She finally let out the breath she’d been holding. “Liam, this is very complicated stuff. Suddenly I’m coming between you and your ex-wife, and Mia is involved—”
“No, Holly. You’re not coming between us. My ex-wife came between us—for a little while.”
“Does Mia know?”
He shook his head. “I just came from Veronica’s hotel. I told her how I feel and I thought I’d just go home and sleep for two days, but instead of turning down my road, I pulled in your driveway. This is where I want to be, Holly. If you’ll even give me another chance.”
“I don’t know, Liam. I don’t know if I can believe in this, if I can handle how messy this is.”
“Can we go back to the start of taking it slowly, then?” he asked.
“I really don’t know.”
“Then let me say this. I want to be with you, Holly. And not for any other reason than the fact that I’m crazy about you.”
I’m crazy about you too. “I need to think about all this, okay?”
He stared at her, his blueberry-colored eyes so intense, so serious. She wanted to fling herself into his arms and take him upstairs, but she wasn’t going to be stupid about this. He’d just been through something very emotionally heavy and adding herself to it didn’t feel right. If a week or two passed and his feelings were the same, if he still believed what he’d said, then maybe she’d give this all a chance again. Maybe.
When Liam left, Holly dropped down on the living room sofa, mentally and physically exhausted. Antonio jumped up and lay his head on her thigh. She sat there for a good half hour, unsure and afraid. Then she called Tamara, hoping she’d be around for another tiramisu and talking session, but her cell phone went directly to voice mail. The moment she set her phone down, it rang, but it wasn’t Tamara, it was Juliet.
“Holly? Are you busy?”
“Not at all.”
“Can I stop over? I’m so confused. I’d really like to talk to you.”
“Jump in your car and come right over,” Holly said. “And I’m glad you called me.”
“Me too.”
In fifteen minutes, Juliet was sitting on the sofa next to Holly, a pot of lemon zinger tea, Juliet’s favorite, on the coffee table in front of them.
“I did it,” she said, her pretty hazel eyes worried and tense. “I called Ethan and told him to come. But now that he’s here, I’m … all shut down again. I picked a fight with him and he stormed out, booked a room of his own, and said he’s flying back home in the morning, that he’s tired of the false starts and has had it.”
“And what did you say?”
“Nothing. I just let him go.”
“Do you want to let him go, Juliet?”
She burst into tears and Holly put her arms around her, then went into the kitchen for a box of tissues. “When I saw him, when he appeared in the doorway of my room when he first arrived, what I felt was relief. Like, here’s here, everything is going to be okay. But then he asked if I was ready to come home, and I said I wasn’t sure, and he got upset and started pacing and telling me that he lost our daughter too. And that then he lost me and it wasn’t fair, and it turned into a fight. And then he said he was booking a room and leaving in the morning.”
“Can you imagine your life without him?” Holly asked.
Juliet sniffled and shook her head. “But I’m not ready to go home.”
“Will you ever be ready?”
‘I can’t see how. He said we could move, buy a new house near the lake so that I’ll be reminded of here, yet get a fresh start. But how can we start fresh? I don’t want to forget Evie.”
“Maybe he just feels that a new home, one without her nursery, will help you begin to start living again.”
“That’s what he said. That I need to let Evie’s memory become a part of me instead of something that keeps me in perpetual grief.”
“That sounds right to me, Juliet. I know it’s not the same thing, but it’s close to what my grandmother said when your father died. How his memory would become a piece of you and when you needed him, needed to feel him with you, you could make his favorite dish and just the making of it, the eating of it, the putting the memory into the food, would bring you comfort.”
“And it did. But this is different.”
“Let’s try, Juliet. Let’s try making her favorite thing to eat. What was it?”
“Cheerios and scrambled eggs with a sprinkling of cheddar cheese.”
“I assume the Cheerios weren’t mixed in?”
She smiled. “No. She just liked to carry a baggie of Cheerios whenever we went out.”
“So let’s make her favorite meal, right now. We’ll write up your recipe, exactly how you made it, and you’ll decide on the final special ingredient.”
She took a deep breath, nodded, and followed Holly into the kitchen. And for the next five minutes, there was the cracking of eggs and whisking of eggs and scrambling of eggs in a pat of butter. And just before the eggs set, Juliet stood over the pan and said, “I love you, baby girl,” and then sprinkled on some cheddar cheese.
Holly took the pen and wrote Sprinkle cheddar cheese. And below that she added the final ingredient:
One true statement
They ate the eggs, which were delicious, and after a bracing cup of Camilla’s espresso, a slightly stronger Juliet took the recipe and went back to the Blue Crab Cove, where hopefully she knocked on her husband’s door.
One true statement. A perfect final ingredient.
Alone in the bungalow, too many thoughts racing through her head, Holly decided to create her own recipe for lasagna, since she finally had to admit she didn’t love ricotta cheese and that for years lasagna was ruined for her because of that cheese. She would use a different kind, find the right one, and add the final ingredient of One True Statement, and another recipe would be hers.
I love Liam was one true statement that she didn’t want to utter right then, so she stopped herself from thinking about him, about Mia, if he’d told her that he wasn’t getting back together with her mother after all, that Mia would not be her mother’s maid of honor.
She put away the flour and eggs and closed the recipe binder. I’ll lose myself in your life instead, Nonna, Holly thought, pouring herself another cup of the espresso and settling on the sofa with it and her grandmother’s diary.
October 1965
Dear Diary,
For years after little Richard Windemere died, Lenora Windemere tried to get rid of me. Someone from the health department would knock on my door to make sure my kitchen was spick-and-span, as I sold packaged foods. Someone from the town hall stopped by to discuss whether my home was properly zoned for business purposes, and I had to go through some rigmarole to get all the proper paperwork. But at least now all of that is in order. I am officially a business.
And then there were the rumors. Lenora’s mother supposedly got food poisoning after trying the takeout dinners that I started selling. One of her friends almost choked to death on a bone—in the veal parmigiana she ordered special. Luckily, most people know that cutlets are boneless.
But still I stayed. This is my home. This is where I’m meant to be. And lately I’ve had this new feeling, that someone is meant to come home here. I have no idea what this means. Or for who. A cousin, maybe, from Italy. Luciana herself, when she’s older?
Though, no, that’s not it. Luciana will live a happy enough life far from Blue Crab Island; I know that with certainty.
But someone will come live in this house after me. Someone near and dear to my heart. Someone who’ll love it here as I do.
“Me, Nonna,” Holly said, her gaze on the painting of the olive tree. “That someone is me.”
Just before midnight, Holly’s cell phone rang. She grabbed it, hoping it was Juliet to say she wouldn’t be at class on Monday, that she and her husband were leaving together in the morning.
But it was Liam.
“Hey,” he said, and she could picture him
sitting on the back deck with a Shipyard beer beside him, the beagles scampering in the yard over their squeaky moose toy. He’d be resting his elbows on his knees and staring out at the water.
“Hey.”
“I just wanted to say good night, Holly. And that I was thinking of you. I don’t know how to exactly do this, if I’m supposed to give you space or what, but if there’s one thing you can count on with me, I’m an honest guy. So I’m just going to tell you honestly that I’m sitting here thinking about you and wishing you were here. And one more thing. That I’m really sorry for hurting you.”
Her heart pinged and she sat up in bed, hugging her knees up to her chest.
“I’m thinking about you too,” she said. But she wouldn’t say more. That she was scared to believe in this. That she wanted to run down Cove Road and sit beside him, watching the dogs, watching the water, watching their hands entwined.
“I’m glad you called,” she said. “Very glad.” And left it that.
“Sweet dreams,” he said.
“Sweet dreams.”
She put the cell phone back on the table and slipped the Po River stones out of the white pouch, holding them up to her face. “Can I trust this?” she asked as if the stones were a Magic 8 Ball.
Ask again later was the response she gave herself before turning off the lamp and snuggling back down under the covers, the stones in her hand.
Nineteen
The next morning, Holly was having her own personal cheese tasting, from three kinds of blue cheese, including the king of cheese, Stilton, to a few different cream cheeses, trying to figure out which would work best as replacement for ricotta in the lasagna, when the bells jangled.
“Hello?” called out a woman’s raspy voice, the kind affected by a lifetime of smoking.
Holly headed into the entryway, where a beautiful elderly woman, who indeed smelled faintly of clove cigarettes, stood holding a black and white canvas tote bag that read: Friends of the Blue Crab Island Library. She looked to be around her grandmother’s age, seventy-five, perhaps even eighty. And she was also somewhat familiar, but Holly couldn’t place her until she realized she’d noticed the woman at her grandmother’s sparsely attended funeral. Her hair was luminous silver in a bun high atop her head with two diamond-encrusted pins poking out of the top. She wore black pants with a long white sweater, a sheer red silk scarf at her neck.
“My name is Lenora Windemere,” she said, and Holly almost gasped. “I knew your grandmother. I took a cooking class here over forty years ago.” There was no emotion in her voice, no nostalgia. This was not about reminiscing.
Holly smiled and held out her hand, and Lenora took it in both of hers for a moment and then let go.
She reached into the tote bag, her many gemstone rings, including an enormous diamond, sparkling on her fingers. “I found this in town.” She pulled out the Camilla’s Cucinotta recipe binder and handed it to Holly.
Holly did gasp this time. “The recipe binder! Oh, thank God! I’ve looked everywhere for it. Where did you—”
“I found it in town,” she repeated, her hazel eyes steady on Holly’s.
You found it in your granddaughter’s bistro, in the kitchen, most likely, as Avery prepared for the “Italian segment” of her own cooking class. That Holly knew with Camilla Constantina certainty.
She clutched the binder against her chest, so relieved to have it back.
Either Avery Windemere or a friend of hers had stolen the binder. And Lenora had either found out or come across it and brought it back. She was telling Holly that her granddaughter didn’t need to resort to crime to get rid of the competition, or that Holly wasn’t any competition, or possibly, that the binder belonged to Camilla Constantina and now her granddaughter—and belonged in this bungalow. Regardless, Lenora was saying something.
“Thank you,” Holly said, holding her gaze. “Very much.”
Lenora stared at her for a moment, perhaps seeing Camilla in her features, in her dark eyes and hair. She glanced around for a moment, stopping at the blackboard menu noting today’s pastas. She opened her mouth to speak, and for a moment Holly thought she might buy one of the pastas, but she just eyed the case and walked out.
The moment Lenora Windemere left, Holly went to a copy center in Portland and made two copies of the binder. The original would always remain in the kitchen, where it belonged, but she’d have the copies up in the attic just in case Madeline Windemere grew up with notions of stealing the recipes one day. It was almost comical to think about, but Holly wouldn’t put anything past those Windemeres. On the way back, as she drove past Avery W’s bistro, she thought about stopping in with the binder and confronting Avery somehow. She knew Avery was the thief—and there was only one reason why Avery would feel threatened by that binder. Because Holly’s previously dissed skills were serious competition, after all. But the fact that Lenora Windemere knew Avery had stolen the recipe binder—whether to use it for her own Italian segment or to simply leave Holly recipe-less, or both—was all the satisfying justice Holly needed.
Back at the bungalow, Holly was layering the lasagna (she’d used store-bought sheets of pasta) when the bell jangled. There was no way she was leaving her béchamel to turn into sludge another time, so she called out, “Come on in.”
Two animated young women, one with striking white-blond hair and the other with a mass of auburn curls practically to her waist, stopped under the archway. “Hi, we heard you offer a basic Italian cooking class?” said the blonde.
Holly finished whisking the white sauce and layered it on, then added another layer of meat sauce. “That’s right, I do. My name is Holly Maguire, and I inherited Camilla’s Cucinotta from my grandmother, who taught the class for decades. The fall course is in session right now, but the winter course will start in January.”
The redhead said, “We heard she used to be called The Love Goddess and told fortunes. Do you tell fortunes too?”
Holly added the final layer of pasta, sprinkled on just a bit of Parmesan, having learned the hard way that too much would turn bitter. “No, I didn’t inherit my grandmother’s gift of fortune-telling, but I did inherit her gift of cooking.”
Well, well. She’d said that with a straight face. Holly smiled. It was true. She had inherited her grandmother’s gift. In her own way, her own style. She belonged in this kitchen.
“Oh, too bad,” the blonde said. “We both just got dumped by our boyfriends. Well, not boyfriends so much as jerks we were dating and thought were our boyfriends. We were hoping we could learn to cook our favorite kind of food and find out what was in store for us.”
Holly smiled. “Sorry about that. There’s no fortune-telling in class, but if you read the brochure, you’ll see that each recipe calls for special ingredients, like a fervent wish or a happy memory. It seems that wishing and hoping and dreaming and remembering can be even more helpful than knowing what’s going to happen.”
The pair looked at each other and smiled. “I love that. So can we sign up for the class? We’re roommates and seniors at USM and we’re totally sick of ordering Chinese food. We’d love to learn to make that, for instance. Lasagna? It smells amazing.”
“It just so happens I’m planning to put this lasagna on the first week’s lesson for the winter/spring course, which will start the first week of January.”
“Awesome. Sign us up.”
As the girls handed over checks for $120 each and wrote their names and telephone numbers in Camilla’s old ledger, Holly realized she’d done it, she’d officially signed up two total strangers for the course. Herself.
“If you don’t mind my asking, where did you hear about my course?”
“We were having lunch in DoodleBop’s Café in Portland, and I had the most delicious pasta salad with sausage and sun dried tomatoes, and when I raved about it, the owner mentioned that a woman on Blue Crab Island makes it and that she also offered an Italian cooking class and that your information was up on the bulletin board. So
here we are. Do you have any of the pasta salad today? I’d love to take a container home.”
Holly slid the lasagna into the oven, then accompanied the young women into the entryway and showed them the pasta menu. They each bought a pasta salad.
And she’d earned these students with her own cooking. With her own recipe.
Thank you, Nonna, she said silently up to the ceiling.
Liam called that night. And the night after. Each time they had the same conversation, nothing more and nothing less. But his voice was becoming familiar to her again.
On the third night, she stared at the old-fashioned alarm clock on the bedside table, willing it to turn to ten o’clock, when he usually called, and anticipating the chimes of her cell phone. But it was the doorbell that rang.
And there he was, standing on her porch in his leather jacket and jeans, his hands shoved in his pockets, his expression saying I need to be with you.
She pulled open the door and he stepped inside, then she took his hand and led him upstairs to her bedroom.
As they stood in her room, standing across from each other holding both hands, Holly asked, “When will you turn into a pumpkin?”
“Not till tomorrow at three thirty, when Mia’s bus pulls in. She’s staying at her mother’s hotel tonight. I told Mia that her mother and I would not be getting back together, and she was upset and furious and crying, and then her mother came and picked her up to assure her that she was staying this time, that even though we weren’t getting back together, she was committed to being her mother, to living in Portland. I don’t think Mia believes that. I think she needed the wedding to believe that.”
“I can understand that. Poor Mia. This has to be very difficult stuff to go through at twelve. I’m just glad her mother is committing to her. Do you think she’ll really stay?”
The Love Goddess’ Cooking School Page 22