideas.
She cranked the wheel left, nearly missing the turnoff to the farm. Another quarter mile and she was in front of a lovely white and yellow farmhouse. Dogs ran out from bushes to greet her and she felt, inexplicably, that Athens Organics was going to be a perfect match for her kitchen.
“Hi.”
Alice turned to find a young blond girl standing at her window. She was about five.
For one second, one naked and vulnerable moment, Alice couldn’t breathe.
Alice didn’t even have to do the math or work hard to recall the expected due date of her first pregnancy. The information was imprinted on her bones. She knew that her own daughter, stillborn at twenty weeks would be this girl’s age.
“Hi,” she said and swallowed. “I’m Alice—”
“You’re here to see my mom,” the girl said. “She’s out in the herb field and I’m supposed to take you there.” She smiled. Her front tooth was missing, and something purple and sticky was stuck to the side of her face.
“Your mom is Daphne?” Alice asked needlessly, knowing the answer already because fate was just that vindictive.
“Yep.” The girl nodded, blond pigtails flapping with her zeal. “I’m Helen.”
Alice climbed out of her car on legs that felt weak around the knees. She was used to seeing children, little girls or boys who were the age of her two babies who never made it would be. She was used to talking with them, trying not stare at them too long or touch them at all. And she was quick to leave their company.
She just wasn’t used to meeting the children of women Gabe planned to date.
No wonder, she thought cruelly, as those parts of her that had begun to feel full—her joy, excitement and thrill—emptied again in her unrelenting grief. No wonder he’s ready to date the farmer.
Two hours later, won over by Daphne’s farm and exhausted by trying to ignore Helen, Alice parked in the area behind the kitchen that was still covered in grass. She leaped out of the car, leaving the herbs and sample produce in the back. She’d return for it after she got dinner made.
It was late already, seven-thirty, so she quickly took stock of what the men had been living on.
Bacon, eggs, pasta. Cream for Patrick’s coffee. Two wizened apples, an inexplicable lime and two industrial-size cans of coffee.
All signs pointed to pasta cabonara. With nothing green in sight. The produce in the back of her car was earmarked for the work in the morning. Besides, vegetable-free was the way the Mitchell men liked their dinners.
She pulled down the new pans, turned the dials on the gas stove, and soon, the smell of bacon and garlic sautéing in olive oil had attracted the men like bees to a picnic.
Gabe came in first, standing in the doorway watching her until her hands felt clumsy, her whole body flushed with awareness.
“Thank God,” Max said as he came in, grabbed a beer and headed into the dining room.
“You are a blessing, a real blessing,” Patrick said, kissing her cheek and actually succeeding in making Alice blush. “I’ll set out the plates.” He grabbed the classic white dishes Gabe had picked out.
Soon, it was just the smell of bacon, her, Gabe at the door and the heat of blood in her face that would not go away.
She wondered if he knew that Daphne had a daughter. If he’d done the math and realized that the little girl was the same age theirs would have been.
She doubted it. Not that he knew about the girl, that she was sure of—of course he’d date women who’d proved their love of family, their ability to create one—he just wouldn’t have done the math.
“Go sit down,” she finally said when she couldn’t tolerate his observation anymore. “I’ll bring it out.”
“About tomorrow morning—”
“I’ve already gone,” she interrupted. “We met this afternoon. She’ll be a fantastic supplier and she gave me great sources for organic meats and dairy.”
She’s a wonderful mother with a funny great kid, I imagine you’ll share a long and happy life with a million children running around.
I need a drink.
“You’ve jumped in with both feet.” Gabe smiled. “It’s still your first day.”
She shrugged. “You hired me to work.”
He stepped past her and she could feel him at her back though there was at least five feet between them. “It’s good to have you here,” he said, his voice that warm dark purr that turned her insides soft. “Max actually laughed like he meant it. Dad nearly fell out of his chair.”
She dumped the dried pasta into the boiling water and didn’t say anything for fear of saying too much. She put butter in the frying pan, studiously not looking at Gabe, pretending to be casual when it felt as if her head would explode.
Still he didn’t leave, he stood at the door like a sentinel.
“Are you going to eat with us?” he asked.
She shook her head, there was only so far a woman could go in a day and she’d hit her limit. “Lots of work to do,” she lied.
“I didn’t think so,” he said, knowing her so well she nearly dropped the cream container right into the sauce.
And finally, just as she thought she might scream from the tension, he left.