Taste

by Juliet Madison

  “Maybe getting dizzy,” said Serena.

  “I didn’t feel dizzy though,” said Talia. “But I felt like I was seated or lying down, so maybe if I’d been standing I would have felt dizzy.”

  “It’s got to be more poisonings,” I said. “But how are we supposed to know where or when?”

  Savannah sucked in a breath, and I caught her gaze. “I saw something else,” she said. “In front of the man who was struggling to breathe, was a menu. I couldn’t see the meals because it was too blurry, but I could make out the logo.”

  Dread pooled in my belly.

  “It was Harborside.”

  Chapter 15

  Talia marched out of the restroom, and we followed. I grasped her arm before we were out in the open dining room. “Wait, what are you doing?”

  “We have to tell Leo, or your boss. Someone.”

  “No!” I did my best to whisper.

  “We can’t let people go through this, feeling what I felt. They might die. Do you want that on your conscience?”

  “No, but how is telling them going to help? We need to figure out the clues ourselves, then maybe consider telling them. We didn’t get any definitive answers they could act on.”

  “What about the lemon and chili? Maybe they’re contaminated,” said Serena.

  I faced my sister. “We use them all the time, and no one’s been hurt so far.” I peered into the dining room to make sure no one was watching us. Two other guests had arrived. “Let’s just write it all down, then discuss when I get home. I have to get to work!”

  “Tamara!” said Talia. “What if it’s tonight? What if the reason we sensed it now is so we can stop it tonight?”

  My heart pounded. She had a point. I needed to check every meal on the menu with lemon and chili and maybe ask Leo if I could practice my customer service skills. If I could talk to each of the patrons as they arrived, maybe I could talk them out of ordering anything with those ingredients. But still. No reason to tell him yet.

  “Yeah, maybe it’s time,” said Savannah.

  “But…”

  “He’ll believe you, I’m sure. Riley eventually believed me. And he needs to know about his dad.”

  “And even if he doesn’t believe you,” said Talia. “At least we did something to try and prevent this happening. There’s more at stake than our reputations.”

  “Yeah. You have to tell Leo, Tamara. Now,” said Savannah.

  I gasped when someone appeared from around the corner of the wall. “Tell me what?” Leo stood there with his arms crossed.

  Gulp.

  How much had he overheard?

  I couldn’t believe this moment was here.

  Just when things had been established and I was experiencing the euphoria of starting a relationship with him, it could all come crashing down. But I knew Talia was right. My relationship with Leo wasn’t important compared to people’s health and lives. We’d been gifted with this ability, and it was our responsibility to do what needed to be done to help people.

  But that didn’t make the idea of telling him any easier.

  “I’ve been worried about working here. Even though I love it. I mean, worried about, you know, the poisonings?”

  “Ah.” He nodded slowly. “Well, we use only local suppliers for our ingredients, and the restaurants that have had the incidents don’t use any of the same suppliers we do. Sam and Maria looked into it. So it’s unlikely we’ll have any issues.”

  That’s not what our vision said.

  I nodded. “Good. It’s just made me nervous that’s all.” I twirled a strand of my hair. “But what if the contamination is spreading? What if one of the suppliers, um…”

  “…Started using a different type of pesticide, or fertilizer, or something else used in the preparation of their produce?” Serena offered.

  “They’re under strict orders to advise their buyers and the health department investigating the cases of any changes in their procedures. Everything is getting documented.”

  In that case, I didn’t know how we could convince him that Harborside was in danger. All we had was our intuition, our psychic ability, which wasn’t always black and white. The sensory predictions sometimes required more abstract interpretation. Maybe the link to Harborside just meant it was going to be another restaurant with the same name located somewhere else. Or with a different name but located next to a harbor.

  Savvy must have been thinking the same thing because she wandered over to a table and picked up a menu. She turned it to face me and pointed, nodding her head.

  Nope, it was definitely here.

  “What’s really going on?” asked Leo. “You’re all acting strange. And I heard my brother’s name mentioned, and something about my dad?” Creases formed around his eyes and forehead.

  Oh God. Telling him about the Delta Girls was one thing, but telling him about his dad, too? That would bring up a whole lot of past trauma, and I didn’t know if our relationship was ready for that.

  “Um, maybe we should talk about this after work?” I suggested.

  Then I remembered that if something happened tonight at the restaurant, I would never forgive myself.

  “Just tell him what we saw,” said Savannah. “Tell him about the other thing, later tonight. Or Riley can.”

  “Hang on, whatever this secret is, my brother knows about it?” He leaned forward.

  “Yes. I mean, not the new part, but the rest, yeah.” I tried to get my hands to help explain.

  “I’m confused.” Leo glanced back at the kitchen. “Wait for me outside. All of you. Let me check with Sam and see if I can spare a few minutes.” He walked off.

  Would a few minutes be enough time to explain everything that had happened over the past several months? The only hope I could cling to was the fact that even though Riley hadn’t believed at first, he did now, and wholeheartedly. Maybe he could help us explain if our attempt was disastrous.

  “Come on.” I ushered my sisters outside. We waited on the sidewalk next to the outside wall of the kitchen, away from the restaurant windows so we could have privacy. Dark clouds smothered the sky, and my mind. Heaviness thickened the air and I tried to breathe slowly, preparing myself for what I would say.

  “Okay,” Leo said upon exiting the restaurant. “Spill.”

  If we had been talking about something less serious, I would have said, “Good chef pun,” but it wasn’t appropriate.

  My sisters all looked at me, their eyes handing over the reigns of responsibility. It was like they were saying, “He’s your boyfriend. You tell him.”

  I drew in a deep breath and crossed my arms, gripping my elbows. “We’re worried that something bad might happen at Harborside. Not because of what’s going on in the news, but because of…” How to put this? “What we’ve seen somewhere else. In some other way.”

  “Do you have information that you need to pass on to the authorities? Because if you know something, you need to report it,” he said.

  “Kinda. But not actual evidence, just some insight into what may happen.”

  He tilted his head.

  I would have to just say it. There was no way he was going to guess and snap his fingers and say, “Aha! I know! You’re psychic, right?.”

  “Leo, my sisters and I… we know things. In advance. We can sense things. We’re kind of, psychic, in a way.”

  Ouch. Ouch, ouch, ouch. Saying the word “psychic” to my boyfriend was like a needle popping a balloon inside my head.

  His eyes became round and large. But he remained silent.

  “When we hold hands together, we can predict things. We each have an ability that has to do with one of the five senses. Mine is taste. Go figure.” I managed a chuckle. “And when we put all our abilities together, we get a complete picture with all the five senses. And we got one just now.”

  “So you’re telling me that you have some kind of supernatural ability and that it has led you to believe that something’s going to happen at Harbo
rside?” He spoke calmly.

  Huh. He didn’t sound too shocked.

  “Yes,” I nodded. “We saw someone getting poisoned. In our minds. I tasted food, Savannah saw his face and other stuff, Talia felt the sensations…”

  He laughed. “Wow. Just wow.”

  Shocked, or impressed?

  “This sounds freaking crazy!” He laughed again.

  Great, just great. He thought we were lunatics. There went my chance at romance with the guy of my dreams. And probably my job, too. How could I work alongside him now? And would he even give me a reference? Tamara Delcarta displays efficient kitchen hand skills and is courteous and friendly, but is absolutely 100 percent crazy.

  “She’s telling the truth,” said Savannah. “Do you think Riley would still be with me if he didn’t know it was true? He’s even helped us when we’ve discovered things.”

  “Yeah, he’s like a Delta Guy,” said Sasha.

  “A what?” asked Leo.

  Oh man, we didn’t have to tell him we had our own name, like some deluded superheroes.

  “A Delta Guy,” I mumbled. “Because, um, we call ourselves the Delta Girls.” I coughed. “Because after Savannah woke up from a coma, we got this ability, and she had all these delta wave thingies going on in her coma, which normally only occur during deep sleep, so we figured it had something to do with them and us getting more of them during these vision things, somehow connecting us to some kind of universal intelligence and—”

  “Tamara,” said Leo. “Slow down. I believe in psychics. I’m just blown away that you’re telling me you are one.”

  What the actual hell?

  All this time I’d been trying to hide my ability and he “believed in psychics?”

  “You believe?” I think I was shaking. Or was it just my voice?

  “I had a reading once, before my mom got sick. The guy told me she should get checked out, and that was what led to her diagnosis. Even though the doctors couldn’t save her, she got treatment much earlier than she would have if she’d waited for the symptoms,” he said quietly. “I never told Riley that. Never even told Mom. I just told her I’d read an article and encouraged her to get a checkup.”

  “And have you had another reading since?”

  “No. I was going to, after Dad died. Thought maybe they could get a message from him or something, but I didn’t want to face the truth. So I just moved on with my life.” He leaned against the wall and looked into the distance. Then he straightened up, as if being jolted from his memories. “Anyway, so you, all of you, can actually predict stuff?”

  I couldn’t stop the tickle of a smile creeping up the corner of my mouth, though I had been preparing for the opposite. I nodded. “We’re not complete pros. We’re still getting used to how to use the gift. But yeah. But it doesn’t seem to work like other psychics, like we don’t do readings or anything. We hold hands, sense things, then try to work it all out.”

  He nodded, and his eyes went from side to side as if processing everything. “And you think something’s going to happen. Here?” He gestured to the building.

  “I saw the Harborside menu,” said Savannah. “In front of a guy who was struggling to breathe.”

  “I felt it,” said Talia. “And we thought we should tell you as soon as possible, in case there were any extra precautions you could take.”

  “The only thing we thought it might relate to is lemon or chili,” I said. They’re the main things I tasted.”

  “But we’re using the same batch of lemons and chilis we got a couple of days ago, and no one’s had a problem.”

  “Then maybe it’s something else. What should we do?” I asked.

  Leo rubbed his chin and looked up at the sky. He shook his head. “I’m still getting my head around this. Wow.”

  “Should we tell Sam?” I asked.

  Leo’s lips twisted to one side. “No. I don’t think he’ll believe it. And even if he did, there’s nothing we can do about it short of sending all the customers home and closing up shop. And no way would he do that.”

  “So, we go about our day and hope for the best?”

  “What else can we do?” he said. “Do you normally sense things and they happen right away?”

  “Not always,” I said. “There was that time with the fires.” I glanced at my sisters. “Remember we had that vision at school, but the main fire was, well, was supposed to be weeks later? But Riley, Savannah, and Mr. Jenkins prevented it?”

  Leo’s jaw dropped. “You knew about the arsonist, the one who took your mom hostage the night of that play?”

  I nodded. “But Savvy was the one who figured it out, based on the clues we got in our vision. Riley helped her get to the arsonist before he lit the match.”

  “I can’t believe he’s kept this from me for so long. It must be killing him.”

  That’s not the only thing he’s kept from you.

  “And Mr. Jenkins knows about it too?”

  “No,” I replied. “He was just there and he helped us. We didn’t tell him how we got the information,” Savannah replied.

  “And who else knows about this?”

  “Damon and Lara Jameson. And some psychic we met once at the beach markets. And our mom.”

  “Okay.” He glanced back at the restaurant. “I’d better get back to work. Somehow. We’d better get back to work.” He eyed me. “Let me talk things out with Sam about the cases, and if there’s anything else I can do, I will. But otherwise, I’m afraid all we can do is get on with things.”

  Before we went to go back inside, he turned back. “And what did you mean about I need to know about my dad?”

  “We’ll have to discuss it after work.” I eyed my sisters, especially Savannah, who had been the one who’d seen the ghost of Mr. Pearce. “But, you know you said you thought a psychic might have a message from your dad but you didn’t want to hear it?”

  He nodded.

  “Well, we kinda got a message from him. A while back. We don’t have to tell you, if you’d rather not know, but, you probably should.”

  “I want to know. I need to know.” He grasped my arms. “Tonight.”

  “Okay.” I leaned my forehead against his, and relief swept through me like a welcome wave rolling onto the shore.

  “See you guys later,” I said. My sisters waved and walked away.

  We returned to the kitchen, trying to act like nothing had happened. Like I hadn’t just revealed to my boyfriend that I was psychic, like I hadn’t told him someone was in danger of being poisoned, like I hadn’t told him his dead father had a message for him. I wouldn’t blame Leo if he forgot how to cook rice or make a chocolate sauce or sauté onions tonight.

  “Everything okay?” Sam asked.

  “Yep!” Leo said, a little too cheerily.

  I almost giggled.

  I went to the sink, which now had a few more things to wash, and left Leo and Sam to do their chef thing and maybe talk about the poisonings. I could hear them chatting, but over the sounds of the utensils clanging and things boiling it was hard to make out the specifics. No doubt he’d let me know if there was anything he thought he could do to act on our vision.

  I hoped that right now Savannah was telling Riley about how we’d told Leo, so he could prepare to talk to his brother about their father. I wasn’t sure whether it was my place to actually tell him, so I quickly and discreetly ducked into the office for my bag and texted Savvy to ask Riley about it. When I managed to duck back in, about ten minutes later, she had replied and said not to tell Leo anything. Riley wanted to explain everything he’d learned from Savannah, and how he’d had the chance to say goodbye to his father’s ghost. Some things needed to be kept within the family. Even though I was desperate to call out to Leo and say, “Leo! Your father didn’t commit suicide like you thought he did! It was an accident!” I hoped the truth would set him free from the despair I knew he’d been holding in all this time, from the feeling that he’d failed his father, and from the feeling
that he had to work as hard as he could to support what was left of his family, and not fail Riley.

  I tried to keep as busy as possible, even during the times when there was nothing much for me to do. I watched Leo and Sam prepare meals, plate them up, and I watched Emilia, Lucy, and Lachlan wait tables and talk to customers. I was like a sponge, absorbing as much as I could about this industry. Leo was a little fidgety and agitated, no doubt wondering what this secret was about his father. I kept giving him reassuring smiles as often as possible, and then when he’d go back to what he was doing, I’d shake my head in disbelief at how well telling him about our secret had gone.

  I also kept an eye on the customers. I eyed each one, looking for any who appeared uncomfortable or unwell. But everyone seemed to be having a great time. It then occurred to me—what if one of us was in danger? One of the staff? We sometimes ate leftover food and tasted things while the meals were cooking. Well, mostly Leo and Sam did, but occasionally he’d bring me over something to sample and then explain how it was made. I think he liked having someone to teach. Maybe we could both have our own cooking show—Leo and Tamara, The Heart of The Kitchen.

  “What are you smiling about?” asked Emilia, coming over to me and handing me someone’s leftover bread. “Want one? It’s still warm.”

  I shrugged and let her pop a bit in my mouth. “Nothing much,” I mumbled, but it sounded more like “muffing mutts.”

  “I know,” she said. “You’re visualizing yourself winning tomorrow’s comp, right?” She smiled. “It’s okay. I know you’ll beat me.” She winked and walked off to help a customer.

  I did want to win, but if she was as good a cook as she was a waitress, then I was in trouble. And who knew what other talents would be there. I’d be happy if the judges liked my creation, even if it didn’t win.