Chapter 15

THERE ARE SOME mornings where it feels like you fell asleep only ten seconds ago, but already, your alarm’s blaring to wake you up again.

This morning would be like that, except it’s Saturday, so I don’t have an alarm set. What actually wakes me up is my phone ringing, with Lily on the other line.

“Are you awake?” she asks. “I didn’t want to call too early.”

I look at the clock on my bedside table. Eight a.m. Does Lily understand what a weekend is for?

“I’m awake.” I rub my eyes. “Now.”

“What happened after we got split up? My moms asked if they could take you home, too, but the officer said no.”

“I put off calling my dad. For a while.”

“Oh, God.”

“No, it’s good. I saw some stuff. Useful stuff.”

I tell her about Officer O’Hara and how freaked out he seemed. And the police chief, who didn’t seem nearly freaked out enough.

“This is getting so complicated,” Lily says. “It’s like the more we learn, the less I understand. Tess totally knows there’s something I’m not telling her, and if we can’t nail down this story when it comes time to decide editor in chief—”

“We’ll figure it out,” I promise her, trying to sound more confident than I am. Someone has to be. “Can you do some background research on the chief? Do you still have your computer and everything?”

“Uh, yeah. Why wouldn’t I?”

“I thought maybe they’d take it. Or your phone.”

“My moms? Have you met them? Priya keeps asking if I need to process my feelings about seeing a corpse, and Zanna just wants to tell me about all the protests she’s been arrested at.”

“We didn’t get arrested.”

“Tell her, not me.”

“Yeah, and tell my dad, he’s acting like I killed the guy myself.”

“So I take it he is mad.”

Dad decides to make his entrance then, swinging open my door without knocking. Which is new.

He nods his head at my phone. “Who is that?”

“Lily.”

“Give it to me,” he says, hand outstretched.

“Why?”

“What’s going on?” Lily asks me.

“This isn’t a discussion,” Dad says to me.

“Not a discussion, apparently,” I say to Lily.

That’s when Dad reaches over and just takes it.

“At least let me say goodbye!” I protest.

He ignores me. Hits speakerphone. Holds it up.

“Hey there, Lily,” he says.

“Oh, um. Hi, Mr. Green.”

“Listen, I just want to apologize on my son’s behalf for getting you mixed up in this.”

“Oh my God,” I say, burying my face in my hands. “Dad.”

“Mr. Green, it really wasn’t like that.”

He doesn’t seem to hear her or me. “And to let you know Gideon won’t be available for the rest of the day. Maybe the year. I haven’t decided yet. Say hi to your mothers for me.”

“Uh, okay, but—”

He hangs up the phone and sticks it in his own pocket.

“That was so embarrassing,” I tell him.

“I don’t think you want to throw stones about what’s embarrassing.”

That metaphor always confuses me. Nobody should be throwing stones, even if their house isn’t glass. And who lives in a glass house, anyway? Other than plants.

“Can I have my phone back?” I ask hopefully. Maybe he only wanted to talk to Lily.

“I’m going to hold on to it for now.”

A month ago that wouldn’t have bothered me. Which is probably why he’s never taken it. Lily and I have work to do, though, so I need it.

“But if you take it away,” I say, trying to appeal to practicality, “how will you track my every move?”

“I don’t have to. You’re going to be right where I can watch you, all day.”

Huh? It’s Saturday, he has a brunch service in two hours—

Oh no.

“Clearly, I can’t trust you to stay home by yourself, so you’re coming to Verde with me. You can spend the afternoon doing side work.”

“Side work” is restaurant-speak for the bullshit chores no one wants to do. Rolling silverware, filling up ketchup dispensers, wiping down tables after a party leaves. It sucks even when it isn’t punishment. I’ve done it before.

“This is child labor,” I tell him, and the eye roll I get back is massive.

“Pobrecito.” I wonder if he’s ever said that nonsarcastically. I wonder if anyone has ever used that word nonsarcastically. “Get dressed. You’re not going to make me late.”

In the car, halfway to Verde, I decide to try out a new defense strategy. I’m not asking for full immunity. Just a commutation of my sentence.

“Dad, I know you’re mad at me—”

“Glad you picked up on that.”

“But this is an overreaction.”

“No, it’s a logical consequence of your actions. If I can’t trust that you’re safe when I leave you alone, then you can’t be left alone.”

“You know,” I point out, “you were the one who told me to get out of the house.”

“I didn’t mean you should go wandering around a construction site at night!”

“Maybe you should have been more specific.”

He blinks. Then turns. And the look he gives me makes me shrink all the way down in my seat.

“You are,” he tells me, “on the thinnest of ice.”

I drop my eyes to my shoes and fold my arms across my chest. I should shut up. I know I should shut up. But I have more questions.

“So, what, you’re going to drag me to the restaurant every weekend?”

“No,” he says. “I’m going to drag you there every day.”

My stomach drops. “What do you mean, every day?”

“I mean, when I go to work in the afternoon, you come with me. You can do your homework in the back office.”

Detectives don’t panic, so I’m definitely not panicking right now. It’s just that my heart is beating too fast and my lungs are contracting, or whatever. How am I going to help Lily if I’m locked in his office? And wait, forget the investigation, what about—

“What about the paper?”

“I . . .” He sighs. “I don’t think I’m comfortable with that.”

“What?”

“Maybe in a few weeks, if I feel like you’ve made an effort—”

I don’t care how thin the ice is. I would rather drown.

“You can’t do that!”

“Excuse me?”

Excuse me is code for You better rephrase that, but I don’t care. I meant those words exactly. “I said, you can’t do that.”

“Who do you think is in charge here?” Dad says. “Me or you?”

“I have a job at the paper. People depend on me. You can’t just make me quit—”

“We’ll talk about this later,” he says, cutting me off. I hadn’t even noticed, but we’ve pulled into the staff parking behind Verde.

The second we walk in the door, Dad’s general manager is at his shoulder. Every time I’ve met him, Mario has been in some stage of calming Dad the hell down, which I appreciate as a person who can only wind my dad up more.

“So we have a small issue,” Mario says.

Dad rubs his temples. “Oh, God.”

“I said small, cálmate.”

Dad does not, in any way, do that. “Just tell me, what?”

“Sarah is a no-call no-show.”

“Christ, again?”

“I keep calling her phone, but it goes to voice mail.”

“Well, then leave one, telling her she’s fired.”

“And in the meantime?” Mario nods his head over at the lone waiter tying on his apron behind the bar. “I only have Josh. He can cover most of the tables, but I don’t think all, so—”

“Gideon will take them.”

Mario and I look at each other, then at Dad, and say in unison: “What?”

“Give Josh all the tables he can handle and put Gideon on any he can’t.”

“He hasn’t been trained—” Mario says.

Dad looks at the clock. “You’ve got an hour, give him a crash course. It’s not rocket science.”

“Dad.” I am dangerously close to begging. “No.”

“I was younger than you when I took my first order. You’re fully capable.”

Is that supposed to be comforting? Or is it an accusation? Like: I could do this at fourteen, so if you can’t, there must be something wrong with you.

He takes me by the arm and leans down a little, like he’s about to impart some kind of wisdom. Or an ancient prophecy. One about human sacrifice.

“It’s easy,” he says, and I hate how excited he sounds by the prospect of dragging me into yet another thing he loves that I’m not cut out for at all. “Smile when you walk up to the table. Be polite, even if they aren’t. Write legibly. Understood?”

I glare at him. He waits.

“And then you say . . . ?”

“This is a terrible idea.”

“Nope.” He shakes his head. “Try again.”

Through gritted teeth, I say: “Yes, Chef.”

Mario does his best—gets me a spare uniform button-down and an apron, goes over everything on the blessedly limited brunch menu, and watches me struggle to learn how a corkscrew works—but we both know this is a disaster in the making. He waits as long as he can to give me a table, but eventually the brunch rush is in full swing, and he doesn’t have a choice.

If my life were a noir, there would be a full-on montage here. Noir doesn’t have montages as a rule, but there would be no other way to convey the rapid-fire chaos. It would be like:

INT. RESTAURANT, DAY—MONTAGE

QUICK CUTS:

—Gideon fights with the POS machine, which stands for point of service but should really stand for piece of shit.

—Gideon gets flagged down by Table 7 (even though it’s not his table) for a side of ranch.

—The woman at Table 6 makes Gideon check three times that there are no nuts in the gazpacho, even though there are never nuts in gazpacho.

—Women at Table 3 ask about their drinks and Gideon says they’re almost ready even though he totally forgot to put them in.

—More ranch is scooped into a tiny ceramic ramekin for Table 7, who should face criminal charges for what they’re doing to a perfectly good omelet.

“Table 6 needs you,” Josh, the other waiter, whispers to me as we pass each other. “They look like you pissed in their cereal.”

“Nobody ordered cereal.”

He shakes his head and keeps walking.

When I get over there, the lady at Table 6 looks at me like I’ve run over her dog, reversed the car and backed over it, then sped away yelling, “I will kill again!”

“Is everything all right?” I ask her.

“My soup is cold.”

I laugh. She doesn’t. I realize it isn’t a joke.

“I mean, yeah,” I say. “It’s gazpacho.”

“I don’t care what it’s called, it’s cold.”

“But it’s supposed to be c—”

“It’s completely unacceptable for you to make soup this cold,” she says.

“I didn’t cook it.”

That only seems to make her angrier. “Just take it back.”

I grab the bowl and stomp back to the kitchen.

“She said the soup is cold,” I say, setting the bowl back on the pass counter.

Dad’s sous-chef stares at me. “We only have gazpacho.”

“I know.”

He groans. Takes the bowl. And sticks it right in the microwave above his head. I must look horrified, because then he adds: “Customer is always right. Even when they’re fucking stupid.”

“Yeah,” I agree, “and can you believe she got mad at me?”

Dad, who was walking by, suddenly stops midmotion. “Why did she get mad at you?”

“I told her gazpacho is supposed to be cold, and she said not that cold, and I was like, ‘Look, I didn’t cook it—’”

“Gideon, Jesus Christ,” he snaps. Then calls over his shoulder, “Héctor—” What follows is Spanglish so fast and furious I can only pick out the words “on the fly” at the end.

As Hector assembles the plate of meat and cheese rapid-fire, Dad turns back to me. “Now you’ll go out there, tell them the platter’s on the house, and then you apologize. Got it?”

“To her? She’s a jerk!”

“Doesn’t matter.” He nods his head at the pass, where the bowl and the platter are both now waiting. “Go.”

The gazpacho’s so hot now, the bowl burns my hands, but I don’t even care. I’m too pissed. He wants me to be nice to them, and for what? For his ego, for his restaurant, the thing he actually cares about. Screw this. Screw him.

“Your soup.” I set it down in front of her. “The crudo platter is on the house.” I set that down, too. “We so very deeply regret your pain.”

After dropping off the boiling gazpacho, I pass by the women at Table 3 and a snippet of their conversation snags my attention.

“I keep telling Andy not to invest in this food-and-beverage kind of stuff,” the woman in blue leggings is telling her friends. “It’s too unpredictable. Look at that brewery, it’s been almost two years and even Fred Willets’s money couldn’t get it off the ground.”

I stop dead in my tracks.

“Did you say Fred Willets?” I blurt out.

Blue Leggings raises her eyebrows. “Um. Yes?”

“Fred Willets owns Triggerfish Brewery?”

“He owns a large share—” She looks around at her friends. “I’m sorry, did you need to ask us something?”

There’s an empty chair next to her at the four-top, so I sit right down. “How do you know he’s an owner?”

Blue Leggings moves her chair ever so slightly away from me. “My husband invested, too, so . . .”

“Is he involved in the construction? Like would he have keys to the site?”

Black Leggings clears her throat. “Sweetie, maybe you could get us some . . . tea?” she suggests to me. “Like . . . iced tea?”

“Yeah,” Blue Leggings agrees. “Iced tea would be so great.” She smiles at me, all teeth. “If you could . . . go and get that?”

I probably shouldn’t have sat at their table.

“Yeah,” I say, hopping up. “Sure. I’ll bring that right away.”

But I don’t. Instead, I walk straight out of the dining room, skirting quietly past the kitchen, and into Dad’s office in the very back, where I dig my phone out of his desk drawer.

“Hi,” Lily says, sounding confused. “Didn’t your dad take your phone?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Maybe you could chill out for like a day before pissing him off again—”

I cut right to the chase: “Fred Willets owns the brewery.”

“What?”

“Triggerfish. He owns it. Or—he partially invested in it, I guess.”

There’s a long pause. Finally, Lily half whispers: “That’s weird.”

“I know.”

“No, it’s weirder than you know,” she says. “Remember Luke telling us about tagging that business? It’s closed now, but I looked it up way back when I was first investigating, and Willets owned that, too.”

“Araceli said he owns a bunch of stuff around town, didn’t she? It could be a coincidence.”

“Could be.” Another long pause. “I’ll see what I can find.”

Fred Willets put money in Triggerfish, I think after we’ve hung up and I finally grab the pitcher of iced tea. Maybe it wasn’t random, the location. Maybe someone picked it because they had access.

Or maybe someone picked it to ruin the business before it ever got off the ground.

The woman from Table 6 snaps her fingers to flag me down again. I glance back at Table 3, but they just look relieved to have me gone. The iced tea can wait.

“Would you like the check?” I ask her hopefully.

“I will have the churros for dessert,” she says, not even looking at me.

“No.”

That makes her look up. “Excuse me?”

“No, you won’t have the churros for dessert.”

“Because you’re out?”

“Because they have walnuts,” I say. She just stares at me. “Which are a kind of nut. Which you are allergic to.”

She waves me off. “It’s fine, I can have a little bit.”

I wonder how much trouble I’d get in if I just flipped over her table right now.

“Then you’re not allergic,” I grind out.

“I asked for the churros.” She sticks her menu up in my face. “Not your opinion.”

I know I’m about to do something stupid, something I’m really going to regret, but I’m too mad to care.

“It’s not an opinion. It’s a fact. If you can eat nuts, then you don’t have a nut allergy, which is weird, because you definitely said you were—and I’m quoting—‘deathly allergic to nuts.’ So if I were to call you a liar,” I say, way too loud, but still not caring, “that would be a fact, too.”

The whole restaurant is so quiet you could hear a pin drop. If anyone brought pins to a restaurant, which they wouldn’t.

The lady at Table 6 interlaces her fingers.

“You’d better go get your manager.”

Mario spends forever soothing the woman at Table 6. If I wasn’t so relieved to be rescued, I’d almost be mad at how good he is at it—nodding solemnly as she rants about how awful I am, speaking to her in a tone so calm and empathetic you’d almost think he agreed with her.

But of course he doesn’t. It wasn’t my fault. Still, he shakes his head when he walks up to me, after brunch service is over and the last table has finally left.

“Well . . .” He clears his throat. “Your first shift could have gone better.”

“Yeah. I know.”

“I’ve had people spill hot soup, drop knives, break wine bottles.” He shakes his head, walking toward the kitchen. “But I don’t think I’ve ever had to comp all the tables on someone’s first shift.”

Waiting alone in the empty dining room feels a lot like when I was little and would break something. The crash, and then the silence. Knowing what’s about to happen was going to be bad, and trying very hard to convince myself I didn’t deserve it.

At least the suspense is short-lived. I can hear Dad shout from inside the kitchen. I could probably hear him from the next county over.

“He said what?”

I wince.

Dad stalks out the swinging kitchen door and into the dining room. I take a large step to the left, strategically putting the hostess stand in between us.

“Come here.” He crooks his finger at me. I stay where I am. “Do you not see my lips moving? Come. Here.”

I inch forward, slowly, until I’m more or less in front of him, and he more or less looks like he wants to knock me to the floor.

“What the hell is the matter with you?”

My throat is all sawdust. “I—”

“What were you thinking, talking to a guest like that? Did you think it was funny, did you think you sounded clever?”

“All I did was tell that lady—”

“All you did was run your mouth.”

We’re gathering an audience. The line cooks are looking at Dad, not me, which is merciful. He must notice he’s being watched, though, because he pauses. Does he wish he hadn’t started in on me like this, in front of everyone?

He glances around. Takes a deep breath. And launches right back in.

“You just go around saying whatever pops into your head. Doesn’t matter who you’re talking to! It could be me, it could be a customer, it could be the cop who’s detaining you, you don’t care!”

The back of my neck goes hot when he brings up the police. As if that’s something I want the whole kitchen to know about.

“Dad, I didn’t mean to—”

“No, you never mean to! It’s never your fault, is it?”

I’ve heard this before. It’s nothing new. But there’s a difference between getting yelled at in the privacy of your own home and having to stand in the center of a room while a bunch of strangers watch your dad tell you exactly how much of a screwup he thinks you are.

“What is your future going to look like, if you can’t keep your mouth shut when you need to, and you won’t listen to a word anybody else says?”

He wants me to just shut up? Fine. I bite the inside of my cheek, fold my arms across my chest, and don’t answer him.

“No, come on, tell me,” he says. “Tell me exactly what you think you’ll be able to do with your life.”

“Well,” I say, as all the anger and embarrassment rises in my chest and spills out of my mouth, “I guess if all else fails, I could go work in some kitchen!”

Oh shit.

Too far. Way too far.

For a second, nobody moves. Nobody even breathes. Or at least I don’t.

But then Dad is stripping off his apron to the floor and closing the space between us fast, and I’m scrambling to remember where the emergency exit is.

I take a stumbling step back, right into the sharp edge of Table 6. I put one hand back on it to steady myself.

It isn’t until we’re nearly toe-to-toe that Dad stops. He glares. I gulp.

“Now you listen to me,” he says, pointing a finger so close to my face I flinch. “I take a lot of shit from you, a lot more than I should, but what I’m not going to do is stand here and let you disrespect all the people who work for me.”

My clammy hand slips on the table edge. I grip tighter. It hurts.

“This isn’t some kitchen, this is my kitchen and my business and the thing that puts food on your fucking plate, kid, so you better watch what you say. Do you understand?”

Behind Dad, the staff is still watching, totally silent, expressions unreadable. Do they feel bad for me? Or do they think I was asking for this?

“That was a question,” Dad says, snapping my attention back to him. “It has an answer.”

Oh, this one’s not rhetorical? I almost snap back. But since I don’t want to die today, I close my eyes and say, very quietly: “Yes.”

He shifts his weight back. I take a breath. But he’s not done.

“How you can stand there and put down not just what I do, but what everyone here does, everyone who tried to help you today—it’s beyond me.”

But that’s not what I meant, I’m on the verge of saying. I didn’t mean to make anyone feel that way. It has to matter, at least a little, that I didn’t mean to. Doesn’t it?

Maybe it does. And maybe it just matters way, way more . . . that I did it.

“You couldn’t do any of their jobs on your best day. Your very best.”

The whole scene swims and blurs, like someone’s smeared Vaseline over a camera lens. Not because I’m about to cry, in front of all these people, in front of the dad I’m never going to be good enough for. I’m not. I won’t.

“I know you think you’re too good for this, Gideon, but here’s the truth and you better believe me when I say it: you aren’t anywhere good enough.”

Maybe if I duck my head quickly enough, no one will be able to tell. Maybe the blurry and now slightly wet floor beneath me will open up and swallow me whole. A person can dream.

Either Dad decides he’s gone far enough, or he got exactly where he wanted to be. He turns away.

“Go wait by the car.”