The Glass Kitchen

by Linda Francis Lee

  There was a moment of silence. “You wouldn’t do that.”

  “Why on earth wouldn’t I?”

  She heard him draw a sharp breath. “You have no way to prove I spent a second alone with Sissy before I divorced you. Or how do you think you’re going to prove I forged your signature. It’s a perfect match.”

  “But that’s the thing. Someone always knows the truth. You know that staffer you got to notarize my signature on the real estate documents? F. Don Whitting?”

  The phone line crackled with a tense silence.

  “Do you think for a second that if the district attorney’s office starts poking around and asking questions, F. Don isn’t going to cave and admit that you made him do it? I know you, Robert. I know how you operate. Plus, I just so happen to have all the proof I need to make a believer out of your constituency about Sissy.”

  She had obtained that proof of his infidelity from the fired employee.

  “You can’t do this!”

  She nodded to Marcus, who pressed send on an ancient fax machine they still had attached to a second phone line, sending through a photograph showing a very naked Robert and Sissy, with a date stamp in the lower right corner.

  “If I were you, Robert, I’d race to your fax machine and snag the proof before someone else sees it.”

  Robert cursed before the phone clattered on his desk. Portia waited, Stanley looking smug, Marcus delighted, until her ex-husband came back on the line.

  “You can’t do this!” he railed.

  “Granted, it’s a little low-tech in this day and age of sex videos, but I’m guessing it will do the trick. Call your lawyer, Robert. Tell him to release my money or I’ll start making some calls of my own. Police first, the Texas press second. You have until the end of the business day.”

  She hung up before he could respond, and Marcus and Portia danced. Even Stanley smiled.

  Forty-five

  AS FAR AS Ariel could tell, her dad had really messed things up. And the guy was supposed to be smart.

  Once they got back from New Jersey, instead of solving things, her dad had gone over to see Portia and obviously made things worse. He had stormed back into the house and started ripping apart the basement apartment like a man obsessed with erasing every little bit of the woman who used to live there.

  On top of that, he was erasing even more of their past by putting the New Jersey house up for sale. She ached a little bit at the idea, because it was like her mom had finally been put to rest. But she also didn’t think she would ever be able to walk back into that house anyway. So why not sell it?

  Now, three days after the whole asthma debacle, she came home from school to find piles of old linoleum on the front curb, waiting for the garbage truck. One more piece of Portia ripped away.

  She dropped her backpack in the vestibule, then found her dad in Portia’s apartment, the place a wreck. He wore a dust mask and seemed to be taking the walls apart with a crowbar.

  “What is it, Ariel?”

  She stood there in the dust and wrecked surroundings, trying to decide the best way to proceed. “How’s it going?”

  She couldn’t read his expression because of the mask, so she just shrugged and walked around the place, just like how she had walked around looking at things the first time she snuck in while Portia and her sisters were sitting around eating.

  “Ariel? What do you need? Rosalie made some cake and left it out for you.”

  Rosalie had started yesterday, replacing Portia. Not to be mean or anything, but nobody could cook like Portia, and they all knew it.

  “I’m fine.” She shrugged again.

  He jammed the crowbar into the top of a piece of molding.

  “You know, I was wondering,” she said, proud at how casual the words sounded.

  He stopped what he was doing and shot her a narrow-eyed look. She refused to let it get to her. This was too important.

  “How did you find me? In New Jersey?”

  He got that odd look he was getting a lot lately. Ferocious mixed with determination.

  “I mean, who would have guessed. New Jersey? Seriously? You found me in New Jersey all by yourself? Ha-ha.”

  “What are you getting at, Ariel?”

  “Me? Getting at something?”

  “Spit it out.”

  And she did. “It just seems to me that you must have had some help.”

  “Portia told me where to find you.” He turned around and gave the molding another sharp jerk. Nails squealed.

  Of course she knew that, or at least suspected it, and hadn’t she proven she was a majorly great sleuth?

  “Really?” She pretended surprise. “How’d she know where I was?”

  “She said she knew because of food. And flowers.”

  He sounded weird, which was super insane since Portia had been doing bizarre things with food ever since she’d landed in their town house, just as she herself had already told him.

  “Portia’s good at that, you know, doing uncanny stuff with food,” she reminded him.

  He just grunted, attacking the wall again.

  “You remember that, right?” Ariel said.

  He just gave her a look and told her to go upstairs before he slammed the crowbar back into another innocent-looking piece of molding.

  “Men,” she grumbled, marching out the door.

  * * *

  The weather started getting cold, and it looked like pretty soon it would start snowing. Her dad just kept ripping away at the garden apartment. While he’d had a whole crowd of people slaving away on their part of the town house months earlier, he was using his own two hands to rip apart the downstairs. Every day he worked down there, and every night he sat at the kitchen table after she and Miranda had cleared away the food he had cooked.

  Yep, he was cooking again. Rosalie had lasted barely a week before she had called them impossible and had departed. Ariel and Miranda had made plans, or colluded, as a good detective would say, to run the woman off. Sure, both of them felt bad about it, but someone had to do something to make their dad see the light.

  Instead of seeing the light, however, and clattering off to Portia and convincing her to come back to them, he just added cooking back to his list of duties. It was insanity, really, since even he admitted he was a horrible cook and they’d probably all keel over with food poisoning any day. That, or starve.

  Even more insane, Miranda had started helping him renovate the garden apartment. No sooner did Miranda get home from school than she changed and headed downstairs like a regular Mini Me Construction Girl.

  Ariel told herself it was ridiculous to be jealous. Dad had chosen her to be his daughter, even when he didn’t have to.

  The other surprise? Uncle Anthony.

  “You know I love you, kid, right?” he said to her when he appeared one day in their kitchen, Dad looking like a ferocious, overprotective bear despite the apron he wore, since he was in the middle of making another awful dinner.

  Ariel wasn’t sure what to say to that. She looked at Anthony closely, trying to decide if he was the kind of guy who wanted the truth or a platitude. The thing was, she didn’t have any idea what was in his mind.

  “Sure, I know.”

  He gave her a wry look. “You’re just saying that.”

  “Isn’t that what you want to hear?”

  “Nope. The fact is, I do love you, kid. Ariel.” He glanced over at Dad, then bent down in front of her. “But I make a better uncle than a father. Do you understand that?”

  Actually, she did, and she couldn’t have agreed more. The tiny knot that had stayed inside her after having read one too many online articles about birth fathers wanting their kids back even after having signed them away eased.

  She threw her arms around the guy’s shoulders. “Thank you for letting me go, Uncle Anthony.”

  He held on tight for a long second, nodded at her dad, and left.

  Later she had overheard her dad tell Nana that he’d given Anthony
the money he wanted, even though all the new and better documents were already signed. Which made her heart buzz even more because her dad wanted her that much. Granted, it was not so buzzworthy that she obviously had a blackmailer’s blood sloshing around in her veins. But she figured she was smart enough to beat it back if the need to con money out of people suddenly started rearing its ugly head.

  After hanging up with Nana, her dad walked back into the study. He looked surprised to find her there. But she’d finally had it. He had fixed the Anthony thing. He was nearly done fixing the garden apartment. But, hello, why wasn’t he taking all of her hints and fixing what was really wrong?

  “You know, we’ve discussed how incredibly smart you are,” she said without preamble.

  “Why do I suspect I’m not going to like where this is going?” he said cautiously.

  “I think you’re stressed.”

  Up shot one of those eyebrows of his.

  She hurried on. “Maybe with all that construction stress you’re under downstairs, you haven’t been totally able to figure out on your own that you need to do whatever it takes to get Portia back. Maybe it’d help if I made a suggestion.”

  “What kind of suggestion?”

  “Groveling.”

  He skewered her with his eyes. “Groveling?”

  “Yep, groveling, to Portia. And don’t bother saying you don’t grovel, Dad, because really, like I said, you’ve got to do whatever it takes. We need Portia. I do. Miranda sure as heck does. And, well”—she scrunched her shoulders—“I hate to break it to you, but you need her most of all.”

  Forty-six

  PORTIA STOOD ON Columbus Avenue, arms raised to the gently falling snow, reveling in the mounting signs that her life was falling in place.

  After growing up in Central Texas, she had virtually no experience with snow. She tilted her head back, feeling the brush of snowflakes against her skin.

  Straightening, she looked into the windows of what used to be Cutie’s Cupcakes. The awful pastries had finally taken their toll, and when they did, the place had closed down and the space had gone up for rent. Yet another sign.

  First, Robert had actually paid her the money he owed her. Then, just when she was ready to make a move, this perfect space came up for rent.

  The minute she saw it, Portia had pulled out her cell phone right there on the street and called Cordelia and Olivia.

  Since that day, the three Cuthcart sisters had worked tirelessly around the clock getting The Glass Kitchen ready—the real one, not the illegal one in a residential building. They’d taken on not one but two investors, using Portia’s money to hire a financial planner who made everything legal and set up an agreement that made sure Portia’s money would be repaid out of the first profits. She planned to buy an apartment of her own as soon as she could.

  They were starting out small, mostly baked goods and a few entrées. Hopefully, with a combination of Portia’s knowing, Cordelia’s chatty advice giving and constant supply of helpful books, and Olivia’s ability to fill the space with the perfect assortment of flowers, not to mention network, they would soon be able to expand.

  For the moment, Portia was living in a small rented apartment of her own, pretty close to The Glass Kitchen. Everything was going better than expected.

  But still, she felt empty, even standing around in falling snow in front of a dream that had finally come true.

  Of course, she knew why.

  She hadn’t heard a single word from Gabriel since he’d walked out of Stanley and Marcus’s door a month ago. She should have been relieved. But all she felt was miserable.

  Pulling her coat tight, she locked the doors of The Glass Kitchen and hurried the few blocks to her new apartment. Taking off her mittens, she checked her voice mail. The first message surprised her.

  “Portia, hi,” the recording announced. “It’s Miranda. Miranda Kane.”

  As if Portia could forget.

  “I just thought you should know that Dad is using the kitchen. As in, he’s cooking. I talked to Ariel about it, but she’s being totally weird. She might have said something about how you, as a self-respecting adult, should be, like, trying to save me and her from Dad’s cooking. Or something. All I know is that we are starving over here.”

  Portia heard the sound of Miranda unwrapping a piece of candy, as if her world was moving on and she needed to disconnect but didn’t know how to break the tenuous connection. The thought tugged at Portia.

  “I’m totally not into missing anyone, but Ariel misses you. I can tell. Whatever. I just thought you should know.”

  Portia didn’t call back. What could she say? The girls had lost so much, and she felt guilty to be part of it. But calling them only prolonged the inevitable. She wouldn’t ever be a part of their lives.

  The next day she worked all day. The Glass Kitchen was packed. She should have felt joy, but by closing time, she felt a strange sensation, like she was getting sick. Worse, all she could think about was food. More specifically, Gabriel’s Meal kept circling back into her head, like some cruel reminder of what she could never have.

  The kitchen staff had already left, and Olivia and Cordelia had departed early, though not before Olivia had shaken her by the shoulders.

  “Portia, you know I love you, but you have to stop moping around.”

  Portia could hardly argue, so she just gave her a lopsided smile.

  “Yes, you do,” Cordelia had added, gathering her things. “And may I point out that while the store is crowded, it’s crowded with widows, Portia.”

  “What?”

  Olivia bustled close. “You didn’t notice? It’s not just widows. There was that poor woman whose son just died after a heart operation.”

  Portia did remember—how could she not, when the woman had burst into tears at the sight of the cupcakes with little trains on them that she had made. They had both cried before the woman took away six cupcakes so her family could celebrate her little boy’s favorite treat.

  “What are you saying?” Portia asked carefully.

  “It’s like all your buckets of sadness are bringing lines of mourners to The Glass Kitchen,” Cordelia explained. “It’s not bad, Portia. Lord knows, you’re making them feel better. But I kind of miss a smile now and then, you know?”

  Her sisters left her standing there speechless, until she finally turned around and started cleaning an already clean counter. A week’s worth of customers started marching through her head—the eighty-year-old man with the exhausted eyes, the two women whose mother had just passed away …

  “Crap,” she said when she realized her sisters were mostly right. But the customers had all been grieving for someone they had lost. There was that man whose wife left him with a devastated five-year-old son, and that teenager who …

  She snapped to attention when the bell rang and the door opened.

  “We’re not open—”

  As she spoke, she turned and froze. Her hair was wild from a day of cooking and baking, and now cleaning. She looked awful and she knew it.

  “Gabriel.” She hated the breathy sound of her voice, the way her heart kicked up.

  Of course he was still beautiful in that way she loved. Hard, craggy. Strong, as if with him she would always be safe. That was what had drawn her to him, right from the beginning. A beast would never let anyone hurt her.

  Until he had.

  “We’re closed.”

  “Good,” he said.

  He made the point by turning over the little sign tacked to the door with yarn. “Now you really are closed.”

  “Which means you should be on the outside of the door. Not inside.”

  He flipped the lock.

  Portia watched him, her eyes narrowing. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “What I should have done weeks ago.”

  He had that way of seeming to catalog each part of her, as if reassuring himself that she was fine, that no harm had come to her in the weeks they had been
apart. Portia stayed behind the counter, telling herself that she was above bolting for the side exit. She would deal with him as the adult she was.

  “Gabriel,” she said as he walked toward her, stopping on the opposite side of the narrow counter. “I really don’t want to have another argument. Please.”

  “I messed up, Portia.”

  He’d already told her that, but this time, there was no anger in the words, only a commitment to truth.

  “You said I didn’t believe in you, that I didn’t want you to be who you really are. I am going to prove that you’re wrong. I do believe in you. I love you, Portia. I love you for every streak of frosting on your face.…” He bent over the gaily painted counter tiles and reached out to wipe her cheek, his thumb coming away with frosting. She was mortified until he licked the buttercream away, and her pulse leaped.

  “I love you for each of the times you pushed me to see some truth I didn’t want to face. For loving me just as I am. For taking care of my girls. For helping me save both of them.”

  His hand slid back into her hair and he leaned closer, his mouth hovering over hers. “I am going to prove to you that I listen. I am going to prove that I love you in that madly, deeply, let-you-eat-crackers-in-my-bed, shouting-Stella-from-the-courtyard sort of way.”

  Tears burned at the proof he had listened, at least to that.

  “I love you for who you are. But I can’t prove it to you here. Come to the town house, then I will prove it.”

  She managed to dash away the threat of tears. “You can’t come in here and ask me to go to your house at the snap of your fingers.” She raised her chin. “We are no longer friends with benefits, Gabriel. I’m sorry.”

  His features cemented, but not with anger. “We were never friends with benefits, Portia.”

  “Oh, that’s right. We were fu—”

  “Enough.”

  He said the word quietly, but with a strength that resonated through the café. “I love you, and the only thing that’s crazy is if you think I’m going to let the best thing that ever happened to me walk out of my life.”