The Love Goddess’ Cooking School

by Melissa Senate

  And she still said nothing as he slowly lifted her T-shirt over her stomach, over her breasts, where he spent a good few moments before slipping the shirt over her head and tossing it off the bed. She did the same to his shirt, kissing her way down as she unbuttoned. She loved the sight of their shirts in a messy heap on the floor, then her attention was completely taken by the feel of his hands and mouth making their way across various bare expanses of her skin until she was completely naked, her yoga pants and lacy white underwear and his gray pants and black boxer briefs, Calvin Klein, she could see from the waistband, joining their shirts.

  And then for a good long while, there was nothing but sensation and the delicious cool air blowing through the slightly open window.

  Liam turned back into a pumpkin around ten o’clock, which was Mia’s bedtime and when he figured her mother would bring her back home.

  Holly’s bed, so warm a moment ago, seemed so big and cold without him. He was dressing, his features tightening with every button, every zip. “I’m not even sure if Veronica’s bringing Mia home or keeping her for the weekend or what,” he said, buttoning his shirt over that rock-hard chest that she’d felt and kissed every inch of. “I wish I could stay. I wish I could stay the night with you.”

  “Me too. But I understand.”

  She put on her little satin robe and tied it tight around her, ready to walk him downstairs. At her bedroom door he turned suddenly, untied her robe, and pulled her against him in a fierce hug that stole her breath, then reached up with two fingers to touch the side of her face, her jawline. He tied her robe again, smiled briefly, and put his arm around her as he led her downstairs.

  If she were making ravioli or mushroom risotto, she would wish he could stay, that circumstances were different. And yes, yes, yes, Tamara, I can now personally attest to the fact that you can fall in love on your second date. You could fall in love on a brief visit, a knock on the door at eight o’clock.

  In the kitchen, she found his jacket lying on the floor where he’d shrugged it off when he’d first kissed her. And then she walked him to the front door. “Call me if you need to talk, okay?”

  He nodded, then leaned over and kissed her, both sweetly and passionately, on the lips, and opened the door. She watched him walk across the road, his shoulders seeming stiff again. When he crossed, he stopped and looked back, holding up his hand the way he had the last time, and Holly held up hers.

  Fifteen

  In the morning, when Holly opened the front door to get the Sunday newspaper, there was something wrapped in white tissue paper on her welcome mat, a note atop it. Holly breathed in the cool early November air, picked up the large, round, flat package, and flipped open the card.

  H—Couldn’t sleep for a bunch of reasons, but mostly because I can’t stop thinking about you, about last night. I’m the type of insomniac who makes things, so I made this for you. L.

  What was it? she wondered, her goofy smile back as she removed the tissue paper to find a wooden sign in the shape of a tomato, HOLLY’S KITCHEN carved into it in beautiful script.

  She stared at it for a moment, ridiculously happy. No matter what, there was feeling in this gift, in what it meant and represented.

  She hung it next to the stove and stepped back and looked at it. HOLLY’S KITCHEN. She smiled, picked up the phone, and pressed in Liam’s number, but she got voice mail, so she left a message thanking him—for the incredible gift and last night. She made a pot of Milanese coffee, opened the last package of her grandmother’s favorite Mulino Bianco breakfast cookies, and, her eyes on the sign, sat at the breakfast nook where her grandmother had told so many fortunes.

  Holly would not serve Liam Geller sa cordula. She would not even think about it.

  In the afternoon, as she prepped for the next day’s class, he finally called back. Mia was staying with her mother at a hotel in Portland for the weekend, Veronica would drop her off Monday morning, and Mia had sounded so excited over the phone that he’d held his tongue and said fine. And apparently he and Veronica had spoken for quite some time. His ex-wife had dropped some bombshells that had made Liam’s head spin, he’d said, and though Holly was dying to know what, Liam didn’t want to get into the particulars until he’d digested them himself.

  “I need a manual for how to deal with this,” he said. “Blueprints. And a really strong drink.”

  Ditto, she thought.

  It was almost six on Monday. Holly wondered if Mia would come to class that night. But at five forty-five, the door blew open and Mia came running in, her smile bigger and brighter than when she’d told Holly that Daniel had asked her to the dance. She wore clothes Holly hadn’t seen before, tight jeans tucked into knee-high brown riding boots, a long multicolored scarf tied around her neck, its long swatch hanging down to her silver belt buckle. And her hair, her perfect, long chestnut hair was now cut into a sophisticated style, with sideswept bangs and long layers. She looked like she was sixteen.

  Liam had to be furious. If he’d even seen her yet.

  Mia twirled her way into the kitchen, three pirouettes, and came to a stop, laughing. “Look at me, Holly! Aren’t I totally all glam? My mom took me shopping and to a salon. Look at my eyebrows!”

  Her eyebrows had been perfectly fine before, but now they were perfect slashes above her beautiful blueberry-colored eyes. At least she wasn’t wearing makeup. Except for some sparkly lip gloss. That was new too. But Holly could live with the sparkly lip gloss. Even if it was probably Chanel.

  “All my wishes came true, Holly! My mom came to the dance and picked me up and we went back to her hotel and we had the most incredible weekend. And then this morning, she dropped me off at my house, and my dad flipped, of course, at my new clothes and my haircut. Hello, I’m twelve. Not ten. Why do I have to have little-girl do-nothing hair that just lies there? My hair is no different than Madeline’s or Morgan’s now. And big deal, I’m wearing jeans tucked into boots. I do that all winter.”

  Twelve-year-old-girl-appropriate jeans tucked into L.L. Bean duck boots wasn’t exactly the same thing, but Holly knew this conversation wasn’t about the clothes or the hair or the eyebrows. It was about Mia’s mother in her life. And she had to tread very carefully.

  “You should have seen Madeline Windemere and her M friends’ faces when I walked into school this morning. And Daniel couldn’t stop staring at me in history. He asked if we could go out again this week, and I said sure, but I didn’t know when because my mom has us totally booked for like every night. Oh, my God, Holly, could my life be any better? Yes! Because guess what the best part is? She’s staying! I mean, she’s actually moving back here! She’s going to rent a house for us in Portland, either on the Eastern or Western Promenade or maybe one of those condos right on the harbor in the Old Port, until she finds exactly what she’s looking for for us. And she said I can have veto power over the house she buys!”

  Whoa. “She’s moving back? With her husband?”

  “That’s actually the best part,” Mia said, taking both Holly’s hands and jumping up and down. “She said she’s getting a divorce!”

  Double whoa. This was happening very fast. And very swoopish, like Liam had said. No wonder he’d been so worried.

  “And do you know what that means?” Mia asked, spinning around again.

  “What?”

  “That my mom and dad will get back together. I know they will. You should have seen his face when she showed up at the dance. She was onstage when they were singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to me, and I looked around to spot him and he was staring up at her and I haven’t seen him look like that in a long time. He’s never looked at Jodie that way.”

  Like he wanted to kill her? Holly wondered.

  Or had there been a moment, before the anger and fear set in, when Liam had looked at his ex-wife and felt something much softer?

  “Oh, and Holly, is it all right if I don’t stay for the class tonight? My mom is taking me to an art exhibit at a gallery. Isn’t th
at so cool?”

  “Of course it’s okay.”

  “I mean, I still plan to be your apprentice, even though our mission is done. We got rid of the fake-o bobblehead! My mom is a great cook, so it’s not like I need to learn anymore, but I really like the class. And we had a deal, right?”

  “Right,” she said, squeezing Mia’s hand, her mind working to take this all in and not focus on any one thing. Like Liam looking at his ex-wife with love and tenderness.

  “Okay, well, I’d better get home. My mom’s picking me up in like fifteen minutes. And now I have an amazing outfit to wear! Thank you for everything, Holly. If it wasn’t for you, Jodie would still be in my dad’s life and that would have totally complicated everything. Now he’s back to being single and is totally available to get back together with my mom.”

  Holly managed a smile, a smile that actually felt genuine because she cared about this girl, a lot more than she realized, and for her, she wanted this fairy tale to end happily.

  But it couldn’t, right? No way, no how? Because Liam was way over his ex-wife, didn’t even like his ex-wife. And because he and Holly had had a perfect date on a rowboat that had ended with an amazing kiss and then they’d shared Gouda cheese and grapes and Italian bread and had made love.

  Because Holly was in love with Liam.

  “Where’s Mia’s tonight?” Juliet asked, glancing around the big kitchen for her. Mia was such a bright, boisterous presence that the lack of her, especially with only worried Holly and grieving Juliet, made her absence all the more noticeable. Tamara had called, sounding very congested, and said she’d come down with a nasty little cold and couldn’t make the class, and Simon, Holly was happy to see, had just come through the door.

  “She’s with her mom,” Holly said, holding up a hello hand to Simon as she placed the copies of the recipes on the center island. Maybe she’d bring down Mia’s copies later, just to have a reason to knock on the Gellers’ door. Uh, you’re not falling back in love with your ex-wife, right? Preposterous, right? And he’d say, Holly, silly woman, how could I feel anything for any woman other than you after the past few times we were together? I carved for you, didn’t I?

  Hardly likely. Though he did carve for her.

  “That makes me very happy,” Juliet said. “For Mia’s sake. But I just don’t get her mother at all. How do you just leave like that, start a new life as though you don’t have a child somewhere? It makes me crazy, especially because I’d do anything to be with my daughter for one more minute, and here someone just up and left her ten-year-old daughter for a man, coming back for every-now-and-then visits.”

  Simon tied on an apron. “I know. Those first few weeks of not seeing Cass every day, having to call her if I wanted to hear her voice, find out about her day, was so hard. It’s almost impossible to imagine a parent who’s able to go for weeks or months without seeing her own kid’s face. I don’t get it either. Mia must be overjoyed, though. Her wish into the wedding soup came true.”

  Wedding soup. Holly had almost forgotten the wedding soup. Maybe she’d helped set up this family reunion without realizing it. A Camilla Constantina moment.

  She had to remember that this was a happy occasion for a child, that a girl’s wish had come true. And how often did that happen? And this wasn’t just any girl, but Mia, whom she’d come to adore. For the past few weeks Mia had shared her hopes and dreams with Holly—when Mia had no one else with whom to share them—and now Holly was going to be the interloper?

  She needed to take a giant step back.

  “You two have put things into perspective for me,” Holly said. “Without even realizing it. Thank you.”

  Juliet smiled. “I’m not that self-absorbed, actually. I know you’ve got a serious thing for Mia’s father. And I also know that things happen that you have absolutely no control over. Like love. And loss.”

  “So you’re saying I should be on guard? Or that I need to let him go?” She wondered what he was doing right then. Walking with Mia and her mother along the windy beach near Mia’s favorite lighthouse in Cape Elizabeth? Sitting down to dinner at Liam’s house, the three of them talking about old times when they were a family?

  How could she wish into tonight’s risotto that Liam would choose her instead of the opportunity to put his family back together? How could she?

  “Holly, I’m just saying that you can’t control everything. Anything, really. Like the food we’ve been making. We can follow the recipe exactly as your grandmother wrote it, do everything exactly—or almost exactly—as she had, and the dish can come out so-so instead of amazing. Or it can come out amazing when you were expecting very little.”

  Simon nodded. “You’re very wise, Juliet.”

  “Hardly. I’m just trying to make sense of Evie’s death for myself. I come up with something like I just said, and I think I believe it, but then the next day I’m back to the crying, back to the anger that makes me want to hit something, back to the total despair that makes me want to smash my car into a brick wall.”

  Holly stared at her, then at Simon, then back at Juliet. “But you wouldn’t, right?”

  Juliet shook her head and tears filled her eyes. “No, I wouldn’t. Not that I haven’t thought about it, when I’ve been behind the wheel and sobbing and there have been a few brick walls looming ahead. It would dishonor Evie’s death.” Her face crumpled, and where a moment ago she’d been so strong, Holly could tell her knees would give out if she didn’t sit down. “Right?”

  Holly led Juliet over to the breakfast nook and sat her in one of the cushioned chairs. “Right, Juliet. Very right. It’s what my grandmother would say, I know it.”

  “And Ethan needs me. I know he does. I’m just not interested in being needed by him. I know how cold that sounds.”

  Simon poured a glass of white wine and handed it to Juliet. “Not cold. Everyone grieves their own way. How long has it been since your daughter died?”

  “Almost six months. At first I stayed in the house with Ethan. I tried. I tried to let him comfort me, but when he started going back to work after two weeks, two weeks, I started to hate him. And he’d come home from work, full of stupid, who-cares conversation about a corporate takeover case he was working on, and I started hating the sound of his voice. I shut myself in Evie’s room, sleeping in there, which I guess made things worse. And eventually he stopped talking to me, would just walk around me. And I finally felt like I could leave. And I came here.”

  Holly squeezed Juliet’s hand. “Oh, Juliet. You’ve been grieving the loss of your husband just as much as your daughter.”

  She shrugged, her slight shoulders barely rising. “Here I go again, sucking all the air out the room like Ethan accused me of. I don’t want to turn this class into some depressing sob story. You two go create amazing risotto. I could use some fresh air, anyway.”

  “So let’s all just go sit out on the porch with the bottle,” Simon said, taking two more glasses from the cupboard. “I’m bone tired from work today. No energy to mince garlic, let alone deal with beef marrow.”

  “Me either,” Holly said. “A glass of wine and two friends sounds just like what the doctor ordered for all of us.”

  And so the three headed outside to the side deck and lay in the chaise lounges facing the evergreens and the beautiful swing between the oaks, sipping their wine and talking about love and loss until Simon started to snore.

  Juliet laughed, a welcome sound.

  Holly was in bed with her grandmother’s diary in her hand and Antonio curled at her feet when her phone rang. For once, she didn’t lunge for it. She almost didn’t answer. But of course she did.

  “Hey,” Liam said.

  “How are you?” she asked, holding her breath.

  “I’m okay. Except for the fact that my head feels like it’s going to explode. Mia’s mother has thrown a few curveballs, and”—he stopped for a moment, and she realized she was holding her breath—“and suddenly things are … complicated when they
weren’t a few days ago.”

  Complicated. Her least favorite word.

  She lay back down and stared up at the ceiling. “I know. Mia stopped by before class tonight. She told me everything. I don’t think she left a single thing out.”

  “Ah. That’s probably a good thing.”

  Or a very bad thing.

  “Veronica says she’s really staying, that she’s going to look for a house—to buy. She seems to really mean it.”

  This was good for Mia, Holly reminded herself as worry crawled back inside her. “So she just left her husband, just like that?”

  “That’s her M.O.”

  This was so confusing. She had left two husbands. And Holly was supposed to root for her to take one back, the one Holly had fallen in love with?

  You’re supposed to root for Mia, she told herself. For a fractured family that could have a second chance.

  Not that they were a family. Veronica was an ex-wife. Ex. She chose to leave. Holly supposed she could think her away around this in circles forever and never know what was right for her to feel.

  “I’m sorry that I kind of defended her the other night, for Mia’s sake,” Holly said. “I can see why you’re so worried about her mother’s intentions. But I guess if she’s serious about staying, that is a good thing for Mia, right?”

  “Have you seen her jeans? Her eyebrows? She’ll be getting a tattoo next. I don’t know how good it is.”

  Holly had no idea what to say to this, to any of this.

  “Listen, Holly, I might make myself a little scarce for the next few days, just until I know what’s really going on, what Veronica’s intentions are, if she’s serious.”

  “Could she be?” And are you part of those intentions?