Cook the Books

by Jessica

  “Chloe!” The male voice came from below.

  I glanced down. Even in my petrified state, I was stunned. “Kyle? What—?”

  My cookbook partner stood at the base of the fire escape. “Chloe, what are you doing? Get down! Get off there now!” He took a step onto the wooden stairs.

  “Get away from me!” I hollered as I moved up to the next step. “You did this! You started this fire, didn’t you?” I yanked my arms out of my coat and threw it over my head in the hope of protecting myself from any more falling debris. Kyle scrambled higher until he was only a few steps away. I couldn’t go up any farther. “Josh!” I screamed. “Owen! Help me! Help me!”

  “Chloe, you have to get down from there!” Kyle begged.

  “Don’t get any closer to me, you psycho!” I swung my leg out as a warning. “Ade and Patrick are in there!”

  “What? No! No!” He froze and stared at me, his head shaking back and forth. “Adrianna!”

  Kyle lunged past me, knocking me to the side. I grabbed the railing and caught myself just before I toppled down the stairs. Frightened of Kyle and knowing that I was unable to save Adrianna and Patrick, I made my way downward. As I descended, the wail of sirens finally began to fill the air. Reaching the ground, I backed up and watched as Kyle reached the stairs to the third floor, the stairs that led to Ade and Owen’s landing. He coughed over and over as smoke swirled around him, and then he suddenly leaped the stairs, two at a time, to reach what was left of the landing and the back door.

  “Kyle!” I yelled uselessly.

  He blindly shot an arm forward to touch the door and screamed in pain, fell backward, and hit the railing behind him. Within a fraction of a second, the railing, none too sturdy to begin with, gave way, and Kyle plummeted three stories down and hit the ground. Feeling sick and sickeningly overwhelmed, I turned away.

  Josh’s voice rang out over the sirens. I turned to see him jogging up the lawn toward me. “We got them! We got Ade and Patrick!”

  “Are they okay?”

  “I think so. Yeah.” Josh wrapped both arms around me and pulled me against him. “It’s all okay now.”

  I clung to him tightly and buried my face in his chest. Nobody in the world could make me feel as safe and as right as Josh could. God, I had missed this feeling. “But, Josh. Look.” I pulled away and walked slowly toward Kyle. He’d landed on his back. Blood seeped from his nose and from the side of his head, and his legs were splayed at awkward angles. As I watched, he turned his head slightly; miraculously, he was alive, although maybe not for long. “Josh, get the EMTs.”

  Josh nodded and took off. I knelt down next to Kyle and spread my coat across him. He was mouthing something, struggling to speak. I leaned my ear close to him.

  Kyle looked up at the sky and blinked rapidly. “It wasn’t supposed to be them, you know. Right? It was supposed to be Owen. We could have been together. I could have made her happier than he could. I’d have taken care of her. You’d have taken Patrick. I know you would. You love him. You’d have been the perfect mother.”

  “Just hold on, Kyle,” I said evenly.

  “See, Dad?” he continued. “Now I have the wife, the beautiful wife, and cookbook, and nobody is going to ruin it this time.”

  “You started the fire at Digger’s, didn’t you?” I asked softly, leadingly.

  “Oh, I had to. Hank Boucher wouldn’t have liked what Digger had to say about me.” His lips curled into a small smile. “That wouldn’t have worked out at all. I think I need to rest now.”

  And with that, Kyle’s head rocked to the side. I pulled the coat up over his face and walked away.

  TWENTY-ONE

  “WHERE’S Patrick? Who has my baby?”

  “He’s right here,” I said gently. “I’ve got him. He’s fine.” I carried Patrick out from my bedroom and handed him to Adrianna.

  “Sorry. I’m sorry. I’m still freaked out.” Adrianna reached out and took Patrick from my arms. She tightened the blanket around her son and kissed the top of his head. “Thanks for letting us crash here, Chloe. Obviously we can’t live in that house any time soon.”

  “I doubt you’ll ever be moving back in there, Ade.” I put my hand on her shoulder and leaned in to give her a hug.

  “True. This is the opportunity that our landlords have been looking for. A good excuse to renovate the apartments back into a single-family house. I don’t know where we’ll go.”

  “We’ll find you guys something. How are you feeling?” I asked. I couldn’t hide my concern. “I know the hospital wanted you two to stay only one night, but I can’t help worrying.”

  Ade shrugged. “We’re fine. Physically, that is. I’m still in a bit of shock, though. I had no idea that Kyle was such a whack job.”

  I nodded. Ade and Patrick were lucky to have needed only minor treatment for smoke inhalation. By the time Josh had returned from my condo with the key to Ade and Owen’s apartment, the fire had really picked up. Only then had the smoke alarm gone off. One of the firefighters told Owen that some smoke alarms are triggered by flames and not by smoke. Ade might have been in the deep, exhausted sleep of a new mother, or she might already have been suffering from smoke inhalation when the alarm finally had sounded. In either case, I was immensely relieved that nothing worse had happened.

  “So, Kyle wanted me?” Ade squirmed uncomfortably and pulled Patrick closer. “And he started the fire believing that Owen was inside?”

  “Yes. It seems that Kyle imagined that with Owen out of the way, you could be together. He took all of the things you’d been saying about Owen’s job and terrible pay and wanting a better place to live, and twisted them in his mind. He developed the idea that he was exactly what you were really looking for and that he’d get rid of Owen for you so you two could, I don’t know, run off into the sunset together.”

  Ade shut her eyes and shivered. Patrick let out a small squawk, as if he were in tune with his mother’s emotions. “Sick man.” She gently stroked the baby’s back.

  “He thought that you were out that night and that Owen was home because that’s what I’d told him when he called me earlier in the day. He broke the glass in the door by the fire escape and started the fire using charcoal and lighter fluid that he tossed inside and on the fire escape itself.”

  “God, and then he watched the fire from the backyard?” She pulled Patrick in even tighter.

  “I know. But I guess he wanted to watch. Some fire-setters do.”

  “Do you think Kyle had been waiting for an opportunity to kill Owen?”

  “I’m not sure. I don’t even think that his fixation on you had all that much to do with you. I think that it was all about his crazy father. He set the fire at Digger’s the night before Hank Boucher was going to meet Digger for the first time and hear what an utter failure his son had been in culinary school. The night of your fire—”

  “Don’t call it my fire,” Ade said. “It’s Kyle’s fire.”

  “Sorry, the night Kyle set your place on fire, he’d just been dealt another rejection from his father, and I think that it triggered another desperate and pathological reaction. Kyle was determined to create the ideal- looking family that he thought he should have—the beautiful wife and the cookbook accomplishment—and when Hank didn’t invite his own son to this prestigious dinner, it set him off. His fire-setting was more about his anger and his fear of his father than anything else.”

  I immediately thought of Danny, my client, and realized how deep his rage must be at his own awful father. I would have to insist that Danny make some changes; I didn’t know whether it would be possible to get his father to come to a session. If not, my client would still have to disengage from his father and deal with the damage that had been done. I had only a month left with Danny until my six- week winter break, so I made a mental note to meet with my supervisor and come up with a solid plan for continued treatment with one of the senior therapists. And then there was Alison and her fantasies about leaving her
boyfriend for an idealized man who was never going to love her.

  As the parallels between my clients and Kyle became obvious, it dawned on me that I’d left my client notes on the coffee table when Kyle had been at my place. What’s more, when I’d moved my notes out of the way, he’d joked about my not wanting him to read my diary. He’d read about Alison, client A, who was desperately in love with an older man and wanted to leave her current partner for this new, suave, charming man. Kyle must have thought that my notes about A were about Adrianna and about her infatuation with him! God, this should teach me to keep my notes hidden!

  The first thing that I’d done after coming home from the hospital was to pack up all of the cookbook materials and mail them to Hank Boucher. I wanted nothing to do with that man ever again. I’d turned off the ringer on the phone, and I’d refused to turn on the television or the computer or to look at a newspaper, since I knew that the headlines would be riddled with the story of famous chef Hank Boucher’s murderous son. Today, I wanted to focus solely on my friends.

  “Look, Ade, you can all stay here for as long as you like. I can go crash at my parents’ house in Newton for a while. It’s not a problem.”

  “Absolutely not. We’re not about to kick you out of your own home, Chloe,” she protested.

  “You’re not kicking me out. I’m volunteering. In fact, I’m insisting. I’ll be perfectly fine at my parents’ place.”

  Ade brightened. “Really? I hate to put you out of your own apartment, Chloe, but I don’t know what other options we have. And we lost so much of what little we had. Even the stuff that wasn’t actually burned reeks of smoke. Hopefully we can salvage most of our clothes and linens with a few good runs in the washing machine, but . . . so much is gone. The only thing that really matters, though, is that Owen, Patrick, and I are still together.” She leaned down and kissed Patrick’s forehead and rubbed her nose against his. “When I think about what could have happened, what we could have lost, I just . . . it’s just unbearable to even consider. Thank God we’re all okay.” Ade repositioned herself on the couch so that Patrick lay across her knees, gazing adoringly at his mother. “You sure about letting us crash here?”

  “Of course you’re staying here. My mother will be thrilled to have me home for a while, too. And speaking of Owen, he and Josh should be back from your apartment soon with some of your things.”

  “And speaking of Josh,” Ade said raising her eyebrows, “what were you two doing together the other night, huh? Gimme the scoop.”

  “We were just, ah, well . . . See, we met up to talk about Kyle, and then . . .”

  Adrianna stared at me while I stuttered helplessly.

  “Okay, fine!” I tossed my hands up. “Here’s what happened.” I relayed all the juicy details from my pre-fire evening with Josh.

  “You slept together? Yahoo! So what’s going to happen now?” she asked excitedly, jostling Patrick as she sat upright. “Does this mean you’re finally back together? Everything is finally back to normal, and he’s moving back to Boston?”

  “I don’t really know what it means, but no, he’s not coming back here. We’re supposed to talk later today. He’s flying to Hawaii tomorrow morning.”

  “Well, you can’t let him, Chloe! You can’t! You love each other! He wrote you all those romantic letters that you never read because you’re a moron!”

  “Thank you very much,” I snarled.

  “You know what I mean,” she said more calmly. “You need to make this work out. I mean, really. Look what just happened to me. Life is too damn short. Get your man back.”

  I sighed and shook my head. “It’s so much more complicated than that. How are we supposed to make it work out? He’ll be in Hawaii, and I’ll be here. Besides, I’m still angry with him for leaving in the first place. He left me, Ade. I’m no freaking Carrie from Sex and the City. Josh is not my Mr. Big. Letters? He has to do better than that.”

  “You listen to me, Chloe,” Adrianna said forcefully. “Get over it. You hear me? Get over it. Josh messed up. Big time. He really messed up, and he knows it. Honey, people make mistakes, and Josh made an enormous mistake. But like he told you, he needed to get away from the restaurant scene here. It was consuming him and draining him and making him miserable. We all saw what he was going through, and it sucked for him. So maybe he did the wrong thing by leaving Boston, but I can understand why he needed to get out of here, can’t you?”

  I closed my eyes for a second and clenched my jaw. “Yeah,” I admitted. “I can. Do you know what he told me this morning at the hospital? He said that he loves this personal-chef job more than he thought he would, and he can’t imagine ever working in a restaurant again. I know that he doesn’t want to come back to Boston anytime soon. He’s happy where he is.”

  “See? He needed to make some major life changes.”

  “Including getting rid of me? He made his life changes, and now he can live with them.”

  “No, that’s not fair. You are one part of his life, a big part, but only one part. If the rest of his life is in the crapper, how is he supposed to make you happy when everything else sucks? He had to get his work life straightened out for himself, and that’s allowed. He screwed up, he paid the price, and now it’s time to forgive him. You made your point, now get over it and quit punishing him. And yourself. You don’t get that may shots at real love.”

  “I had it once. I’m sure I’ll find it again,” I said as dismissively as possible.

  “Don’t be so cavalier about this,” Ade warned.

  “I’m not being cavalier, but I worked hard to feel as independent as I do and to finally feel connected to school and becoming a social worker. For the first time, I am actually looking forward to graduating in May and getting a job. I think I could be good at this work. I don’t need a man! I can be happy and fulfilled with my friends, my family, and whatever great job I get.”

  Adrianna sighed with exasperation. “I don’t know how you started equating independence with not having a relationship, dummy. You can do both. You can be a strong, savvy woman and still be in love. Don’t be stupid, Chloe. You have six weeks of vacation coming up.”

  “So?”

  “So go to Hawaii!”

  “No,” I shook my head. “I’m not going to Hawaii. I have things to do here.”

  “They can wait.”

  “I have a whole semester of classes coming up,” I protested.

  “You’ll be back for those. And then you’ll graduate, and you can do whatever you want then. You can be with Josh if you want to, Chloe. You love Josh.”

  “I don’t love Josh. Josh is my past. He really is. I loved him. Loved what we had, but it’s over. It is over.” I swallowed hard.

  “You’re being stubborn.”

  “I’m not being stubborn. I’m being independent.” Adrianna flopped back on the couch with Patrick and looked at her baby. “She’s being stubborn.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  MY mother was a little disappointed that I hadn’t gone home to stay with her, but she understood. I’d found a better place to spend my winter break.

  When I arrived at the cottage, I explained who I was, and the woman who owned it smiled and let me in. I liked her immediately. She was a joyful woman who seemed to have no cares in the world. “Make yourself at home. I’m so glad you’re here,” she said cheerfully. “There is a refreshment for you in the refrigerator. My specialty.” She smiled and winked before leaving me alone.

  I peered into the fridge. Before helping myself to a mai tai, I unpacked. While putting some things away in a dresser, I noticed that two of the four drawers were empty. I hung a dress in the closet; the clothes were all pushed to one side, and empty hangers occupied the other. The left side of the bathroom vanity was empty. I stowed my makeup and hair products there. I opened the sliding glass door and took a deep breath, closing my eyes. It’s always kind of hard settling in, figuring out what to do first: put this and that away, just sit down and pour a drink,
or call my mother or Ade. I was overwhelmed—but in a good way. And for the first time in a very long time, I suddenly felt all of the muscles in my neck and shoulders relax. Paradise.

  I walked back inside, knowing that it wouldn’t be long. I went to the fridge, took out the pitcher of mai tais, and poured two.

  Then I got naked. Almost.

  Josh opened the door to the guesthouse and, with his back to me, tossed his keys on the table and threw a wet towel into the laundry basket. He had on swim trunks, and his hair was still wet.

  “How’s the water?” I asked.

  Josh whipped around. He stared at me for a moment, his jaw dropped, and then he grinned. “The water is perfect.” Still smiling, he put his hands on his hips. “Are you really here, or am I having another one of my fantasies? God, you are beautiful.”

  I handed him a mai tai. “Come find out. Dream or reality?” We clinked our glasses together. I laughed and beckoned him to the bed. “I was under the Fantasy Island impression that everyone was given a lei when getting off the plane, but I had to buy mine.” I touched a finger to one of the flowers around my neck.

  “If I’d known you were coming, I’d have been waiting for you with an armful of leis. But considering that’s all you’re wearing, I think you chose well. The colors look good on you.” He winked and moved closer, crawling across the bed until his chest was against mine and his hands cradled my head.

  “I still don’t believe you showed up here,” Josh said. “When I said I’d move back to Boston to be together, you said no. Then I must have asked you thirty times to visit me on your break, and you said no every time.”

  I brushed my hand against his cheek and kissed him softly. “I know that you don’t want to be in Boston. At least for now. And you know,” I said casually, “I couldn’t think of anything better to do over break.”

  “Very funny. I’ll try to keep you entertained.” Josh kissed me. “I can’t wait to show you around. You’re going to love it here.”