Out of Grant’s periphery, Thandie moved through the space, greeting guests, pouring water, and lighting up the room like a firefly at twilight. She spotted him looking at her, and he turned his head quickly back to the conversation. Thinking that wasn’t right, he looked back to her and gave a low wave which also didn’t feel right. His body was making a fool out of him.
She bobbed and weaved around the tables on her way towards him. “Everything alright over here?” she asked the whole table, though he could tell she was really just asking him. “I thought it looked like one of you waved me over?” She poured water into his glass and topped off the others. “Supper should be out any moment. It’s self-serve at the sideboard.”
“What’s on the menu?” Anne asked to his left.
Thandie pinched her brows together and looked up as though the answer might be on the ceiling. “You know, I’m not certain. Do you want me to go check with the chef?”
“That won’t be necessary,” Margret said. “Ignore my friend here. She’ll eat whatever it is.”
“I know the chef has planned according to the preference sheets that each of you filed before check-in.”
“Do you think the chef will come out and explain the dishes like they do on those fancy food shows?” Anne asked.
Thandie looked back at the cucina and then placed her hands on her hips. “Would you look at that? How did the chef put all that food out without any of us seeing? Since I’ve been here, I haven’t actually met the chef, to be honest with you. I’m just as curious to know him as you are.”
“You haven’t met the chef?” Grant asked. “Shouldn’t you know who’s doing all the cooking?”
“All I know is that all my meals here so far have been perfect. No complaints from me.” She took the nearly empty pitcher and tapped her painted, pink fingernails on the bottom, causing it to play a little musical trill. “I’m going to go fill this up and see if I can coax the chef out for a meet and greet.”
No sooner had Thandie walked away than a white-hatted and cloaked young man came through a side door opposite the cucina. His black hair poked out from the rim of his hat, his face had a warm healthy tan, and his deep brown eyes reminded Grant of his trip to Greece last year.
The chef cleared his throat and announced dinner was served. “I prepare for you tonight, a selection based on your preferenza.” The chef’s Italian accent was thick and smooth like honey. “Though the—how you say, pietanze? The dishes, the entrées, may not be what you envision, I hope you like very much. Mangia!” he said and bowed with his hand over his heart. “Enjoy.”
“Definitely Italian,” Margret said and stood from the table. “But there’s something else. I’ll have to think on it. Greek—no, French . . .” Her voice trailed off as she moved away.
Grant leaned over to the woman on his left, who was still seated. “What’s that about?”
“Mags fancies herself a linguist of sorts, but she’s just nosy is all. I’m Anne,” she said. Her smile cut a jolly line across her round face and wrinkled the skin around her eyes.
“Grant. Pleasure to meet you,” he said and took her hand, helping her to her feet.
The other guests queued at the buffet and were busy heaping their plates with the assorted fare. Despite fatigue pushing at his eyelids, Grant knew he needed to try all the food. He covered a small yawn with the back of his hand. Travel days weren’t his favorite by a long shot.
Margret returned to the table first and placed her plate down. “You’re not eating?”
“Not yet,” he said. “I’ll let everyone else go through first.”
“A gentleman,” she said and sat down. “What brings a nice-looking bloke like you to a wellness retreat all alone?”
“How do you know I’m alone?” he said.
“Because if you were my man, I would dare not let you go anywhere without me.” She hid a giggle behind a fork full of tomato and basil salad. “You’re single?”
He nodded at the woman’s uncanny ability to parse things out for herself. “Is it that obvious?”
“Yes. So, answer my question. What brings you out here?”
“I, um . . .” Usually had a canned answer ready to go. “Work.” It wasn’t a lie, though he was certain she would ask more questions. He beat her to the inevitable. “I needed a break from the day-to-day grind. This place seemed like a good way to do that.”
“And what is the grind?” she asked as Anne returned to the table with a modest dinner sampling on her plate.
“I’m a consultant,” he said, knowing it was easier to weave as much truth into his ruse as possible than risk getting caught in a lie. “It’s a good job. I get to travel a lot.”
“Oh,” Anne said between bites of thinly sliced beef that dripped with gravy. “We love to travel. That’s all we do now that we are both widows and retired.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said, and he was. “It’s difficult to lose someone you love.”
“Speaking from experience?”
He pinched his lips tightly and nodded as the image flashed in his mind of the woman he had loved once. She had taken the key to his heart with her to the grave. At risk of feeling emotions that he had been avoiding for longer than he could admit, he stood from the table. “I think I’ll get some food now.”
Anne placed a hand on his shoulder the way people do when they truly understand the deep hurt hiding under the surface. He appreciated the gesture and didn’t know why now, after nearly ten years, he had chosen that moment to call up his wife’s memory. The pain that he had so expertly disguised beneath the mask of an international corporate consultant with no time for love or fancy was surfacing with force.
He blinked away the moisture fogging his eyes and bowed out of the lady’s presence. At the buffet, Grant looked at the food, though he was seeing past it. He mindlessly picked and spooned each item onto a plate, numb to his appetite.
“It’s the darnedest thing,” Thandie said as she bumped shoulders with him, tearing him from his solitary contemplation. “I went to talk to the chef, and no one was in there.”
“What? What did you say?” Grant said as her words sunk in. “Oh, the chef was out here. You didn’t see him introduce dinner?”
Thandie looked over her shoulder into the dining area as though she was wanting to spot the chef. “I just don’t get it. It’s as though he, I’m pretty sure he is a he, I barely saw him through a curtain of fettuccine yesterday—”
“He. And we think he’s Italian.”
“We?”
“Margret. She’s some sort of linguist, and she thinks he’s Italian.”
“I hear she’s just nosey,” Thandie whispered as she filled her own plate. “But don’t tell anyone I said that.”
Grant pinched his lips and mimed turning a lock. Her laugh was the sweetest reprieve from his depressive reverie about his loss. “Your clandestine gossiping is safe with me.”
“Thank you,” she said and scooped the tomato and basil salad onto her plate. “This is the strangest collection of food I think I’ve ever seen. There’s Mediterranean, sushi, and whatever that is, and this—” She held up something on a skewer that looked like a banana dipped in barbeque sauce and sprinkled with chopped cauliflower. “What is this?”
Grant pointed at the table. “That is squid-ink risotto, and that is broccoli rabe. This,” he held up the skewer, “is corn on the cob. Though I’ve never seen it prepared this way.”
Thandie stopped all movement but her eyes. Astonishment stretched her face, and her eyes were wide. She put the skewered corn back on the tray. “I hate corn on the cob. If I never see another ear of corn again, I’d be perfectly happy.”
“Now that you mention it, I don’t like octopus, and there it is.”
“How do you know what all these things are? Are you a chef too?” Thandie asked him.
This time, Grant laughed so loud that the room quieted, and the guests turned their attention to him. He addressed the group and waved them off as his laugh subsided.
“What is so funny?” Thandie asked. Her hand went to her hip, and he could see heat rise in her cheeks.
He merely pointed at the buffet. Little chalk board signs sat in front of each item and described the menu. “I can read.”
Thandie grunted, and Grant realized he might have teased her too far, given their rocky start on the hiking trail.
“I honestly didn’t even notice the little signs. I suppose I was just so hungry, not to mention puzzled by the vanishing chef, that I was mindlessly filling my plate.”
“I know the feeling.” Grant looked at his own plate and then to her nearly identical one with one of each item neatly arranged around the rim. “Do you want to sit with us? There’s an empty seat.”
Thandie looked around him at the table where Margret and Anne were sitting, and back at him. “Sit with the cool kids? On the first day?” A grin. A giggle.
Her laugh was like a song, and Grant felt a crack forming in the wall around his heart in that moment. He would very much like to tease her back, and he was glad that he had a whole week to try. She followed him around the maze of little tables, and he directed her around his side with his free arm.
“Mind if I join you?” Thandie asked the ladies, who quickly agreed. “Grant was just telling me how much he loves octopus. Did you try some?”
“It’s delicious,” Anne said and took a long, slimy piece. “I’ve never had it prepared like this. But Grant, it doesn’t look like you put any on your plate.”
He shook his head at Thandie. “She’s mistaken. I do not like octopus. And she doesn’t like corn.”
“Funny,” Margret said and pushed the black risotto off to the side of her plate. “I don’t like squid ink, and yet here it is. Anne, is there something the chef prepared that you don’t prefer too?”
Anne inspected her plate and then looked over to the buffet. “As a matter of fact. I had put down that I don’t like creamed vegetables. And there was that broccoli dish, though I’ve never seen broccoli like that before.”
Grant was catching on, but didn’t know if he should say anything. It appeared that the chef had created dinner based on their preference sheets, but had used their dislikes instead of their likes. He was curious whether the decision had been a mistake or if the chef had intentionally prepared the disliked dishes in a new way. The chef had even encouraged the group to give things a try. If it was an intentional act, Grant was impressed by the chef’s audacity and would certainly include it in his report. He hoped for Leo’s sake that the chef hadn’t made a huge miscalculation, though.
“Do you think I should go ask?” Thandie said and was already getting up from the table.
Grant intercepted her hand and tugged ever so slightly, causing her to pause. He pulled a little harder, and she sat back down. Their hands stayed together long after the need was there for him to touch her. It was as though the whole world was silent for a split second and then rushed back at him all at once. Touching her was like a tide going out only to be followed by a tsunami wave of butterflies and heartbeats.
He snapped back his hand. The shock on her face was surely mimicked on his own, though neither of them said a word.
“Single, huh?” Margret teased and broke the air surrounding them.
“I think I’ll go find the chef now,” Thandie said, and this time, got up on the far side of her chair so as to avoid his touch again.
After she walked away, Grant eyed Margret. “Look what you did. Made her leave,” he said.
“I wouldn’t be so sure. Just you wait and see. I think she likes you,” Margret said with a single nod that proclaimed that was that.
Anne leaned over to him. “See. Nosey.”
“I heard that,” Margret said and turned up her chin. Straightening her back, she cleared her throat and motioned with her eyes as a warning. And not a moment too soon. “What did you find out about this meal, dear?”
Thandie’s hip brushed against Grant’s upper-arm as she came back around to her seat, and he instinctively looked. It was only a split second. But he had looked.
“Chef wasn’t there,” Thandie said. “But mark my words, I will uncover the truth about this intriguing meal.” Thandie took a bite of the octopus. “You’re right, Anne. This is really good.” Grant sucked in a chuckle as she skewered the remaining pieces with her fork and filled her cheeks to the breaking point.
“Maybe you should try that corn after all,” Grant joked.
“Not in your lifetime.”
“You can’t give up corn forever, you know.”
“I can try,” Thandie laughed and took a bite of something else, savoring the flavors with a gentle grin.
As Grant skewered his own piece of octopus, Leo came around Thandie’s back. He leaned over her shoulder and spoke into her ear. Grant tilted his body to hear, to eavesdrop, but was unable to make out any words. Thandie nodded as though she understood what was being told to her.
When Leo was done, he stood and nodded to them. “Enjoying dinner?”
“Yes, very much,” Margret said.
“Delicious,” Anne added.
“Compliments to the chef,” Grant said. As Leo turned away, he leaned over to Thandie. “Everything alright?”
She shook her head and forced a smile. “Please excuse me for a moment.” Thandie got up from her seat and placed her napkin on her plate like she was finished. He watched her walk across the room, pull a chair towards the wall and step up onto the seat.
As she clapped her hands, the dozen guests stopped what they were doing, mid chew, mid cackle, mid thought, and turned towards the sound. The tension in her face radiated bad news. She took a deep breath. Her chest filled slowly, and he could see she was holding the air in for a few seconds before letting it out. He was on the edge of his seat.
She began. “Good evening to each of you. I’m happy to officially welcome you to The Foundry Retreat and begin our week together. For those of you who don’t remember names well, my name is Thandie and I’m the activities director here.” Leo returned and handed her a stack of papers. “I have the tentative schedule for the week.” She stepped down quickly and passed the papers to the closest guest. “Will you pass these around? Thank you.” Returning to her perch, she continued. “There is one caveat I must correct. The bonfire, listed for tonight, has been rescheduled for Wednesday evening due to the rainy weather.”
And there it was, the bad news. The first evening’s event was rained out. Soft murmurs livened the room.
She continued. “You can’t have a fire in the rain.” She paused as though waiting for a laugh. When none came, she swallowed and tucked a curly strand behind her ear. “I’ve placed a basket beside the front door with ponchos and umbrellas. These items are supplied for your use during your stay, and I only ask that you return them, or leave them in your cabin when it’s time to say goodbye.”
“Is it gonna rain all week?” a young lady asked in a melodic southern accent.
“I’m sorry, the weather here is a little unpredictable, so I can’t say for sure, but it looks like it will be fine. Just your typical late spring showers. In the meantime, as this is your first evening here, I suggest rest and hydration. We’ll see you bright and early in here for breakfast. At nine-thirty, I will meet you in the gazebo for yoga.”