The Love Goddess’ Cooking School

by Melissa Senate

  As they disappeared into the kitchen amid lots of “No, Dad, you’re supposed to coat it in flour first, then the egg, then the polenta” and “Daddy, the pan has to be hot first,” Holly realized Mia had absorbed more than she would have thought in just two classes. A glass of red wine and a dazzling smile appeared in front of her, and as Liam returned to the kitchen, Holly took the opportunity to check out his butt in those worn jeans. Which also made her smile. The man was sexy.

  She gazed around the room, taking in the décor, which looked like interesting items Liam had brought back from various faraway vacations, until she noticed a photograph of Mia and a woman on a city street, maybe New York City, on the long row of bookshelves by the window. Holly got up, wineglass in hand, and walked over, pretending great interest in the many sculptures on the shelf, but staring at the photograph. The woman had to be Mia’s mother. They had the same hair color and texture, but the woman’s was cut like Cleopatra’s with a shock of bangs. She was sophisticated and elegant, wearing high heels and an interesting wrap type thing for what looked like sightseeing. She was beautiful too.

  Holly had a quick vision of a younger Liam offering this woman that engagement ring however many years ago with all his loving heart. She wondered what that felt like, to be loved enough for someone to propose and hand over a diamond ring symbolizing forever and everything else those jewelry store commercials promised.

  She took a gulp of wine and sat on the sofa and leaned her head back, staring up at the ceiling. Six, seven weeks ago she was in California, dreaming of one life, and now she was here, living quite another, here in this room with these people she hadn’t known existed before September. Another father and daughter. And the father had a girlfriend.

  Proceed with caution, she said to herself slowly, enunciating just in case the wine had gone to her head, which she hoped it had.

  “Dinner is served!” Mia said, coming through the kitchen doorway with a large plate of chicken alla Milanese that smelled delicious. Liam walked into the living room carrying a bowl of linguini covered in marinara.

  They sat at the table, Liam and Holly across from each other, Mia regaling them with stories of teachers she liked and teachers she hated.

  “Hey, this is great,” Holly said as she closed her lips around a bite of the chicken. It was the slightest bit overcooked, but so flavorful. “And the linguini is cooked just right.”

  Mia beamed. “I mostly did both. Dad was on dredge duty.”

  “Aren’t I always,” he said, and Holly laughed.

  Mia grimaced at them. “Why are adults so geeky?”

  Liam pretend-swatted her with a breadstick, which Holly had bought from the bakery in town.

  “We decided to not say our wishes aloud, but I know mine will come true,” Mia said, smiling.

  “I hope it does,” Liam said, and Holly wondered what his wish had been.

  “So, Holly, can I ask you the biggest favor?” Mia said. “Now that I’m not exactly on good terms with Madeline, can you go dress shopping with me?”

  Liam twirled a forkful of linguini. “Mia, I’m sure Holly—”

  “Would love to go dress shopping with you,” Holly finished. Had he been about to say that Holly was surely busy and that Jodie, clearly the fancy dress queen, would he happy to take her to all her favorite shops?

  “Yay!” Mia said. “Can we go after school? I’ll come over when I get home and drop off my backpack.”

  “Sure can.”

  “Is Holly the best or what?” Mia said to her father.

  “She certainly is very kind,” Liam said, winking at Holly.

  Holly hated winks. Winks always seemed to Holly something people did when they wanted to take back whatever they’d just said. Or add an “I’m not really being serious.”

  And then Liam turned the conversation to the farm he was renovating for a couple from New York who’d decided to give up the rat race. Neither had ever milked a cow and suddenly they were making their own butter.

  “That’s sort of like what Holly’s doing,” Mia said. “Before she came here, she never cooked. And now she’s a teacher—an amazing one. Why can’t my teachers at school be like you?”

  Holly smiled at Mia and wanted to hug her. And she did, since she’d been there for two hours and it was nearing eight o’clock and time to go.

  Liam stood and started clearing the table. “Mia, if you’ll finish clearing, I’ll clean the kitchen and do the dishes when I get back from walking Holly home.”

  “Oh, you don’t have to walk me home,” Holly said, even though she liked the idea.

  “I get out of cleaning and dish washing and all I have to do is clear the rest of the table? I’m so taking this deal.”

  “And start your homework immediately after,” Liam added.

  Mia scrunched up her face and stacked plates. “See you tomorrow after school, Holly. I’ll meet you at your house at around three thirty, okay?”

  “Perfect,” Holly said and Mia carefully balanced dishes and glasses as she headed to the kitchen.

  Liam leashed the dogs and they headed up the path to Blue Crab Boulevard, commenting on the weather, which was still warm enough to barely require a light jacket, and how good the food was and how amazed Liam was that making a delicious and healthy dinner took no more time than waiting for Pizza Palace to make an extra-large pie with meatballs and peppers.

  When they arrived at her porch, Liam sat down on the top step. Holly sat beside him, and for a moment they both stared at the moon, a perfect yellow crescent in the dark sky.

  “Thanks for tonight,” he said. “I’ve been looking for something to bring me and Mia closer and I had no idea it would be the teacher of her cooking class. I owe you more than I can put into words.” He turned to face her. “Thank you.”

  He was sitting so close to her, his thigh so touchably close that for a moment Holly was rendered speechless. And when he leaned closer, as if he might kiss her, Holly felt goose bumps along her arms.

  Good ones and bad ones, though. She leaned slightly away. “Your life seems kind of complicated right now, Liam. And I don’t kiss guys who have girlfriends.” Even if she was dying to.

  “What about guys with former girlfriends?” he asked.

  She glanced at him. “You and Jodie broke up?”

  He nodded and stared straight ahead. For a moment she didn’t think he was going to say more, but then he added, “She asked where the relationship was heading, if I was serious about her, and I told her the truth. I told her what I told Mia. And she said that wasn’t good enough for her, and a whole bunch of words later, she punched me in the stomach and left.”

  “Did she really punch you?”

  “Yup.”

  Holly had no trouble envisioning Jodie punching someone. “Why?”

  She said I acted like I liked her more than I obviously did and that I was a fraud, and then she wailed me in the gut.”

  “Did it hurt?”

  He shook his head.

  Which all meant Holly was free to fall for him and have her heart broken in five places. She should just feed him the sa cordula now and get it over with.

  “Have you told Mia yet?”

  “No. I will in good time.” He held her gaze for a moment. “So, if you’re interested, I thought I might take you on a real date. Actually, a date not involving food.”

  She was way too happy about this. “I’m sick to death of food.”

  A few minutes later, a day and time agreed upon, he and the beagles were headed back toward Cove Road. When he crossed, he turned and stopped, eyeing her for a moment before holding up his hand and disappearing down the path with her heart.

  The next morning someone was ringing the doorbell like a lunatic. Holly glanced at the clock on her bedside table. It was barely eight o’clock. Mia, maybe? She went to the window to see if a car was parked in the drive, and there was a little red Honda with Maine plates.

  She put on her robe and went downstairs as the bell
rang again. And again.

  “This had better be important,” she whispered in the direction of the door.

  More peals of the bell.

  “Okay, okay,” Holly said she opened the door.

  Francesca Bean stood there, beaming, in a pantsuit with a little filmy scarf wrapped around her neck. “Sorry about dragging you out of bed at the crack of dawn, but I wanted to come see you in person before I left for work. You’re hired, Holly! You’re catering my wedding!”

  Holly’s mouth dropped open. “What?”

  “I had a long talk with Jack about the wedding and what this whole being bossed around because ‘they’re paying for it’ means for every single moment of our future—get-togethers, family dinners, holidays—and how if I don’t put my foot down now about my own wedding, my own life, I’ll always be a doormat to them. And Jack backed me up.”

  “That’s great,” Holly said. “Good for you and him.”

  “I know! I was so proud of myself. So we sat our mothers down for our weekly breakfast checklist of where we are on the wedding and what’s done and what needs to be done, and—”

  “Wait, you have a weekly wedding meeting with your and Jack’s mother?”

  “You met my mother, Holly. What’s not to understand?”

  Holly laughed. “Go on.”

  “Well, we told them we’d decided that we would foot the bill for our wedding ourselves and have just a simple affair at the college in the English department’s meeting room, since they had the nicest furniture with almost leatherlike Naugahyde green sofas and chairs, and all those old hardback books, and they both got the funniest looks of pure horror on their faces and agreed that I make all final decisions. They could put in their two cents, but I make the final call—on everything. So guess who’s catering my wedding for sixty-two guests?”

  Holly grabbed Francesca into a hug. “I don’t even know how to thank you, Francesca. You really put yourself on the line for me. And for my grandmother. You’re amazing.”

  “I’m the happiest I’ve ever been in my life, Holly. Because your grandmother sent me down to that pier. Yeah, I was happy enough before I met Jack, but what we have, how he makes me feel about myself, how comfortable and truly happy I am just sitting on the sofa with him at night watching American Idol or whatever—I’ve never had this kind of crazy, perfect, just-right relationship before, Holly. My love life sucked until Jack.”

  “I know what that’s like.”

  Francesca squeezed Holly’s hand. “And so does my poor sister, who’s dating herself into a total depression just to have a date to the wedding. Nothing I say is getting through to her, so maybe you can tell her she can’t force it. Yeah, she doesn’t have someone with magic stones telling her that her guy will turn up in the supermarket in the peanut butter section, but it’s like she thinks she’s going to miss him if she doesn’t date every guy in Maine.”

  “I think she just wants what you have. She wants what everyone wants.”

  Francesca glanced at her watch. “Oh, God, almost eight thirty. I’d better get going. But I don’t want to forget to tell you that my mother even admitted your work was more an A than a B and she was only thinking of her ‘dear friend Amanda Windemere and Avery, who are such good friends of the family,’ blah, blah, blah. So forget all the nasty stuff that was said. We’ll hook up again closer to the date to plan the final menu, but don’t let anyone else hire you for the first of spring.”

  “No weekly meetings to plan the menu?” Holly asked with a smile.

  “Those are history too. And, really, it’s thanks to you, since the big confrontation was over you. Okay, gotta run. Bye!”

  Holly closed the door, happiness pinging from her toes along her entire body.

  She did it.

  “I did it! Antonio,” she shouted, scooping up the grumpy cat and twirling him around kitchen—the place where she felt comfortable and truly happy and with which she was having a crazy, perfect, just-right relationship.

  Thirteen

  After champagne (white grape juice for Mia) and clinking of glasses all around, Holly and her four students began chopping vegetables for minestra maritata, Italian wedding soup, in honor of Holly’s victory. Camilla had two versions of the hearty soup in her recipe binder, one that took hours for the various meats to simmer, and one quicker version, and Holly chose the quick. The recipe once again involved meatballs, but since last week’s spaghetti and meatballs was such a hit, especially with Simon’s daughter, Holly had come to think of meatballs as good luck charms.

  As Juliet crumbled the ground beef and Italian sausage into the bread crumbs and eggs in the large metal bowl on the island, Mia was sniffing the start of the soup, the classic Italian soffrito of sautéing onions, garlic, celery, and carrots in a large pot on the stove. Simon and Tamara were on chopping and mincing duty, an array of colorful vegetables and herbs awaiting Juliet’s knife and Simon’s grater and mincer, from basil and bay leaves to leafy green spinach and thyme.

  “I always thought orzo was rice,” Tamara said, pouring in the cup of undercooked barley-shaped pasta to the fragrant pot of broth and vegetables. “Which reminds me of my moronic date a couple of nights ago—a monologue on whether couscous is a pasta or a grain. I wanted to jump on the table and shout ‘Who cares?’ at the top of my lungs. This guy went on and on in these fifteen-minute monologues about his deep thoughts on everything.”

  “I can’t even imagine dating ever again,” Simon said, taking a sip of champagne. “I can barely figure out what I’m supposed to do as a person now that I’m suddenly not living with my wife and daughter. Every day I feel like I’m living someone else’s life.”

  Holly was reminded of her conversation with Liam during the hunt for Mia a couple of weeks ago. “I feel like that sometimes. Like I’m trying to be my grandmother when I’ll never come close to filling her shoes.”

  “You got a very big catering job on your own merit,” Juliet said as she ripped spinach into a wooden bowl. “That’s major. You used your grandmother’s recipes, but you got the job.”

  Everyone raised a glass, and Holly walked around and clinked every last one, unable to believe how far she’d come in these two months. From sobbing with the blankets pulled over her head to leading this class with something close to confidence.

  As Simon and Juliet formed the little meatballs, Holly said, “The soup calls for a happy memory, and mine is the last day I spent with my grandmother, right here, watching her crank the pasta machine and eye the stretch of dough with such love as though it were the first time she was making pasta. Seventy-five years old, and she still loved what she was doing even though she’d been doing it her entire life.”

  The meatball Mia was rolling slipped out of her hands and onto the floor. “Oops,” she said. “I was just thinking my happy memory into that one. Does it still work if I start over with a new one?”

  “Your memories will always be your memories,” Holly said. “So yes.”

  Mia scooped up the dirty one with a paper towel and tossed it in the garbage, then sat back down at one of the island stools and began rolling another. “My happy memory is two years ago when my mom came for my birthday. My dad kept telling me not to get my hopes up, that she might not be able to come, but she’d left a few months before that and I’d only seen her once since, and I did get my hopes up, and when I woke up in the morning, guess who was sitting in a chair by my bed?”

  Holly envisioned the sophisticated, beautiful woman with the model hair and high heels in the photograph at the Geller house. She was such a different type from Holly. Holly, drawn to jeans and riding boots and cozy sweaters and ponytails, rarely wore a dress, let alone heels. And her only piece of jewelry was a delicate gold necklace, a chain with three tiny dangling discs that her grandmother had given her for her sixteenth birthday when she’d finally shared Holly’s fortune. On each disc was an initial of Holly’s name, HMM, Holly Marie Maguire.

  Discs. Holly reached her hand up to her
necklace and walked over to the entryway, where a beautiful round mirror was hung over a side table holding explanations of pastas and sauces. She stared at the necklace. The tiny circles were meant to symbolize the Po River stones. Why had she never realized that before?

  “And guess what else?” Mia continued, rolling another meatball. “My mother said she’d been sitting there for over an hour, just watching me sleep. My birthday is this Friday and I know she’s going to come. I haven’t seen her in almost six months, and the last time was for only a couple of days.”

  “That must be hard, not seeing your mom very often,” Tamara said. “My mother is a total nightmare, but she’s my mother …” Tamara stopped talking, eyeing Mia, who was looking at her expectantly. She’d seemed to realize she was talking to an almost twelve-year-old and not an adult and that this was a very sensitive subject. “It’ll be exciting to see her. What’s her name?”

  “Veronica Feroux. Isn’t that pretty? It’s French. Her maiden name was Smith. And then Geller when she married my dad. And now that she’s married to René, she’s French. It’s too bad Daniel’s name is so boring. Dressler. Not that I’m marrying him.”

  “Daniel Dressler. I like that name,” Simon said. “You’ll never forget it, either, since he’s escorting you to your first dance.”

  Mia beamed. “This week is going to be my best memory ever. First my birthday and my mom and the next night, the dance with Daniel. You should see my dress. Holly took me shopping after school this past Friday. It’s a sparkly lavender and has the coolest neckline.”

  “We want pictures next Monday,” Simon said. “Oh, I almost forgot to add my happy memory into the soup. The expression on Cass’s face when she opened the door to her bedroom and saw what we’d done. She’d been so … dour a moment before and then she lit up and turned to me and said, ‘This is mine?’ And she walked in so slowly and looked around, taking in every little thing, every star on the ceiling. And then gave me the fiercest hug of my life. She almost knocked the wind out of me and she’s just eight.”